Brindle

This is the terrifying lamprey/centipede inspired snowmonster constructed in his yard by artist Zach Frost, who I think we can all agree has a great name for a snowmonster sculptor. Still *shaking head sadly* I'm afraid poor Frosty never stood a chance. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to gather whatever belongings I can of Frosty's for the memorial service. "You're going to dig through the snowmonster's waste for that magic hat, aren't you?" Please, a magic hat with the power to bring inanimate objects to life -- what would I ever want with that? "I'll go grab a snow shovel." And make it snappy. Keep going for a closeup of its face. Thanks to speakerbox, who informed me he plans on constructing an entire yard of different snowmonsters and making the local news. Dare to dream.

There's a lot of talk about border security recently. Rather strangely, it involves CBP officers going without paychecks for an indefinite amount of time as government funding is held hostage in exchange for border wall/fence money.

Not that the CBP needs to remain near the wall/fence. It's able to hassle people within 100 miles of the border, which also includes international airports and has the capability to sweep up most of America's population. And that's just CBP officers. The CBP's drones are being lent out to anyone who wants to use one as far inland as they want to use it.

The CBP performs a whole lot of searches. Over the past couple of years, the CBP has vastly increased the number of electronic searches it performs, needing little more than "because it's there" to perform at least a surface scan of a device's contents. Deeper digging requires extra paperwork, but a staggering amount of exceptions to the Fourth Amendment apply at the borders which, as we noted earlier, covers far more than points of entry.

The ACLU's FOIA lawsuit has resulted in the production of a couple of lengthy documents from the CBP. These documents detail search procedures and the CBP's long list of justifications for performing these searches. There are 1,200 pages in the newly-released stash. 1,100 of them are the CBP's "Enforcement Law Course" [PDF]. The other 100 are a Powerpoint [PDF] containing "legal update training."

The CBP has studied every Fourth Amendment-related legal decision to compile a long list of things officers can use to predicate a warrantless search. This multi-jurisdictional paper chase results in the expected internal contradictions, resulting in the CBP being able to argue both sides of a flipped coin can give them permission to perform a search. Here's a quick summation of some of the documents' contents by Max Rivlin-Nadler of The Intercept.

[The CBP] can determine “whether the vehicle or its load looks unusual in some way,” or “whether the passengers appeared dirty.” If those descriptions don’t apply, they can assess “whether the persons inside the vehicle avoid looking at the agent,” or conversely, “whether the persons inside the vehicle are paying undue attention to the agent’s presence.” And if those don’t apply, they can simply determine that the car is in an area nearby the border and pull it over on that basis alone.

Being near a border is inherently suspicious, even if someone has only made the mistake of residing legally within 100 miles of a border or airport. That sucks for them since it means any trip out of town and onto a major highway could result in a fully "justified" search.

When Border Patrol officers aren't claiming their dogs can detect smuggled humans in moving vehicles dozens of feet away, they're saying whatever comes to mind to justify a search they've already performed. A much longer list of search predicates -- culled from hundreds of legal decisions all over the nation -- is contained in the documents.

(1) whether the vehicle is close to the border;
(2) whether the vehicle is on a known smuggling route;
(3) whether the vehicle’s presence is inconsistent with the local traffic patterns;
(4) whether the vehicle could have been trying to avoid a checkpoint;
(5) whether the vehicle appears to be heavily laden;
(6) whether the vehicle is from out of the area;
(7) whether the vehicle or its load looks unusual in some way;
(8) whether the vehicle is of a sort often favored by smugglers;
(9) whether the vehicle appears to have been altered or modified;
(10) whether the cargo area in the vehicle is covered;
(11) the time of day or night at which the vehicle is spotted, and whether it corresponds to a shift change;
(12) whether the vehicle is being driven in an erratic or unsafe manner;
(13) whether the vehicle appears to be traveling in tandem with another vehicle;
(14) whether the vehicle looks as if it has recently been driven off road;
(15) whether the persons inside the vehicle avoid looking at the agent;
(16) whether the persons inside the vehicle are paying undue attention to the agent’s presence;
(17) whether the persons in the vehicle tried to avoid being seen or exhibited other unusual behavior;
(18) whether the driver slowed down after seeing the agent;
(19) whether the passengers appeared dirty;
(20) whether there is intelligence available that suggests that smuggling will occur in the area or by a specific vehicle; and
(21) whether the vehicle is coming from an area of a sensor alert.

Heads, the CBP wins. Tails, citizens and visitors lose.

As this chart shows, a whole lot of searching can be performed under the "Border Exception." Things and people that have crossed a border tend not to require probable cause or warrants to be searched.

The CBP is going to perform a search. That's pretty much all there is to it. The only thing limiting it is hours in the day. The courts aren't helping either. They've been lulled to sleep with statements about "border integrity" and "national security," becoming complicit in a unilateral removal of rights for anyone in the areas the CBP is allowed to roam.

There's no upside here. The steady deterioration of rights near the border will continue. There hasn't been a presidential administration yet willing to put an end to the DHS's mission creep. And it really doesn't matter how well the CBP knows its Fourth Amendment caselaw. It will still be granted good faith exceptions for searches that somehow manage to implicate what's left of the Fourth Amendment because protecting the nation is somehow more important than protecting the rights of its citizens.

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California has long protected police officers from accountability. Most police misconduct records are impossible to obtain via public records requests. The restrictions covering these personnel files even prevent defense attorneys and prosecutors from accessing them, allowing cops with lousy track records for telling the truth present testimony as if they've never committed a misdeed or told a lie.

After years of legislative surrender to police union pressure and an overall deference to all things law enforcement, this year's model finally managed to get a records reform bill to land on the governor's desk. The new law goes into effect January 1, 2019, opening up access to a number of records Californians have never seen.

Under SB-1421, law enforcement agencies are required to provide public access to records related to use of force, sexual assault complaints, and dishonesty in investigations and reporting of a crime.

Faced with impending accountability, police departments are readying themselves for mass releases of previously withheld data. Oh, wait. The opposite of that.

Inglewood City Council approved the destruction of records that have been in the police department’s possession — more than 100 cases — longer than required by law. The city staff report and council resolution describing the action makes no mention of the new police transparency law. Instead it says the affected records are “obsolete, occupy valuable space, and are of no further use to the police department.” It added the traditional method of destroying such records is to shred them.

Yes, it's merely a coincidence that records the Inglewood PD has held onto for years -- "longer than required by law" -- are being destroyed days before the new transparency law goes into effect. It's all so innocent and devoid of subterfuge the city council did it in secret with zero public notice or input.

No video or audio of the Dec. 11 council action is available on the city’s website and neither are meeting minutes or any record of the decision.

It affects far more than records the PD has retained for years. The authorization from the Inglewood council will allow the PD to destroy all Internal Affairs investigations from 2004-2012 and all Use of Force reports from 2015-2016.

The mayor continues to argue this is all routine city business and has nothing to do with the mandatory transparency going into effect January 1.

“It’s actually quite routine for us to do records destruction,” [Mayor James T. Butts Jr.] told ABC 7’s Eyewitness News. “The Finance Department, the Police Department and other entities — whenever they want to destroy records that exceed a time limit — they submit a staff report to the City Council and the City Council approves or disapproves the records destruction.”

No doubt this statement is true. But this move, with this timing, does nothing to restore years of shattered trust. The Inglewood PD has stonewalled the public for two years, refusing to release info about the killing of two residents by police officers who encountered them passed out in a parked vehicle. The PD was also investigated by the DOJ, which found officers routinely deployed excessive force and were overseen by department management that often cleared officers of wrongdoing after little or no investigation.

The PD's decision to destroy records it has held onto for years only days before they may have become publicly-accessible only further adds to the "bunker mentality" perception noted in the DOJ's investigation. The PD wishes to remain a closed shop despite the new law. This move -- and the city's approval -- lets residents know the city isn't interested in accountability or transparency, no matter what the new law says.

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This is a bad lip reading video starring Apple CEO Tim Cook and engineer Craig Federighi announcing a bunch of new make-believe Apple products. "Some of these products include the Apple Skin Twist, the Lickamaforbus, the Handsome Anthony, Apple Wings, Apple socks, the Apple Hole, the Apple Wish Prince, the Apple DeBonk Debonk (musical can opener)." Honestly, the Skin Twist is not the dumbest product I've ever seen. Actually none of them are. Just let that sink in while I check to see what time the next rocket launch leaving earth's orbit is at. Keep going for the video. Thanks to Jody, who agrees there are 100% people out there that would buy these products for top dollar.

