Brindle

Just how many entities have their hands on your data when the NSA makes requests? Well, it's not just the service providers and any number of analysts at the NSA. There's a whole industry subset of third parties that actually handle requests, implement wiretaps, direct searches for communications/data and deliver this information to the intelligence agency.

ZDNet's Zack Whittaker has the details.

With permission from their ISP customers, these third-parties discreetly wiretap their networks at the behest of law enforcement agencies, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and even intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA).

By implementing these government data requests with precision and accuracy, trusted third-parties — like Neustar, Subsentio, and Yaana — can turn reasonable profits for their services.

Little is known about these types of companies, which act as outsourced data brokers between small and major U.S. ISPs and phone companies, and the federal government. Under the 1994 law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), any company considered a "communications provider" has to allow government agencies access when a valid court order is served. No matter how big or small, even companies whose legal and financial resources are limited do not escape federal wiretapping laws.

Subpoenas, search warrants, court orders -- even those from the FISA court -- run through these trusted third parties. From the information Whittaker has gathered, this market seems to have evolved out of limited legal resources retained by smaller ISPs and service providers. Incoming requests are forwarded to these companies, which vet them for legal issues and determine what exactly needs to be done to satisfy them. Some of this is just CYA -- an extra insulating layer to serve as a buffer between the service provider and the possibly aggrieved customer(s). Some of it is due to practicality. Smaller ISPs and service providers do not retain lawyers with the security clearance needed to inspect/challenge certain orders.

One of those attorneys, who declined to be named for the story because the person holds top-secret security clearance, explained that although hundreds of lawyers have the same clearance — including those serving terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay — very few have been in front of the FISA Court to defend their clients. These clearance-holding lawyers have been in high demand over the past year representing major Silicon Valley companies implicated in the NSA's surveillance programs.

For the majority of smaller companies (as well as larger ones, who have refused to comment on challenging such warrants), complying with data demands may be their only option. The vast majority, however, do not have the resources to handle such requests.

"If they don't have an internal lawyer [reviewing FISA warrants], they could use a third-party service. That third-party can't provide legal advice, but it can create a system for reviewing the data, pulling, and processing the data," the security clearance-holding attorney said.

Because these companies have the sort of clearance the ISPs lack, smaller ISPs are often nothing more than dumb terminals for government agencies to manipulate. The trusted third parties are often the only entities that see certain court orders and requests, and ISP participation in the approval and response processes is often non-existent. In many cases, the ISP cannot even see the court order it's being directed to comply with.

"Of what worth is our permission when we don't even know what we're being asked to give access to?" a senior staffer at [ISP] Cbeyond admitted.

In the unlikely event that a request is rejected, it's usually done by the third parties, again without the participation of the ISP itself. The trusted third parties are better equipped -- in terms of legal team security clearance -- to do this than smaller ISPs are, but that additional expertise is of little use should ISPs decide to directly challenge a court order.

If the ISP or phone company decides to fight a warrant, the third-party can stand back and wash its hands of it.

Burr said Neustar "has and will" reject subpoenas that are inadequate for one reason or another. But should its clients choose to fight a FISA warrant or court order it believes to be overbroad, Neustar will not join the battle in court.

Other trusted third-parties take a similar approach.

"We're out of the picture," said Marcus Thomas, chief technology officer at Subsentio, another trusted third-party company, founded in 2004, and based out of Littleton, Colorado.

While the third parties may be collecting money from ISPs for handling data and intercept requests, their desire to stay in the government's good graces appears to outweigh any loyalty to the businesses that retain their services.

"It's the provider's problem," [Yaana Executive VP Tony] Rutkowski said. "The nice part about the trusted third-party business is that just from a liability standpoint, we don't want to be left holding the bag here." [Yaana CTO David] Grootwassink agreed. "We provide the gears. We don't get involved in fights between the governments and our clients."

And therein lies part of the problem. While it may be easier to turn over what is largely a compliance function to third parties, there's very little oversight into these companies' actions and processes. Even the ISPs that hire them seem to have limited insight into what's actually being done. These go-betweens have carefully dodged liability by refusing to be involved in legal challenges, leaving underequipped ISPs to fight their own battles. While some trusted third parties have issued transparency reports detailing the requests they've facilitated, this basically leaves the public to perform the oversight, something of very limited use. About all the public can do is switch providers, which, if even an option, only puts them in the hands of another company using the same practices.

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Over at The Verge, Vlad Savov has an amusing post about how NFL announcers this weekend referred to the sideline tablets that players are using as "iPad-like tools." Microsoft Surface tablets are being allowed on the sidelines as part of a $400 million deal between Microsoft and the NFL. And Microsoft is promoting the Surface as "the official tablet of the NFL." And, in the end, all anyone remembers is that it's an "iPad-like tool." I wonder if the guy who signed that deal for Microsoft has lined up a new job yet...

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These are several shots and a video of World of Warcraft's in-game tributes to the late Robin Williams. There's a genie that comes out of a lamp when you rub it and says, "INFINITE COSMIC POWER! Itty bitty living space," as well as Mork's crashed egg spaceship and some toys scattered around (a head-nod to Williams' role in Toys). Good work. Maybe I'll recover my old character and start playing again. You think my guild will let me back in? I sort of Leroy Jenkins'd them a few times. Plus stole most of their rare items and sold them on eBay. They were not very understanding. God, get over it guys, it's just a video game. Based on all the threats it sounds like a lot of you have anger management issues. Keep going for the pictures and video, as well as the 'There You Are, Peter' scene from Hook because maybe you needed a good cry today and just weren't sure how to get it started. Thanks to Viv, who offered to let me join her Counter-Strike clan. Now you're talking!

Amazon is one of the most brutal  companies to compete against. 

With founder and CEO Jeff Bezos at the helm, Amazon forgoes profits, endures slim margins, and relentlessly prioritizes customers. Bezos snuffs out competition with low prices, and takes a hardline in negotiations companies that want to sell products on Amazon. This has led to Amazon taking vastly more ecommerce sales than anyone else. 

Amazon started as a site to buy books online, but today it sells everything. It's expected to do ~$91 billion in sales this year. 

In a 2013 blog post on competing with Amazon, Andreessen Horowitz investor Jeff Jordan included the following chart, noting, "Amazon is larger than the next dozen largest e-tailers—COMBINED!  Its resulting scale advantages are staggering."

Benedict Evans, an analyst at Andreessen Horowitz, recently wrote a big analysis of Amazon. In it, he included the following chart that shows Amazon's willingness to give up on profits.

Now, it's important to note that it's not like Amazon can't make money. It's that it chooses not to make money. As Evans puts it Amazon has someone at the company whose job it is to make sure that net income gets to zero. 

Amazon takes nearly every dollar of cash that it generates and pumps it right back into the company, which you can see represented here by the growth in capital expenditures:

Amazon's willingness to reinvest its money makes it an intimidating company. It's run like a startup, not a 20 year old mainstream company. 

"We won't invest in a company unless they can tell us why they won't get steamrolled by Amazon," Jordan once told Fast Company. 

But recently, it feels like something has changed. As Amazon expands into more verticals, its sheer number of competitors has exploded, and they're attacking Amazon in ways that are both big and small. Amazon remains a strong company, but it suddenly seems at risk of stretching itself too thin, exposing itself to too many competitors. 

The startups that could disrupt Amazon

For instance, Andreessen Horowitz just invested $44 million in Instacart, a grocery delivery service. Instacart hires people to drive their own cars to grocery stores to pick up stuff that users order through their smartphone. This is a direct competitor to AmazonFresh, which also delivers groceries, but in fewer markets around the country than Instacart does.

The Instacart example is telling, partly because the company exists almost entirely because of our smartphones and the desire for instant gratification.

Mobile apps are changing shopping (mobile commerce grew three times faster than e-commerce year-over-year overall in Q2). But, until its recent release of the Fire phone, Amazon had done hardly anything to make its mobile experience distinct from its desktop experience. It basically just ported its website into an app. With the Fire phone, Amazon went hard in the opposite direction. Part of the reason why the Fire phone hasn't done well, is that it feels like the phone exists mainly as a portal to the Amazon ecosystem.

Besides providing a better gateway to instant gratification, many e-commerce apps also offer a more personalized shopping experience. Amazon may be the "everything store," but it isn't great at pointing you towards things you weren't specifically looking for. 

As Kevin Roose put it in a recent New York Magazine piece, Amazon has issues with "discovery." Startups like Spring, Fancy, and One Kings Lane, to name a few, are all beautifying the e-commerce process while giving customers new ways to browse. 

