Brindle

We've seen this over and over again: new and innovative startups enter a market in a creative and compelling way, and a combination of incumbents and regulators get in the way of something cool happening. Perhaps the most well known recent example of this is with Uber, but probably a close second is Airbnb. Airbnb is the immensely popular system for letting people rent out their homes/apartments/spare rooms to willing guests for (usually) short stays. Completely coincidentally, just this morning, I tried Airbnb for the very first time, trying to book a stay in Manhattan for an upcoming trip. And... soon after I submitted my request, I saw this report that officials in New York City have deemed Airbnb to violate the city's "illegal hotel law." Basically, they're arguing that people renting out their homes are running illegal hotels. They originally asked the guy who rented his condo out to pay $7,000 for both violating that law and for zoning and building code violations, but then dropped the latter part, and lowered the fine to $2,400 for just the hotel part.

Of course, laws like the illegal hotel law are supposed to be about public safety, and to maintain certain health and safety standards. But, the reality is that, like so much regulation these days, it's turned into a way to keep competition out. Laws to protect hotel visitors certainly made some amount of sense in the past, but most of the reasons why they're in place don't necessarily apply to the way Airbnb functions. Because we can now share information pretty easily, Airbnb's detailed review system and communication process take away most of the "risk" that necessitated a health and safety law.

Just as an example, in my own search for a place to stay, I went through about half a dozen different apartments that were available, and looked over the pictures and carefully read the reviews. I immediately discounted the cheapest one, because multiple reviews mentioned that the apartment had not been cleaned prior to them showing up. Information and the sharing of information made that place undesirable just like that. No laws needed. I also emailed back and forth with a few other apartment/condo owners to find out some details about their places, before finally selecting one that worked for me. Honestly, the experience has been awesome so far, giving me much greater choice, and the likelihood of a much nicer stay than in a hotel.

The new ruling doesn't suddenly make Airbnb itself "illegal," but does suggest that if the city finds out that you're using the service, you could face stiff fines. At the heart of the issue is a really stupid law that was basically designed to make Airbnb impossible: it says you can't rent out your place for less than 29 days. The only purpose of this law is to protect hotels from competition. The backer of the law claims that it was really about landlords illegally converting residential buildings into hotels, but if that was the case, they should have made the bill a lot clearer, because it's being used to punish this Airbnb user. Airbnb, which tried to intervene in the case, is (quite reasonably) disappointed:

This decision runs contrary to the stated intention and the plain text of New York law, so obviously we are disappointed. But more importantly, this decision makes it even more critical that New York law be clarified to make sure regular New Yorkers can occasionally rent out their own homes. There is universal agreement that occasional hosts like Nigel Warren were not the target of the 2010 law, but that agreement provides little comfort to the handful of people, like Nigel, who find themselves targeted by overzealous enforcement officials. It is time to fix this law and protect hosts who occasionally rent out their own homes. Eighty-seven percent of Airbnb hosts in New York list just a home they live in -- they are average New Yorkers trying to make ends meet, not illegal hotels that should be subject to the 2010 law.

As the reports note, this doesn't mean that the city will now be going after the tens of thousands of residents who rent their places out on Airbnb, but if complaints are filed, it can go after them. Hopefully, this doesn't scare off the person whose house I just requested... But, more importantly, this shows, yet again, why bad regulations can do serious harm to innovation, often while serving to protect less innovative incumbents.

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WARNING: Ad may contain spoilers. This is the allegedly real casual encounters Craigslist ad from a lady in New Orleans who's looking for a Robb Stark look-alike to have her way with as Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen. Allegedly she has a replica of the Iron Throne too, which I find hard to believe because those things cost $30,000. Who knows, maybe she had a friend make one out of melted plastic swords from Toys R' Us. But that's not the point, the point is that one of you better look like Robb Stark and contact this woman to make this whole fantasy happen. Preferably with a Go-Pro camera strapped to your noggin. Thanks to T8RO & Busty McGee, who have cool nicknames and should give me a cool nickname too and let me be part of their crew.

For years, we've been critics of red light cameras, which have been shown time and time again to actually increase accidents rather than decrease them -- which you would think should be the goal. Of course, we all know that's not really the goal. The goal has always been revenue generation for cities. If they actually wanted to increase safety there's a very simple way to do it: you increase the timing of yellow lights (and for the places, like where I live, that don't have an interval between when one direction turns red and the other turns green, you add that brief interval where all directions are red). Do that, and you increase safety and decrease accidents. And it's incredibly easy and cheap to do.

But, of course, various governments hate that idea, because it would decrease the massive revenue from red light camera fines. That's why over and over and over again, we see that various governments are caught redhanded lowering the time for yellow lights. Make no mistake about it: this increases the danger, and puts many more people at risk. Stupidly, it probably also could end up costing the city more in terms of having to respond to more accidents and deal with more injuries. But, boy, I'm sure it pumps up the revenue on red light camera violations.

The latest example of this comes via Darby Keene, who points out that the Florida Department of Transportation quietly tweaked its own standards for yellow light intervals in 2011, allowing them to be shorter without breaking the law (after many cities have been caught violating official standards). And, of course, various cities quickly did lower the interval timing. Yes, revenue at the expense of public safety. Research has shown that reducing the time of a yellow light by a mere half a second can double the number of red light camera citations -- and in some cases, the changes to FDOT's regulations meant cities reduced the length of a yellow light by an entire second. Smell that? It's the smell of revenue for cities, intermingled with wrecked cars and destroyed lives!

Even worse: while FDOT is claiming that it changed its regulations to clean up some wording, and not because of potential revenue, the report from WTSP, also found emails from FDOT engineers telling local government officials to lower their yellow light intervals to the absolute minimums allowed. That is, they weren't even saying it was just an option, they were being told to decrease the timing to make the intersection less safe, but more profitable.

And, while FDOT defended the whole thing claiming that they changed the policies to "match federal guidelines," the report explains that federal guidelines actually recommend longer yellow light times, just as we discussed above.

A USDOT/Federal Highway Administration (FHA) report said cities should not use speed limit in the yellow interval equation because it results "in more red light violations and higher crash rates." And if drivers' average speeds cannot be calculated, it's recommended engineers use the "speed limit plus 10 mph" variable to producing more conservative, and safer, yellow intervals.

Another report stresses the importance of using 85^th percentile speed to calculate yellow intervals, while slide 28 on this report indicates when yellow light times are lengthened, severe crashes drop.  

USDOT also recommends an extra half-second of yellow time at intersections with lots of trucks or elderly drivers to allow them to react safely. And despite the fact that Greater Tampa Bay is home to five of the nation's 12 oldest counties (by median age), it's also home to some of the shortest yellow lights.

Don't you feel safer now?