Over the years, we've written an awful lot about asset forfeiture and how it is basically the government stealing shit they want with almost no due process. But the reason we started writing about asset forfeiture was when ICE used that process to seize a bunch of websites based entirely on the claims of the RIAA and MPAA that those websites were distributing copyright-infringing material. It turned out those claims were totally bullshit, leading to ICE eventually agreeing to return a blog over a year after it had been seized, and two others after holding them for over five years.

I'm still perplexed that this story was almost entirely ignored by the media. This was outright censorship by the US government -- the equivalent of seizing a printing press from a publication and holding it based on nothing other than some private party's complaints about the content of their publication. Incredibly, an ICE official, soon after the initial seizures, made the following bold claim:

"People told us that we will fail if we seize these domain names, and that we'll look foolish," said Erik Barnett, assistant deputy director of the US government's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) team, which began conducting Operation In Our Sites last year.

He also stated that none of the seized sites had challenged the seizure, which was literally false. Barnett, in case you're wondering, has moved on to the private sector and is apparently now the Regional Head of Europe for Financial Crime Threat Mitigation for HSBC, a company that was described in a recent article this way:

DRUG cartels, mafia, celebrities and the European aristocracy: when it comes to laundering “dirty money” world giant HSBC is king and proof it may actually be impossible to regulate banks.

[....]

The French-TV made “Banksters” claims HSBC was the go-to bank for “a raft of illegal activities, from money laundering for the mafia, to enabling tax evasion and currency manipulation”.

Right.

ICE's boss at the time of these seizures, John Morton, also made some flabbergasting comments:

We don't have any interest in going after bloggers or discussion boards," he said. "We're not about what is being said by anybody. We're about making sure that the intellectual property laws of the United States, which are clear, are enforced. When somebody spends hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the next movie or a billion dollars to develop the next heart medicine, the innovation and the enterprise that went into that effort is protected as the law provides. It's that simple."

Except it wasn't that simple, as proven by the fact that ICE eventually returned all of those sites. Without getting any sort of apology from Morton. Or any acknowledgement that the 1st Amendment actually bars you from seizing a website. Oh, and if you're wondering, Morton is now the Chief Compliance Officer at Capital One, a company that paid out a $200 million fine for deceptive marketing, and also is viewed as the "least favorite" credit card company... perhaps because it sues more of its customers than any other credit card company.

So, anyway, back to ICE and seizing websites. Even after its total flop in seizing blogs for false accusations of copyright infringement, ICE has gone right on seizing websites, though most of them appear to be focused on seizing sites selling counterfeit goods, rather than blogs and forums discussing music.

Still, it seems notable that in late November, ICE proudly announced that it had seized over a million websites, though frankly, the press release raises a hell of a lot more questions than it answers. First off, it appears that ICE has no clue that copyright and trademark are entirely different things.

More than 1 million copyright-infringing website domain names selling counterfeit automotive parts, electrical components, personal care items and other fake goods were criminally and civilly seized in the past year through the combined efforts of law-enforcement agencies across the world, high-profile industry representatives and anti-counterfeiting associations.

"Copyright infringing website domain names" already is a weird description (were the URLs themselves infringing?) but it's made even weirder by saying that these sites were seized because they were selling counterfeits. Counterfeiting is a trademark issue, not a copyright one. Those laws are entirely different. Shouldn't a government agency in charge of enforcing these things... uh... know the difference?

The ongoing intellectual property enforcement initiative targeting fake websites, dubbed Operation In Our Sites, was facilitated by the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), a joint-task force agency led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The IPR Center, which stands at the forefront of the U.S. government’s response to IP theft, worked directly with key international law-enforcement authorities and industry organizations representing the electronics sector, luxury brand-name designers, film and entertainment and several entities specializing in apparel and accessories through the major enforcement effort.

Operation In Our Sites is the same one that was named when ICE seized all those sites I mentioned earlier -- in which blogs and discussion forums were seized, with no evidence to back them up, and held by the US government for between one and five years, before finally being handed back to the original owners because no one could ever prove those sites actually broke the law. Seems kinda weird to now tout that same operation as a roaring success.

And, need we remind you that, under the "Operation in Our Sites" banner, ICE once accidentally seized 84,000 sites, denied it for nearly a week and then finally admitted they fucked up? This is the same Operation they're now promoting for seizing one million sites? It's not clear if they include those 84,000 that were done "accidentally" in that total.

Roughly 33,600 website domain names were criminally seized in a collaborative effort between ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Europol, Interpol and police agencies from 26 different countries. Industry partners participating in the operation were fully responsible for civilly seizing 1.21 million domain names and shutting down 2.2 million erroneous ecommerce links featured on social media platforms and third-party marketplaces.

Hmm. "Industry partners" were "fully responsible for civilly seizing" these domain names. Does that mean the US government "seized" them... or that the "industry partners" got the domains. Because if it were the latter... that seems extraordinarily questionable. I know that, in some of those earlier seizures, we found it odd and distasteful that ICE announced the seizures of sites from a Hollywood studio, but it's another thing altogether if the federal government is literally taking domains and handing them to private companies without even a whiff of due process. Even if this just means that the "industry partners" gave ICE a big list, then we're still left with a fairly long list of due process questions. Did ICE really check all 1.21 million domains before having them seized? Considering that they fucked up so badly a few years ago at a time when they merely seized five domains, forgive me for questioning the amount of review that went into 1.21 million.

Investigations led by HSI resulted in the removal of copyright-infringing websites that sold counterfeit airbags and integrated sensors, both commodities that present a potential safety hazard. An investigation based in Louisiana led to the seizure of five website domain names – including Chinaseatbelt.com; Airbagpart.com; Chinasafetybelt.com; Fareurope.com; and Far-europe.com – involved in the sale of fake automotive parts. A joint case between HSI and Department of Defense investigative agencies resulted in the removal of PRBlogics.com, a copyright-infringing website offering counterfeit integrated sensors.

Once again, ICE makes it clear that they haven't the slightest clue that copyrights and trademarks are not just separate laws, but that they originate from two totally different parts of the Constitution. None of what's being described as "copyright-infringing" appears to be copyright related. Look, I get it that some people -- often reporters! -- mix up copyrights and trademarks (and patents!), but this is a law enforcement agency of the US government, who actually (for reasons that make no sense at all) has a major role in enforcing intellectual property laws. You'd think that at least they could get this kinda stuff correct.

Oh, and I should be clear: this isn't just ICE in general. This is a special division of ICE specific to "Intellectual Property."

“The IPR Center is committed to supporting enforcement actions that target copyright-infringing websites threatening the health and safety of unsuspecting consumers by offering dangerous counterfeit goods,” said IPR Center Director Alex Khu. “Collaborative efforts with external law enforcement agencies and industry have led to a crackdown on intellectual property theft that negatively impacts economies and funds organizations involved in other criminal activities.”

The "IPR Center" doesn't know the difference between trademarks and copyrights?!? Shouldn't... uh... that be seen as a problem?

Each year, the market is flooded with counterfeit products being sold at stores, on street corners and online. Additionally, criminals have taken advantage of the internet to deceive, sell and ship fake products directly to American consumers. The most popular counterfeit products seized each year include watches, jewelry, handbags, wallets, wearing apparel/accessories, consumer electronics/parts, pharmaceuticals and personal care products.

As we've discussed for years, multiple studies have shown that people buying counterfeit watches, jewelry, handbags, wallets and clothing tend not to be "tricked" into buying these things. Most buy them because it's all they can afford. The studies have shown that many of these purchases are aspirational, in that these people want to buy the real thing, but can't afford it yet. Studies have also shown that the same people who buy these knockoffs frequently will later buy the real thing when they can afford it. In short, these counterfeit purchases rarely result in any harm. The consumer has not been deceived. The trademark holder has not lost any money (and, indeed, may make money in the long run). This just seems to be ICE shutting down websites because it can.

Anyway, this press release is so bizarre, and so devoid of actual information, I've fired off a FOIA request asking for the details of these "seized" domains and the communications with those industry partners. Should ICE ever decide to obey the law and respond to the FOIA, we'll share it here. I wouldn't recommend holding your breath.

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This is some helmet-cam footage from Scottish cyclist David Brennan on the A739 Switchback Road between Bearsden and Glasgow when he gets into an argument with a motorist he spots texting and driving. He tells the guy to put down his phone, but the guy argues he can text and drive safely, before rear-ending the car in front of him shortly after. Obviously, while texting and driving has already been proven dangerous, I think it's high time we add arguing with cyclists and driving to that same list. I'll get to work on the PSAs. Keep going for the video while I really wish it showed the aftermath. Thanks to Damien, who agrees you should never drive angry.