 

Lee Hnetinka, founder and CEO of New York City-based startup WunWun thinks his company undercuts Amazon in several different ways. WunWun is a delivery service app that lets customers purchase goods from local stores and then delivers them within an hour for free, and Hnetinka says that operating without warehouses and inventory makes it much more nimble than Amazon.  

"We're also empowering merchants," Hnetinka told Business Insider "We're empowering them to compete with Amazon." Although he says that he doesn't "wake up everyday thinking about how [WunWun] can kill Amazon," he's not afraid of the competition. 

The other reason the Instacart story is important is that it only competes with Amazon because Amazon is doing everything now. If Apple is famous for its focus, Amazon should be famous for its lack of focus.

The "everything" store

In the last nine months, Amazon has made three new forays into hardware, with a TV streaming box, the Fire smartphone (which was largely seen as a bit of a flop), and its Square-killer, Local Register. Amazon also launched a local services marketplace, an unlimited e-book subscription service, Amazon Pantry for grocery delivery (and an accompanying barcode scanner), its own in-house delivery system for same-day and grocery services, and a music-streaming offering, while also continuing its experimentation with drones and pouring millions into its original video content.

Plus, it owns Zappos, Diapers.com, and IMDB. There's a lot more, that's just a taste. There are few, if any, other companies trying to do as much all at once as Amazon.

Another thing that makes this this period of competition different han the others is that Amazon itself has trained its newest competitors. 

For instance, Flipkart, an India-based e-commerce company built by two Amazon alumni, just raised $1 billion. After they announced their raise, Amazon said it would go spend $2 billion in India. 

Then there's Jet, a soon-to-be-launched e-commerce startup from Marc Lore. Lore knows Amazon's brutal tactics as well as anyone. Prior to starting Jet, he co-founded Quidsi, which was the parent company of Diapers.com. In 2010, BusinessWeek called Diapers.com "What Amazon Fears Most."

Diapers.com was shipping hundreds of millions of Diapers annually, making a dent in Amazon's business. To compete, Amazon went nuclear on Diapers.com, drastically lowering prices forcing Quidsi to sell to Amazon for  $540 million.

When he announced his new company, Lore said, "At Jet we will make use of the latest advancements in technology to create a new shopping experience that will empower customers like never before. Jet will bring unprecedented transparency and efficiencies to the overall e-commerce market, and as a result, will transform the customer experience in a way that, until now, has not been possible."

Lore raised $55 million for his new venture, and although he doesn't specifically call out Amazon, his ambitions are clearly big. 

The giant companies that want to disrupt Amazon

Amazon isn't under attack from just startups, though. There are big companies with deep pockets ready to challenge Amazon, too.

Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba is about to IPO. It's hoping to raise $21 billion in the biggest IPO in history, giving Alibaba billions in cash to try to crack into the U.S. market.  

Then, there's Google, which has ramped up its inclusion of paid product listings. These listings show products right in Google searches. Amazon-Google is one of the most underreported, but important, rivalries in tech. 

Google makes its money when people do commercial searches for products. As Amazon grows in power and ubiquity, consumers are going straight to Amazon.com to do searches for stuff instead of Google. To fight back, Google has tried to improve its shopping results. As these results improve, Amazon is hurt. 

The companies compete in many other ways. Amazon just launched a new mobile ad network that could threaten Google. Google is testing Shopping Express, a delivery service that goes right at the heart of Amazon's e-commerce business. Google partners with local stores, and if you order something through Google, it will deliver it that day. 

Google and Microsoft are both taking on Amazon Web Services, which is one of Amazon's biggest businesses (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has even said that he expects AWS to eventually be Amazon's biggest business). From tiny startups, to big companies like Netflix, AWS powers a lot of the services you use on the web.

Google and Microsoft have slashed their own cloud computing prices to compete with Amazon's. Although the Amazon doesn't break out its AWS business in its earnings, you can parse through the report to see that the revenue growth of its "other" category — which is mainly AWS — slowed, from 60% growth year-over-year first quarter, to only 38% growth year-over-year in Q2.

Here's the chart Microsoft (Azure) and Google are trying hard to change:

"People still think of Amazon as a retailer," says SunTrust analyst Robert Peck, "But when you think about all of its investments, it has expanded into many new areas."

Whether it's expanding too much, spending too heavily, and losing its focus are a crucial questions. When Amazon revealed it expects to lose a whopping $410 to $810 million in Q3, investors panicked, and the stock tanked more than 10%. Overall this year, it's down nearly 20%. 

Scott Tilghman, from B. Riley & Co., said that although the firm is used to Amazon's slim profits or even losses, it downgraded its estimates because "we are finding no end to the company's spending this time around."

Amazon's view: This is only day one

Peck, however, believes that CEO Jeff Bezos and Amazon are making a series of well-calculated decisions, even if they don't "bat a thousand." In fact, he thinks that bold moves outside of are the strategy du jour. 

"There are four or five tech titans have expanded outside their core, and are now stepping into each others' core businesses and competing for the future, the new opportunities. It's a really unique time." he says. "I think where Amazon is going makes a ton of sense." 

Amazon's strategy has always been to focus on the long-term and make bold decisions and investments that it thinks will help it gain market leadership. 

"Some of these investments will pay off, others will not," Bezos wrote in his original letter to shareholders, "And we will have learned another valuable lesson in either case." 

SEE ALSO: More Evidence That Amazon's Fire Phone Is A Flop

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The government's predilection for waiting until late Friday to deliver bad news remains unchanged. Two memos justifying wireless wiretapping were released Friday night, buying it a few days time to prep before dealing with any uncomfortable questions raised by these documents.

Both memos [PDF links: first, second] have multiple redactions. The first memo has had entire groups of pages withheld, as well as pages so heavily-redacted they may as well have been deleted. Additional details are scant, leaving readers to read between the redactions in hopes of cobbling together the government's rationale for the warrantless wiretapping of calls originating in the United States.

What does remain is mostly post-9/11 justifications about needing to respond to a new threat in new ways. And that "new way" was apparently to give the President a blank surveillance check to do with what he wished.

The broad outlines of the argument — that the president has inherent constitutional power to monitor Americans’ communications without a warrant in a time of war — were known, but the sweep of the reasoning becomes even clearer in the memos written by then-Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith, who was head of President George W. Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel.

“We conclude only that when the nation has been thrust into an armed conflict by a foreign attack on the United States and the president determines in his role as commander in chief . . . that it is essential for defense against a further foreign attack to use the [wiretapping] capabilities of the [National Security Agency] within the United States, he has inherent constitutional authority” to order warrantless wiretapping — “an authority that Congress cannot curtail,” Goldsmith wrote in a redacted 108-page memo dated May 6, 2004.

The Stellar Wind program, as it was known, was implemented in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, without Congressional approval. The warrantless wiretapping was rationalized into legality years after implementation, and memos like these were the delivery vehicles. The government doesn't trust Americans to understand why it believes a pseudo-war justifies violations of civil liberties. Those parts are blacked out. What we're left with is supposed to be enough.

And it's not just Stellar Wind. Other dragnet programs (internet/email/phone metadata) are rationalized as well in these pages. The May 6, 2004 memo by Jack Goldsmith does everything it can to eliminate Fourth Amendment protections, as Marcy Wheeler points out.

It shows that the memo discusses content, discusses telephony metadata, discusses something else, then concludes that content and metadata are both kosher under the Fourth Amendment.

The second memo, also written by Goldsmith, does more of the same. This one throws in the then-recent decision by the Supreme Court, finding the detainment of a US citizen (Yaser Esam Hamdi) in Afghanistan was justified because it occurred during a time of war. According to Goldsmith, intercepting communications without a warrant is a "fundamental and accepted" part of waging war. Again, the argument finds in favor of the Executive Branch acting unilaterally to combat terrorism. Anything more detailed or subtly written is buried behind black bars or removed entirely.

But the gist of it is: Smith v. Maryland means intelligence agencies can collect nearly anything they deem metadata without tripping over the Fourth Amendment -- and if these small limits are exceeded, the Executive Branch has the power to override any objections.

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Cyborg Unplug is a gadget no bigger than a laptop charger that plugs into a wall and patrols the local Wi-Fi network for connected Google Glass devices, along with other potential surveillance gadgets like Google Dropcams, Wi-Fi-enabled drone copters, and certain wireless microphones.

The post For Sale Soon: The World’s First Google Glass Detector appeared first on WIRED.