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Update: The DHS has released a copy of the warrant, which claims probable cause to believe that Mt. Gox is engaging in money transmitting without a license.

We've discussed in the past how the government seems very skeptical of Bitcoin, and now it may be doing something about it. As a whole bunch of you have sent in, ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement), a division of Homeland Security -- best known around here for its cowboy attitude towards censoring websites with no basis -- has cut off Dwolla transfers to Mt. Gox, the biggest Bitcoin exchange, preventing Dwolla from processing any Bitcoin transfers. According to Declan McCullagh at News.com:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed it has initiated legal action that prompted the Dwolla payment service to stop processing bitcoin transactions.

Nicole Navas, a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, confirmed the legal action to CNET this afternoon.

Chris Coyne, from Ok Cupid, posted a screenshot of an email from Dwolla claiming that ICE had "seized" the account of Mt. Gox: Mt. Gox, for its part, claims this is the first it's heard of anything:

MtGox has read on the Internet that the United States Department of Homeland Security had a court order and/or warrant issued from the United States District Court in Maryland which it served upon the Dwolla mobile payment service with respect to accounts used for trading with MtGox. We take this information seriously. However, as of this time we have not been provided with a copy of the court order and/or warrant, and do not know its scope and/or the reasons for its issuance. MtGox is investigating and will provide further reports when additional information becomes known.

I would imagine there will be a lot more to this story, but for the moment details are scarce.

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Late on Friday (the time when people try to break bad news to avoid a big news cycle) the IRS admitted that the office that scrutinizes non-profit/tax exempt status of organizations had acted politically in targeting groups that had "tea party" or "patriot" in their names. Over the weekend, more details have been revealed showing that they further targeted groups that criticized how the government is being run including so-called "social welfare" groups. In other words: if you want to improve our government, the IRS might target you for a burdensome audit. As someone who regularly criticizes our government because I want it to act better, this is absolutely horrifying. I know that this issue has already descended for some into a "left" vs. "right" political battle, but this is an issue that everyone should be aghast about. While the full report hasn't been released yet (and, in fact, there are already accusations that the IRS has leaked parts to try to contain the fallout), some of the details are astounding:

The documents, obtained by The Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that the IRS field office in charge of evaluating applications for tax-exempt status decided to focus on groups making statements that “criticize how the country is being run” and those that were involved in educating Americans “on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”

Educating people about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights gets extra scrutiny by the IRS? Isn't that the kind of thing that we should be encouraging?

Are there groups that abuse the non-profit status? Probably. But targeting them based on their viewpoints goes way beyond what's allowed or should be seen as even remotely reasonable. As some have pointed out, politicizing the IRS was part of the impeachment articles against Nixon.

Is it so much to ask for a government that actually respects the Constitution? Or does simply asking for that make you a target?

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We've talked quite a bit about how the federal government has been pretty aggressively shattering any remnants of the 4th amendment, and while there are some parts of the 1st amendment that are still respected, our government doesn't always seem so keen on that one either. Apparently, they've decided to kill two birds with one stone recently, in obtaining a broad collection of phone records concerning Associated Press journalists, which is almost certainly in violation of the law. The AP only just found out about this on Friday, despite the data already being obtained, and covering more than 20 separate phone lines (including work, home and mobile phones) for multiple AP journalists -- and a period covering approximately two months in early 2012. The AP has sent a quite reasonably angry letter to Attorney General Holder about this collection.

There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.

That the Department undertook this unprecedented step without providing any notice to the AP, and without taking any steps to narrow the scope of its subpoenas to matters actually relevant to an ongoing investigation, is particularly troubling.

The sheer volume of records obtained, most of which can have no plausible connection to any ongoing investigation, indicates, at a minimum, that this effort did not comply with 28 C.F.R. §50.10 and should therefore never have been undertaken in the first place. The regulations require that, in all cases and without exception, a subpoena for a reporter’s telephone toll records must be “as narrowly drawn as possible.’’ This plainly did not happen

The AP also (again, quite reasonably) notes that this appears to be a "serious interference with AP's constitutional rights to gather and report the news" and demand that the government destroy all copies of the data it received.

This really is an incredibly broad move by the government. Especially when it comes to reporters, the government has generally respected the right for reporters to keep their sources private, even if this administration has been known to threaten reporters if they won't reveal sources. In case you're wondering the law here is pretty clear about the limitations on getting this kind of info.

There should be reasonable ground to believe that a crime has been committed and that the information sought is essential to the successful investigation of that crime. The subpoena should be as narrowly drawn as possible; it should be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited time period. In addition, prior to seeking the Attorney General's authorization, the government should have pursued all reasonable alternative investigation steps as required by paragraph (b) of this section.

I'm sure that Eric Holder will try to tapdance around this one as well, but the claims here are very serious. On the positive side, perhaps this will finally help the press wake up to the continued expansion of the federal government's surveillance operations and their general disdain for the constitution if it helps them go after whoever they want. The press likes to go nuts when some startup accidentally leaks some data or tracks what people are doing online, but routinely ignores how the government seems to feel entitled to any bit of private data about anyone, often without a warrant. Perhaps having the press have their records taken will wake some of them up to the fact that it impacts them as well (perhaps even more than others).

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How many law enforcement officers does it take to subdue one intoxicated man? In Bakersfield, CA, it takes nine: seven sheriff's deputies, two CHP officers and a police dog. It also appears that being publicly intoxicated and resisting arrest in Bakersfield is punishable by immediate death in the same county.

At this point, consider everything regarding the beating to be "alleged." After all, we don't have any conclusive evidence of what happened, despite two people filming it (and a handful of eyewitnesses) because law enforcement made sure every recording of the event (except one -- more on that in a bit) was seized as "evidence."

Also, keep in mind that David Silva, the thirty-three year old father of four who was allegedly beaten to death by nine law enforcement officers, was only allegedly intoxicated and violent. Evidence of his crime(s) disappeared along with the footage of multiple cops swinging batons. (I suppose this will be verified when the autopsy results are made public, presumably featuring a full toxicology report.)

Here's an eyewitness account of the beating:

At about midnight, Ruben Ceballos, 19,was awakened by screams and loud banging noises outside his home. He said he ran to the left side of his house to find out who was causing the ruckus.

"When I got outside I saw two officers beating a man with batons and they were hitting his head so every time they would swing, I could hear the blows to his head," Ceballos said.

Silva was on the ground screaming for help, but officers continued to beat him, Ceballos said.

After several minutes, Ceballos said, Silva stopped screaming and was no longer responsive.

The phones used to record the incident were seized by law enforcement as "evidence." As it's highly doubtful the sheriff's department is looking into charging a dead man with a crime, the only "investigation" possible would be a look into the actions of the officers at the scene. This also means the only criminal activity captured on film would be the officers'. Turning over the only copy of evidence to the perpetrators is generally considered to be a terrible idea. But when you've just witnessed nine law enforcement officers beat a man into unconsciousness (and eventual death), your normal citizen is probably going to think twice before telling another officer, "No."

