Brindle

Following Leonard Nimoy's death last week, the Bank of Canada is urging citizens to stop drawing on their $5 bills to make seventh Canadian prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier look more like Spock, despite it being an obvious improvement. YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO.

Contrary to what many believe, the Bank of Canada said Monday it's not illegal to deface or even mutilate banknotes, although there are laws that prohibit reproducing both sides of a current bill electronically. Nonetheless, bank spokeswoman Josianne Menard pointed out there are reasons to resist the urge to scribble on bills. "The Bank of Canada feels that writing and markings on bank notes are inappropriate as they are a symbol of our country and a source of national pride," Menard wrote in an email. Long life and prosperity might also take a hit: Menard said disfigured bills may not circulate for as long and risk being rejected by retailers.

Yeah, no retailer is going to reject a $5 that has Spock drawn on it. It's still legal tender. These? These are chicken tenders, and I WISH I had some dipping sauce. Ranch specifically, but I wouldn't complain if you hit me with some honey BBQ. *sipping milkshake* I'm getting fat. Thanks to Greg C, who always adds a B and R to the back of $1's to spell BONER. Classic.

An anti-public urination activist group functioning in Hamburg, Germany, has started covering walls in the city's party district of St. Pauli with superhydrophobic coatings so would-be pissers end up soaking themselves with their own urine. Man, guys peeing wherever they feel like it is gross. Personally, I only pee in three places: the toilet, my pants, and the bed. But that's just me and I'm mature and don't go peeing on things all willy-nilly. Unless I'm camping, in which it's a free-for-all, and yes, I have peed on bears before. Keep going for a video about the anti-pissing movement. Thanks to Lucas, who purposefully pees on friends' couches if he wakes up and finds a penis drawn on his forehead. Hey -- gotta take your shoes off before passing out, bro.

Our objective is to build the kernel network stack as a shared library that can be linked to by userspace programs to provide network stack personalization and testing facilities, and allow researchers to more easily simulate complex network topologies of linux routers/hosts. Although the architecture itself can virtualize various things, the current design only focuses on the network stack. You can benefit network stack feature such as TCP, UDP, SCTP, DCCP (IPv4 and IPv6), Mobie IPv6, Multipath TCP (IPv4/IPv6, out-of-tree at the present moment), and netlink with various userspace applications (quagga, iproute2, iperf, wget, and thttpd).

Soon, it could take as little as $60 and a laptop to begin messing around with a car's digital innards.

The post A $60 Gadget That Makes Car Hacking Far Easier appeared first on WIRED.

For quite some time now, we've been covering how various law enforcement agencies have been using "Stingray" (or similar) cell tower spoofing devices to track the public. Beyond the questionable Constitutionality of such mass surveillance techniques, what's been really quite incredible is the level of secrecy surrounding such devices. We've written about how the US Marshals have "intervened" in various court cases to hide info about the use of Stingrays -- and even telling local law enforcement to lie about their use of the devices. We've written about law enforcement officials claiming "terrorism" as the reason for needing Stingrays, but then using them for everyday law enforcement. We've written about the company that makes Stingrays, Harris Corp., forcing police to sign non-disclosure agreements barring them from revealing any info about their use. It also appears that Harris Corp. misled the FCC to receive approval for its mobile tower spoofing capabilities. Some police departments have even withdrawn evidence rather than talk about their use of Stingrays.

Thankfully, there's been growing concern about these devices. Congress has been investigating and now it appears at least some courts are getting skeptical about the use of Stingrays. The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) has highlighted that a judge in one of its cases has ordered the Erie County Sheriff's Office to reveal information to the public about its Stingray operations. The full ruling [pdf] is worth reading. While denying the NYCLU's claim that the Sheriff's Office didn't conduct a thorough search as required, the judge is not at all impressed by the redactions in the documents that were released:

The purchase orders should have been disclosed in their entirety, without redaction of the various words, phrases, and figures thus far withheld. The purchase orders (and more particularly the redacted words, phrases, and prices), were not "compiled for law enforcement purposes" in the sense meant by the statute but, even if they were, their disclosure would not: "interfere with law enforcement investigations or judicial proceedings"; "identify a confidential source or disclose confidential information relating to a criminal investigation," meaning a particular ongoing one; or "reveal [non-'routine'] criminal investigative techniques or procedures, meaning techniques a knowledge of which would permit a miscreant to evade detection, frustrate a pending or threatened investigation, or construct a defense to impede a prosecution.... Further, the purchase orders (or, more precisely, the information redacted therefrom), although clearly constituting inter-agency materials" (the other agency involved was Erie County and its Office of the Comptroller), amount entirely to "instructions to staff that affect the public".... Indeed, the instructions set forth in the purchase orders—'in essence, "Pay this bill of this vendor for this item purchased by the Sheriff's Office at this price"—was and is of quintessentially compelling interest to and of undeniable impact upon the taxpaying public.

Finally, the Court finds that the purchase orders, and particularly the matters redacted therefrom, are not "specifically exempted from disclosure by state or federal statute" .... The Court rejects respondent's arguments that the disclosure sought here would, if made, violate a particular federal statute, regulatory scheme, and executive order forbidding (and indeed criminalizing) the export of certain sensitive technology without government license or the illicit revelation of sensitive information about such sensitive technology to foreign nationals. The Court instead is convinced by petitioner's argument that the disclosure of public records pursuant to New York's Freedom of Information Law and the within judicial directive -- even records concerning respondent's ownership and use of a cell site simulator device -- does not amount to the actual export of such arms, munitions, or defense technology. Further, the Court is satisfied by showing on this record that petitioner, a New York not-for-profit corporation, is not a "foreign person," meaning that the disclosures sought by it pursuant to FOIL would not in fact run afoul of related federal legal restrictions on the revelation of sensitive technical data about export-restricted arms or technology.

Got that? Basically the court rejects the Sheriff's Office's contention that disclosing this information was somehow "exporting munitions" to "foreign persons."

Oh, as for the non-disclosure agreement with Harris Corp.? The judge notes that a non-disclosure agreement is not a federal regulation:

At the outset, the Court notes its agreement with petitioner's observation that the FBI-drafted non-disclosure agreement is not itself a federal statute specifically exempting anything from disclosure....

In fact, later in the order, the court says that the non-disclosure agreement itself should be disclosed:

Likewise, the Court concludes that this public record ought to have been disclosed in its entirety. As indicated, the agreement was entered into between the FBI and respondent as an apparent pre-condition of respondent's being allowed to acquire and use the cell site simulator. The gist of the letter is not a recitation of the technological capabilities of the device or even the "hows" and "whens" or the advantages of its use for law enforcement purposes, but rather simply the need for the Sheriff's Office to avoid disclosing the existence, the technological capabilities, or any use of the device to anyone, lest "individuals who are the subject of investigation ... employ countermeasures to avoid detection," thereby endangering the lives and safety of law enforcement officers and others and compromising criminal law enforcement efforts as well as national security. The Court has no difficulty in concluding that the agreement (or, more precisely, each redacted-at-length passage of it) was not "compiled for law enforcement purposes" in the sense meant by the statute.... Again, even if it was, the Court would conclude that the disclosure of the non-disclosure agreement would not thwart or prejudice any particular ongoing law enforcement investigation or pending prosecution.... Nor, the Court concludes, would the disclosure of the non-disclosure agreement "identify a confidential source or disclose confidential information relating to a criminal investigation," again meaning a specific ongoing one, or "reveal" other than "routine" "criminal investigative techniques or procedures"....

There's a lot more, including other documents, and all of that leads the judge to also grant attorney's fees to the NYCLU. It will be interesting to see if the Sherriff's Office challenges this, but it's a pretty complete win for transparency in an area that law enforcement has been trying to keep totally secret for quite some time now.

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March 16th is National Freedom of Information Day (and the beginning of Sunshine Week). The Most Transparent Administration™ celebrated it in the style to which is has become accustomed.

The White House is removing a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject requests for records to that office.