I'd say it's been pretty well established at this point that the NYPD sucks at Twitter. Occasionally they get it right and engage with the public in a meaningful way, but too often NYPD officers put things on Twitter that can only serve to cause the public to question their judgement. Insensitivity, racism, and otherwise crass behavior doesn't make the NYPD look all that good, of course, so the top brass has a solution. They're going to review their hiring practices to make sure they're hiring good, level-headed men and women to put on the uniform and protect the public. Hahahahaha, just kidding, they've decided to send some of their officers to "Twitter school" instead.

After a series of online gaffes — including a joke tweet about a dead woman and a hashtag that became a laughingstock — the NYPD is forcing top officers to take a course in Twitter. “USE COMMON SENSE” reads a memo handed out to the commanders at the first training session at John Jay College.

Yes, police are going to a formal class in order to learn how to use Twitter in a manner consistent with common sense. That appears to indicate that common sense isn't all that common amongst NYPD officers, which should probably be setting off alarm bells in everyone's brain. The kind of person that doesn't know they shouldn't make fun of dead members of the public they're supposed to be protecting and serving probably aren't the kind of people I really want walking around with a gun in the first place.

The course is designed to prevent embarrassments like a tweet sent by Capt. Thomas Harnisch of Harlem last month in which he made light of the death of a woman who fell onto the subway tracks at Union Square while using an iPad.

“Let me guess, driver’s fault right?” he wrote over his personal account in a tweet directed at a safe-streets advocacy group.

Lovely. It's not that a single incident like this was particularly egregious, or that it prevents Harnisch from doing his job. The problem is that when the inability to act appropriately is such a pandemic across the police force that formal training on not acting like a jackass is warranted, the public might better be served by excising said jackasses from the police ranks entirely.

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We've already mentioned how a number of comments have been submitted concerning Australian Attorney General George Brandis' Hollywood wishlist proposal for copyright reform in Australia. There are a number of interesting comments worth reading. I was pleasantly surprised to see the normally copyright-maximalist BSA come out against the proposal, saying that it will create a real risk of "over-enforcement, punishment of lawful conduct and blocking of lawful content including critically important free speech rights." Dr. Rebecca Giblin, who has studied these issues and other attempts to put in place similar filters (and how they've failed), has also put forth a very interesting comment.

The most bizarre comment, however, has to come from Village Roadshow. Village Roadshow is the Australian movie studio that the US State Department admitted was used as the token "Australian" movie studio in the MPAA's big lawsuit against iiNet. iiNet is the Australian ISP that the MPAA (with Village Roadshow appearing as "the local face") sued for not waving a magic wand and stopping piracy. iiNet won its case at basically every stage of the game, and that big legal win is really at the heart of these new regulatory proposals. Apparently, Village Roadshow's CEO still hasn't gotten over the loss in the legal case.

I read a lot of public comments to government requests. Comments from individuals may vary in style and quality, but generally speaking, comments from large businesses and professional organizations take on a certain very professional tone. You can see that in basically every comment listed in this particular comment period. Except for Village Roadshow's. The tone is both exceptionally informal and... almost frantic. The use of hyperbole is quite incredible. It claims without these reforms the entire industry will die, and says that infringement is on par with terrorism and pedophilia. Just the intro itself basically highlights the style and tone:

Piracy, if not addressed, will shut down the Australian feature film production industry entirely. It will rip out the heart of the cinema and TV industries, creating massive unemployment and slashing the profitability of taxpaying companies.

The problem is urgent. Village Roadshow estimates the theatrical business is down 12% as a result of piracy. Rupert Murdoch interviewed in Australia said: “between 15 and 20 percent of Fox’s revenue is being eaten up by illegal downloads”!

The problem is urgent as piracy is spreading like a highly infectious disease and as bad habits become entrenched, they become harder to eradicate. Also of course high speed broadband is just around the corner.

The dangers posed by piracy are so great, the goal should be total eradication or zero tolerance. Just as there is no place on the internet for terrorism or paedophilia, there should be no place for theft that will impact the livelihoods of the 900,000 people whose security is protected by legitimate copyright.

And this is from the company whose CEO is refusing to take part in a public Q&A about the issue because he claims that any such event will be "filled with crazies."

The filing also quotes Steve Jobs from Walter Isaacson's book:

“From the earliest days at Apple, I realised that we thrived when we created intellectual property. If people copied or stole our software we’d be out of business. If we weren’t protected there’d be no incentive for us to make new software or product designs. If protection of intellectual property begins to dissipate, creative companies will disappear or never get started. But there’s a simpler reason. It’s wrong to steal. It hurts other people. And it hurts your own character.”

Of course, there's that other famous Steve Jobs quote that is a bit more accurate:

"Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we've always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

And, at least for that quote, we've actually got video of him saying it rather than having it paraphrased through a third party.

Village Roadshow's filing actually claims that Brandis' proposal does not go far enough in making ISPs liable and forcing them to magically make piracy disappear:

Vitally, in Village’s view, the question of “reasonable steps” presupposes the clear establishment of ISP’s being potentially liable for infringement on their services. It is crucial that this first step be properly legislated – and then ISP’s will approach the consultation process with a legal incentive to co-operate. As the Discussion Paper states “Extending the authorisation liability is essential ….”. Village is concerned that the proposed amendment to Section 101 of the Copyright Act suggested in the Discussion Paper does not clearly achieve this, and supports clear drafting to achieve that objective.

The underlines are in the original. Village Roadshow says that it would love to be able to bombard ISPs with notices in a graduated response (i.e., three strikes type) system, but that it will refuse to do so if it actually has to pay for each notice (apparently Village Roadshow not only wants ISPs to be the copyright cops, but it wants them to do so for free).

The entire comment filing comes off as ill-thought-out ranting, or last minute answers to a take home exam of a procrastinating junior high school student. Perhaps my favorite example of this is in response to the question "How can the impact of any measures to address online copyright infringement best be measured?" and Village Roadshow starts off its response:

Powerfully this will be measured by the results.

Powerfully, this comment is not.

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Public libraries: they're important. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, somebody is going to have to explain to me why we occasionally see people attempt to take books out of libraries on either religious or decency grounds. It seems to me that these people often need a lecture on the First Amendment and how they probably want to be careful about eroding its protections. The latest in need of such a lecture is a group of Texas religious leaders who are circulating a letter demanding a local public library remove all works of fiction that have to do with vampires and the occult.

Phillip Missick and other religious leaders have called on the Austin Memorial Library to remove books about vampires, demons and other magical beings from the teen section. Missick is circulating a petition that requests that the "occultic and demonic room be shut down, and these books be purged from the shelves, and that public funds would no longer be used to purchase such material, or at least require parents to check them out for their children," according to the Cleveland Advocate.

Missick's reasoning for this is the same moral panic crap we've written about so often: if children read about the occult, they'll end up being demonic little hooligans or whatever. It's Dungeons and Dragons, video games, and chess all over again. But it's all the more egregious when a religious leader calls for the removal of secular funds from a public institution to fulfill his religious views. We don't do that in America. Let me show Pastor Missick why we don't do that, using one of his own statements.

"This is dark. There's a sexual element. You have creatures that aren't human. I think it's dangerous for our kids," Missick, a pastor at King of Saints Tabernacle of Cleveland, told KTRK.

Now, let me think what other books that might exist that I could argue contain dark literature, sexual elements, and creatures that aren't human? Oh, I know! How about the bible? Plenty that could be considered dark, what with the detailed descriptions of war and Cain killing Abel and all that. Sexual elements? Oh, you betcha, what with the incestuous date-rape of Lot by his daughters and the orgies and whatnot. Non-human creatures? Well, you know, there's God, angels, and demons, so yeah. Most public libraries carry the bible in the reference section, alongside the equally dark-n-sexy religious texts from other major religions.

So, are we going to ban the bible in public libraries because of this? Shall we insist no public funds go to buying religious texts, including the bible? Of course not, because libraries aren't for partisan texts, they're for all texts that have value to the public, including texts we may not care for. You can't understand literature if you don't have a basic understanding of religious texts and you can't understand the current realm of young-adult fiction if you don't have access to vampire books. Sad, but that's the way it is.

So, hey, to my religious friends: stop trying to ban books. You're chipping away at a federal law that allows you to exist.

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Today's militarized policeman often feels naked without the protection of mine-resistant vehicles, despite very little evidence that such vehicles are necessary to handle the deadly (or is it?) rigors of police work. Citizens, however, aren't so sure they like seeing their law enforcement officers rolling out like they're keeping the peace in the middle of Baghdad.

Even better, some representatives are finally starting to feel the same way. Sure, the vehicles and other militarized accoutrements may come cheap, thanks to DHS grants, but even deep, deep discounts aren't enough to justify picking these up simply because the US government has made them available.