But the witnesses held out as long as they could. The incident happened around midnight. The two witnesses who had recorded the event (a male whose name hasn't been released and Maria Melendez) were called back to their apartment by the sheriff's department. This was at 3 AM. At that point, the officers demanded they turn over their cell phones. They refused to do so without being served a warrant. The officers then detained them in the apartment, telling them they couldn't leave without turning over their phones.

Three hours later, the male turned over his phone, stating he needed to be to work in a couple of hours. The officers detained Melendez for nearly nine hours. The search warrant finally arrived around noon and Melendez relinquished her phone. The two witnesses were told they could pick up their phones the next day. When the unnamed male went to recover his, he found the timeframe had now changed to "months, even years" before he could get his phone back.

Two bits of evidence have made their way into the public, unimpeded by sheriff's deputies with endless amounts of time to waste and rights to violate. The first is a 911 call reporting the beating made by Salinas Quair, Melendez's daughter. This call alerted law enforcement to the fact that the (alleged) beating had been recorded, triggering the intimidating roundup (and detainment) of these witnesses.

There's a man laying on the floor and your police officers beat the [explicit] out of him and killed him," said the woman. "I have it all on video camera."

The woman continued:

"I am sitting here on the corner of Flower and Palm right now and you have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight Sheriffs. The guy was laying on the floor and eight Sheriff's ran up and started beating him up with sticks. The man is dead laying right here, right now."

The second piece of evidence, a security camera recording, was turned over by an individual who (unsurprisingly) has refused to go on camera or reveal his or her name. Here's KERO TV's (Bakersfield) description of the recordings' contents.

The grainy black and white video appears to show the alleged victim, David Silva, 33, lying on the ground. Another person is then seen walking up to Silva and attempting to pick him up. Both men appear to scuffle, and after a few minutes, Silva is seen being struck with an object.

Other cars are seen arriving at the scene with lights flashing on top of them. Several other men are then seen in the video, also striking Silva more than a dozen times with objects. Silva is then seen being taken into custody.

If you click through and watch the footage, at about 4:05 an officer can be seen taking a two-handed swing with a baton. Shortly thereafter, more officers arrive. One of the first to arrive also takes a two-handed swing with a baton. In all, nine baton-swinging officers showed up. A spokesman for the Kern County Sheriff's Office reassures everyone that the officers felt no need to deploy any of their other weaponry, as well as undercounting the number of respondents.

KCSO Spokesperson Ray Pruitt told 23 ABC it took 5 deputies, 2 CHP officers and a K-9 to subdue Silva.

Pruitt said officers were forced to use their batons to arrest Silva but no tazers, pepper spray or guns were used during the altercation.

His count is off. Here are the names of the Sheriff's Department personnel involved in the incident, as released by the Sheriff's Office.

The office did identify the officers involved in the arrest as Sgt. Douglas Sword and deputies Ryan Greer, Tanner Miller, Jeffrey Kelly, Luis Almanza, Brian Brock and David Stephens.

That's seven from the sheriff's department. The names of the two CHP officers have not been released. That's nine altogether, plus a police dog.

One has to wonder, though, how the officers were "forced" to use their batons. Perhaps some force was needed to subdue Silva, but with nine officers responding (and swinging), you'd think the tide would have turned in law enforcement's favor long before Silva lost consciousness. And how much "resistance" did Silva actually offer, considering the first officer on the scene was responding to a call from Kern Medical Center security who reported Silva as "passed out?"

End result: a man loses his life for being intoxicated. Nine officers beat Silva senseless take Silva "into custody," which in this case is synonymous with "attempt CPR and call an ambulance." Ironically, Silva was only a block away from Kern Medical Center, not that it did him any good.

Not content to limit its wrongdoing to a beating, deputies then barge into a home without a warrant and detain two citizens against their will, one of them for nearly nine hours, until the warrant they should have needed just to get in the door at 3 AM finally shows up at noon.

Now, all of the inarguable evidence is in the hands of the same people who would prefer it just went away. It will be tough for them to get away with simply deleting the recordings, but stranger things have happened to evidence that implicates law enforcement officers but has ended up in the possession of law enforcement. The recording can be termed "unrecoverable" or have inexplicably large gaps in the footage. Or the phone may be damaged during "processing." Sometimes, the evidence just vanishes conveniently and a lengthy internal investigation will unwind at a glacial pace until everyone loses interest.

There's a law enforcement problem here, and the problem is with the brand of "enforcement" that bypasses the law entirely. David Silva's death at the hands of police officers conjures up images of similar methods being deployed to subdue a schizophrenic homeless man in nearby Fullerton, CA. Kelly Thomas was beaten by several officers, resulting in a death by "mechanical suppression of the thorax." This one was caught on tape (via security camera), as well as captured more intimately by a microphone worn by one of the officers.

The people who witnessed this beating have nowhere to go. They can't trust the police and they've seen those who recorded the event quarantined in their home until they complied with the officers' requests to turn over their phones. If not for the constitutional violations committed by "law enforcement," the footage would already be publicly displayed. The longer the Sheriff's office delays in releasing this footage, the worse it appears. If this went down as described, there's no way law enforcement can hope to salvage some respect by attempting to downplay or justify the actions of these officers.

Even if Silva was putting up the fight of his life, he was intoxicated and was outnumbered 9-to-1. Any reasonable person would expect a suspect to be subdued before it got to the point where it became life-threatening. But any hopes of a reasonable outcome were discarded the moment that first two-handed swing connected.


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The Supreme Court on Monday for the first time backed patents for a self-replicating technology -- Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" soybeans -- along with its licensing agreement that allows farmers to use them only once.

We recently had an article about how intellectual property makes people pretend to be stupid, by forcing us to pretend that digital works act in the same way as physical products do, even though we know that they don't. This seems silly, but it goes beyond just copyright. There's been a lot of hubbub recently concerning 3D printed guns. While there's been some discussions about them in the past, it went into overdrive last week when the first fully 3D-printed gun was unveiled. The plans were uploaded online and... over 100,000 people downloaded them.

And then the US government freaked out, as the State Department argued that the company that put the files online may have violated export control laws.

The government says it wants to review the files for compliance with arms export control laws known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. By uploading the weapons files to the Internet and allowing them to be downloaded abroad, the letter implies Wilson’s high-tech gun group may have violated those export controls.