So, there's that: another agency within the government that won't respond to FOIA requests. I mean, many don't, at least not until they're successfully sued. Others play the waiting game, the "we can't find it" game and the "fine, but it'll cost you" game. But this office will simply play the "we don't have to" game.

Most of the White House is off-limits to FOIA requests, with various court decisions in its favor shoring up the request denials. But the Office of Administration was different… or was up until recently.

Unlike other offices within the White House, which were always exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, the Office of Administration responded to FOIA requests for 30 years. Until the Obama administration, watchdog groups on the left and the right used records from the office to shed light on how the White House works.

Obama may have pressed the kill switch, but this slide towards opacity started back during the previous presidency -- also no fan of government transparency. A lawsuit over 22 million emails led Bush's administration to exercise its option to opt out of FOIA responsiveness and a 2009 court ruling upheld the Office's decision. In the end, the Office of Administration is still charged with archiving presidential emails, but it doesn't have to release them until five years after the current president has left office.

The administration's ironic decision to eliminate sunshine during Sunshine Week is explained in a notice at the Federal Register.

This action is being taken in order to align Office of Administration policy with well-settled legal interpretations of the Office of Administration's status under Federal law and Executive Orders, including the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act of 1974, and Executive Order 13526. The Office of Administration, as an entity whose sole function is to advise and assist the President of the United States, is not an agency under the Freedom of Information Act or the Privacy Act of 1974, nor does its implementation of Executive Order 13526 affect members of the public. Accordingly, the provisions of the Code of Federal Regulations to be removed are without legal effect.

All well and good, but it would be refreshing to see an agency opt in to greater transparency, rather than reverting to the default opacity setting. And then there's the issue of self-governance. Give a government body the power to set its own FOIA rules and you should expect nothing less than more secrecy. As Rick Blum of Sunshine in Government points out, this is a problem.

"I think what we've all learned in the last few weeks is the person who creates a record — whether it's running a program or writing an e-mail — is the one who gets to decide whether it's an official record," Blum said. "And there ought to be another set of eyes on that."

At the very least, it's a conflict of interest. When one side wants less transparency and has the unchallenged power to make that decision, the public -- and its right to know -- goes completely unrepresented.

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Last week we wrote about the hypothetical situation of CCTV cameras being installed in every home. It turns out that this particular dystopia is closer than we thought: an article by Kashmir Hill on the Fusion site passes on the news that Hertz is putting cameras inside its rental cars as part of its "NeverLost" navigational system:

Hertz has offered the NeverLost navigational device for years, but it only added the built-in camera feature (which includes audio and video) to its latest version of the device -- NeverLost 6 -- in mid-2014. "Approximately a quarter of our vehicles across the country have a NeverLost unit and slightly more than half of those vehicles have the NeverLost 6 model installed,” Hertz spokesperson Evelin Imperatrice said by email. In other words, one in 8 Hertz cars has a camera inside -- but Imperatrice says that, for now, they are inactive. "We do not have adequate bandwidth capabilities to the car to support streaming video at this time," she said.

So why did it install them?

"Hertz added the camera as a feature of the NeverLost 6 in the event it was decided, in the future, to activate live agent connectivity to customers by video. In that plan the customer would have needed to turn on the camera by pushing a button (while stationary)," Imperatrice explained. "The camera feature has not been launched, cannot be operated and we have no current plans to do so."

But of course, Hertz would hardly go to the trouble and expense of fitting its cars with this feature unless, at some future point, it did plan to use them. Morever, that future use might go well beyond "live agent connectivity", as Hill rightly points out:

you could imagine camera mission creep, such as Hertz using it to capture video of what a trouble renter is up to in the vehicle, or to see who is really driving the car, or to snoop on a singing -- or snuggling -- driver.

According to the Fusion article, Hertz doesn't seem to be telling anyone about the camera, on the grounds that the company doesn't plan to use it, and so there's nothing for customers to know. But if and when it does announce its presence, there will be precisely the problem Techdirt mentioned last week: that people in front of it would naturally be worried they were being spied upon -- even if assured to the contrary -- and would start constraining their speech and behavior.

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

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Vigilant Solutions' automatic license plate readers are everywhere, even places where you wouldn't expect them. Like, mounted on private companies' vehicles. This isn't new. BetaBoston investigated the private ALPR growth industry early last year. Unfortunately, there's been very little good news to report since then. In fact, there still isn't.

Vigilant's ALPR database currently houses more than 2 billion plate scans, with nearly 100 million more being added every day by law enforcement agencies and repo companies. It actually has two databases. One can be plugged into by law enforcement. The other, housed by Vigilant-owned Digital Recognition Network, can be accessed by certain members of the public: car dealers, insurance companies, private detectives… basically anyone willing to pay access fees and who can offer a suitable justification for digging through a multi-billion plate database.

But when confronted with the possible privacy issues this massive database creates, the company is swift to point out the obvious: license plates on vehicles are, in fact, public. But this justification for the creation of the database fails to carry over to those requesting information about what's in the database. Public records requests have routinely been denied by law enforcement, who claim releasing publicly-obtained, by definition public, license plate photos is somehow a privacy violation.

Todd Hodnett, founder of Digital Recognition Network (corporate "child" of ALPR manufacturer Vigilant Solutions), says privacy concerns should be addressed by anyone but the company making the ALPR equipment and the one housing billions of plate photos accessible by non-government entities.

Hodnett… added that state and federal laws protect the privacy of motorists' information. State lawmakers, he said, could instead focus on restricting public access to the records and requiring state government oversight and more transparency.

He also points out the hypocrisy of the current situation:

"For the state on one hand to require that you place a license plate with six or eight alphanumeric characters on your vehicle and then on the other hand come back and say that is private - well it doesn't make any sense," he said. "It is not private. Otherwise, how could they require you or mandate you to expose it?"

It's a good point, but one Hodnett ultimately doesn't care about. At present, plates are considered "public" -- which allows his company to do what it does with no legal ramifications. And when the massive database of plate and location info is threatened, DRN's parent company (Vigilant) is prone to filing lawsuits claiming its license plate photography is protected speech.

It also goes to great lengths to portray any limitation of its plate readers as a threat to public safety.

Brian Shockley — vice president of marketing at Vigilant — plans to warn legislators that Massachusetts risks getting left behind in the use of a new tool that helps fight crime.

“I fear that the proposed legislation would essentially create a safe haven in the Commonwealth for certain types of criminals, it would reduce the safety of our officers, and it could ultimately result in lives lost,” Shockley is scheduled to say in testimony prepared for the hearing before the Joint Transportation Committee.

This may sound reasonable, but Shockley's claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny. As it stands now, ALPRs seem nearly as likely to return false positives as generate useful leads.

Until there's any serious pushback, Vigilant is free to arm both cops and citizens with plate scanners and sell access to both. And until someone starts seriously considering the fact that a plate/location database containing billions of records unrelated to criminal activity might be a bit of a privacy issue (in terms of long-term tracking of people's movements), Vigilant has no reason to alter even the most questionable of its practices. After all, it's not as if law enforcement agencies and their private customers (through DRN) have any problem with limitless collection and retention.

Fulton County Police Dept. Corporal Kay Lester:

"Per our understanding, the data that we contribute stays on the database indefinitely," Lester said in an email. "We can change the time frame if we choose, but since the data is only accessible to (law enforcement agencies), we currently have elected not to do so."

This is the standard m.o. for most law enforcement agencies in the country. As McClatchy reports, only 10 states have implemented laws governing collection and retention of license plate photos. There's even less oversight of Vigilant's "private" collection -- the database accessible by corporate customers. Until laws are passed governing the private side of Vigilant's collection activities, the company is free to hold onto everything forever.

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Last year, we noted how The Weather Channel was starting to have a hard time getting cable operators to pay the kinds of carriage fee increases the channel is looking for. That's of course in large part thanks to the fact that The Weather Channel increasingly focuses on fluff and nonsense (photos of the world's sexiest beaches, anyone?) instead of oh, forecasting the weather. These struggles have only been compounded by the fact that these days, all manner of apps can quickly tell you the weather while The Weather Channel is busy talking about wacky buffalo with "ginormous" tongues.