We've written in the past about things like "super injunctions" in the UK and elsewhere that often put a huge and near absolute gag order on writing about a famous person enmeshed in some sort of scandal, and apparently Australia has such a thing as well -- and it's now scaring off tons of publications from writing about the fact that George Pell, the Vatican's CFO and often called the "3rd most powerful person in the Vatican" was convicted on all charges that he sexually molested choir boys in Australia in the 1990s. However, the press is barred from reporting on it based on one of those gag orders. The Herald Sun in Australia did post a brilliant, Streisand Effect-inducing front page display about how it was being censored from publishing an important story:

Though, if you click on the link in that tweet it now shows an error message reading Error 400 and "Content is deleted, expired or legal killed." Legal killed.

And here's the thing. Very few publications -- even those outside of Australia -- seem to be willing to pick up on the story. To their credit, the NY Post, owned by Australian Rupert Murdoch has posted about it as has Margaret Sullivan at the Washington Post, who included an impassioned plea for this kind of censorship to not be allowed to continue.

The secrecy surrounding the court case — and now the verdict — is offensive. That’s especially so because it echoes the secrecy that has always been so appalling a part of widespread sexual abuse by priests.

That has changed a great deal in recent years — in part because of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation in 2002 that broke open a global scandal and was the subject of the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight.” (Current Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron was executive editor at the Globe at that time.)

But clearly, it hasn’t changed entirely. And the news media shouldn’t be forced to be a part of keeping these destructive secrets.

Steven Spaner, Australia coordinator from the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests told the Daily Beast he felt frustrated and left “in the dark” because of the suppression of news about Pell.

“It’s hard to know if there are any shenanigans going on — things the church did that are illegal themselves,” he said. “There is always suspicion when you don’t know what is going on.”

The story itself was actually broken by The Daily Beast (first link up top), but as that site's editor told Sullivan at the Washington Post, they were a bit worried about doing so:

Editor in chief Noah Shachtman told me that he waded carefully into the dangerous legal waters.

“We understood there could be legal, and even criminal, consequences if we ran this story,” said. “But ultimately, this was an easy call. You’ve got a top Vatican official convicted of a horrific crime. That’s major, major news. The public deserves to know about it.”

Shachtman said the Daily Beast did its best to honor the suppression order, consulting with attorneys here and in Australia, and even “geo-blocking” the article so that it would be harder to access in Australia, and keeping headlines “relatively neutral.”

If you do look around, there are a bunch of news articles, including some in Australia, all published after the verdict, talking about how the Pope has "removed" Pell from his "inner circle" and hinting at "historical sexual offences" but not saying that he's been convicted. And even the news of the removal is made to sound rather benign:

A Vatican spokesman said Francis had written to the prelates “thanking them for the work they have done over these past five years”.

Or here's an article from the Australian again published after the conviction, but not mentioning a word of it, and making it sound like Pell's removal was merely his term being up:

The Vatican said it had written to Cardinal Pell and his two colleagues in late October, telling them their roles on the C9 council had expired at the end of their five-year tenure.

[....]

“In October, the Pope had written to three of the more ­elderly cardinals — Cardinal Pell from Australia, Cardinal ­Errazuriz from Chile and Cardinal Monsengwo of Congo — thanking them for their work,” he said.

“After a five-year term, these three have passed out for the ­moment.”

And the Washington Post's Editor, Marty Baron, has now had to defend publishing Sullivan's piece:

If you can't read that, it says:

This story is a matter of major news significance involving an individual of global prominence. A fundamental principle of The Washington Post is to report the news truthfully, which we did. While we always consider guidelines given by courts and governments, we must ultimately use our judgment and exercise our right to publish such consequential news. Freedom of the press in the world will cease to exist if a judge in one country is allowed to bar publication of information anywhere in the world.

It seems heavily implied by this statement that the Washington Post has been contacted about its story.

Some may argue that there is, in fact, a good reason for the suppression orders. Specifically, the idea is to have trials of prominent figures be "impartial" and not influenced by media coverage. And you can understand the basic reasoning for that -- though, in this case, there is already a conviction, and that seems obviously newsworthy. The response to that argument is that Pell is still facing more such charges in another trial. I'm sympathetic to these arguments, but only to the point that I understand the emotional position from which those arguments are made. I cannot, however, agree that they are good reasons. Yes, media sensationalism around a trial can be an issue, but in the US we've been able to deal with that fairly successfully over the years with the way courts treat jurors and order them not to read the press coverage. Is it a perfect system? Nope. Not at all. But it does mostly function. On the flip side, the ability to do damage through these gag orders is immense.

Among other things, it hides the details of what's happening at the trial, and those details can really matter, as Sullivan's article quote above makes clear. In addition, only being able to reveal details way after the fact very much dilutes or even totally destroys the impact of such stories. It is much harder to make people care about this news much later, after it has been suppressed, than when it first comes out.

On top of that, all of this relies on the idea that those issuing these gag orders always do so with the best of intentions, and that's a huge leap of faith. The opportunity for mischief here is great, as we've seen in the UK with some of its super injunctions.

This kind of thing is one of the reasons why we're so concerned here about encroachments on free speech by governments. The ability to order platforms to censor material is a massively slippery slope. Indeed, in searching for the news coverage about this, I couldn't find any of the actual coverage of the convictions on Google News. I could only find the stories about the much more tame "removed from the inner circle." It may be that Google News algorithms picked up on that story more prominently (in part because there are many more such stories) or it could be because Australia has told Google News not to post such stories. At the very least, it's ambiguous and concerning.

Having a free and open press is a pretty key aspect of democracy. Australia is making it clear that it doesn't buy into that, and tragically, it's leading to new publications around the world choosing not to report on a huge story with immense public impact.

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Athletic clothing maker Under Armour has graced our fair pages a few times in the past, always for being on exactly the wrong side of the trademark equation. Between trying to torpedo tiny Christian companies like Armor & Glory, and ensuring that every member of the public is aware that its own executives don't have a sense of humor that they are aware of by suing Ass Armor, the mega-company has been quite busy making sure the entire world knows that only it is allowed to use the word "Armour." Notably important in all of this is that the company is exactly wrong in this claim, as trademark law nearly always comes down to whether customers will be confused by the use of words and trade dress, and it is not a platform for a single company being able to lock up a fairly common word.

This is a lesson that apparently hasn't stuck for the folks at Under Armour, however, as the company has recently fired off a C&D letter to another tiny clothier, Cascade Armory.

According to Source Weekly, a start-up clothing store in Bend, Oregon named Cascade Armory has received a cease and desist order from the gigantic corporation claiming that the tiny store's brand could cause confusion to the billions of dads and bro-dudes who wear Under Armour's ass-ugly athletic gear.

As you can see from the [below] picture, the logos of both companies share almost no similarities—other than the word "armor" which UA seems to have trouble spelling.

Here are the logos in question.

The first thing that should immediately jump out at you is just how insane any claim that there is the potential for customer confusion here would be. Cascade Armory isn't even using the word "armor", never mind the British spelling that Under Armour uses. On top of that, all of the dress and iconography is significantly different. Add to all of this that Cascade Armory isn't an athletic clothing maker, but a traditional one, and that should be the final nail in all of this. Under Armour can play make-believe pretending it lives in a world where it can tell everyone else on the planet that they cannot use any words that are even close to "armour" if it wants, but it simply isn't true.

And, yet, the company makes demands far outside its legal rights.

In the cease and desist order, Under Armour demanded that Cascade Armory abandon with prejudice its application for trademark and any other applications and registrations for marks comprised of or containing the term armory, armoury, armor, armour or any misspellings or variations thereof. The company demanded Cascade Armory permanently quit using, registering or applying to register the Cascade Armory mark and any versions containing the same versions of 'armory' or 'armor.' Also, they demanded that Cascade Armory deactivate its website and social media pages that contain the same words.

These demands are flatly obscene given the flimsy nature of Under Armour's basis for all of this. Of course, we've said many times that big companies play the trademark bully because it works, largely because it can scare the hell out of startups and small companies that don't have a comparable legal war chest with which to work.

While the owners of Cascade Armory, Alex and Diana Short, have no intention of kowtowing to Under Armour's bullying tactics, they also admit that a legal fight against the conglomerate would put their young business in peril.