“Until the Department provides Defense Distributed with final [commodity jurisdiction] determinations, Defense Distributed should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled,” reads the letter, referring to a list of ten CAD files hosted on Defcad that include the 3D-printable gun, silencers, sights and other pieces. “This means that all data should be removed from public access immediately. Defense Distributed should review the remainder of the data made public on its website to determine whether any other data may be similarly controlled and proceed according to ITAR requirements.”

Remember, this file has already been downloaded over 100,000 times. It's not going to be removed from public access. That's reality. But the laws that demand we pretend to be stupid include pretending that something like this is stoppable, when plenty of sites are still making them available.

As Rick Falkvinge notes, the whole idea of pretending you can delete these files from existence and keep it under control suggests a very confused US government. Not only is the concept impossible, but even stepping in like that has only drawn much more attention to the files. Falkvinge points out that this highlights how the US government is "unfit to set and shape Internet policy, due to their simply not understanding of what the internet is and how it works." Of course, that hasn't stopped them before.

I recognize that a 3D printable gun freaks some people out. But just because some people are freaked out, it doesn't mean we should deny reality and pretend it's possible to disappear these plans when it's clearly not. I don't know about you, but I prefer a government that deals in reality, rather than one that chooses to act stupid on purpose.

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We've seen plenty of lawsuits involving people upset about Yelp reviews, but here's a fairly extreme case. Apparently, a DC-area carpet cleaning service named Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, which is somewhat infamous in the area for its "pervasive advertising" and direct mail coupons promising a $99 cleaning special, does not have the greatest reputation on Yelp. The key issue: apparently that $99 deal is often not honored. Also, there are multiple reviews of people getting a quote, dropping off a carpet, and then being told later if they want the carpet back they have to pay much more -- with various excuses being offered as to why they're charging more than the quote.

Hadeed then decided to sue seven anonymous reviewers for defamation. Here's the oddity: Hadeed does not appear to be suing them over the contents of the bad review. In fact, the company doesn't seem to dispute the various complaints about its pricing practices. Rather, it argues that it could not match these seven reviewers to actual customers within its database, and therefore, the reviewers are defaming them by misrepresenting that they were ever Hadeed customers. Hadeed appears to suggest that they reviews were really written by a competitor.

As we've discussed, many courts have adopted the so-called Dendrite rules for identifying anonymous speakers. The rules require giving the anonymous users a chance to respond and (more importantly) require the plaintiff to present enough evidence to prove there's an actual case. However, the court in Virginia chose to not apply any such rules, but rather allowed a subpoena to Yelp ordering it to identify the posters. Yelp has refused, and the court ordered compliance, which Yelp again refused, leading to the court saying Yelp was in contempt.

Public Citizen has now filed a brief on behalf of Yelp with the appeals court, arguing both that the Virginia court had no jurisdiction over Yelp, a California company, and that Yelp was correct to ignore the order since the First Amendment (which protects anonymous speech) requires much more proof before an anonymous speaker can be revealed.

When pervasive advertisements from a local merchant feature prices that seem to be just too good to be true, they may, in fact, not be the price that the average consumer will pay. Dozens of consumers who have used pseudonyms to post about their experiences with appellee Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, Inc. (“Hadeed”) on the popular website www.yelp.com, maintained by appellant Yelp Inc. (“Yelp”), report that Hadeed routinely fails to honor the advertised discount prices. Hadeed’s responses to several consumers on Yelp suggest that it recognizes the problem; yet its complaint for defamation singles out the authors of seven reviews posted on Yelp that say the same thing as the other online detractors of Hadeed and its sister business, Hadeed Oriental Rug Cleaning. Based on that allegation, Hadeed invoked the court’s subpoena power to strip its pseudonymous critics of their First Amendment right to speak anonymously.

The main question on this appeal—an issue of first impression at the appellate level in Virginia—is whether the trial court applied the proper legal standard in overriding the anonymous speakers’ First Amendment rights. Courts elsewhere have recognized that, given the valuable role played by the First Amendment right to speak anonymously in encouraging ordinary people to express themselves fully, it is necessary to balance that right against a plaintiff’s right to seek redress for wrongful speech by adopting a standard requiring a plaintiff to do more than articulate a good faith belief that the speech “maybe tortious.” Before stripping the defendant of a First Amendment right, these courts take an early look at the merits of the plaintiff’s claim to determine whether a valid claim has been alleged and whether there is a prima facie evidentiary basis for that claim. In this appeal, Yelp urges Virginia to adopt the same approach, and to remand this case to give Hadeed an opportunity to pursue its subpoena by meeting the proper standard.

In the meantime, though, we have yet another case of a company suing over Yelp reviews -- which just makes me wonder how they ever expect to get more customers. Any company that sues over online reviews someone makes is clearly a company not worth doing business with, since they might, potentially, sue you over any bad review you write online about them.

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I suppose that’s a rhetorical question. When you live in a nation that’s been reduced to an army of mindless reality-TV-watching drones, it’s not exactly surprising that the average citizen is more inclined to trust a television judge than a jurist who’s been appointed to the highest court in the land.

We care more about the matching camouflage wedding couture Honey Boo Boo’s parents, Mama June and Sugar Bear, wore when they tied the knot this past weekend than the next round of controversial decisions that will be soon be handed down by the Supreme Court. We care more about the Kimye baby bump than the very existence of the Supreme Court, much less the names of the justices sitting on its esteemed bench.

No one who’s been paying any attention is taken aback by the fact that Americans care more about the people they see on television on a daily basis than names they once read in a textbook. That’s why the results of the latest Reader’s Digest Trust Poll as to this country’s judges are expected, and sad, and not at all surprising….

Before we start discussing the names of the judges who ranked the highest in the trust poll, we’ll break down the magazine’s methodology for you. Reader’s Digest rounded up the names of 200 “opinion shapers, leaders and headline makers” across 15 professions and showed the list to more than 1,000 Americans, who then ranked each name based on how trustworthy they thought they were. Here, trustworthiness was defined as “integrity and character, exceptional talent, drive to personal excellence, internal moral compass, message, honesty and leadership.”

All that being said, famous actors — Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, and Denzel Washington — were the most trusted people in America. Our own president was in the bottom half of the list, behind people like Tim Tebow and Adam Sandler. Again, this isn’t at all surprising, because we bring these people into our homes on DVD and pay exorbitant fees to see them in theaters while we eat our overpriced popcorn.

So when it comes to American’s most trusted judges, it’s no surprise that we all love Judge Judy. She was #28 on the Reader’s Digest list. She’s snarky and laypeople love it when she lays down the law in little sound bytes that actually make sense. Plus, her show is only half an hour long, which is about the amount of time it would take for the average citizen with an Adderall prescription to put aside the Supreme Court’s 193-page Obamacare opinion before deciding to use it to papercut their eyeballs.

But how do the Supreme Court justices stack up against our nation’s preeminent television jurist?