When The Weather Channel demanded a steep carriage fee hike from DirecTV last year, the satellite TV company responded by laughing and offering its customers channels that actually delivered the weather for a change. After many customers stated the loss of The Weather Channel was an improvement, the channel buckled and settled for significantly less money.

Apparently, the company hasn't learned its lesson quite yet. Verizon this week decided to pull The Weather Channel from its channel lineup after the channel demanded notably higher rates. In a note to subscribers, Verizon was quick to point out that, hey -- it's not like reconstituting reports from the National Weather Service is really all that difficult in the Internet age:

"Verizon’s agreements to carry The Weather Channel and Weather Scan have expired, and have not been renewed. In today’s environment, customers are increasingly accessing weather information not only from their TV but from a variety of online sources and apps. Verizon is therefore pleased to launch the new AccuWeather Network, which will be available on FiOS® TV on channel 119/619 (HD) and on our free FiOS Mobile App starting March 10, 2015."

Like the DirecTV feud, most customers responded to the channel being pulled with either a shoulder shrug or declarations that they find the replacement apps and channels a marked improvement. Still, like it did with the DirecTV dispute, The Weather Channel quickly cobbled together a fake news story implying that pulling the channel is a safety hazard:

"Customers turned to social media and the Verizon website today, March 10, in support of The Weather Channel, which for more than 30 years, has been the most trusted resource for disseminating timely information to help prepare and protect families across the nation against weather-related emergencies."

Apparently nobody at The Weather Channel has been getting the memos stating that their increasing failure to actually report the weather has made the channel a laughing stock. Cable companies are having a harder time pushing off programming rate hikes to consumers awash with alternative options (whether that's a weather app or Netflix). As such, cable companies themselves are starting to push back harder at broadcasters like The Weather Channel (or post Colbert and Stewart Viacom) that demand higher programming fees for lower-quality product.

If you offer a smash hit product like "Breaking Bad" or "Mad Men," you can often demand higher carriage rates. If your claim to fame instead is programs like "Prospectors" -- or creating a nation of weather neurotics by naming every flimsy storm that comes down the pike -- you're going to have a harder time as the pay TV market begins to finally evolve.

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Android 5.1 might not have a horde of obvious changes above the surface, but there’s no doubt Google put in a lot of work under the hood. Another interesting new change has come to light — the company might be working on bringing a built-in VPN service for use on public WiFi networks.

The change was noticed when a new app — called Google Connectivity Services — was found among the list of other apps installed on the latest stock build of Android 5.1. Using an app like QuickShortCutMaker will allow you to launch the following activity within the app:

com.google.android.apps.gcs/com.google.android.apps.gcs.WifiAssistantOptInActivity

Launching said activity brings up a dialog box letting you know that you will be connected to a Google VPN to transmit your data in a secure fashion. Clicking “Got It” takes you to the standard VPN menu, though the phone fails to connect to any VPN at that point.

So is Google working on a free VPN that anyone can access? It’s possible, though there are a couple of other things to consider:

• This could be a feature of the carrier’s upcoming MVNO service that was confirmed at Mobile World Congress. Google’s MVNO will leverage the use of both public WiFi and cellular networks for calling, messaging and data activity. Such a solution certainly could benefit from encrypted data. We expect to hear more about these efforts at Google I/O.
• It’s possible this could eventually be offered for Android for Work users who transmit sensitive data to and from the workplace.
• It could be a free-for-all where anyone and everyone who needs VPN access can easily get it with just a few clicks.

But without any official word from Google, it’s all just a series of guesses. The “learn more” button on the dialog box links to a generic support page so there are no answers to be had there.

We’ll be looking for answers from sources of our own, though, and will update you accordingly if we hear anything. Built-in VPN that anyone can use at any time? That would be a game changer, but let’s try not to get too excited before we know what, exactly, El Googs is planning.

[via Pocketables]

In a few months, we'll be marking the second anniversary of the first Snowden leak. The outraged responses of citizens and politicians around the world to these revelations has resulted in approximately nothing in those 24 months. There have been bright spots here and there -- where governments and their intelligence agencies were painted into corners by multiple leaks and forced to respond -- but overall, the supposed debate on the balance between security and privacy has been largely ignored by those on Team National Security.

Here in the US, multiple surveillance reforms were promised. So far, very little has been put into practice. The NSA may be forced to seek court approval for searches of its bulk phone metadata, but otherwise the program rolls on unimpaired and slightly rebranded (from Section 215 to Section 501).

Senator Ron Wyden -- one of the few members of our nation's intelligence oversight committees actively performing any oversight -- isn't happy with the lack of progress. In an interview with Buzzfeed's John Stanton, Wyden points out that not only has there been little movement forward in terms of surveillance reform, there actually may have been a few steps backward.

Wyden bluntly warned that even after the NSA scandal that started with Edward Snowden’s disclosures, the Obama administration has continued programs to monitor the activities of American citizens in ways that the public is unaware of and that could be giving government officials intimate details of citizens’ lives.

Asked if intelligence agencies have domestic surveillance programs of which the public is still unaware, Wyden said simply, “Yeah, there’s plenty of stuff.

One place there's definite regression -- at least in terms of attitude, if not results -- is the push to give intelligence and law enforcement agencies "keys" to encrypted communications, whether in the form of unicorns "golden keys" or pre-installed backdoors in hardware and software. Wyden recognizes the dangers inherent to these demands -- the ones these agencies won't admit exist.

“I’m going to fight that with everything I’ve got … Once the good guys have the keys, the bad guys have the keys and this is going to be incredibly damaging to innovation,” Wyden said.

Wyden blames the current intelligence reform stasis on two key figures, as well as the administration that bends over backwards to oblige them.

Wyden made clear he has little faith serious changes will be made so long as the current leaders of the intelligence community, like Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, retain their jobs. “The ways this works is, these are individuals who serve at the pleasure of the president … [and] the president wants them there.”

“All of these officials … work for the president of the United States, so you can ask him about it. But I don’t have confidence in [CIA Director] Brennan,” Wyden added bluntly.

No reason why he should. As he points out earlier in the interview, the hacker-esque actions the CIA deployed against Senate staffers during the crafting of the Torture Report would get an ordinary person thrown in jail.

The intelligence community may be avoiding any serious reforms thanks to an all-too-gracious administration, but they haven't found a way to shake Wyden -- someone who knows that not receiving an answer to a pointed question can sometimes be as powerful as wrestling admissions from tight-lipped surveillance defenders.

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Looks like the long arm of the law is trying to diddle Wikipedia into submission. Members of the NYPD are trying to scrub Wikipedia's entries about police violence.

Read more...

If you wanted more bad reviews than you could shake a legally-unenforceable clause at, you'd do this:

[Windermere Cay's] Social Media Addendum, published here, is a triple-whammy. First, it explicitly bans all "negative commentary and reviews on Yelp! [sic], Apartment Ratings, Facebook, or any other website or Internet-based publication or blog." It also says any "breach" of the Social Media Addendum will result in a $10,000 fine, to be paid within ten business days. Finally, it assigns the renters' copyrights to the owner—not just the copyright on the negative review, but "any and all written or photographic works regarding the Owner, the Unit, the property, or the apartments." Snap a few shots of friends who come over for a dinner party? The photos are owned by your landlord.

The Florida apartment complex claims the stupid clause is needed to prevent "unjust and defamatory reviews." It makes this claim -- not in a statement given to Ars Technica (which was tipped off by a resident) -- but in the introductory paragraph of the Addendum. From there it gets worse. Doing any of the following triggers a $10,000 fine, with $5,000 added on for each additional "infraction."

This means that Applicant shall not post negative commentary or reviews on Yelp!, Apartment Ratings, Facebook, or any other website or Internet-based publication or blog. Applicant agrees that Owner shall make the determination of whether such commentary is harmful in Owner's sole discretion, and Applicant agrees to abide by Owner' determination as to whether such commentary is harmful.

