It’s 2016 all over again. The FBI can’t get everything it wants from a dead person’s phone, so it has decided to start revving up its anti-encryption engine. The DOJ took Apple to court in hopes of securing precedent compelling tech companies to crack encrypted devices for it after it recovered the San Bernardino shooter’s […]
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The 2024 Paris Olympics is drawing the eyes of the world as thousands of athletes and support personnel and hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the globe converge in France. It’s not just the eyes of the world that will be watching. Artificial intelligence systems will be watching, too. Government and private companies will […]
We’ve noted repeatedly that in the wake of the Sprint T-Mobile merger, wireless carriers immediately stopped trying to compete on price (exactly what deal critics had warned the Trump administration would happen when you reduce sector competition). Recently, T-Mobile imposed another $3-$5 per month price hike on most of its plans — including customers who […]
The asset forfeiture playing field is still far from level, but it at least got a little bit better in Virginia, thanks to a recent state appeals court decision. Here’s Graham Moomaw with more details for the Virginia Mercury: A Virginia court erroneously ruled authorities could keep $35,293 seized from a Chesterfield County auto repair […]
One of the central ideas of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) is that there is a fundamental difference between analog and digital, and that copyright fails to recognize that. Instead, it seeks to impose what is an inherently analog approach based on scarcity to the online world where abundance is the norm. The […]
Apparently, Congress only “listens to the children” when they agree with what the kids are saying. As soon as some kids oppose something like KOSA, their views no longer count. It’s no surprise given the way things were going, but the Senate today overwhelmingly passed KOSA by a 91 to 3 vote. The three no […]
Good news for free speech enthusiasts. And that should be everyone in this nation, especially those living in Florida. And that goes for everyone who supports Governor Ron DeSantis and dumbass legislation like the “Stop WOKE Act.” Whether you like it or not, the First Amendment protects speech you disagree with, not just the stuff […]
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Please. I beg of people: stop it. Stop it with the conspiracy theories. Stop it with the nonsense. If you can’t find something you want on social media, it’s not because a billionaire is trying to influence an election. It might just be because some antifraud system went haywire or something. Last week we wrote […]
Automakers are among the worst “tech” companies in America when it comes to your privacy. They hoover up an ocean of contact, location and behavior data from your car and phone, don’t really clearly tell you they’re doing it, then sell access to that data to a rotating crop of super dodgy and largely unregulated […]
You will likely have noticed that we have begun talking more frequently over the past couple of years about the importance both of video game preservation efforts as well as the idea that people should either be better informed of the terms of buying a digital version of a game, or should have more rights […]
Low-key vigilantism is the new Crime Stoppers. I’m pretty ambivalent about this new law enforcement effort (with the emphasis on “lack of effort”), but this is how things are going in one part of Australia right now. Here’s Lewin Day writing for The Autopian with more details: As covered by The Canberra Times, Australian Capital Territory police […]
Even though parents insist that it is good and right to share things, the copyright world has succeeded in establishing the contrary as the norm. Now, sharing is deemed a bad, possibly illegal thing. But it was not always thus, as a fascinating speech by Ryan Cordell, Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences […]
Before the news had broken that NSO Group’s clients were utilizing its powerful spyware to target journalists, dissidents, activists, religious leaders, opposition party members, and anyone else that might have irritated the autocrats and human rights abusers that made up a disproportionate percentage of its customer list, NSO was sued by Meta and WhatsApp. That […]
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If you’ve been paying any attention to the political news in the last week, you may have seen stories about couch fucking, or dolphin porn, or burnt monkey testicles, or even cat ladies. Or really just about any of the comments coming out of the Harris campaign, or from other Democratic supporters, calling out the […]
The FCC has long run an $8 billion federal subsidy program to help bring phone and broadband services to lower income homes and schools called the Universal Service Fund. The bipartisan program has historically been funded by a fee on traditional phone lines. But with traditional phone lines dying, there’s been a long, ongoing discussion […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous reply in a discussion about how to deal with trolls: This kind of condescension mixed with vague references that assume everyone else is an idiot is completely useless because not only are you expecting people to read your mind, but you’re assuming […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we looked at how the FTC’s settlement with YouTube pissed everyone off and how its settlement with Facebook got everything backwards. Oakland was on its way to becoming the third city to ban facial recognition tech while Orlando police ended their facial recognition deal with Amazon and a […]
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