• No. 36: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• No. 43: Stephen Breyer
• No. 44: John Roberts
• No. 49: Anthony Kennedy
• No. 53: Sonia Sotomayor
• No. 62: Elena Kagan
• No. 60: Samuel Alito
• No. 66: Antonin Scalia
• No. 88: Clarence Thomas

So again, I’m going to implore the Supreme Court to start televising its arguments — or better yet, give them all their own television shows, reality or otherwise. Seriously, give us a reason to watch C-SPAN.

Perhaps if something like “Keeping Up With Klarence” existed, the only black member of our country’s high court wouldn’t have been beaten out by Judge Joe Brown, who was ranked as the 39th most trustworthy person according to the Reader’s Digest poll. How about a talk show with Sonia Sotomayor? “It’s Her Beloved World (And We’re Just Living in It)” — she could be the next Oprah!

You want a comedy? “Kagan and Scalia: The Really Odd Couple”. If you’re into shows about buying other people’s expensive old things, you can watch “Antiques Roadshow with Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” where she’d star as a host and as an antique. If you want a late night talk show, you could watch “The John Roberts Show,” with Sam Alito standing in as the witty sidekick. Last, but not least, for some action, why not watch “I Survived” with Stephen Breyer? His calamities could fill out an entire season.

Just think about the ratings, network execs. Please help make American less… stupid.

Reader’s Digest Trust Poll: The 100 Most Trusted People in America [Reader's Digest]
Reader’s Digest Trust Poll: Here’s What Shocked Us the Most [Reader's Digest]
Justice Ginsburg is close behind Judge Judy on most trusted list [ABA Journal]

More stories from Above The Law

• The High Price of the Federal Bench
• It’s Her Beloved World, And We’re Just Living In It: Justice Sotomayor Speaks on Free Speech
• You Stay Classy, Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Mike Randolph

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A few months ago, we wrote about Steven Brill's amazing article in Time Magazine about hospital billing. As we noted at the time, the story confirmed what many people believed: that healthcare is a giant economic scam, and it's often the hospitals (not necessarily the insurance companies) who are driving the massive increases in costs. A big part of the scam is the fact that hospitals don't reveal their price list -- known as the "chargemaster." It's all a giant secret. There's no such thing as comparison shopping. There's simply no data anywhere.

Well, that may be changing. The US government just released data on what various hospitals charge for various things, along with how much Medicare actually pays in return. This has quickly resulted in people noticing massive differences in pricing for the same treatment in different hospitals (including, at times, hospitals very close to one another). This release definitely provides some significant data about just how massively hospitals are overcharging for things, even if most patients never pay the listed fees.

Still, it's not quite enough. Brill has responded to the release by noting that while this is a big deal and can be quite helpful in highlighting how broken the system really is (and hopefully will lead to a lot more reporting on the subject), it could go much further:

The feds need to publish chargemaster and Medicare pricing for the most frequent outpatient procedures and diagnostic tests at clinics—two huge profit venues in the medical world. But an even bigger step toward transparency would be collecting data that Medicare doesn’t have: exactly what insurance companies pay to the various hospitals, testing clinics and other providers for various treatments and services.

After all, as the hospitals themselves concede in downplaying their chargemasters, these insurance prices are the ones that affect most patients.

And that is one price list where there is close to zero transparency.

While hospitals and insurance providers clearly will not want to give up that information, Bill points out that patients do find out this information, so perhaps we should crowdsource the data:

So even if insurance companies don't want to participate, Brill writes, states could crowdsource price information from patients:

...state pricing centers could gather the information from patients who volunteer, in exchange for a promise that their names won't be used, to submit their Explanations of Benefits. After all, a hospital or insurance company can't claim a patient can be prohibited from talking about or making public his or her own bill.

For a market to work in any effective manner, pricing information must be clear. It's not that way at all in healthcare, and it needs to get that way fast if we're ever to get healthcare pricing under control.

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There's been some hand-wringing in the past about online services like Wikipedia and WebMD and how patients and families use them to do self-diagnosis. Much of this seemed to be drummed up media attention, since you have to imagine the vast majority of medical patients are intelligent enough to listen to the advice of their doctors, Chicago Bulls players notwithstanding. Every once in a while, however, you'll get a story of someone who decided to trust information found online over medical personnel, typically regarding minor medical issues.

Even more rarely, you find a real treasure in the form of someone lacking so much in common sense that you have to wonder how they manage to get out of bed in the morning. For example, I'm not yet a parent, but I'm pretty sure that if my child suffered from lead poisoning caused by someone wielding a freaking pistol, my first reaction would be to take my child to the hospital. Not so if you're this mother in Texas, apparently, since she decided to hop on the old interwebz to see what WebMD advised for gunshot wounds.

Despite the shooting taking place around 6:30 PM on Tuesday, it wasn't until 2 AM on Wednesday that the boy's mother finally brought him to Mainland Medical Center for treatment. She had apparently spent the previous hours looking up "gunshot wound" on WebMD.

And that brings to mind the two obvious questions. First, why isn't there an entry for "gunshot wound" on WebMD that simply reads, "Go to the damned hospital, you moron!"? And second, exactly how much searching is required on WebMD before you come to that conclusion anyway? One hour? Two? Three? This mother-of-the-year candidate has to account for seven and a half hours! One assumes she spent at least four of those looking for the "any" key on her computer, right?

Fortunately, investigators are now saying they may charge the mother with a felony being-stupid or some such thing. Here's hoping they get that child out of her house and into a safer environment, like the tiger pit at their nearest zoo.

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We've been dealing with the New York police department lately, thanks to the mayor and the police chief using the recent Boston bombing as an excuse to increase surveillance efforts and enact other policies to further encroach on New Yorkers' civil liberties. Whenever something terrorist-related occurs, it seems as though the NYPD's reps can't keep their opinions to themselves, even as the department itself drifts further and further away from being a sterling example of How Things Should Be Done.

In a recent Christian Science Monitor article dealing with "teenagers, terrorism and social media" (focusing on the recent Cameron D'Ambrosio arrest for making "terrorist threats" via some improvised rap lyrics posted to Facebook), Sgt. Ed Mullins of the NYPD shows up to make some very disturbing statements about your rights and responsibilities as a (mere) citizen. It starts with the worst kind of "policy" and goes downhill fast.

Using a zero tolerance approach to track domestic terrorists online is the only reasonable way to analyze online threats these days, especially after the Boston Marathon bombing and news that the suspects had subsequently planned to target Times Square in Manhattan, Mullins says. The way law enforcement agencies approach online activity that appears sinister is this: “If you’re not a terrorist, if you’re not a threat, prove it,” he says.