Then come the copyright demands.

Additionally, each Applicant hereby assigns and transfers to Owner any and all rights, including all rights of copyright as set forth in the United States Copyright Act, in any and all written or photographic works regarding the Owner, the Unit, the property, or the apartments. This means that if an Applicant creates an online posting on a website regarding the Owner, the Unit, the property, or the apartments, the Owner will have the right to notify the website to take down any such online posting pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Of course, when confronted by Ars about the Addendum, the property managers claimed this was all someone else's fault.

Asked about the Social Media Addendum by Ars, Windermere Cay's property manager sent this response via e-mail: "This addendum was put in place by a previous general partner for the community following a series of false reviews. The current general partner and property management do not support the continued use of this addendum and have voided it for all residents."

I would imagine the support was removed and addendum voided shortly after Ars publicized it, and not a moment before. According to Ars, the resident who contacted the site was asked to sign this suddenly-unsupported addendum only "days before." But Windermere Cay's management now very likely regrets ever including it in the first place. Like so many others before it, Windermere Cay is learning that attempting to preemptively shut down criticism with bogus clauses and high fees almost always results in more criticism. Its Yelp page is swiftly filling up with negative reviews and -- like every other emotionally-charged incident on the internet, has already achieved Godwin.


Obviously, there are better ways to handle allegedly defamatory reviews. A $10,000 fine and a preemptive usurpation of tenants' copyright isn't one of them.

[And neither is this bizarre Craigslist ad from another, unrelated rental property -- which makes vague claims about "defamation" while shouting "LAWSUIT LAWSUIT LAWSUIT" across the ether.]


As multiple entities have learned over the years, you can't stop criticism on the internet. You can only hope to contain it. Legal threats and punitive fines tend to blow the walls right off the containment scheme. What should be handled with exceptional customer service and the rare lawsuit (for truly defamatory statements) is instead turned over to hamfisted legalese and intimidating dollar amounts -- both of which make things worse for the entities they're ostensibly in place to protect.

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While some members of Congress have argued that the best way to deal with net neutrality is to create a law that guides what broadband providers can and can’t do with regard to data, one legislator from Tennessee — who has received significant money from neutrality’s biggest opponents — has introduced a bill that would kill neutrality and strip the FCC of its authority to regulate broadband as a necessary piece of telecommunications infrastructure.

Last week, a politically divided FCC voted to approve new neutrality rules that would prevent Internet service providers from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing any legal content carried over the web. In order to do this, the Commission had to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service (as opposed to the long-used “information service” classification that involves fewer regulations).

The “Internet Freedom Act” [PDF], introduced yesterday by Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, seeks to “prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from reclassifying broadband Internet access service as a telecommunications service and from imposing certain regulations on providers of such service.”

More precisely, it aims to nullify last week’s vote and prevent the FCC from ever reissuing or adopting similar neutrality rules “unless the reissued or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted” by Congress.

So the Freedom Act would give true freedom to neutrality opponents like the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast (a neutrality-hating wolf in sheep’s clothing), as ISPs would be unfettered by rules against blocking competing content or giving higher priority to their own content.

And if you look at the top contributors to Blackburn’s campaign and leadership PAC, you’ll see these same names showing up:
AT&T: $25,000
Comcast: $20,000
NCTA: $20,000
Verizon: $16,000

We’re not saying that Rep. Blackburn introduced this bill because of the substantial donations from these groups, but when the congresswoman states that “My legislation will put the brakes on this FCC overreach and protect our innovators from these job-killing regulations,” you might be getting an insight into whether she’s on the side of consumers or the ISP industry, even though many Internet and telecom giants — like Google and Sprint, have explicitly stated that neutrality will not harm innovation or investment.

Blackburn has also recently introduced legislation to take away the FCC’s authority to preempt state and local laws restricting municipal broadband services.

More than 20 states have laws that forbid or highly restrict local governments from operating broadband services even if consumers want them and there isn’t adequate service provided by privately run companies. On the same day the FCC voted to approve the neutrality rules, it also sided with two municipal utilities — one in Tennessee and one in North Carolina — that offer broadband service but face limits on their ability to expand these offerings because of state laws that received telecom industry support.

Blackburn’s legislation, as the title implies, would strip away the FCC’s statutory authority to preempt local laws that inhibit broadband deployment.

The good news for supporters of neutrality and muni broadband is that, according to GovTrack, both bills currently face steep odds of even getting out of committee, let alone becoming law.

[via ArsTechnica]

India's government is attempting to do the impossible and for all the wrong reasons.

India has asked YouTube to remove all links to a controversial documentary about the gang rape and murder of a woman in Delhi after banning its broadcast, a government official told Reuters on Thursday...

"We just forwarded the court order and asked them (YouTube) to comply."

The targeted BBC documentary details the horrific rape carried out by a busful of Indian men.

In the brutal two-hour assault, the woman was repeatedly violated with a metal rod before being dumped naked along with her companion beside a road near New Delhi's airport. The couple was then ignored by passersby, while police argued over where to take them as they lay bleeding on the street, according to the woman's friend. The victim died of her injuries two weeks later.

Supposedly at the center of the Indian government's attempted ban is an "illegal" interview with the bus driver, whose comments placed the blame on the rape victim. The bus driver also claimed he didn't participate in the assault, something disproven later by DNA evidence.

"When being raped, she shouldn't fight back," Mukesh Singh, who pleaded not guilty at the trial, said in one of several chilling comments.

"She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they'd have dropped her off after 'doing her' and only hit the boy."

The bus driver's lawyer claims Singh shouldn't have been interviewed about an ongoing court case. Maybe so, but Singh was under no obligation to further destroy his own reputation with these comments. The Indian government has justified its ban under the guise of "protecting" women, a job it's apparently terrible at performing.

The documentary was banned because Mukesh Singh's comments "are highly derogatory and are an affront to the dignity of women," India's Home Minister Rajnath Singh said in parliament on Wednesday.

In reality, the government is banning the documentary to insulate itself from further criticism. Various officials have made similarly repulsive comments over the past few years, as reports of gang rapes have hit the internet with alarming frequency.

Haryana's top elected official, Manohar Lal Khattar, said this last year in response to multiple gang rape incidents:

"If a girl is dressed decently, a boy will not look at her in the wrong way," Khattar told reporters, "Freedom has to be limited. These short clothes are Western influences. Our country's tradition asks girls to dress decently."

A defense lawyer for one of the accused men blamed not only the woman, but also her companion, who failed to protect her from six rapists.

Manohar Lal Sharma said 23-year-old Jyoti Singh Pandey and her male friend were "wholly responsible" for the horrific torture they suffered in the Dec. 16 attack in New Delhi because they were an unmarried couple on the streets at night, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

"Until today I have not seen a single incident or example of rape with a respected lady," Sharma told the newspaper.

Jyoti's companion, meanwhile, was guilty of failing to protect her, he said.

"The man has broken the faith of the woman," Sharma told the newspaper. "If a man fails to protect the woman, or she has a single doubt about his failure to protect her, the woman will never go with that man."

So, it's cultural, and those leading the culture -- elected government officials -- don't want to deal with the fallout of their passive and active support of treating women as second-class citizens. That's what has prompted the ban, not the "disrespect" for women voiced by one of the attackers. So far, it has managed to only nail down its own borders, but that means nothing to the world's largest communication platform: the internet.

YouTube has acquiesced to the Indian court order. But that won't keep Indians from seeing the documentary their government is trying to silence. All this ban attempt has accomplished is draw further attention to both the documentary and the government's petty acts of self-preservation.

The government -- unwilling to admit failure -- is exploring its other legal options (protip: there aren't any) in hopes of forcing the rest of the world to play by its stupid, denialist rules.

"We can ban the documentary in India but there is a conspiracy to defame India and the documentary can be telecast outside," India's Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said.

The government was exploring how it could be blocked abroad, he said.

Nobody's "defaming" India other than the rapists living within its borders. Oh, and the prominent public officials who stand up for them by suggesting those who have been raped/tortured/killed brought it on themselves.