Two law enforcement agencies will be returning their MRAPs to Uncle Sam, with the announcements arriving almost simultaneously.

Davis, Calif., city officials have directed the police department to return a surplus U.S. military armored vehicle to the federal government after residents, citing images seen during protests in Ferguson, Mo., expressed fears of militarization.

The Davis Police Department now has 60 days to get rid of a $689,000 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle, which police acquired through a U.S. Defense Department program, and must consider other rescue vehicle options.

Councilman Robb Davis explained the rationale behind the decision:

"I am opposed to the investments that are made and then the results of those investments flowed back to our community in ways that may not hurt our community in a physical sense by are destructive in terms of not increasing our security but increasing our anxiety." Councilman Robb Davis said at a council meeting Tuesday.

The public's growing unease with the weaponry amassed via the Pentagon's 1033 program has been hurtling towards critical mass in recent weeks, thanks to the heavy-handed tactics and military gear used by police officers in response to protests in Ferguson, MO. The police cited armored vehicles' life-saving qualities in two separate instances, but that wasn't enough to sway the council's vote. Perhaps the worst part (for the cops) is the fact that they didn't even get a chance to take their new armored toy for a spin.

The Davis Police Department took possession of the free vehicle two weeks ago…

It still had that new 1033 acquisition smell. What a shame.

Over in San Jose, CA, it's a completely different story. Rather than having an MRAP pried from law enforcement's clutches by city reps, the San Jose Police Department gave it up voluntarily to protect its relationship with the people it serves.

San Jose police spokeswoman Sgt. Heather Randol told KCBS the decision was made based on concerns for potential damage to the department’s image and community relationships.

“We want to keep their trust. We don’t want them to feel we are going off on another path with our police department,” she said. “We want them to feel comfortable about the tools that we use.”

Kudos to the SJPD. Not many police departments offer this sort of statement as lip service, much less with actions to back it up. Notice that it's San Jose, with a population of nearly 1 million and a violent crime rate right at the national average, that is voluntarily giving up its armored vehicle. Davis (pop. 66,000) has a violent crime rate that's roughly half of San Jose's, and its MRAP had to be taken away from it by the city government. (Quick fact: San Jose had 35 murders in 2012. Davis had 4... in the last decade.) Who would you rather be policed by? Those who know that combating serious crime doesn't require the use of shock-and-awe vehicles or those who think that officer safety is more important than maintaining a positive relationship with their community?

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One of the less well-known projects of the West is to convince developing countries that they need to convert traditional approaches to agriculture, which have functioned well for hundreds of years, into a system of intellectual monopolies for seeds -- the implicit and patronizing message being that this is the "modern" way to do things. Last year we wrote about how this was happening in Africa, and an article on bilaterals.org reports on similar moves in Guatemala:

On 10 June, the Congress of Guatemala approved Decree 19-2014 or the "Law for the Protection of New Plant Varieties" which led to an outpouring of criticism from various sectors of civil society.

This law, published on 26 June, protects the intellectual property of plant breeders deemed to have "created" or "discovered" new plant varieties, or genetically modified existing ones.

This way, the beneficiaries of the law -- "breeders", which are typically companies producing transgenic seeds like the transnational corporation Monsanto -- obtain property rights over the use of such varieties, in the form of plants or seeds.

Here's how that is likely to impact Guatemalan farmers:

In a publication, the Rural Studies Collective (Cer-Ixim) warned about the consequences of this "Monsanto Law".

They explained that under this law the possession or exchange of seeds of protected varieties without the breeder's authorisation will be illegal and punishable by imprisonment.

It will also be illegal, and punishable by prison, to posses the harvest from such seeds or to save them for future plantings.

According to the law, the breeder's right extends to "varieties essentially derived from the protected variety." In this sense, a hybrid produced from a protected variety crossed with an unprotected variety would automatically belong to the breeder of the patented variety.

The law thus promotes privatisation and monopolies over seeds, endangering food sovereignty, especially that of indigenous peoples, said Cer-Ixim. It also warned that Guatemala's biodiversity will fall "under the control of domestic and foreign companies."

The new law was brought in as part of the process of complying with the 2005 CAFTA-DR free trade agreement between Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and the US. Under its terms, signatories are obliged to sign up to the International Convention for the Protection of New Plant Varieties -- exactly the same one that was being foisted on Africa last year. However, as bilaterals.org reports, despite that obligation, there is mounting resistance to handing over the country's seed sovereignty in this way:

The growing opposition to the "Monsanto Law" comes from diverse sectors of civil society such as indigenous organisations, environmental groups, scientists, artists and members of Congress.

...

Artists and television celebrities have joined an online signature campaign to reject the law.

Their petition is addressed to the President, Otto Perez Molina, via the Avaaz website, and argues that the law is unconstitutional.

"This law violates articles of the Constitution relating to the Protection of Individuals, Cultural Identity, Natural Heritage, Right to Health, the principles of the Economic and Social Regime, in addition to the obligation of the state to protect consumers," the petition states.

Just recently, the Constitutional Court, Guatemala's highest legal body, provisionally suspended the entry into force of the law, giving 15 days for the various parties to to present their arguments. Despite the broad-based support for repealing or modifying the law, it is not clear what options the government has. After all, passing the law is a requirement of CAFTA-DR, and if Guatemala refuses to comply, we can expect the US to apply considerable pressure to encourage it to toe the line. Ultimately, the US can refuse to bring into force the agreement; given the presence of corporate sovereignty (pdf) and other onerous provisions in CAFTA-DR, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing for the people of Guatemala.

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The surveillance device that dare not speak its name (thanks, FBI!) is on its last legs… or at least one version is. Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica reports that law enforcement agencies are moving quickly to avoid being locked out of the cell tower spoofing racket.

Documents released last week by the City of Oakland reveal that it is one of a handful of American jurisdictions attempting to upgrade an existing cellular surveillance system, commonly known as a stingray.

The Oakland Police Department, the nearby Fremont Police Department, and the Alameda County District Attorney jointly applied for a grant from the Department of Homeland Security to "obtain a state-of-the-art cell phone tracking system," the records show.

The Stingray is Harris Corporation's most infamous product. But the original version has its limitations. While the nation's cell phone carriers have largely moved on to 3G/4G networks, Stingray devices without optional upgrades haven't. All they can access is 2G, the default connection when nothing better is available. Those looking to capture cell activity on 3G and 4G networks will need to purchase Harris' "Hailstorm" upgrade… which also means they'll need to start generating paperwork and asking federal and local governments for funds. The problem with these actions is that they have the tendency to expose those in need of new capabilities.

Other locales known to be in the process of related federally-funded upgrades include Tacoma, Wash.; Baltimore, Md.; Chesterfield, Va.; Sunrise, Fla.; and Oakland County, Mich. There are likely many more, but such purchases are often shrouded in secrecy.

FOIA requests have turned up some information, but much of it is redacted and many more requests have been refused or ignored. With the federal government itself instructing local law enforcement to cover up its acquisition and use of tower spoofers, the FOIA process becomes even more of an uphill battle.

Law enforcement can't be happy to see 2G networks being switched off. When you're in the untargeted dragnet business, 2G is a willing supplier of "business records."

2G networks are notoriously insecure. Handsets operating on 2G will readily accept communication from another device purporting to be a valid cell tower, like a stingray. So the stingray takes advantage of this feature by jamming the 3G and 4G signals, forcing the phone to use a 2G signal.

What's considered a criminal act when performed by a civilian is just SOP for law enforcement. The same can be said for the fake sworn documents (warrant requests, subpoenas) obtained to cover the use of these devices. The manufacturer with the most devices in use is no better than the agencies it sells to. When approached about this scramble for upgrades, Harris Corporation borrowed the NSA's Glomar.

"We do not comment on solutions we may or may not provide to classified Department of Defense or law enforcement agencies," Jim Burke, a spokesman for Harris, told Ars.

The timeline for 2G shutoff is still vague. Verizon says "by the end of the decade." AT&T says 2017. So there's still some time for law enforcement agencies to avoid being bypassed by the slow rollout of network upgrades. But between now and then, these agencies need to put together nearly $500,000 just to stay current. And as usual, as much as possible about the process will be obscured, because otherwise the terrorists criminals win.

"Once that's disclosed then the targets of the technology will know how to avoid it," [Alameda County Assistant DA Michael] O’Connor, the assistant district attorney, told Ars. "Once the bad guys understand how to beat it then they will."