"Zero tolerance" is never "reasonable." It never has been and it never will be. In fact, it's the polar opposite. Zero tolerance policies simply absolve the enforcers of any responsibility for the outcome and grant them the privilege of ignoring mitigating factors. It allows them to bypass applying any sort of critical thinking skills (the "reason" part of "reasonable") and view every infractions as nothing more than a binary IF THEN equation.

Mullins goes even further than this, though, asserting that the burden of proof lies with the person charged, not the person bringing the charges. This flips our judicial system on its head (along with the judicial systems in many other countries) and, if applied the way Mullins views it, puts accused citizens in the impossible position of trying to prove a negative. This is just completely wrong, and it's a dangerously stupid thing for someone in his position to believe, much less state out loud. (Mullins also heads the Sergeants Benevolent Association, the second-largest police union in New York City.)

Believe it or not, Mullins is not done talking. What he says next doubles up on the "dangerous" and "stupid."

“This is the price you pay to live in free society right now. It’s just the way it is,” Mullins adds.

No. It isn't.

This is the price Mullins is charging to live in the NYPD's severely stunted version of a "free" society. The NYPD has been harassing young minorities at the rate of 500,000 impromptu stop-and-frisks per year for the better part of the last decade. For the past 10 years, the NYPD has been regularly trampling citizens' civil liberties simply because they attend a mosque. The NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg have worked ceaselessly to make New York the most-surveilled city in the U.S.

That's the price New Yorkers are paying. It has nothing to do with living in a free society. The NYPD takes liberties away and high-ranking cops like Mullins have the gall to suggest there's some sort of equitable exchange occurring. Mullins doesn't seem to understand (or just doesn't care) that if you take away freedom you no longer have a free society.

It has been said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, but "eternal vigilance" isn't shorthand for oppressive surveillance and zero tolerance policies that make freedom less "free." "Eternal vigilance" isn't treating the Constitution like a relic too worn and tattered to serve any purpose in these "dangerous" times. And being an officer of the law isn't an excuse to shut your intellect off and allow your brain stem and broad policies to "work" in concert in order to treat loudmouth teens on Facebook like a guy with a trailer home full of explosives.

This "vigilance" is supposed to be put to use by citizens in order to prevent authorities like Mullins from encroaching on our liberties. It's not solely limited to a united military effort against foreign powers. There are plenty of people apparently willing to attack our freedom from the comfort of the home front.

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A majority of human beings would look at two 7-year-old boys pretending their pencils are guns and say something about "boys being boys" or "someone's going to poke their eye out" and leave it at that. Those who craft and enforce zero tolerance policies see something more sinister. They see "threatening behavior" that must be dealt with swiftly and with as little thought as possible.

The end result? Two 7-year-old boys with otherwise clean records were handed two-day suspensions for pointing their pencils at each other and making shooting noises. This ridiculous punishment was (of course) defended at length by school administration.

Suffolk Public Schools spokeswoman Bethanne Bradshaw said a pencil is considered a weapon when it’s pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made.

Really? Administration thinks a pencil becomes a weapon when "gun noises are made." (They don't actually think this, of course. They've just crafted a policy that states this, thus preventing administration members from "erroneously" coming to independent conclusions.) I can see a pencil being considered a weapon if it's being "pointed" (in a stabbing motion) at a sensitive area like an eyeball or a neck. Then a pencil is a weapon.

When two boys point pencils at each other and make shooting noises, a pencil is still a pencil and their imagination is doing all the heavy lifting. All it would take to "disarm" these kids is asking them to stop. Which is what a teacher did.

On the suspension note, the teacher noted that the boy stopped when she told him to do so.

Problem solved. No one is harmed and the perpetrators were left with nothing but non-threatening pencils. Why this was written on a suspension note, rather than on a simple concerned note to the parents or better yet, on NOTHING AT ALL, is beyond me. But Bradshaw has an answer for every question and a terrible excuse for every idiotic zero tolerance policy.

“Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community,” Bradshaw said. “Kids don’t think about ‘Cowboys and Indians’ anymore, they think about drive-by shootings and murders and everything they see on television news every day.”

Do they? My kids don't think about that kind of stuff. Then again, they rarely watch the news. Would my boys be "threatened" by a pencil gun? I doubt it. They're probably packing a pencil or two themselves during the school day. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that these hypothetical, hypersensitive children who bruise whenever the wind changes direction do not actually exist, at least not outside of statements like Bradshaw's. They're straw children.

Bradshaw also defended the moronic policy using this gem:

Bradshaw said the policy has been in place for at least two decades.

So... you're saying the administration has been stupidly overreacting since back when MTV still played music videos and no one has once thought that maybe a few policies might need to be updated or relaxed or given a good once over with a dose of context or common sense? Rules can be changed, even big, important ones. (See also: Amendments 1-27 to the Constitution, but pay close attention to nos. 18 and 21.) Nothing's so inflexible that anyone should be reduced to the rhetorical level Bradshaw is, fending off irritated parents with "Yeah, it's a shitty policy but what are you going to do. It has tenure."

Bradshaw doubles down on the importance and inflexibility of "rules" as well.

“It’s an effort to try to get kids not to bring any form of violence, even if it’s violent play, into the classroom,” Bradshaw said. “There has to be a consequence because it’s a rule."

Yeah, I get it. A rule is a rule. And enforcers like Bradshaw are throwing stuff on kids' permanent records that wouldn't pass the laugh test in the real world. Will this file note that the two boys "pointed pencils at each other and made shooting noises?" Or will it state something to the effect that the boys broke the school's policy on violence and threatening behavior? My guess is the latter, which will allow anyone perusing the record to imagine the worst.

We can only hope that having these stories reported widely might push a few administrators to consider loosening or removing these so-called "zero tolerance" policies. Unfortunately, to date most administrators (and their policies) seem impervious to public ridicule, and every school-related tragedy just results in a newer, more rigid set of unbreakable rules. Until the day comes when kids can be kids without being suspended for pretending pencils are guns, parents might want to sit their kids down and have a long talk about safe pencil handling and the requirements and responsibilities that come with the "conceal-and-carry" permit they'll be needing before being allowed to start the next school year.

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Want to know how to "'hack" Google like the pros? The NSA has released a book it produced for its workers on how to find intelligence on the web.

It's long been assumed (or hinted at very strongly by a variety of evidence) that the feds have been making and collecting copies of pretty much every digital communication available. A whistleblower from AT&T more or less revealed the details on that. The NSA's ability to collect all this data is well documented, and people are just now coming to terms with the legal loopholes used to justify this mass sweeping up of communications.

However, for the most part, it was believed that the content of phone calls was not included in this broad sweep. While it's well known that law enforcement can get a wiretap on your phone if they suspect something, there was little indication that other calls are being recorded. Similarly, information about who you called and when you spoke to them tend to be easy for law enforcement to get. However, Glenn Greenwald is noting that a former FBI counterterrorism agent, Tim Clemente, went on TV, and in discussing the investigation of Katherine Russell (the wife of deceased accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev) has clearly said that the contents of historical phone calls are also available to the feds.