Unfortunately, the BBC -- which produced the documentary -- is now inadvertently assisting the Indian government in its censorious quest. Multiple uploads meant to circumvent YouTube's India-only blockade have been taken down by BBC copyright claims.

While I appreciate the company's desire to route viewers to its monetized upload, there are bigger issues at play here. Unless it's willing to use other platforms to further distribute its powerful documentary (many of which won't generate any income), its removal of other YouTube options only makes it easier to keep India's citizens from seeing something their government has chosen to censor for its own benefit.

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McDonald's announced today it will begin only sourcing chickens raised without medically important antibiotics in the U.S. When a juggernaut like McDonald's makes such decisions, the food world listens—and sourcing only antibiotic-free chicken is a big deal.

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About a year ago we noted how Comcast has a weird tendency to prevent its broadband users from being able to use HBO Go on some fairly standard technology, including incredibly common Roku hardware. For several years Roku users couldn't use HBO Go if they had a Comcast connection, and for just as long Comcast refused to explain why. Every other broadband provider had no problem ensuring the back-end authentication (needed to confirm you have a traditional cable connection) worked, but not Comcast.

HBO Go is part of the cable and broadcast industry's "TV Everywhere" initiative, the shortfalls of which we've tackled previously. HBO Go, as part of the TV Everywhere initiative, requires you prove you're a traditional cable customer before you can access most online content. For example, if you want to watch HBO Go on your Roku 3, the HBO Go app simply needs Comcast servers to quickly confirm that you are a paying cable customer. Comcast's refusing to make this part of the connection process work, effectively restricting users from using bandwidth they pay for, over hardware they own, to access content they also pay for.

The goal of course is to keep as many users as possible on Comcast's X1 set top platform and away from the most popular Internet video devices. Last I saw, Roku sells around 30% of all streaming video hardware sold in any given month. Comcast clearly can't admit they're being shifty, so when pressed on why it takes them years to set up a simple authentication mechanism, the company usually makes up a rotating crop of bullshit excuses:

"With every new website, device or player we authenticate, we need to work through technical integration and customer service which takes time and resources. Moving forward, we will continue to prioritize as we partner with various players."

Roku had to file an FCC complaint to get Comcast to finally stop doing this. At the time, the filing argued that while "throttling" and "blocking" get all the attention as weapons of discrimination, the TV Everywhere authentication model is also a useful weapon for large cable providers when it comes to harming competing services:

"While an ISP can throttle content delivery speeds to effect anti-competitive discrimination, throttling is only the most transparent of a long list of discriminatory actions than an ISP with market power can undertake. [Additional discriminatory actions may] include control over data caps and authentication to hinder content and platforms that directly compete with the ISP's own or affiliated content."

And the problem wasn't just with Roku. When HBO Go on the Playstation 3 was released, it worked with every other TV-Everywhere compatible provider, but not Comcast. When customers complained in the Comcast forums, they were greeted with total silence. When customers called in to try and figure out why HBO Go wouldn't work, they usually received incorrect statements from front level support (it should arrive in 48 hours, don't worry!).

Fast forward nearly a year since the HBO Go Playstation 3 launch (it still doesn't work), and Sony has now announced an HBO Go app for the Playstation 4 console. And guess what -- when you go to activate the app you'll find it works with every major broadband ISP -- except Comcast. Why? Comcast still won't really say, but the company appears to have backed away from claims that the delay is due to technical or customer support issues, and is now telling forum visitors the hangup is related to some ambiguous business impasse:

"HBO Go availability on PS3 (and some other devices) are business decisions and deal with business terms that have not yet been agreed to between the parties. Thanks for your continued patience."

Since every other ISP (including AT&T, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable) didn't have a problem supporting the app, you have to assume Comcast specifically isn't getting something from Sony or HBO it would like (read: enough money to make them feel comfortable about potentially cannibalizing traditional TV/HBO viewers). Comcast's basically using the TV Anywhere authentication mechanism -- as opposed to outright blocking or throttling -- to prohibit its customers from accessing content in a way Comcast doesn't approve of. In this way Comcast's behavior, while not necessarily a net neutrality offense on its surface, is certainly part of the conversation in regards to gatekeeper power.

Fortunately for users in this instance, HBO's about to launch a stand alone app that won't need cable authentication, taking Comcast out of the equation anyway. Still, this is a good example of how crafting net neutrality rules is only part of the conversation about mega-ISP power. It's great to have rules governing the pipes themselves, but they don't mean much if other anti-competitive behaviors can just be hidden behind half-answers and faux-technical nonsense for years on end without repercussion.

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So the whole Hillary Clinton email story is getting worse and worse for Clinton. We already noted that there was no way she couldn't have known that she had to use government email systems for government work, as there was a big scandal from the previous administration using private emails and within the early Obama administration as well. This morning we discovered that Clinton also gave clintonemail.com email addresses to staffers, which undermines the argument made by Hillary's spokesperson that it was okay for her to use her own email address because any emails with staffers would still be archived by the State Department thanks to their use of state.gov emails. But that's clearly not the case when she's just emailing others with the private email addresses.

As we noted yesterday, there are two separate key issues here, neither of which look good for Clinton. First, is the security question. There's no question at all that as Secretary of State she dealt with all sorts of important, confidential and classified information. Doing that on your own email server seems like a pretty big target for foreign intelligence. In fact, Gawker points out, correctly, that Hillary's private email address was actually revealed a few years ago when the hacker "Guccifer" revealed the inbox of former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal. So it was known years ago that Clinton used a private email account, and you have to think it was targeted.

Anonymous State Department "cybersecurity" officials are apparently shoving each other aside to leak to the press that they warned Clinton that what she was doing was dangerous, but couldn't convince her staff to do otherwise:

“We tried,” an unnamed current employee told Al Jazeera. “We told people in her office that it wasn't a good idea. They were so uninterested that I doubt the secretary was ever informed.”

The AP has a somewhat weird and slightly confused article detailing the setup of the email system, but seems to imply things that aren't clearly true.

It was unclear whom Clinton hired to set up or maintain her private email server, which the AP traced to a mysterious identity, Eric Hoteham. That name does not appear in public records databases, campaign contribution records or Internet background searches. Hoteham was listed as the customer at Clinton's $1.7 million home on Old House Lane in Chappaqua in records registering the Internet address for her email server since August 2010.

The Hoteham personality also is associated with a separate email server, presidentclinton.com, and a non-functioning website, wjcoffice.com, all linked to the same residential Internet account as Mrs. Clinton's email server. The former president's full name is William Jefferson Clinton.

While Eric Hoteham may be a mysterious non-entity, as Julian Sanchez points out, an early Clinton staffer was named Eric Hothem. Of course, Stanford cybersecurity guru Jonthan Mayer also notes that Hillary's old home server is still online and running Windows Server 2008 R2. However, the AP reports that the email has moved around a bit over the past few years:

In November 2012, without explanation, Clinton's private email account was reconfigured to use Google's servers as a backup in case her own personal email server failed, according to Internet records. That is significant because Clinton publicly supported Google's accusations in June 2011 that China's government had tried to break into the Google mail accounts of senior U.S. government officials. It was one of the first instances of a major American corporation openly accusing a foreign government of hacking.

Then, in July 2013, five months after she resigned as secretary of state, Clinton's private email server was reconfigured again to use a Denver-based commercial email provider, MX Logic, which is now owned by McAfee Inc., a top Internet security company.

That likely means the email was much more secure after July of 2013, but it certainly raises questions about how secure it was for years before that.

Though, we do know that it was secure from one thing: FOIA requests. That is the second of the two big issues raised by this whole thing. By using her own email setup, she was clearly able to hide important documents from FOIA requests. In fact, as Gawker notes, her staff's defense of the use of her private email, actually now confirms emails as legit that the State Department denied existed back when Gawker made a FOIA request years ago.

That's because following that Guccifer hack, Gawker filed a FOIA for those emails and was told they don't exist. Yet, now Clinton staffers point to that old Gawker article to suggest that the private email address is "old news," thus confirming that the emails were legit, even though the State Department denied them.