It seems like all the bad guys would need to know is that the technology exists and is being used and just stay off their cell phones. But in this day and age, being completely unconnected while away from home is untenable, if not nearly impossible. Communication is key in criminal enterprises, and the steady disappearance of pay phones doesn't leave them with many options. O'Connor completely overstates the "exposure" danger and follows it up with this:

"It can't easily be resolved—the public's right to know, the Fourth Amendment rights of people who might be subject to this kind of analysis and the needs of law enforcement to keep sources confidential especially in a day and age when the bad guys have acquired considerable technology that is turned against good guys."

One: if it can't "easily be resolved," why not err on the Fourth Amendment/public knowledge side, rather than on the cop side? Two: the bad guys' "considerable technology" isn't lapping law enforcement's. This ridiculous claim has been used as justification for warrantless cell phone searches, and it failed to move the Supreme Court justices. Pushing this narrative now just makes the pusher look like the sort of credulous rube who would put together a Powerpoint presentation on food-trucks-as-terrorist-vehicles.

The bright side here is that more paperwork is being generated… which eventually means more of the public will know their local law enforcement is scooping up their location/connection info (most likely without a warrant) at any given time and is not above killing their network to do it.

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We've covered a lot of stories dealing with the Right of First Sale being undermined by digital goods being sold as licenses, rather than products. It's much more rare to find the Right of First Sale being yanked away from paying customers who have purchased physical products. But it happens. You'd think shelling out a quarter-million dollars would allow you to do what you please with your purchase. Think again.

Apparently Ferrari was none to pleased with the custom badges and associated floor mats on Deadmau5's 458 Italia Purrari. So much so that Ferrari North America sent the self-admitted button-pusher a cease and desist to have the custom emblems removed.

Deadmau5 (aka Joel Zimmerman) wrapped his 458 in a vinyl tribute to Nyan cat, running it in a few rallies and getting coffee with assorted celebrities and disgraced politicians before it went up for sale.

Deadmau5 didn't share the actual cease and desist order but pointed out later that it specifically mentioned the badges and floor mats. Ferrari was probably none too thrilled with the custom wrap, which took the vaunted manufacturer's luxury sportscar and turned it into a meme-on-wheels for the Gumball 3000 Rally.


First off, it seems a car company should let its customers customize their vehicles however they want to. Second, it was originally done for the Gumball 3000 -- an event where all sorts of vehicles are wrapped/customized to ridiculous extents.

But that's Ferrari's m.o., apparently. Not only will it get testy about Pop Tart cats trailing rainbows, but it also won't let you sell its vehicles without its permission. The Right of First Refusal contract (posted at a Porsche enthusiasts forum) states that Ferrari, not the customer, gets to say who the car gets sold to.

Customer recognizes that the 430 is a limited-edition, high-performance vehicle and that it is the goal of both Ferrari and the Dealer to offer and sell such vehicles principally to Ferrari enthusiasts who are purchasing the vehicles for their own use, who intend to use the 430 and not for purposes of resale or price speculation. Customer further recognizes that, in the past, Ferrari vehicles like the 430, have frequently appreciated in value, such that used and "almost new" vehicles can be sold at prices substantially in excess of the original Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. While there is no guarantee that the 430 will enjoy similar customer acceptance, and while Ferrari and the Dealer recognize Customer's ultimate right to enjoy any appreciation that may occur with respect to his/her vehicle, Customer acknowledges that Ferrari and Dealer have a legitimate interest in minimizing speculation in the 430, at least and the time of, and within reasonable time after, introduction of the vehicle. Customer, in particular, acknowledges that, in the past, excessive speculation in certain Ferrari vehicles has resulted in customer ill-will and can, under certain circumstances, expose Ferrari and/or Dealer to liabilities over which neither has control or recourse.

In order to address the foregoing concerns. Customer hereby grants to Dealer, as a material consideration for the opportunity to purchase a 430, an option to repurchase the 430 at its market value (but in no event more than the original Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price) at any time within two (2) years of the date of delivery of his/her 430, provided Customer decides to sell, lease or otherwise transfer possession the vehicle to a third-party during that period (the "Right of First Refusal"). Customer agrees to abide by this provision, and understands that, notwithstanding any other terms thereof, it constitutes an integrated and material part of the retail contract between Customer and Dealer.

To put this in the best light, Ferrari (and its licensed dealers) doesn't desire for the rich to become richer by flipping its vehicles. It apparently wants customers to drive the cars, not buy up a few with the hopes of profiting on the price appreciation. It's a noble thought, but it completely destroys the Right of First Sale. The contract says it recognizes the customer's "right" to "enjoy any appreciation," but then says the dealer gets first shot at repurchasing the Ferrari "at no higher than the "original MSRP." How often this clause is actually triggered is unknown, but it basically takes control of a very expensive vehicle out of the customer's hands for two years.

I'm not saying more money should mean more rights, but it would seem that those spending a small fortune for Ferrari's vehicles should at least be able to paint the vehicle like the General Lee and sell it to old money in Mississippi without the owner having to check with the dealer first or receive ludicrous cease-and-desist orders.

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We've talked in the past about the ridiculous nature of the academic publishing world these days, which involve a variety of questionable tactics mostly focused on (1) predatorily preying on those who "need" to be published, (2) enabling researchers (and sometimes large companies) to whitewash shoddy research by "publishing" it for a fee, and (3) making the "publishers" filthy stinking rich despite doing no actual work. The problem is that, while much of this is scammy, the line between fraudulent practices and more "legitimate" practices are pretty damn blurry. After all, when you have "legitimate" names like the American Psychological Association trying to charge $2,500 to "deposit" newly published papers with PubMed (as required to do for NIH funded papers) or publishing giant Elsevier having an entire division devoted to publishing fake journals paid for by giant pharmaceutical companies promoting their drugs, sometimes it's tough to tell who's legit and who's the out and out swindler.

But, there's definitely been a flood of "predatory" publishers lately, who will basically offer to publish absolutely anything for a fee. This has resulted in some amusing stories of purely gibberish papers getting published as "legit" (that link points to a paper that directly claimed in its own text that it was a fraud and also widely quoted My Cousin Vinny). There are reports of such gibberish papers flooding academia, sometimes in attempts to highlight how lax publishers are, and what a giant scam all of this is.

The Ottawa Citizen has a story highlighting yet another twist and turn in this ongoing battle of bogosity in academic research, involving sketchy people stepping in to buy a formerly respected journal and turning it into a pure pay-to-play publication willing to publish absolute gibberish (which the Ottawa Citizen tested and easily proved). The Ottawa Citizen was turned onto the story by Jeffrey Beall, author of Scholarly Open Access, a site that chronicles predatory publishing scams, and who was last mentioned on these pages after being threatened with a $1 billion lawsuit and "criminal charges" for outing a predatory publisher based in India.

In this case, the Experimental & Clinical Cardiology journal had been a widely respected publication covering research on (you guessed it) experimental and clinical cardiology. However, last year it got sold to some unknown folks who appear to have turned it into a pure gibberish publishing enterprise -- so long as you can pay the $1,200 fee. In other words, the new publishers are trading on the old reputation of the journal, now allowing it to publish junk science or nonsensical rantings. Here's how Tom Spears at the Ottawa Citizen tested it out:

To test the journal, the Citizen sent in an outrageously bad manuscript. The title is a hodgepodge of medical-sounding words adding up to nothing: “VEGF proliferation in cardiac cells contributes to vascular declension.”

For the rest we plagiarized a study on HIV but replaced “HIV” with the word “cardiac” throughout, to make it look (sort of) like cardiology. But it wouldn’t impress anyone who knows the subject.

We submitted detailed captions for graphs — but there are no graphs.

In case you're wondering, Spears notes that "declension" is not a medical word. "It means a group of nouns in Latin that behave the same way." And, it appears that other articles in the same journal have gone through a similar level of review (i.e., none, so long as the check clears):

This is paying off spectacularly. Experimental & Clinical Cardiology published 142 articles in July alone, worth a total of $170,000 U.S. for one month. It operates online only and doesn’t bother with editing, so it has almost no costs.

The result is sloppy, or worse. Some articles are called “Enter Paper Title” — the layout instructions instead of the intended title. One is filled with visible paragraph markers (¶). Some authors’ names are missing.

The academic publishing world is already massively profitable, and with that it appears that the scammers have jumped in and are abusing the system to make money. Of course, the "legit" publishers made this quite easy in the first place, and now it appears that there are opportunities to jump in by using previously respected journal brand reputations as part of furthering these kinds of predatory practices.