Which is why companies like Under Armour get away with this nonsense. Why they feel the need to do so is an open question.

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This is a shot of the ~5-foot tall wooden middle finger sculpture that 54-year old Ted Pilkey of Westford, Vermont erected atop a 16-foot pole in his yard after local officials repeatedly rejected his applications to build a large garage on his property for his automotive and monofilament recycling businesses. Some more info while I build an entire wooden fence of middle fingers around my house:

"I'm not trying to cause hate and animosity to the people who live in that town, because there's very good people in that town," the 54-year-old Westford native says of his fellow residents in the 2,000-person town. "All the people are very good people." With the exception, Pelkey says, of the Westford Selectboard, Development Review Board, and other town leaders, who have blocked his efforts to get a permit to build the 8,000-square-foot garage, so he could move his truck repair and monofilament recycling businesses in nearby Swanton to his own property. Officials say Pelkey's applications have fallen short of the town's standards, but he thinks they're biased against him...

Hmm, I'm not really sure about all this sub-standard application and biased business, but I do admire Ted's gumption. Granted the giant middle finger probably isn't going to help him make any friends on the development review board, but I've always been a huge fan of burning bridges out of spite with the intention of building a hovercraft even though I know I'm nowhere near capable. Keep going for a closeup of the middle finger before it was mounted. Thanks to Jeffrey S, who agrees we all deal with disappointment in our own ways.

This is an animated gif showing just how much landmasses and countries near earth's poles appear enlarged due to the Mercator projection, the "most commonly used two-dimensional depiction of the globe." Previously: another map with countries shown to actual scale. Man, Russia isn't nearly as big as I thought it was. Now I'm not saying it's clearly time for you and me to invade, but I am saying I doubt my nephews would miss their Power Wheels for one weekend. Thanks to Marcus O, who agrees there's barely enough ice in Antarctica to cool a pitcher of lemonade.

If it exists, the DEA probably wants to stash a camera in it.

A Denair, California-based company called the Special Services Group, LLC won a $42,595 DEA purchase order at the end of November for a “custom Shop Vac concealment with Canon M50B.” Canon describes the M50B as a “high-sensitivity…PTZ [Pan-Tilt-Zoom] network camera” that “captures video with remarkable color and clarity, even in very low-light environments.” The M50B retails for about $3,400; the acquisition is being funded by the DEA’s Office of Investigative Technology and is presumably intended to assist agents in a specific operation, rather than for wider, passive monitoring.

This almost sounds like an ultra-low tech version of the NSA's hardware interdiction program. The NSA intercepts computer equipment to install hardware/software backdoors. The DEA's vacuum camera possibly could be stashed in a Shop Vac en route to a targeted person/business. Either that or a DEA agent/informant is going to pretend to be a janitor and wheel around a loaded Shop Vac to capture footage.

It's weird but it's pretty much in line with the DEA's procurement history. A report from Quartz last month showed the DEA was buying cameras concealed in streetlights, traffic barrels, and speed-display road signs. The last one on the list doesn't house ordinary cameras, but rather automated license plate readers.

Are there Constitutional concerns? Sure. They're pretty minimal in areas where any activity could be observed by a member of the public. But they're not nonexistent. And much of this surveillance activity occurs with the silent blessing of the city governments that own the repurposed streetlights. The government has occasionally pushed for upgraded streetlight systems, with the main "improvement" being the addition of surveillance devices.

Chad Marlow, a senior advocacy and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, says efforts to put cameras in street lights have been proposed before by local law enforcement, typically as part of a “smart” LED street light system.

“It basically has the ability to turn every streetlight into a surveillance device, which is very Orwellian to say the least,” Marlow told Quartz. “In most jurisdictions, the local police or department of public works are authorized to make these decisions unilaterally and in secret. There’s no public debate or oversight.”

The Shop Vac+camera is more problematic. Vacuums are typically used in areas not readily visible to the public. This narc vac deployment hopefully comes with a warrant attached. Someone consenting to having an area vacuumed isn't the same as consenting to a search. This device can do both at the same time, which would appear to be a Fourth Amendment issue if there's no accompanying paperwork.

Of course, it could be argued allowing someone like a DEA agent/informant into a private area is tacit consent to be searched. After all, anything seen by the camera would be seen by its operator. Anything illegal observed by this third party could be reported to law enforcement. Utilizing a camera as another set of eyes doesn't undercut this Fourth Amendment end-around. (If it's a DEA informant deploying the vacu-cam, the government can't claim it was a private search, so there's that...) The best solution is don't do illegal stuff where it can be observed by anyone -- or anything -- you don't know inside and out.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this tactic to be discussed in court. There's nothing particularly secretive about the tech angle, especially when there's publicly-available acquisition documents directly referencing both the mean and the method. But I'm sure the DEA will still argue discussing a camera in a Shop Vac in open court will jeopardize future/ongoing investigations. However this procurement pans out, it's probably safe to say more than a few pieces of cleaning equipment underwent exploratory disassembly following the publication of the DEA's acquisition

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Atlanta, Georgia, August 23, 2016:

Officials are promising more transparency on the part of law enforcement, and greater trust between cops and the community. The body cameras “will strengthen trust among our officers and the communities they serve by providing transparency to officer interactions,” said Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed this past week in announcing a purchase.

Oh, we were all so very young then. Look at us (including me!), pointing to the increasing adoption of body cameras as the ushering in of a new era of transparency and accountability. Didn't take long for this lily to get unceremoniously de-gilded.

Cameras are great tools of accountability. They just can't be controlled and maintained by cops. Two years after promising a better police force brimming with accountable officers steadily working to rebuild relationships with the citizens they police, Atlanta residents are being informed their servants/protectors are cheats and liars.

The audit looked at a random sample of 150 videos from officers’ body cameras. In more than half the cases, officers failed to activate and deactivate their cameras at the required time, the audit said.

Officers also miscategorized 22 of the videos, including a use of force incident. Auditors said mislabeling the videos may have led to some being deleted prematurely.

And the audit said that officers failed to capture two-thirds of dispatched calls between November 2017 and May 2018.

These results shouldn't shock Atlanta residents or readers of this site. It doesn't even shock Atlanta Police officials. Police Chief Erika Shields says she's "not happy" with the results of the audit, but also "not surprised." She excuses her officers actions in the worst possible way:

"I knew that what we are asking of officers is a culture shift."

It's your job to make sure the "culture" actually "shifts," Chief Shields. That it hasn't budged despite the addition of body cameras says a whole lot about the culture at the top of the PD. Whatever discipline Shields has meted out (she only says it happens, not how frequently or severely) clearly isn't enough. And the culture that remains in place in the Atlanta PD is downright nasty.

Auditors identified 64 videos “that were deleted by users who should not have had been authorized to delete videos from the system” from November 2016 to 2018.

Officer use-of-force incident videos are supposed to be handled differently. Supervisors are supposed to upload them and they to be labeled properly in case the department or the public needs to review them later.

But the audit found APD supervisors routinely didn’t understand their responsibilities. One zone supervisor told auditors he was unaware that it was his job to upload use of force videos.

Officers know the system is flawed and abuse it. Those in charge of securing recordings officers may not want retained either don't know what they're doing or are playing dumb when questioned by auditors. At the top of the miserable heap is a chief who has allowed flagrant policy violations to occur under her watch.

An official worth a damn would never express their lack of surprise at this sort of behavior from underlings. There should be shock and dismay at these results, not a shrug of "They're cops, what can you do?" emanating from the top person in Atlanta law enforcement. If that's the official reaction, the next audit will just find more of the same.

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If anything might make police-community relations better, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA) -- the union representing NYPD officers -- is against it. PBA President Pat Lynch has come out against body cameras, community policing, and even his own union members.

The battle over the court-ordered revamping of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program rages on five years after Judge Scheindlin found it to be unconstitutional. So does the PBA, which is now arguing keeping data on stops is throwing sand in the NYPD's gears.

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association swiftly condemned an order issued Nov. 20 by a Federal Judge concerning stop-and-frisk data that it said would further discourage “proactive policing in New York City.”

The directive from U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres requires the NYPD, in consultation with an outside monitor, to submit for approval a plan to implement “a program for systematically receiving, assessing, and acting on information regarding adverse findings on the conduct of police officers involving illegal stops or illegal trespass enforcements.”

The NYPD has been ordered to document its stops numerous times since the 2013 decision. And it has continued to fail to do so. Officers blame a lack of instruction and/or clarity from upper management. Upper management blames multiple court orders and outside oversight for its inability to deliver clear instructions. And the PBA blames the whole mess on officers being forced to engage in Constitutional policing, which apparently is the opposite of "proactive" policing.