The Clinton camp’s claims about the email account being above-board is also contradicted by the State Department’s response to Gawker’s inquires two years ago. After we published the story about Blumenthal’s correspondence with Clinton, we filed a FOIA request with the agency for all correspondence to date between Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, specifically including any messages to or from the hdr22@clintonemail.com account. The screenshots and other documents released by Guccifer—which have now been validated by Clinton’s spokesman—confirmed that such messages existed.

But the State Department replied to our request by saying that, after an extensive search, it could find no records responsive to our request. That is not to say that they found the emails and refused to release them—it is conceivable, after all, that the State Department might have attempted to deny the release of the Clinton-Blumenthal correspondence on grounds of national security or Blumenthal’s own privacy. Instead, the State Department confirmed that it didn’t have the emails at all.

Which is exactly why Clinton used a non-State Department email server to conduct her official business.

According to the NY Times, the State Department says that it won't go back to correct the FOIA requests that it responded to in the past, saying that such records didn't exist. Instead, it will only now search the emails that have been turned over by Clinton's staff. That is another 50,000 emails, but no one knows what emails the staff removed or refused to turn over.

Either way, there are two huge problems here. Clinton likely exposed her emails to foreign spies, while keeping them away from the American public.

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Hillary Clinton's homebrew email solution potentially left the communications of the top US foreign affairs official vulnerable to state-sponsored hackers.

The post Why Clinton’s Private Email Server Was Such a Security Fail appeared first on WIRED.

There has been quite a kerfuffle around the apparent fact that Hillary Clinton solely used her personal email account for government business. This piqued my curiosity, especially since I've been playing with a service called Conspire lately.

Conspire is a startup that analyzes your email and then seeks to provide you with an email chain with which to introduce you to the desired person. So, say I wanted to email my current business crush, Marcus Lemonis, Conspire's system found a path with which I could ask for an introduction. In my case, my friend Espree could email her friend Nathan for an introduction to Marcus. Neat. I can definitely see how Conspire could become a useful tool, albeit one that raises some very interesting privacy questions.

So, I looked for Hillary Clinton's now famous hdr22@clintonemail.com email address in Conspire. No luck. Conspire is still growing, so I suppose it makes sense that none of its members have yet to email Hillary. But then I tried just the clintonemail.com domain in the search, and got one hit. Huma Abedin, Hillary's long-time aide, had an email address with the clintonemail.com domain in Conspire's records. Unfortunately, I have no connection path to Ms. Abedin, so I can't ask the system to facilitate an introduction, but it is fascinating. What other Clinton staffers were using email addresses at the clintonemail.com domain? Seems like at least one was. To be fair, Abedin not only was Clinton's deputy chief of staff in the State Department, but she also continued to work for Clinton after Clinton left office. It is possible that she only got the email address after leaving the government, but it certainly raises some serious questions about whether or not other State Department staffers were provided private clintonemail addresses to avoid transparency requirements. In fact, Politico is reporting specifically that Abedin and other staffers used non-government email addresses while in the State Department, which suggests the clintonemail address may have come earlier:

Clinton’s personal aide, Huma Abedin, and her communications adviser, Philippe Reines, regularly used unofficial email accounts for work-related email, former colleagues said.

This also makes me wonder what other new communications mediums our government officials are using. Could world leaders be SnapChatting each other? Or perhaps sending international YO's? Or trolling each other on YikYak? And, if they are, are they complying with records retention laws?

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The administration still wants to punish whistleblowers and leakers, but only if it can do it with logic borrowed from Animal Farm. When it comes to prosecution, some leakers are more equal than others.

John Kiriakou -- who exposed a single CIA operative's name while exposing its waterboarding tactics -- spent more time in jail than former CIA director Leon Panetta, who has spent (at last count) a grand total of 0 days locked up for leaking tons of classified info to Zero Dark Thirty's screenwriter, Mark Boal.

Of course, some leaks just aren't leaks, at least not according to the government. Kiriakou's were wrong. Panetta's were right. And Kiriakou spent three years in prison for a lesser "crime."

Thomas Drake faced a potential 35-year sentence for his exposure of wasteful NSA spending. The government's case against him self-imploded, however, resulting in a guilty plea to a misdemeanor and no jail time.

General Petraeus, who leaked classified information to his mistress, is in line to receive the lightest of wrist slaps for his indiscretion: two years probation and a $40,000 fine. The lightness of the sentence suggested by government prosecutors belies the extent of Petraeus' wrongdoing.

What he handed over to his mistress far surpasses anything the above whistleblowers "leaked."

While he was commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus “maintained bound, five-by-eight inch notebooks that contained his daily schedule and classified and unclassified notes he took during official meetings, conferences and briefings,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina writes in a statement of fact regarding the case...

All eight books “collectively contained classified information regarding the identifies of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings… and discussions with the president of the United States.”

The books also contained “national defense information, including top secret/SCI and code word information,” according to the court papers. In other words: These weren’t just ordinary secrets. This was highly, highly classified material.

On top of that, he lied to the government about these books, first in the form of a sworn statement...

Petreaus retained those Black Books after he signed his debriefing agreement upon leaving DOD, in which he attested “I give my assurance that there is no classified material in my possession, custody, or control at this time.” He kept those Black Books in an unlocked desk drawer.

And again to investigating FBI agents.

In an interview on October 26, 2012, he told the FBI:

(a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer.

Simply lying to the FBI has consequences far greater than those Petraeus will face. But that's because he's General Petraeus and you're not -- as 22-year-old Kirstie Barratt recently discovered.

United States Attorney Bill Nettles stated today that Kirstie Elaine Philome Barratt, age 22, of Fort Mill, South Carolina was sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment today after earlier pleading guilty to making a false statement to a federal agent, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001. United States District Judge Joseph F. Anderson, Jr. imposed the term of imprisonment, which will be followed by a 3 year term of supervised release. In October, Barratt plead straight up to the charge without a plea agreement. Barratt also may face deportation as a result of her guilty plea. During the sentencing hearing, Judge Anderson granted the government’s motion for an upward departure from the federal guidelines sentencing range of 0 to 6 months, noting that this was a “rare” case and that Barratt “knowingly placed a law enforcement officer’s life in jeopardy” by her false statement.

Petraeus was a trusted member of the military and the CIA. And he turned over eight books worth of classified info to his biographer/mistress just because she asked. But because he's part of the administration's arbitrarily-selected "in crowd," and because he didn't embarrass the government as much as he embarrassed himself, he's facing a sentence of nearly nothing. His suggested punishment will have zero effect on his current position at a top equity firm and his life will suffer none of the disruptions Kiriakou and Drake experienced. He'll be $40,000 poorer -- and with "deterrents" like these being deployed -- none the wiser.

What's most disgusting about Petraeus' cakewalk of a proposed sentence is that he himself took a hypocritical hardline stance on leaking after Kiriakou's sentencing.

When John Kiriakou pled guilty on October 23, 2012 to crimes having to do with sharing a single covert officer’s identity just days before Petraeus would lie to the FBI about sharing, among other things, numerous covert officers’ identities with his mistress, Petraeus sent out a memo to the CIA stating,

"Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy."

Yeah. "Oaths matter." Except when you're the one uttering them, right? Apparently, a "requisite degree of secrecy" means stashing eight books full of classified info in an unlocked desk drawer and handing them out to your clandestine SO in hopes of keeping your knob biography as polished as possible.

This administration is severely hypocritical, but seemingly no more so than in its treatment of whistleblowers. There are those who will be persecuted and punished and those whose similar indiscretions will be waved away by government prosecutors. The problem is: you may not know which of these faces of the administration you'll be facing when you decide to start blowing the whistle. Chances are -- given this administration's track record -- it will be the vindictive, angry administration that continually hopes to "send a message" with each new whistleblower/leaker prosecuted.