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After gaining $22 million in series B funding last year, Cyanogen Inc’s first foray into the mobile arena was a little bumpy to say the least. Not so much because the new software company failed to live up to any expectations on their end, mind you (CyanogenMod 11S is some pretty amazing custom Android software). It had more to do with oddball devices like the Oppo N1 and constant barrage of bad press OnePlus received time and time again with the OnePlus One.

But even with that small hiccup, it seems Cyanogen Inc’s image hasn’t been tarnished as a new report suggests some pretty big names in tech are eyeballing the software startup. If you’re wondering what’s next for everyone’s favorite Android success story, The Information is now reporting that Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, and Yahoo are just a few of the companies looking to partner up with Cyanogen Inc. Well, that, or acquire them altogether. While nothing is set in stone just yet, it’s being said Cyanogen Inc has already had a sit down chat with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella while Steve Kondik and crew prepare for their series C round of funding later this year.

We should warn, we’ve seen reports out of The Information quickly shot down in the past, so take this all with a grain of salt for now. It’s still unclear exactly what kind of work Cyanogen Inc — who built their house working exclusively with Android software — would do for some of these other companies, but it appears CyanogenMod could be a way for Google’s rivals to circumvent Android software that relies so heavily on their apps and services. With countless AOSP apps moving over to exclusive Google properties, there’s not much left to harvest and we’re already shuddering at the thought of a Yahoo Phone.

It's not just the thin blue line insulating bad cops from accountability, it's the entire judicial system. From lower-level judges treating statements from police with amazing amounts of credulity even in the face of past misconduct or contradictory recordings to the nation's top court, the judiciary branch, giving police officers built-in defenses that far exceed those available to the public.

An op-ed by Edwin Chemerinsky (lawyer and Dean of Law at the University of California, Irvine) notes that recent decisions by the Supreme Court have put even more distance between bad cops and accountability. Earlier this year, the nation's top court essentially gave police officers permission to open fire on anyone deemed a threat and not stop firing until they determined the threat to be neutralized.

A suspect that led police on a 100-mph chase met his end when police officers fired 15 bullets in his vehicle, killing him and his passenger. Although other methods may have ended this chase without resulting in the suspect's death, the Supreme Court found nothing about this use of force was "excessive."

The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and ruled unanimously in favor of the police. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that the driver’s conduct posed a “grave public safety risk” and that the police were justified in shooting at the car to stop it. The court said it “stands to reason that, if police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended.”

While the police have access to a wide variety of tactics and less-lethal weapons when dealing with "public safety risks," there's really no need for them to use anything but their guns. (Which they do… with gusto.) The Supreme Court's decision turns any perceived threats to "public safety" (practically speaking, "officer safety") into blank checks for excessive force.

Federal courts aren't much better than the Supreme Court when it comes to prosecuting excessive force. Amanda Taub at Vox, writing about the ongoing investigation into Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson's killing of unarmed resident Mike Brown, notes that while officers can find themselves facing both local and federal charges, Officer Wilson's chances of walking away from this situation intact are still very high.

Simple murder is not a federal offense, but it is a federal crime for a police officer to deprive someone of his rights under the Constitution. If a victim dies, the perpetrator can be sentenced to life in prison or even the death penalty. That means the DOJ could prosecute Wilson under federal law for violating Brown's civil rights, if the evidence supports that charge.

Federal civil rights prosecutions are rare, though, and convictions are even rarer. A study from Syracuse University's TRAC program found that between 1986 and 2003, fewer than 2 percent of civil rights matters referred to the DOJ were ever prosecuted. Out of 43,331 referrals, 690 were actually prosecuted — and of those, 423 resulted in a conviction.

If pursuing criminal charges seems futile, Wilson could still face a civil lawsuit, with only a slightly greater chance of success. This, too, can be traced back to the Supreme Court.

When there is not absolute immunity, police officers are still protected by “qualified immunity” when sued for monetary damages. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2011, ruled that a government officer can be held liable only if “every reasonable official” would have known that his conduct was unlawful. For example, the officer who shot Michael Brown can be held liable only if every reasonable officer would have known that the shooting constituted the use of excessive force and was not self-defense.

We already know the Ferguson Police Dept. believes Wilson's actions to be defensible. Statements released by the department claim that Mike Brown got into an altercation with Officer Wilson and tried to grab his gun. It has also claimed that Officer Wilson suffered injuries from Wilson's attack (although it has released no photos or medical information to back up these claims). The courts have repeatedly shown that officers claiming to fear for their safety are fully justified in deploying deadly force. In the absence of any start-to-finish recordings of the incident, it becomes the police department's word against the words of Mike Brown's legal representatives. And the department will have some form of immunity as well as "officer safety" to deploy in its defense.

With all of this in play, it seems unlikely that there will be a satisfactory resolution to the Ferguson situation. And, despite all appearances otherwise, Officer Wilson may truly be justified in his shooting of Mike Brown. But the legal roadblocks erected by every level of the judicial system makes it extremely difficult to combat the use of excessive force. Even when the system comes together to punish officer wrongdoing, it's rarely the officer that bears the burden. Whether it's a settlement or a prison sentence, it's still the public footing the bill.

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Note: Larger version HERE so you don't have to strain those beady little eyeballs of yours (one of your friends told me you look like a rat). This is the conversation between Redditor UranusExplorer (hey -- you stay out of there!) and an Amazon customer service rep about a book order. They decide to role-play as Thor and his father, Odin. It reminded me of that Netflix customer service rep that all-starred his performance as well. Those are some quality customer service reps. Me? I always manage to get the one who isn't afraid to hang up or disconnect the chat. Fun fact: when I was in college I actually used to work at a call center for a satellite TV company. One time when I was training I panicked and put a woman on hold for so long she hung up on me. Of course that just so happened to be the call that quality assurance was listening in on. They came and made me sign a 'non-negotiable' form that said if it ever happened again I'd be fired. Then on my lunch break I went out and got high and just never came back. I spent the afternoon in a field eating wild berries. Looking back, that might have been the last good afternoon of my life. Thanks to n0nentity, cameron, Jenn, Alex Kidd (I used to love that game on Genesis!) and Sarah, who agree quality customer service reps can really turn a frown upside-down. And bad ones? A bad one can make you want to drive to wherever they are and tear their f***ing head off and kick it like a football.

"He’s always been optimistic about the future," says Hal Finney's wife, Fran. "Every new advance, he embraced it, every new technology. Hal relished life, and he made the most of everything."

The whole Ice Bucket Challenge thing has become quite the story of the month of August, and it's certainly been fascinating to watch how this viral promotion has turned into a massive money raiser for research into ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis -- sometimes called Lou Gehrig's Disease). If you somehow haven't yet heard of this (and I find it nearly impossible to believe you haven't yet), it's when people get challenged to dump a bucket of ice over their heads or give money to charity (though, mostly people do both things). While there's been some ice bucket challenge backlash (often for silly reasons), just from the standpoint of watching something go viral, it's been fascinating. Of course, whenever things get big, sooner or later lawyers are going to step in and things are going to get messy. It appears that the ALS Association -- by far the largest beneficiary of the Ice Bucket Challenge -- is now trying to trademark the term.

That seems problematic for a number of reasons. First off, the ALS Association had nothing to do with the Ice Bucket Challenge originally. It only later became popular in association with ALS. I first heard of the Ice Bucket Challenge back in early July when a friend of the blog, law professor Eric Goldman, did an ice bucket challenge as part of a lung cancer fundraiser. And research into the history of the challenge found that it was used widely for other charities for months before that (often cancer). And other, similar, challenges go back over a century.

The ice bucket challenge really only became associated with ALS much later. The first known connection of the challenge to ALS came on July 14th when a golfer did it for ALS (a bunch of other golfers had been doing ice bucket challenges for other charities for a couple of months before that). Pete Frates, the guy that many have credited as starting the whole "ALS Ice Bucket Challenge" thing didn't actually get involved until the end of July.

While the ALS Association has certainly been a massive beneficiary, it had little to nothing to do with anything related to the challenge, other than getting a bunch of checks in the month of August. To now claim a trademark over it seems... kind of disgusting. It's also legally dubious. In the link above, by Erik Pelton, he highlights many of these problems with the trademark claim, but further notes how troubling this is:

If ALS Association successfully registers the phrase, it could seek to restrict use of it for other charitable causes. That would be the biggest shame in all of this.

Hopefully ALS Association reconsiders or the trademark attempt is rejected. Not everything needs to be "owned," and it's a real shame that people have been so indoctrinated into myths related to "IP" that they immediately rush to lock up everything.