What the PBA is agitating for is the return to halcyon days of stop-and-frisk when NYPD officers performed hundreds of thousands of stops a year, a majority of them targeting the city's minorities. Constitutional policing would trim hundreds of man hours from the production of mandated reports, but the PBA wants nothing to do with keeping officers on patrol, rather than tied up doing internal bookkeeping for the DA's office.

Judge Torres said she was requiring that the plan to provide extensive information on the program include “(a) declinations of prosecutions by the District Attorneys in New York City; (b) suppression decisions by courts precluding evidence as a result of unlawful stops and searches; (c) court findings of incredible testimony by police officers; (d) denials of indemnification and/or representation of police officers by the New York City Law Department; and (e) judgments and settlements against police officers in civil cases where, in the opinion of the New York City Law Department, there exists evidence of police malfeasance.”

The PBA's response? To deride the accountability mandates as "unnecessary" -- an abuse of the court's "narrow authority" that will somehow wreak havoc on the NYPD's rank-and-file. This production of information will "end proactive policing in New York City," according to PBA president Pat Lynch.

Fortunately, Pat Lynch has long been recognized as a blowhard who seldom has the full support of the officers he represents. According to this report, the PBA was "quietly critical" of the PD's stop-and-frisk program when it was being abused to its fullest extent. Now that it's being deployed in a more Constitutional fashion -- resulting in a severe decline in stops -- the PBA wants to pretend the same program it criticized as "overused" is now a critical aspect of New York law enforcement.

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Why is routine police misconduct a problem police departments can't seem to solve? It's a mystery, says Elkhart, Indiana law enforcement.

Twenty-eight of the Elkhart Police Department’s 34 supervisors, from chief down to sergeant, have disciplinary records. The reasons range from carelessness to incompetence to serious, even criminal, misconduct.

Fifteen of them have served suspensions, including [Police Chief Ed] Windbigler himself, who was once suspended for three days and ordered to pay punitive damages in a federal lawsuit alleging excessive force.

Change starts at the stop... unless it's stagnation you're really looking for. Then all you have to do is put someone as questionable as the officers he oversees in charge of the whole mess.

This report -- put together by ProPublica and the South Bend Tribune -- compiles information from public records and court documents to paint a disturbing picture of the Elkhart police force. Making bad cops supervisors ensures misconduct by officers will never be fully addressed.

One promoted officer fired his weapon in three fatal shootings in the span of four years. Sergeant Dan Jones has been promoted twice, despite being found at fault in at least four accidents. He's also Parent of the Year.

Jones was once disciplined for how he picked his child up from elementary school, according to his personnel file. In his squad car, Jones entered a drive marked “wrong way,” cut into line, failed to properly secure his child and then, at a pedestrian crossing, failed to stop for a student holding up her stop sign.

Despite seven reprimands, a suspension, a demotion, and a finding of neglect of duty, Todd Thayer was promoted from corporal to assistant chief in 2016 by Chief Windbigler shortly after he took over the top spot in the department. His suspension involved officers taking suggestive photos of a woman waiting for a ride at the police station.

Another promoted officer shot and killed an unarmed man while serving a search warrant, and tasered a student at a local high school while acting as a school resource officer. Other members of the PD's supervisory team have used data terminals to "talk about white power," repeatedly switched recording devices off, threw away property seized from people they've stopped, slept on the job, filed incomplete paperwork, and been involved in large number of auto accidents and on-the-job shootings.

With these promotions, Chief Windbigler has made it clear he won't hold his officers accountable for their misdeeds. He's been in office for less than two years, but he's already shown he's not willing to mete out discipline.

This month, the city said two Elkhart police officers would be charged with misdemeanor battery after the Tribune requested video that showed them repeatedly punching a handcuffed man in the face. Windbigler had previously opted to limit the two officers’ discipline to reprimands. He told the oversight board they “just went a little overboard when they took him to the ground,” while making no mention of the punches thrown.

There's another level of oversight that may rein some of the worst cops in, but Chief Windbigler is actively avoiding its scrutiny. The Public Safety Board is supposed to be the disciplinary body handling misconduct cases, but Chief Windbigler isn't giving it anything to work with. As the article notes, previous police chiefs brought 20 cases a year to the PSB. Windbigler brought zero cases to the board during his first full year as chief. Since then, he has only brought eight. For all of this accountability-dodging, his officers voted the chief "Officer of the Year," despite the fact the honor is supposed to go to actual officers, not top PD brass.

The news only gets worse for Elkhart residents, who will be paying bad cops to oversee possibly worse cops. The mayor, Tim Neese, has decided to reform the Public Safety Board. Neese, whose son is an Elkhart police officer, will be dropping his two appointees and replacing them with more cops.

He said the board would be made up of five people — and all five would be police officers, including an assistant chief, a captain and an internal affairs lieutenant.

The mayor and police chief don't appear to care how much long-term damage they're doing to community relations and the police department itself. The Elkhart PD spent much of the early 90s defending itself in a long string of civil rights lawsuits that culminated in a study commissioned by the city that showed the department had a "reputation for brutality" and almost zero internal accountability. With these recent brass installations, it's the 90s all over again.

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Blueway Software Works (who purchased the intellectual property rights to PC/GEOS from the estate of Frank Fischer of Breadbox when he passed away) seems to have published the source code for PC/GEOS on their GitHub repository. This repository is the official place to hold all the source code around the PC/GEOS graphical user interface and its sophisticated applications. It is the source to build SDK and release version of PC/GEOS. It is the place to collaborate on further developments. While I can't ascertain the exact version that they have published, it looks like it contains all of the UI options/themes provided in Ensemble 2.0 onwards (i.e. Motif, OS/2 2.0 PM and Windows 95). It also looks like they have published the source code for all of the Breadbox titles (extra games and so on) that were sold separately. By the looks of it, they are also re-factoring the source to allow it to be compiled on Windows and Linux with more modern toolchains.

Seen here wearing what I assume is a vest borrowed from Fatz Geronimo of Showbiz Pizza's Rock-A-Fire Explosion band, this is a video of author George R.R. Martin taking a break from his busy schedule of watching his books write themselves to guide us in the ways of New York City pizza. George says the most important aspects of a good New York City pizza are a very thin but still flavorful crust, and the use of a coal fired oven to cook the pizza. He specifically gives John's Pizzeria, Lombardi's and Di Fara shoutouts, but insists you shouldn't "get any weird stuff on it though. None of this sprouts or pineapple or anything like that." Personally I happen to like sprouts and pineapple pizza, but that's just me and I'm a raccoon and four out of five of my most recent meals have come out of garbage bags I've torn open. Keep going for the video. Thanks to K Diddie, who agrees they should really invite the Ninja Turtles to do this segment next.

Rudy Giuliani may have built up a reputation for himself as "America's Mayor" but the latest chapters in his life seem to be a mad dash to undo whatever shred of goodwill or credibility he might have left. Politics watchers will know that he's been acting as the President's lawyer, in which (as far as I can tell) his main job is to go on TV news programs and reveal stuff no lawyer should reveal. But, we shouldn't forget Giuliani's previous jobs. His earlier firm, Giuliani Partners, had a subsidiary called Giuliani Security that at least at one time claimed to do "cybersecurity." Of course, when the press explored what that actually meant, it was fairly limited.

"If you hired them on a cyber engagement, they are going to tell you what your legal obligations are and how to manage the legal risk related to cyber," a cybersecurity executive in New York who has experience with Giuliani Security and Safety and requested to remain anonymous told Motherboard. "Basically, not to prevent a Target [breach], but how to prevent a Target CEO being fired."

Still, a lot of heads spun around when Giuliani himself was named as Trump's cybersecurity advisor, because, as basically everyone recognized, he does not appear to know anything about cybersecurity.

Yesterday, Giuliani made clear just how incredibly ignorant he is of the basic functioning of the internet. As I type this these tweets are still up, but I'll post a screenshot on the assumption that someday, someone with actual knowledge will get to Giuliani and convince him to take these tweets down:

There's a lot going on here, so if you haven't been following all of this, it may take a bit to unpack. The first tweet references Mueller's recent filings against Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign boss, for lying (again) to the Special Counsel's Office. Giuliani is making a weird unfounded claim that Mueller is specifically timing his indictments to times when the President is about to leave town for international gatherings. Considering the number of indictments that Mueller drops -- most of which don't happen when Trump is about to travel to meet foreign world leaders -- this already feels like ridiculous conspiracy mongering.