Those on the inside of the military/industrial/surveillance supercomplex -- who leak under the name of "anonymous official" to aid filmmakers, deploy talking points or steer narratives -- will never see this side of the two-faced administration. Their leaks are more equal than others.

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With the abuses of asset forfeiture being loudly publicized, there has (finally) been some legislative pushback against these abusive programs. Wyoming's legislators -- hoping to institute asset forfeiture reform -- ran into pushback themselves from the state's governor, who vetoed the popular bill (which passed out of the Senate with an 80-9 vote) when it hit his desk.

Governor Matt Mead explained his reasons for doing so in a letter to the Senate president Phil Nicholas. According to Mead, he didn't agree that Wyoming has an asset forfeiture problem and saw no reason to curtail a program that is (supposedly) so effective in fighting the Drug War.

Now, while Wyoming hasn't made splashy headlines with bogus busts, it's more likely due to the limited population than better laws or better law enforcement. Mead's letter explaining his veto contains three examples he feels prove Wyoming is better-behaved than most when it comes to separating citizens from their possessions. But none of those are particularly persuasive.

One deals with $17,000 being returned after "procedural safeguards" were ignored. The other two simply assume the seizure of funds was completely justified, even though no corresponding conviction is noted in his explanation.

In one case, a car owner denied knowing whose $327,000 was found in his vehicle. Fully justified, of course, because as Mead explains, the seized funds were spent "to enforce drug laws." In the other case, $415,000 was found in a vehicle being carried on a semi trailer full of vehicles. This, too, was taken and the seizure fully justified because the money was obviously evil in and of itself. Here's Mead's actual sentence explaining what happened to these funds.

"The money was taken out of circulation so it could not be used for other illegal activity."

Stupid money. It's like it's a troubled teen in need of a grounding. "Don't let it out! It will probably just do illegal things!"

Not cited: the "illegal activity" prompting the seizure of the funds in either case.

The reform bill didn't ask for much -- just a conviction to go with every seizure -- but that was still too much for Mead, who still carries inside him the beating heart of a long-term prosecutor. To him, these means are perfectly acceptable because drugs are a problem. Case closed.

That's likely one of the factors playing into the deployment of his otherwise seldom-used veto power. This is the other: a meeting with the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs -- which occurred three days before the veto.

I enjoyed meeting w/ the WY Assoc.of Sheriffs & Chiefs of Police.Thanks for serving & protecting the citizens of WY. pic.twitter.com/TRzgXcMyru

— Governor Matt Mead (@GovMattMead) February 14, 2015

Beyond all that, Mead simply believes asset forfeiture is a law enforcement tool that simply cannot be questioned.

I believe civil asset forfeiture is important and it is right.

Too "right" to be even slightly curtailed by the addition of a small but logical stipulation: a conviction of the assets' owner before the assets can be claimed. Mead prefers the way it's been done for years: assets are presumed guilty, the burden of proof rests on those whose assets have been seized and anything not clearly associated with any criminal activity can still be repurposed to fight the Everlasting War on Drugs.

Wyoming may not have a history of forfeiture abuse, but it makes no sense not to head off a problem before it becomes one. Everything about its current program lends itself to abuse.

Wyoming has horrible civil forfeiture laws, with an F law grade. The state’s final grade is pulled up to a C only by limited use of equitable sharing (an evasion grade of A) to date. The government can seize and subsequently forfeit property with just probable cause that it is subject to forfeiture. This is the lowest standard, far easier for the government than proving criminal guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A property owner who wishes to claim an innocent owner defense bears the burden of proof, effectively making owners guilty until proven innocent. All of the proceeds from civil forfeiture are distributed to the state Attorney General’s asset fund. In turn, those funds are used as matching funds for federal drug enforcement grants. Finally, although officials are required to collect information on the use of forfeiture, they did not respond to requests.

Gov. Mead's view of this program is rosy to the point of blindness. But that's the sort of thing we expect from career prosecutors who question very little if anything about the law enforcement under their purview and who wholeheartedly support strong drug enforcement tactics. Mead may not see any abuse occurring, but I get the feeling he's not looking too hard. Considering how low the bar is set in terms of burden of proof, you'd have to do some serious digging to find seizures not justified by this barely-there requirement. And, considering the funds flow into Mead's former office, I would imagine he's in no hurry to find anything that might threaten the state's revenue stream, or its attendant matching funds grants from the US government.

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Former Red Sox pitching ace Curt Schilling is striking back at Internet trolls who attacked his daughter online with real-world consequences.

Last week, Schilling tweeted a congratulations to his daughter Gabby for being accepted into a college softball program at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island. But as Twitter users are wont to do, Twitter users responded with rape references and sexually explicit threats aimed at the 17-year-old

Then, on Sunday, Schilling penned a blog post outing some of the trolls, many of whom were suspended from schools, fired from jobs or kicked off sports teams.
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If you were the Secretary of Defense of a large country, you might think you'd be slightly concerned that foreign agents would want to spy on you. Not so down in Australia apparently, where the current Secretary of Defense, insists that he'd be "surprised" if anyone wanted to find out what was on his phone. Seriously.

We've written about the recent story, revealed in documents leaked by Ed Snowden, that the NSA and GCHQ were able to hack into the systems of Gemalto, the world's largest maker of SIM cards for mobile phones, and obtain the encryption keys used in those cards. While Gemalto insists that the hack didn't actually get those encryption keys, not everyone feels so comfortable with Gemalto's own analysis of what happened.

Senator Scott Ludlam (who we've written about a few times before) reasonably found the story of the Gemalto hack to be concerning, and went about asking some questions of the government to find out what they knew about it. The results are rather astounding. First he had asked ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, and they said it wasn't their area, but it might be ASD (the Australian Signals Directorate). The video below shows Ludlam asking the ASD folks for more information about the hack and being flabbergasted that they basically say they haven't even heard about the hack at all: Right at the beginning, the first person says he's not aware of the situation, and Ludlam asks "are you aware of the broad outlines?" and gets a "no I am not" response, leading to a rather dry "Really?!? Okay, this is going to be interesting" reply from Ludlam. It goes on in this nature for a while, with the various people on the panel playing dumb, and Ludlam repeatedly (and rightly) appearing shocked that they appear to have no idea about the story.

But the really incredible part comes in the last minute of the video, in which Ludlam asks the Australian Secretary of Defense, Dennis Richardson, about his own concerns about his phone being spied on:

Ludlam: Do you use an encrypted phone, Mr. Richardson?

Richardson: No, I don't.

Ludlam: Right. Okay. Do you use a commercial -- I'm not asking you to name names -- but do you use a commercial telecommunications provider?

Richardson: Yeah, yeah, yes.

Ludlam: So there might be a SIM card in your phone or mind. Does this alarm you at all?

Richardson: No.

Ludlam: No?

Richardson: No.

Ludlam: Why is that?

Richardson: Well, because I don't particularly deal with people who... if anyone wants to listen to my telephone calls they can. I'd be surprised if they do, but I don't particularly have conversations which I'm particularly worried about.

[Laughter all around the room]

Ludlam: So it's okay if foreign spooks have hacked every mobile handset in the country because you don't have anything in particular...

Richardson: It's possible some might try to.

Ludlam: It's possible some just have.

Richardson: [shrugs] Well, it's possible.

So there you have it, folks. The Australian Secretary of Defense says that anyone is allowed to listen in to his calls, because there's nothing secret about any of them. I'm not quite familiar with public records/freedom of information laws in Australia, but is it possible for someone to put in a request for recording all of the Secretary of Defense's phone calls?

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Readers of Techdirt have been hearing about corporate sovereignty -- the ability of foreign investors to sue governments directly in special courts over alleged losses, also known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) -- for a while now. For others who have yet to discover this particular feature of so-called trade agreements, Senator Elizabeth Warren has a good, approachable summary of the key issues in a Washington Post opinion piece. In fact, it was clearly so good that the White House Blog felt obliged to try to rebut its main arguments (there's also a great point-by-point response to that response by the Cato Institute's Simon Lester.). The White House Blogt post, written by Jeff Zients, Director of the National Economic Council, pretty much concedes that the criticisms of ISDS are valid, but would have us believe that everything has been fixed now:

ISDS has come under criticism because of some legitimate complaints about poorly written agreements. The U.S. shares some of those concerns, and agrees with the need for new, higher standards, stronger safeguards and better transparency provisions. Through TPP and other agreements, that is exactly what we are putting in place.