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."

It's possible this was an exaggeration, but when questioned about this particular point later, Clemente again insisted that it was the case and specifically added that "all digital communications in the past" are recorded and stored. Of course, again, he may have misspoke. Or he may be exaggerating for effect. There's also the possibility that Tamerlan's phone calls were actually being tapped given the earlier investigation of him for possible terrorist connections.

So there are numerous possibilities here, but it is still a case of an FBI counterterrorism agent claiming, multiple times, that the contents of all phone calls are being recorded which, if true, would be quite a revelation (and probably not something Clemente is supposed to be revealing via an interview with the media). At the very least, it would be good for there to be some serious follow up on this to find out how true Clemente's claims really are.

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This is a test video of what's allegedly the first fully 3-D printed plastic gun (previously: an AR-15 with 3-D printed receiver) firing a bullet and not shattering to pieces in the shooter's hands like I expected. PROTIP: Never bring a plastic fork to a knife fight. I've never tasted so much of my own blood before.

...Wilson's weapon is almost entirely plastic: Fifteen of its 16 pieces have been created inside an $8,000 second-hand Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer, a machine that lays down threads of melted polymer that add up to precisely-shaped solid objects just as easily as a traditional printer lays ink on a page. The only non-printed piece is a common hardware store nail used as its firing pin. The verdict: it worked. The Liberator fired a standard .380 handgun round without visible damage, though it also misfired on another occasion when the firing pin failed to hit the primer cap in the loaded cartridge due a misalignment in the hammer body, resulting in an anti-climactic thunk.

So yeah, apparently 3-D printed guns are right around the corner. Possibly waiting to take your wallet and purse. Which is exactly why I don't carry a wallet. Keep your money in your man-bra -- that's what I do. "Man-bra?" I meant to say shoe. Hit the jump for the video. Thanks to Evil Ares (two tips in a row, bro -- you're mad evil!) and Dubin, who refuse to 3-D print weapons because they like to forge them from magic the way swordsmiths and magicians would to get together to do in medieval times.

We have a variety of concerns with the so-called "Marketplace Fairness Act," which will require companies selling things online to track, collect and distribute taxes based on where buyers are coming from. For small and medium-sized businesses, this is likely going to be a big burden online (and for buyers in many places, this will likely increase what you have to pay on checkout). Given the fact that the bill is mostly supported by brick and mortar stores and shopping centers, it's not difficult to see how it's an attack on online shopping (for what it's worth, Amazon was initially against the bill, but eventually flipped when it realized that it could use the bill to hold back smaller competitors).

Unfortunately, the Senate passed the bill by a decent margin, 69-27. The bill will move to the House where it may be more difficult to pass. So it may die on the vine, even as the administration has said it will support it.

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Last fall, the Internet Archive celebrated a massive milestone, as the "online Library of Alexandria" reached 10 Petabytes of stored information. Yes, that means 10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes accessible to anyone. Wow.

Read more...

Greenheart Games is a small independent video game publisher that just released their first title, Game Dev Tycoon, last week. But alongside the legitimate version, they also uploaded a torrent containing a cracked version of the game. Fast forward to later that day when pirates start complaining they can't proceed any further in the sim because all the games they develop get virtually pirated. I think my brain just exploded a little bit. "That was a sneeze." So all this green stuff? "Snot." Oh thank heavens. Hit the jump for another pirate complaining and a pie chart showing how many legitimate copies vs. pirated copies were being played after the first day (it's depressing). Thanks to tony pepparoni and Shaun, who agree that when you pirate games, nobody wins but the Kraken.

A secretive federal court last year approved all of the 1,856 requests to search or electronically surveil people within the United States “for foreign intelligence purposes,” the Justice Department reported this week.

We've written a few times now about so-called ag gag laws that have been pushed by lobbyists for the farm industry for years now. The bills are pretty ridiculous, often making it illegal to videotape or photograph an agricultural operation. While many people talked about how ridiculous the prosecutions would be under those bills, supporters insisted that the bills were really only for cases where activists were doing something really egregious. In Utah, which has one of these bills, during the debate over the bill, the Utah Sentencing Commission warned that it could be used against anyone who merely photographed a farm. In response, Rep. Greg Hughes said: "Who would really pursue that in terms of prosecution?" Well, now we have an answer: the local prosecutor in Draper, Utah (which, coincidentally, appears to be the district Rep. Hughes represents.

As pointed out by Mike Eber, a woman named Amy Meyer used her mobile phone camera to video tape what was happening at the Dale Smith Meatpacking Company, which she could see from the street. Dale Smith, it should be noted, also happens to be the mayor of Draper. Another coincidence, I'm sure.

When the slaughterhouse manager came outside and told her to stop, she replied that she was on the public easement and had the right to film. When police arrived, she said told them the same thing. According to the police report, the manager said she was trespassing and crossed over the barbed-wire fence, but the officer noted “there was no damage to the fence in my observation.”

Meyer was allowed to leave. She later found out she was being prosecuted under the state’s new “ag-gag” law. This is the first prosecution in the country under one of these laws, which are designed to silence undercover investigators who expose animal welfare abuses on factory farms. The legislation is a direct response to a series of shocking investigations by groups like the Humane Society, Mercy for Animals, and Compassion Over Killing that have led to plant closures, public outrage, and criminal charges against workers.

Of course, as soon as this story started getting publicity, prosecutors suddenly decided that perhaps this wasn't a case to take a stand on and quickly dropped the charges. Of course, the law is still on the books (as are similar laws in a number of other states) and it's entirely possible similar cases may pop up elsewhere, when there's less publicity and press coverage.

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CBS has officially joined the chorus of angsty executive voices expressing their displeasure with Aereo by threatening to take their ball and go cable. Only this time, Moonves really means it.

CBS CEO Les Moonves has said before that he’s talked with New York cable operators about taking his network cable-only if Aereo is allowed to keep streaming what it broadcasts on the internet, but now he’s saying that he could make the switch in as little as a few days "if we are forced to."

"Forced to?" What a small-minded, self-serving, overly dramatic "threat." I'll join Mike and a majority of our readers in inviting Moonves to go do exactly that ASAP. Stop arsing about in court and just take that shiny ball of yours and cram it into the overcrowded cable market and see exactly who notices your departure or arrival.

By taking free CBS broadcasts off the airwaves, Moonves says, "about 10 percent of America will not get our signal and I don’t think they will like that."

And when people out there in flyover country (or wherever Moonves imagines this 10% lives) find themselves short a free TV signal, do you really think they're going to be pissed off at an antenna manufacturer whose only sin was its cord was "too long?"