Within that tweet, Giuliani appears to make a few typos -- specifically forgetting to put a space after the period of a couple of sentences. The first time this happened, the sentence ended with "G-20." The next sentence begins "In". However, because (1) the lack of a period mushes these together as "G-20.In" and (2) because ".in" is the top level domain for India, Twitter interpreted that as a link to the website g-20.in. Some bright, enterprising person then registered such a website and posted an anti-Trump message to it, specifically this:

Whoever set up that site has since added a news update concerning Mueller's recent sentencing recommendations for Trump's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who was among the first brought down by Mueller.

Lots of people were mocking supposed "cybersecurity expert" Giuliani for accidentally posting such a link and opening himself up to such a thing. But last night Giuliani decided to take the nonsense to extreme levels of nonsense, accusing "cardcarrying anti-Trumpers" at Twitter of allowing "someone to invade" his tweet to insert that link. His "evidence" for this was the fact that the second time in that same tweet where he made the same "no space after a period" typo -- creating "Helsinki.Either" -- it did not turn into a link. And... as basically anyone who has even the most rudimentary understanding of the internet (clearly not including cybersecurity expert Rudy Giuliani), the reason there is no link for that is because ".either" is not (yet) a top level domain, and thus Twitter's systems don't see it as a link and don't automatically link it.

The rest of the internet has been having lots of fun with this, mocking Giuliani, and I'm amazed that the tweet has stayed up for as long as it has. Twitter was even forced to issue a statement denying any foul play:

A spokesperson told Fortune that the company’s “service worked as designed.” The spokesperson added that whenever someone tweets a Web address, a clickable link is automatically created.

“Any suggestion that we artificially injected something into the user’s account is false,” the spokesperson said.

And while it may be fun to mock such utter incompetence put on display for the world, this really does highlight a serious problem. The lack of knowledgeable people about real online security issues in the government -- especially when computer security issues are so vital to almost everything these days -- is a real problem. We can laugh about "cybersecurity advisor" and "expert" Rudy Giuliani not understanding how top level domains and links work, but then we should be terrified to think that... who the hell is actually advising the administration on very serious issues regarding internet security, at a time when tons of entities, from lowly criminals to aggressive nationstates, are using the network to mount various attacks.

And, yes, there are actually a number of other people in the government who do truly understand this stuff. But over and over again it appears that the people appointed to the highest levels concerning these things have no clue. And that's a big deal, because computer security issues aren't something you just pick up with a crash course. They're complex and challenging and require a pretty deep level of knowledge to actually understand both the threats and the possible remedies. And, when the administration's top cybersecurity adviser freaks out because he doesn't know what a top level domain is... that should worry us all.

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If you’re still using Google Hangouts, you should start looking for an alternative over the coming months. According to a source who’s familiar with the Hangouts internal roadmap, Google is planning on pulling to plug on the messaging platform sometime in 2020. The service hasn’t received any updates in more than a year and Google itself has already mentioned that Hangouts would be repurposed as an enterprise messaging service for its G Suite customers as Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet.

While Google doesn’t have a direct replacement for Hangouts, the planned shutdown of the platform isn’t surprising. For the past few years, Google has been leading the charge on RCS which is the replacement for MMS service that’s offered by nearly every service provider around the globe. Android Messages is likely what Google plans to use as its direct Hangouts replacement once the new Chat feature which will allow many of the same features that are built into Hangouts and allow you to send and receive messages on your phone and computer.

Hangouts was never the perfect chat service, but it did become the default platform for millions who relied heavily on Android and Gmail since the service was built into Gmail on the web. While I personally still use Hangouts as my main messaging platform to communicate with friends, family and co-workers, it may finally be time to find a replacement messaging service. Most other platforms have evolved way beyond what Hangouts has to offer, but it’ll be hard living with an alternative service which doesn’t allow you to search through years of archived messages or quickly find images which were sent to you and automatically stored in Google Photos.

Source: 9to5Google

 

 

Samsung's latest bendable screen technology has been stolen and sold to two Chinese companies, according to prosecutors in South Korea. The Suwon District Prosecutor's Office charged 11 people on Thursday with stealing tech secrets from Samsung (SSNLF), the office said in a statement. The prosecutors allege that a Samsung supplier leaked blueprints of Samsung's "flexible OLED edge panel 3D lamination" to a company that it had set up. That company then sold the tech secrets to the Chinese firms for nearly $14 million, according to the prosecutors. Samsung invested 130 million dollars and six years of work to develop this technology - only to have it stolen and sold to Chinese competitors. Crazy.

Here in America, unpleasant speech is still protected speech, something a federal court recently reminded a plaintiff. (h/t Adam Steinbaugh)

The person bringing the lawsuit is Marion Hammer, the first female president of the National Rifle Association. A frequent target of online criticism, hate mail, and harassment, Hammer decided to sue a handful of her many, many detractors. The lawsuit [PDF] alleges an ongoing campaign of harassment and cyberstalking engaged in by the four defendants.

The suit was filed in July. Three of the four defendants failed to respond. The fourth, Lawrence T. "LOL" Sorensen, responded with a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Sorensen argued his communications with Hammer were protected speech. The judge agrees. In Robert Hinkle's short decision [PDF], the judge reminds Hammer that the First Amendment protects a lot of speech people don't like, even when it's targeting them.

Mr. Sorensen sent Ms. Hammer two emails, each transmitting one or more photographs showing injuries from gunshot wounds. Sending these unsolicited to anyone, even a public figure who advocates gun rights, was inappropriate, indeed disgusting. As Ms. Hammer correctly notes in response to the motion to dismiss, “there are limits on how people can treat those with whom they disagree.” Or at least on how people should treat those with whom they disagree. Emails like these should not be sent in a civilized society.

That does not mean, though, that emails like these can be made criminal or even tortious. Tolerating incivility, at least to some extent, is a price a nation pays for freedom. There is no clear line between incivility, on the one hand, and effective advocacy, on the other. Turning loose a legislature, judge, or jury to ferret out incivility would deter and even sometimes punish the robust public discourse that is essential to freedom—the public discourse whose protection is the main object of the First Amendment.

The judge notes that simply finding someone else's behavior unseemly isn't a federal case, especially not when First Amendment rights are on the line. He notes Sorensen never threatened Marion Hammer "explicitly or implicitly" when he sent her photos of gunshot wounds. All the email said was "Thought you should see a few photos of handiwork of the assault rifles you support." The second was along the same line, noting that the attached photo of a dead John F. Kennedy showed the damage done by an "outdated military rifle" and that today's rifles were far more powerful and "far more destructive."

The court reminds Hammer the First Amendment doesn't work the way she wants it to work. If the First Amendment only protected polite discourse, it would be useless. Not only that, but the sending of gunshot wound photos to an advocate of gun ownership is not harassment or cyberstalking. It's a discussion of a matter of public interest, even if the discussion is largely one-sided.

The photographs were germane to the policy debate that Ms. Hammer regularly participated in and Mr. Sorensen apparently sought to join. Sending these photographs, at least in these circumstances, was not tortious. And treating them as tortious would violate the First Amendment.

As Adam Steinbaugh notes in his follow-up tweet, it would be nice to have a federal anti-SLAPP law in place to deter lawsuits like these. If Hammer felt she may have to pay Sorensen's legal fees for bringing a misguided lawsuit against him, she may have decided to leave him out of it. Now, Sorensen's out time and money for doing nothing more than engaging in protected speech.

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In a weird announcement threatening the commencement of pointless government monitoring, a French official says tax cheats will now be outed by their own selfies. (via Reason)

France’s tax administrators will start searching through social media accounts in early 2019, a pilot project in the fight against tax avoidance, Budget Minister Gerald Darmanin told weekly business TV show Capital.

[...]

"(The fiscal administration) will be able to see that if you have numerous pictures of yourself with a luxury car while you don’t have the means to own one, then maybe your cousin or your girlfriend has lent it to you... or maybe not," Darmanin said.

I guess French tax collectors will be scrolling through social media profiles with lists of tax dodgers and a keen appraiser's eye. There may be several reasons people have expensive items showcased on social media, and not all of them will have anything to do with ill-gotten net gains. A very common internet pastime is presenting your life as more exciting, dynamic, and filled with material goods than it actually is. Photoshop may be involved. Some of what tax officials come across will be evidence of nothing more than self-esteem issues.