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So we were just writing about how the White House appeared to be going with a security by obscurity tactic in denying an Associated Press FOIA request concerning the security behind Healthcare.gov. Specifically, the request was denied because the White House claimed that revealing such info might help hackers. As we noted, if revealing the basic security plan you're using will help hackers, then you're not secure and chances are you've already been hacked.

Of course, perhaps the reason why the cybersecurity is so awful is because the White House's "cybersecurity coordinator," Michael Daniel, not only isn't a cybersecurity expert but thinks that's a good thing. I wish I was joking. After spending a few minutes talking about all his training at Princeton and the Kennedy School at Harvard taught him to communicate well and "break down problems" he dismisses the need for actual technical knowledge.

You don't have to be a coder to really do well in this position. In fact, actually, I think being too down in the weeds at the technical level could actually be a little bit of a distraction..... You can get taken up and sort of enamored with the very detailed aspects of some of the technical solutions. And, particularly here at the White House... the real issue is to look at the broad, strategic picture and the impact that technology will have.

Now there is some truth to the idea that it's important to be able to look at the bigger picture, but when you're talking about cybersecurity, part of the way that you can look at the bigger picture is to actually understand the technology. That's not "a distraction" it's part of the core and necessary knowledge to then do the job of a cybersecurity coordinator. People who don't spend much time with these things view cybersecurity and technology as a kind of "magic." But it's not. Nor is technology economics, but Daniel thinks it is:

But the other issue in my mind is that at a very fundamental level, cybersecurity isn't just about the technology but it's also about the economics of cybersecurity. Why companies choose to invest the way they invest. It's about the pscyhology of cybersecurity. You know, one of my sayings is that 'expediency trumps cybersecurity every time' meaning that people will prioritize convenience over being secure many times. So you need to have the understanding of those kinds of factors: the psychology, the economics, the broad policy, the politics with a little p, in addition to the technology. So you need to be more of a generalist than having a lot of expertise particularly in the technological side.

Yes, in addition to the technology. All of those things are important, but they're mostly useless if you don't understand the underlying technology. He's then asked what are the biggest challenges and... after talking about how important it is to understand the psychology and economics (more important than the technology) he admits that he doesn't actually understand the psychology and economics. Because, apparently, he wants to make sure that he has none of the job qualifications for the job.

There are a few [challenges] that I can identify. One is that we don't actually truly understand the economics and psychology behind cybersecurity. We know that a huge number of intrusions rely on known fixable vulnerabilities... We know that intruders get in through those holes that we know about that we could fix. The question is, 'Why don't we do that?' That clearly leads me to the conclusion that we really don't understand all of those economics and psychology well enough.

So there you have it folks. The White House's cybersecurity expert doesn't have the technological expertise, but insists it's okay because he's focused on the economics and psychology of the fact that people don't patch their computers -- and then admits he has no idea why that happens.

This doesn't make me feel any safer.

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Are police officers getting worse or is this apparent increase in excessive force nothing more than a reflection of the increase in unofficial documentation (read: cameras) and public scrutiny? What we do know is that as crime has gone down, police forces have escalated their acquisitions of military gear and weapons. With options for lethal and less-lethal force continually expanding, it seems that deployment of force in excess of what the situation requires has become the new normal, but it's tough to find hard data that backs up these impressions.

One of the reasons we don't have data on police use of excessive force is because compiling this information relies on law enforcement agencies being forthcoming about these incidents. Generally speaking, it takes FOIA requests and lawsuits to obtain any data gathered by individual police departments. This shouldn't be the case. In fact, as AllGov reports, this lack of data violates a federal law.

In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Among its provisions was the order that “the Attorney General shall, through appropriate means, acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers.” The Justice Department was also required to publish an annual report on the data collected.

And…that’s pretty much the last anyone heard of that. The work of collecting the data was shuffled off to the International Association for Chiefs of Police, which made a few efforts at collecting data and put together a report in 2001, but has produced nothing since.

Unsurprisingly, law enforcement agencies don't want to talk about it, and the entity in charge of compiling the data seems entirely uninterested in doing the job. Even if the data was collected as the statute requires, much of it would still be questionable. For one, it relies on self-reporting by entities that see zero benefit in exposing their officers' wrongdoing. For another, excessive force incidents previously recorded may turn out to be "justified" later, either by internal investigations or via the judicial system.

But a starting point would be nice or, at the very least, some ballpark figures on year-to-year excessive force incidents. Without it, the public is largely reliant on perception -- and the perception is that police officers are deploying excessive force with increasing frequency.

The person ultimately responsible for this annual compilation of data is none other than the US Attorney General -- the same person who recently traveled to Ferguson, Missouri to help sort out its excessive force problem.

(a) Attorney General to collect
The Attorney General shall, through appropriate means, acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers.

(b) Limitation on use of data
Data acquired under this section shall be used only for research or statistical purposes and may not contain any information that may reveal the identity of the victim or any law enforcement officer.

(c) Annual summary
The Attorney General shall publish an annual summary of the data acquired under this section.

(Pub. L. 103–322, title XXI, §210402, Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2071.)

But in the 20 years since the law went on the books, very little has happened and no one's holding the AG or any of the law enforcement agencies below him accountable for the lack of input.

Because the government can't be bothered to police the nation's police forces, it's up to citizens to do the job. Deadspin-spinoff Regressing, ostensibly a stat-focused sports site, has asked its readers to help it compile a database of police shootings over the last three years (2011-2013).

This, too, is a job that is supposed to be performed by government officials.

The Justice Department began to compile statistics on police shootings in 2001, according to the International Business Times. However, their reports cover only the years from 2003 to 2009 and don’t tell the whole story because of incomplete reporting and problems with research methods.

The public will likely find more complete data than that compiled irregularly (and incompletely) from information reluctantly submitted by law enforcement agencies (if it's submitted at all). Anthony Fisher points out the effed-upness of the situation over at Reason:

Considering the sheer volume of highly personal information the government collects and analyzes (often without consent), it is simply outrageous that the public has to struggle to find even the raw data tallying something as vital as government agents shooting citizens.

The general narrative is that criminals have gotten more dangerous, hence the need for better weapons and armor. But there's no data to support this theory. Police work is safer than it's been for over 50 years. It certainly appears that the police themselves are more dangerous, but there's no data that proves that conjecture. At this point, Americans should have access to nearly 20 years worth of excessive force data. Instead, we have another situation where certain laws are optional -- and these laws are being ignored by those who are more than happy to come down hard on even minimal violations by citizens.

[Just a reminder to US cops: not every dangerous situation requires the use of excessive/deadly force. Here's CCTV footage of Australian police defusing a situation involving a mall full of people and a mentally-unstable gunman who "held heavily-armed officers at bay for 90 minutes before the stand-off ended when Hillier was shot several times with non-lethal rounds."]



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Once a place for posting erotic black and white images (or as some would call it, “hipster porn”), Tumblr will soon find itself a haven for multinational corporations looking to find new ways of marketing their goods. Tumblr recently inked a deal with Ditto, a company who specializes in the scanning of photos for brand images — everything from the Nike “swoosh,” to the logos like Coca-Cola, and more — selling that information back to those corporations. The deal will give Ditto “wholesale access” to Tumblr’s vast repository of user generated content (read: photos). All those images of girls sharing their Starbucks drinks? Ditto certainly has plenty to work with.

In a statement to Motherboard, Ditto CEO David Rose said:

“Twitter and Instagram have been suppliers of data to us for over a year and we’re able to look on behalf of brands at what the conversation about them looks like through photos. What’s different about Tumblr is that they’re supplying us with the entire firehose of all photos that we’re then able to interpret.”

Ditto’s unique image identifying algorithm doesn’t just identify brands, but even the expression of faces in photos to indicate the general feelings towards a specific brand. And although Ditto says they don’t identify individual people, they can pinpoint top “influencers” on any given social network, handing off this information to corporations looking to team up with these influencers for promotional campaigns (see the spammy sh*t show Vine has turned into in recent months).

While Ditto and Tumblr’s new agreement isn’t likely to raise any privacy concerns, if the Instagram fiasco of 2013 has taught us anything, it’s that the internet has some major trust issues. Tumblr and Ditto wouldn’t comment on if this was a money-changing-hands kinda deal, or if users would be notified of how Tumblr is planning on using these photos. User data is a lucrative business. We’ve all seen what Google and Facebook has done with it. Now it seems Tumblr — and parent company Yahoo — are looking to cash in on photos and the unspoken data therein.