There are two massive problems with that assurance. First, the extreme secrecy of the TPP negotiations means that we have no idea just how strong those "safeguards" are. And secondly, in some sense it doesn't even matter: companies can use the mere threat of an ISDS action to cast a chill over future regulatory action. That's why the following comment is true but misses the point:

The reality is that ISDS does not and cannot require countries to change any law or regulation.

The ability to use ISDS to discourage governments from introducing inconvenient laws or regulations is no mere theoretical fear. As this important 2001 article in The Nation explains:

Carla Hills, the US Trade Representative who oversaw the NAFTA negotiations for Bush I and now heads her own trade-consulting firm, was among the very first to play this game of bump-and-run intimidation. Her corporate clients include big tobacco -- R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris. Sixteen months after leaving office, Hills dispatched Julius Katz, her former chief deputy at USTR, to warn Ottawa to back off its proposed law to require plain packaging for cigarettes. If it didn't, Katz said, Canada would have to compensate his clients under NAFTA and the new legal doctrine he and Hills had helped create [ISDS]. "No US multinational tobacco manufacturer or its lobbyists are going to dictate health policy in this country," the Canadian health minister vowed. Canada backed off, nevertheless.

Nor was that an isolated incident:

A former government official in Ottawa told me: "I've seen the letters from the New York and DC law firms coming up to the Canadian government on virtually every new environmental regulation and proposition in the last five years. They involved dry-cleaning chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, patent law.Virtually all of the new initiatives were targeted and most of them never saw the light of day."

Zients goes on to say that corporate sovereignty chapters are needed because foreign courts can't be trusted to provide justice:

U.S. investors often face a heightened risk of bias or discrimination when abroad.

But Warren already answered that with several extremely powerful points:

Countries in the TPP are hardly emerging economies with weak legal systems. Australia and Japan have well-developed, well-respected legal systems, and multinational corporations navigate those systems every day, but ISDS would preempt their courts too. And to the extent there are countries that are riskier politically, market competition can solve the problem. Countries that respect property rights and the rule of law — such as the United States — should be more competitive, and if a company wants to invest in a country with a weak legal system, then it should buy political-risk insurance.

Zients also tries to argue that since the US hasn't suffered as a result of ISDS cases in the past, it'll be fine in the future:

There have only been 13 cases brought to judgment against the United States in the three decades since we’ve been party to these agreements. By contrast, during the same period of time in our domestic system, individual and companies have brought hundreds of thousands of challenges against Federal, state, and local governments in U.S. courts under U.S. law.

We have never lost an ISDS case because of the strong safeguards in the U.S. approach. And because we have continued to raise standards through each agreement, in recent years we have seen a drop in ISDS claims, despite increased levels of investment.

But that line of reasoning ignores why there have been so few cases in the past: because corporate sovereignty provisions were mainly included to protect US investments in developing countries with weaker legal systems. By definition, such nations are unlikely to have the resources to make many or significant investments in the US, and therefore have few opportunities to use the ISDS system. That is what will change dramatically with TAFTA/TTIP, as this analysis by Public Citizen explains:

TAFTA would vastly expand the investor-state threat, given the thousands of corporations doing business in both the United States and EU that would be newly empowered to attack public interest policies. More than 3,400 EU parent corporations own more than 24,200 subsidiaries in the United States, any one of which could provide the basis for an investor-state claim. This exposure to investor-state attacks far exceeds that associated with all other U.S. "free trade" agreement partners.

In fact, the US may be about to find out about the modern reality of billion-dollar corporate sovereignty lawsuits, thanks to the 21-year-old NAFTA agreement, and the controversial Keystone XL project, which President Obama recently vetoed. Here's Politico's explanation of how corporate sovereignty could enter the equation:

President Barack Obama may decide to kill Keystone XL for good, but that could be no easy task -- thanks in part to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The 21-year-old free-trade pact allows foreign companies or governments to haul the U.S. in front of an international tribunal to face accusations of putting their investments at risk through regulations or other decisions. The CEO of Keystone developer TransCanada has raised the prospect as a potential last resort if Obama rejects the $8 billion project, although for now the company is focused on getting him to say yes.

Administration officials involved in reviewing the proposed Canada-to-Texas pipeline are aware of the potential for a NAFTA challenge and the importance of minimizing that risk in the event the president rejects Keystone.

So even though the President retains full powers to reject Keystone, it’s easy to see how the threat of a billion-dollar ISDS lawsuit might encourage him to approve it anyway. That would offer the perfect demonstration of how corporate sovereignty chapters can interfere with democratic decision-making -- at even the highest levels.

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

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The age of 3-D printing in carbon fiber has hardly arrived. But the controversy over 3-D printing carbon fiber guns is well under way. Starting in the second half of last year, 3-D printing startup MarkForged has been shipping the Mark One, a device it advertises as the world’s first 3-D printer that prints carbon fiber; The Mark […]

The post Gun Group: We’ll Pay $15K for Your Carbon Fiber 3-D Printer appeared first on WIRED.

Over the years, many folks in the broadcast and entertainment industries have made it increasingly clear they'd love to see tools like VPNs or proxy services made illegal. Sure, both are perfectly legal and have a myriad of valid purposes, but because they can allow users to dodge anti-piracy snooping efforts (like the not-really effective U.S. six strikes program) or geo-blocks (like say watching Netflix in unsupported countries) -- apparently they should be outlawed entirely. You know, like in Iran -- and now Russia.

Canadian law professor Michael Geist notes that several Rogers, Bell and Shaw executives recently gathered for the Content Industry Connect conference in Toronto. There, Rogers Senior Vice President David Purdy spent some time complaining that VPNs "aren't fair" and -- according to at least one attendee -- suggested that the government should think about banning them. You know, just because:

Purdy - need the govt to shut down VPNs, enforce copyright then can have a viable business #cicto

— Kelly Lynne Ashton (@klashton27) February 26, 2015

Purdy: if gov not willing to stop piracy, VPNs, BitTorrent not fair #cicto

— Marcia Douglas (@Marcia_Douglas) February 26, 2015

Rogers' "me too" streaming video service Shomi isn't really resonating with consumers, and blocking Canadian VPN/Netflix users would certainly be easier than actually competing. As Geist is quick to note, it's unlikely that the Canadian government is going to want to wade into the minefield of banning VPNs, so all Purdy managed to do is make him and his company seem somewhat narrow-minded and unnecessarily aggressive:

"If Rogers is upset over VPN use to access U.S. Netflix, it should take it up with Netflix. Instead, focusing on consumer VPN use by suggesting that the solution lies in blocking legal technologies in order to stop consumer access is a dangerous one. Countries like China have tried to regulate VPNs, while Iran and Oman have tried to ban them. A Canadian attempt to do so would be subject to an immediate legal challenge, particularly since virtual private networks are widely used within the business community and play a crucial role for consumers in preserving user privacy, enabling access to information, and facilitating free speech."

After Geist posted a number of attendee Tweets citing Purdy's disdain for VPNs, a Rogers spokesperson denied that Purdy said anything of the sort, lamenting that it's "hard to communicate a discussion via Twitter." I've yet to find a transcript of the comments (and Purdy doesn't appear to be responding to media inquiries), but given Rogers' ugly history as a front-runner when it comes to net neutrality violations, quietly dreaming of a ban on VPNs certainly wouldn't be out of character for the company.

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If you own an iPhone or Android handset and care about your privacy, there’s no longer much of an excuse not to encrypt every conversation you have. Now a free, zero-learning-curve app exists for both text and voice that can keep those communications fully encrypted, so that no one but the person holding the phone […]

The post There’s Now a Free iPhone App That Encrypts Calls and Texts appeared first on WIRED.