In case Moonves might feel such a question purely rhetorical, allow me to point out the obvious: they will blame the station that went "off the air" for reasons even the courts are having trouble understanding. CBS will be the villain, along with FOX and whoever else decides the only way to compete in a market is to exit it.

And, yes, CBS is still claiming the courts will find "stealing" its precious signal "illegal." So far, this doesn't seem to be happening. If CBS really wants to play chicken with Aereo, I can only suggest it's not doing it nearly fast enough. Go ahead and give up the free airwave access and the enviable spot as a big fish in a rather limited pond and become just another number out of hundreds, distinguishable only by the number of executives suddenly grumpy they're running a cable channel rather than a network.

Even if Aereo cuts these channels out of retransmission fees from cable operators, who cares? This was the networks' short-sighted decision, one based on wringing money out of something they give away for free to anyone without cable. If Aereo is the cord-cutter's best friend, what does jumping to cable accomplish? If that's the scenario, CBS is better off losing the retransmission fees and staying on open airwaves where it takes nothing more than an antenna to access its programming, rather than exiling itself to a service people seem more and more willing to abandon.

If CBS thinks threatening to move to cable is going to turn the public against upstarts like Hopper or Aereo, it really has no idea what the public actually wants. It will simply turn itself into a lumbering villain at best and gone-but-barely-remembered also-ran at worst.

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The Samsung Galaxy S4's bootloader has been unlocked, but extenuating circumstances are forcing the developer to hold the method until Verizon's unit launches. Find out why by clicking through!

Samsung's phones might be taking the next big leap to help dominate government and enterprise. The US Department of Defense is reportedly set to approve Samsung devices for governmental use.

Right after the "six strikes" Copyright Alert System (CAS) launched, I heard from a few people saying that it was actually likely to increase their file sharing activities, in part because it clearly laid out the "risks" of doing so. In other words, rather than educating people that file sharing was "wrong," the CAS seemed to clarify the actual risks involved. Of course, some of the CAS punishments can be somewhat severe, so I do wonder how accurate those predictions were. However, apparently some folks have tried and failed to get themselves a strike under the CAS system, according to a report in DailyDot (which, bizarrely, never seems to name who conducted the actual study). They chose some popular content -- including some Rihanna songs, since Rihanna songs have been targeted under both France's and New Zealand's three strikes systems. They found torrents via The Pirate Bay, downloaded the works and then left the files available for weeks... and nothing.

Obviously, this is just one test on one ISP (Verizon) with just a few files. That's hardly indicative of what's actually happening with the overall CAS. However, it does make me wonder, if we start seeing more, similar reports, if it will lead more people to actually look at the whole system as making it more enticing to share files than before. Obviously, that would be the exact opposite of what the program's supporters would like.

At the very least, however, it makes me wonder (yet again) why the industry is putting so much effort towards punishment and enforcement, and so little towards actually adding value and giving people good reasons to buy.

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Just a few weeks back we relayed the news that Washington State was seeking to codify into law an employer's right to ask for the social media passwords of their employees. I continue to be amazed both at why such a law was considered in the first place, as well as why there hasn't been more backlash against it. That said, I imagine the answer to the latter has something to do with the idea that employees and prospective employees could deny that request, so perhaps some people think that there's little to no impact overall. This, on its face, is obviously silly. Were there going to be no impact to denying the request, employers would never make it in the first place. You have to imagine that an employee, and to a larger extent an applicant, is going to face enormous pressure to give the key to their personal sites away, whether that pressure is real or imagined.

However, since the bill hasn't been challenged in the court of public opinion, others are now beginning to follow suit. Such is the case in Illinois, where the state House passed a bill this week, sponsored by Jim Durkin, that gives employers there the same rights. And, of course, it's all done in the name of protecting the workplace.

The Illinois House passed a bill today that would allow employers to request access to employees' personal web accounts used for business purposes, like Facebook and other social networking sites. As if people aren't paranoid enough already. To be clear, the bill does not mandate that employees supply the information, and no one could be fired or penalized for noncompliance. The idea is to allow employers the opportunity to investigate employee misconduct, protect trade secrets, and prevent workplace violence by monitoring online activities. Even without it being mandatory to share your login and password, you could imagine a boss putting a subordinate under some uncomfortable pressure.

A challenge to everyone, if I may. If you were able to somehow catalog and characterize every single instance of employee misconduct, trade secret revealing, and workplace violence, exactly what percentage of them would you guess could have been prevented by proactive investigation of social media? Further, what percentage of such cases are such that the key evidence that would conclude any investigation into them would be only made available with a social media password? These are the kinds of answers with which I would expect proponents of such laws to be beating us over the head, yet you never seem to see any data in the reports. It all essentially comes down to, "We need to give employers the right to ask for social media passwords, because violence, scary internet, and children."

Do you know why we highlight when stupid criminals spurt their stupid juices all over the internet? Because they're the vast exception, not the rule. Creating the kind of animosity between employers and employees such as this bill will do is an awful over-reaction to those stories.



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We've talked a lot about how the Justice Department (DOJ), mainly via the FBI, has been pushing for years to change the laws in order to require tech companies to build wiretapping backdoors into any and every form of communication online. As we've explained over and over again, this is a really silly proposal, that won't make us any safer. Instead, it's likely to make us a lot less secure, because those backdoors will be abused, not just by law enforcement, but by those with malicious intent who will work hard to find the backdoors and make use of them.

The latest proposal on this front is equally ridiculous. While it wouldn't dictate specific wiretapping/backdoor standards, it would require that companies make some sort of backdoor available or face rapidly escalating fines.

Under the draft proposal, a court could levy a series of escalating fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars, on firms that fail to comply with wiretap orders, according to persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. A company that does not comply with an order within a certain period would face an automatic judicial inquiry, which could lead to fines. After 90 days, fines that remain unpaid would double daily.

This would be a disaster for innovative companies and for public security and privacy as well. The DOJ really needs to learn that not everything must be tappable. As it stands now, if I just sit on a park bench talking to someone, the DOJ can't tap it. Sometimes law enforcement doesn't get the right to hear everything I have to say. That's the nature of freedom and privacy protection that we're supposed to believe in. I'm sure with the news that chat apps are now more popular than SMS worldwide, law enforcement folks think that they need to "do something" to make sure they can spy on those conversations, but that's not true. Yes, it may make their job harder at times, but in a free country, the focus should be on protecting the freedom of the people, not decimating it to make the job of law enforcement easier. Those who commit crimes leave other clues beyond their communications online. Tapping such communications will lead to a massive security risk and huge expense for many innovative companies (likely slowing down the pace of innovation in that space). Is that worth it just so the DOJ can spy on what you have to say? That seems doubtful.

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