We've been writing up some of the new political efforts to try to put some limits on money in politics, including Larry Lessig's Mayday SuperPAC, Represent.us' satirical campaign for the "most honest politician," Gil Fulbright, and also CounterPAC, a SuperPAC that tries to get politicians to take a pledge not to accept dark money.

They're all moving forward with their goals, and two new commercials have come out that are worth highlighting. First, Represent.us has teamed up with Mayday in their effort to promote Jim Rubens, the (generally considered to be a long shot) candidate for Senate in New Hampshire. They've sent "Gil Fulbright" to New Hampshire to "campaign" for Rubens' opponent (and former Massachusetts Senator) Scott Brown. The ad is well worth watching: In case you can't watch it, here's a basic transcript of the text stated by the exceptionally honest Gil Fulbright:

I'm a career politician and this is an unprovoked attack on Jim Rubens. And I'm in it!

You see, me and my buddy, Scott Brown (shows picture of Brown making the "call me" sign), we want to take your tax dollars and hand them out to the cronies and lobbyists who bankroll our political campaigns.

But this Jim Rubens guy? He wants to stop corruption in Washington. He thinks it's his job to help the people of New Hampshire.

Career politicians like me? We've got a sweet thing going on. Do not let Jim Rubens screw that up.

This is a bit different from some of Mayday's earliest commercial spots which I thought were a bit weak. Frankly the first few radio ads (which, for some reason seem to have disappeared from Soundcloud where they were) sounded a little off. Lessig is a great presenter, but I'm not sure he's the best radio voice. Though, the latest TV commercial for Ruben Gallego (which also uses Lessig's voiceover) is stronger than those first few radio ads: Finally, CounterPAC has also launched its first TV ads, including this one involving a sky diver, calling on Georgia Senate candidates Michelle Nunn and David Perdue to pledge to deny dark money in their campaigns (they also have a nearly identical ad targeting Alaska Senate candidates Mark Begich and Dan Sullivan). The production value of the ad is a bit weak, and it kind of buries the point of the ad, which is unfortunate.

Either way, we're seeing the first steps of these efforts to try to limit the impact of money in politics and it will be worth watching how these various campaigns work out.

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My understanding is that there was once a theory that America's public universities were havens of free speech, political thought, and a center for the exchange of ideas. I must admit that this seems foreign to me. I've always experienced universities primarily as a group-think center mostly centered around college athletics. That said, if universities want to still claim to be at the forefront of idea and thought, they probably shouldn't be censoring the hell out of what their students can access on the internet.

Yet, as btr1701 writes in about, that's exactly what Northern Illinois University appears to be doing.

Northern Illinois University enacted an Acceptable Use Policy that goes further than banning torrents, also denying students access to social media sites and other content the university considers “unethical” or “obscene.” A discussion on the ban was brought to Reddit by user darkf who discovered the new policy while trying to access the Wikipedia page for the Westboro Baptist Church from his personal computer in his dorm room. The student received a filter message categorizing the page as “illegal or unethical.” It seems possible to continue to the webpage, but the message warns that all violations will be reviewed.

While sites that only potentially violate the policy, such as the Wikipedia page for stupidest church in America, are still accessible after the warning, other sites that NIU has deemed offensive, defamatory, or threatening remain. These, oddly, include pornography sites, for some reason. It also includes social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIN, the latter of which seems like an especially odd choice since it's primarily a job networking site and I'd think that would be the kind of thing a university would want their students to be doing. Granted, this usage policy applies to staff as well as students, but that's the entire problem with a catchall filtering system like this: you block too much good along with the "bad."

But where this really goes off the rails is NIU's apparent attempt to stifle political discussion on their campus.

Perhaps one of the most controversial of the terms is the restriction on political activities such as surveying, polling, material distribution, vote solicitation and organization or participation in meetings, rallies and demonstrations, among other activities...Isn’t it obvious that an institute of higher learning should be the last place to put a huge block in the information pathway?

It's not just obvious, it seems like the antithesis of what a public university ought to be doing. Forget the social media and pornography sites for a moment. Turning the filters up to the point when Wikipedia pages are blocked is insane. That site is a go to resource for, well, everyone, but probably especially for students. And the ban on political activism and traffic suggests NIU is turning a blind-eye to the important role that universities have always played in political thought and activism.

Shame on NIU for trying to strangle the internet access their students rely on as they learn and become adults.

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America has long held the position as the world's foremost imprisoner of its own citizens. Around 2 million people are incarcerated in America, giving us nearly one-fourth of the world's total prison population. Spending any length of time in prison is a good way to destroy your future. But even if you never spend a day inside -- or even end up facing charges -- there's a good chance you'll still be facing a bleak future should you ever have the misfortune to be booked.

Over the past 20 years, authorities have made more than a quarter of a billion arrests, the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates. As a result, the FBI currently has 77.7 million individuals on file in its master criminal database—or nearly one out of every three American adults.

Between 10,000 and 12,000 new names are added each day.

This master database is accessed by thousands of employers running pre-hire background checks, as well as by banks and landlords. One moment of stupidity, even if it never results in time served, could derail someone's life. Arrests are damaging, even if it's ultimately determined that no criminal activity occurred. How many thousands of people are being turned down for loans or rejected by landlords simply because a cop made up BS charges to arrest a photographer or deployed handcuffs instead of responsible crowd control?

When Precious Daniels learned that the Census Bureau was looking for temporary workers, she thought she would make an ideal candidate. The lifelong Detroit resident and veteran health-care worker knew the people in the community. She had studied psychology at a local college.

Days after she applied for the job in 2010, she received a letter indicating a routine background check had turned up a red flag.

In November of 2009, Ms. Daniels had participated in a protest against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan as the health-care law was being debated. Arrested with others for disorderly conduct, she was released on $50 bail and the misdemeanor charge was subsequently dropped. Ms. Daniels didn't anticipate any further problems.

But her job application brought the matter back to life. For the application to proceed, the Census bureau informed her she would need to submit fingerprints and gave her 30 days to obtain court documents proving her case had been resolved without a conviction...

She didn't get the job.

This is one case out of thousands. Exacerbating law enforcement's enthusiasm for making meaningless arrests is the fact that no one involved in maintaining the criminal database is interested in making sure it only contains convicted criminals. Documentation of arrests aren't removed when charges are dismissed and information on cleared individuals is seldom forwarded to the FBI by local PDs.

And it's not as though false arrests are the exception to the rule. According to research done by the University of South Carolina, it's more of a coin toss -- 47% of respondents who were arrested were never convicted and 25% were never even charged.

This callous disregard for the falsely arrested places the burden on those harmed by law enforcement's wrongful actions to clear their names, which in our criminal justice system is an entirely uphill battle.

In October 2012, Jose Gabriel Hernandez was finishing up dinner at home when officers came to arrest him for sexually assaulting two young girls.

Turns out, it was a case of mistaken identity. In court documents, the prosecutor's office acknowledged that the "wrong Jose Hernandez" had been arrested and the charges were dropped.

Once the case was dismissed, Mr. Hernandez assumed authorities would set the record straight. Instead, he learned that the burden was on him to clear his record and that he would need a lawyer to seek a formal expungement.

"Needless to say, that hasn't happened yet," says Mr. Hernandez, who works as a contractor. Mr. Hernandez was held in the Bexar County jail on $150,000 bond. He didn't have the cash, so his wife borrowed money to pay a bail bondsman the nonrefundable sum of $22,500, or the 15% fee, he needed to put up. They are still repaying the loans.

Notably, there are no corresponding negative results for police who arrest the wrong person. It's always an "honest mistake" even when nearly half of their arrests never result in convictions. It's the citizens who need to spend their time and money (which, given the economic background of those most likely to be arrested, are generally commodities in short supply) trying to convince potential employers, landlords and banks that they're not actually criminals.

The difference a false arrest can make in one person's life is devastating. According to the Wall Street Journal, someone with an arrest on their record is only half as likely to own a house and twice as likely to be below the poverty line by age 25.

Ballooning law enforcement budgets have combined with bad ideas like zero tolerance policies and "broken windows" policing to turn arrests into a near inevitability, especially for citizens who aren't white… or document police activity… or engage in First Amendment-protected speech. There's no path guaranteed to keep your record from being blighted by a trumped-up charge or an arrest that leads nowhere. To those who control your future -- employers, landlords, banks, college admission offices -- it all looks the same when the background report comes in. The FBI is barely interested in ensuring its criminal database only houses data on criminals and local law enforcement agencies seem to be totally disinterested in clearing those wrongfully charged. Once again, the public is expected to do the legwork if it ever hopes to climb higher than the lowest rung in our nation -- guilty even if proven innocent.

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