However, this statement may not actually reflect what French tax officials have in mind. This may just be an inelegant (and partially inaccurate) depiction of the program being put in place. It appears this social media monitoring will follow the UK's lead, which doesn't have much to do with scanning social media posts for inexplicable luxury cars. If the French are on the UK Plan, as this article suggests, auditors will bury themselves in mountains of data and hope the algorithm sorts the cheats from the dreamers.

Here's what Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs [HMRC] is doing to track down tax fraudsters:

Tax authorities plan to increase the amount of data Her Majesty Revenue and Customs (HMRC) hold and can analyze. They’ve done this by extending their legal right to gather data from merchant service providers and data aggregators, including those that are based outside of the UK. This is a crucial step, as many Tax Avoidance schemes use businesses and trusts based overseas. They also now have the power to hold an online market place liable if a trader sells goods in the UK without paying tax on it.

Secondly, there will be data gathering and monitoring of certain high-risk groups. These include previous tax evasion and avoidance offenders, who will have data gathered on them for several years after they are convicted. Certain affluent individuals will also be monitored as they have been identified as a high-risk group because those with overseas business assets or connections are at a greater risk of offending.

The monitoring includes social media, but it's only a small part of the data haul.

The UK's HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will "observe, monitor, record and retain internet data" which is available to everyone, including blogs and social networking sites where no privacy settings have been applied, it has specifically confirmed in an update to its guidance on criminal investigations for tax offences.

Having a public account means the public -- and the government -- can see everything you post. That includes stuff it may try to use against you -- in this case, expensive items the government feels you can't afford.

And, lest we think we're any better than our European counterparts, the IRS has been doing the same thing in the States for years. And it's possibly been breaking the law the whole time.

The Internal Revenue Service is breaking several laws by mining large data sets and combing through social media posts in its search for people to audit, a Washington State University professor says.

Kimberly Houser, a clinical assistant professor of business law, in WSU’s Carson College of Business, said the IRS is breaking federal privacy law that says citizens should be:

– Informed when the government is collecting data on them.

– Given the chance to review and correct the information.

Such policies are required by the fair information practices incorporated into the Privacy Act of 1974.

The ACLU also argues the IRS's collection of communications violates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and skirts warrant requirements. The IRS has agreed to stop gathering emails but made no promises about text messages and social media posts.

Of course, the IRS doesn't need a warrant to collect publicly-viewable posts. Text messages, however, definitely aren't public. But it isn't really clear the IRS is collecting these without a warrant. The IRS does have Stingray devices capable of intercepting text messages, but if it has done so, nothing about this use of cell tower spoofers has made it into the public domain. More likely, the IRS has interpreted the ECPA "abandonment" rule -- which allows the government to collect email older than 180 days without a warrant (treating it as abandoned physical mail) -- to cover text messages and social media posts.

Basically, what the French government is threatening to do is something several other governments already do. It's just that none have announced it quite this badly. Trawling social media posts for inexplicable wealth may trap a few tax cheats, but it's far more likely to produce false positives and piles of mostly-useless data for investigators to dig through.

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In a Thanksgiving surprise, a new code change has revealed the first Android smartphone to be used as a testbed for Fuchsia, Google's in-development operating system for devices of all kinds. The bigger surprise - it's a Huawei. Fuchsia is still such a mystery - there's clearly a lot of effort being put into it, but at this point, we still have no solid word on that, exactly, Google intends to do with it.

This is some sausage scented holiday gift wrap from Jimmy Dean. In order to score some you have to submit a Jimmy Dean sausage including recipe to their Recipe Gift Exchange and request the paper as your reward (or a glass sausage tree ornament, chef's apron, or vinyl holiday music record). Unfortunately, it looks like everything but the ornaments have already been claimed (not sure if they're re-upping or not). That's a shame too, because I've been looking high and low for the perfect wrapping paper that would made shredding all the gifts under the Christmas tree even more appealing to cats and dogs. Keep going for one more shot. Thanks to Jess D, who agrees the best wrapping paper has been and always will be the funnies from the Sunday newspaper.

A recent study published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology indicates women may find bearded men more attractive in terms of their potential as a long-term romantic partner. The study consisted of 8,500 women who were asked to evaluate pictures of the same men while clean shaven, with light stubble (5 days of growth), heavy stubble (10 days of growth), and full beards (over 4 weeks of growth). Heavy stubble was found to be the most attractive in terms of long-term romantic partnership, followed by full beards, light stubble, and clean shaven in last. Of course I would argue that women don't actually find bearded men more attractive, just less ugly. Beards hide your face so there's less monster to look at. "You can't grow a beard, can you, GW?" Of course I can, I just don't want to because I'm afraid my dog won't recognize me and will try to attack me when I come home. "So no." Whatever, I could have a 5 o'clock shadow by New Year's if I wanted. Thanks to Thaylor H, who agrees they also should have included mustache only, neckbeard, and goatee in the mix.

This is a rending of the 100% cultured (lab created) diamond ring designed by Apple chief designer Jony Ives along with famed industrial designer Marc Newson. Sotheby's is set to auction the ring, which is estimated to fetch between $150,000 - $250,000, or about four MacBook Pros and the new iPhone.

Theirs will be created by removing material rather than adding - an ambition made possible by the extraordinary scale of the stone which will enable the ring to be completely made of this material. Creating a ring-shaped diamond is no small feat; the diamond block will be faceted with several thousand facets, some of which are as small as several hundred micrometers. The interior ring will be cylindrically cut out for the desired smoothness using a micrometer thick water jet inside which a laser beam is cast. The finished ring will have between 2000-3000 facets which has never been seen before on a single piece.

I dunno, looks like a turd to me. Not to brag or anything, but I could definitely design a cooler looking ring. *sketching* See? "That's the earth ring from Captain Planet." Oh piss off, don't act like you were a Planeteer, I was the Planeteer. Thanks to Alyssa, for reminding me of my glory days as a Planeteer before Captain Planet cut from the roster. It used to go: Earth, fire, wind, water, heart, despair! (I was despair)

Late last week, Torrentfreak had a fascinating story about Bahnhof's response to a court case demanding it block the site Sci-Hub due to demands from Elsevier that Sci-Hub was inducing infringement of academic papers. We've written in the past about Sci-Hub. Rather than an evil piracy site as Elsevier likes to imply, it is a very clever system to allow academics to share and access other academic works. Of course, Elsevier prefers to lock up academic research that it did not pay for, which is a travesty. And it has gone after Sci-Hub in multiple jurisdictions, and is constantly playing a form of Whac-a-Mole as Sci-Hub keeps on moving around (not to mention each attempt at taking it down only seems to add to Sci-Hub's popularity). In this case, Elsevier sought a blocking order in Sweden. The Swedish ISP, Bahnhof, which has spent years pushing back against copyright maximalist extremism, but without much luck.

In giving in to the block demand, however, Bahnhof went a step further. It also put up a "block" for any subscriber visiting Elsevier's sites or the court's sites:

These are not full "blocks" per se. After reading Bahnhof's protest message, you can then apparently click through to the original site.

I posted this on Twitter on Friday and it got a huge response, with many people cheering it on. I think many of them had an initial gut reaction that this was a clever (and somewhat amusing) way to protest what many people feel is an unjust blocking order by turning the tables on those who requested and approved the blocking order. Indeed, that was my instinctual reaction as well. But, I don't think we should be that celebratory about this.

For one thing, this is exactly the kind of thing that many of us warn about concerning a lack of net neutrality laws. In this case, many people support this because they all agree that Elsevier is being ridiculous and censorial here. But... it's not hard to imagine a different situation. How would people feel if an ISP were, say, putting up a similar block page for anyone trying to visit a union webpage of striking telco workers? Because that happened once in Canada. Then... it feels a bit more like a giant company using its market position to silence critics in its workforce. We shouldn't change our views on what is and what is not okay for an ISP to do based solely on whether or not we like who is put out by the decision.

Sweden doesn't currently have net neutrality rules as far as I can tell, though ironically it appears that Bahnhof sells a pro-net neutrality hoodie. But blocking sites -- even to make a good point in the ridiculousness of the site blocking order -- still goes against net neutrality and raises serious questions about whether anyone should want an ISP inspecting the sites that we go to and interjecting its own man in the middle attack to make a political message.

Suddenly... it doesn't look quite as clever in that light. I understand the value of protesting an unjust court ruling, and this certainly feels like just desserts for Elsevier and the court, but we should always see it as problematic when an ISP is getting between us and the sites we want to visit, even if it's for a good cause.

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Motel 6 franchise owners suddenly decided it was their job to play part-time cop/immigration officer and use their paying customers as grist for the laughably-named criminal justice system. One branch began faxing guest lists to the local PD without any prompting from the recipient agency. Another decided anyone who didn't look American (guess what that means) should be reported to ICE.

This drew the attention of the internet. It also drew the attention of the Washington state attorney general. Finally, it drew the attention of the federal court system, but not for the reasons these self-appointed posse members expected. The chain was hit with a class action lawsuit alleging privacy violations related to the unprompted reporting of Hispanic guests to ICE.

This is going to cost the motel chain some of its light money, as Reuters reports.

Motel 6 will pay up to $7.6 million to Hispanic guests to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming that it violated their privacy by regularly providing guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

The chain (of course) admitted no liability nor agreed that it had engaged in unconstitutional activities. Instead, it mumbled something about "recognizing the seriousness of the situation" and that it would, at some point in the near future, respect the privacy of its guests.

The respect will be mandatory if the full settlement is approved by the court.

Motel 6 also agreed to a two-year consent decree barring it from sharing guest data with immigration authorities absent warrants, subpoenas, or threats of serious crime or harm.

I guess the feeling must be that two years of not screwing paying customers out of their privacy will result in the creation of good habits. That seems unlikely to have a permanent effect, so it would have been nice to see this consent decree govern the chain's behavior in perpetuity, but you take what you can get.

This isn't necessarily Motel 6's fault -- at least not at the corporate level. There's no indication the chain's owner, G6 Hospitality, ever instructed franchise operators to engage in these activities. These appear to have been initiatives specific to some Motel 6 locations in Arizona. They were uncovered by the Phoenix New Times's examination of court records and confirmed by Motel 6 employees who said they "just pushed a button" to send guest lists to ICE.

These freelance ICE operative have screwed the Constitutional pooch so badly their parent company will be paying out the equivalent of ~110,000 overnight stays. Whatever discomfort they caused their guests will hopefully pale in comparison to the heat they're feeling now.

The proposed order [PDF] is embedded below.

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Apple's latest iOS devices aren't perfect, but even the platform's biggest detractors recognize that the company is leading the market when it comes to mobile CPU and GPU performance - not by a little, but by a lot. It's all done on custom silicon designed within Apple - a different approach than that taken by any mainstream Android or Windows device. But not every consumer - even the "professional" target consumer of the iPad Pro - really groks the fact this gap is so big. How is this possible? What does this architecture actually look like? Why is Apple doing this, and how did it get here? After the hardware announcements last week, Ars sat down with Anand Shimpi from Hardware Technologies at Apple and Apple's Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller to ask. We wanted to hear exactly what Apple is trying to accomplish by making its own chips and how the A12X is architected. It turns out that the iPad Pro's striking, console-level graphics performance and many of the other headlining features in new Apple devices (like FaceID and various augmented-reality applications) may not be possible any other way. During Apple's event last week, the company didn't even mention Intel once, and profusely made it very clear just how much faster the A12X is compared to all other laptops - even its own - that obviously all run on Intel (or AMD) processors. It seems like with this exclusive Ars Technica article, Apple is continuing its A12X marketing blitz, which all just further solidifies that Intel's days inside Apple's Macs are almost over.

Because adding flavor enhancers to the exterior of a banana is for peasants, this is the Banana Surprise, a $26 children's kitchen tool that cores and fills bananas with the injectable flavor of your choosing. You just cut the end off a banana, place it in the Yumstation, jam the corer into the banana, remove it, then inject some jelly or chocolate or whatever and TA-DA, severed penis. Me? I'm not really that into banana surprises. When I have a banana I like to know exactly what I'm getting into, and I'm 100% cool with Bananas The Same As Always. Keep going for a handful more product shots. Thanks to Jodie, who agrees the best thing you can do to a banana is make a banana split. That's what they all dream of being one day.

Crushing drug dealers and criminal cartels: that's the asset forfeiture narrative. The reality is something completely different. It's the government taking property from people with a minimum of due process, urged on by a set of perverse incentives. Law enforcement agencies directly profit from the stuff they take from people, so there's really no reason not to.

When the general public hears forfeiture is being used to target criminal cartels, they tend to think of piles of cash, luxury vehicles, sprawling mansions, and the occasional aircraft. In reality, it's whatever cash cops can find laying around (usually less than $1,000) and vehicles a couple of decades old that are someone's barely-reliable ride.

Whatever statistics can be obtained -- and it isn't much, given the secrecy cloaking these state-ordained seizures -- always tell the same story: 99% of civil asset forfeiture is penny ante bullshit. It's this way for several reasons. First, smaller forfeitures aren't worth fighting in court, so small ball seizures are almost guaranteed to end up in the hands of law enforcement. Second, it all adds up over the year. A bunch of small seizures turns into real money eventually. Third, cops aren't willing to let drug lords walk. But they'll take stuff from anyone they can imagine might be part of a cartel, even when it's someone busted carrying nothing more than a personal stash.

And that's if they even find contraband at all. The absence of criminal evidence seldom deters seizures, and forfeitures have been expanded to cover vehicles driven by impaired or uninsured drivers.

Wayne County, Michigan is no exception to this particularly depressing set of rules. As the Michigan Capitol Confidential reports, local law enforcement has seized millions of dollars worth of property, but a closer examination of the data shows its forfeiture programs prey on the poor and/or drug users who have nothing to do with the supply side of the Drug War.

Altogether, there were 736 asset forfeiture proceedings in Michigan in 2017 during which someone lost property to the government despite never being charged with any crime; this happened 380 times in Wayne County. A state law passed in 2015 requires law enforcement agencies across Michigan to submit data about forfeiture to the Michigan State Police.

Jarrett Skorup of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, who co-authored a recent report on civil forfeiture, said the data shows nearly all of those Wayne County seizures involved vehicles valued at less than $1,000. He said it’s likely that these forfeitures disproportionately affected low-income individuals, who are less able to afford an attorney or navigate the legal system to reclaim their property.

The report [PDF] doesn't break down the total value of vehicles seized, but the numbers bear out Skorup's claim. The state as a whole reported $13 million in net total proceeds from all property forfeited. $11 million of that was cash. There were 7,999 vehicles seized statewide. Simple division says that's only $250 per vehicle. State agencies also seized other property that wasn't vehicles or cash, further lowering the per vehicle estimate.

Now, there are a few unknown factors that may bring that number back up slightly. It's unclear whether this reflects proceeds after auctions, etc. that would result in a lower net total for the state due to differences in expected property value and its actual value after "disposal." This may raise the per vehicle value, but there's still a long way to go from the $250 baseline and a dollar amount that would suggest something other than what appears to be happening here: thousands of seizures of vehicles worth less than the legal costs that would be accrued fighting the forfeiture.

There's more disturbing data in the report beyond the apparent wholesale forfeiture of cars whose value barely exceeds the going rate for scrap. A vast majority of those targeted by forfeiture -- with or without accompanying criminal charges -- were caught with the lowest amounts needed to trigger criminal charges. 88% of cocaine-related seizures involved the less than 50 grams. 83% of marijuana-related seizures also involved the lowest amounts needed to charge someone. And so on down the chart of criminal charges.

The lowest-level busts make up the vast majority of all seizures. It makes sense that officers would encounter users far more often than dealers. What doesn't add up is the narrative: that forfeitures are essential to destroying drug cartels. All it's really doing is depriving people of property and disproportionately punishing the demand side of the drug problem.

Serious crimes barely register. There are thousands of drug-related forfeitures -- with more than 80% of those covering bare minimum possession. The list of serious crimes -- ranging from grand larceny to child molestation to home invasion -- makes up only 95 of the state's ~6,000 seizures. The only other big chunk (984 forfeitures) is related to prostitution charges, showing the state is willing to take away vehicles for engaging in consensual sexual transactions.

This abuse of a law enforcement tool has gotten the county sued. Multiple citizens are seeking to have the program found unconstitutional. Two of the plaintiffs listed in this story by the Detroit News have waited years for a hearing on seized vehicles, one of which is a 1998 Toyota Avalon, to give you some idea what kind of prime drug-dealing vehicles the county targets.

The small bright spot in all this is there's a bill seeking to institute a conviction requirement for forfeitures. If state agencies have to be able to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, they'll be far less likely to engage in specious seizures based on little more than the agency's desire to have more money/stuff. Unfortunately, the bill appears to be waiting for its Senate counterpart to arrive and it's been waiting almost six months at this point.

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