A stunning 54% of Americans now believe we’re in a Constitutional crisis, according to recent YouGov polling. They’re right. As a tech billionaire effectively dismantles federal agencies without Congressional authority — agencies that Congress explicitly created and funded — we’re watching in real-time as our system of checks and balances crumbles. Yet supporters of the […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about the assault on the idea that laws have any meaning at all: A lot of people—especially in right-wing circles—tend to forget that the process of civilization is the process of everyone forgetting that they can grab a […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Facebook paid out a hefty settlement in a facial recognition lawsuit in Illinois, which looked like bad news for the also-just-sued new kid on the block: Clearview AI, about whom we were learning lots of disturbing new things. In an ongoing attempt to avoid its own similar problems, […]
Last June, Louisiana became the third state to decide the US Constitution was subservient to cops’ wishes that they not be filmed while performing their public duties. Arizona had already tried this twice, starting at 25 feet before trimming the “halo” to an 8-foot diameter. It didn’t matter. A federal court permanently blocked the law […]
And there you have it. It was a mere couple of weeks back that I wrote about the Kansas City Chiefs potential to reach the Super Bowl and go for a third straight title and how that would mean you’d start hearing a whole lot about Pat Riley. I don’t want to say I told […]
A little over a year ago, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) to pass a new state right to repair law designed to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data to consumers and third-party independent repair shops. […]
In a stunning escalation that confirms our worst fears, the UK government has finally shown its true hand on encryption — and it’s even worse than we predicted. According to a bombshell report from Joseph Menn at the Washington Post, British officials have ordered Apple to create a backdoor that would allow them to access […]
After years of screaming “save the children” while baselessly accusing others of exploiting kids, the Trump administration is now trying to destroy the actual infrastructure that saves children. This one crosses from standard MAGA hypocrisy into genuinely evil territory. I’m one of those people who doesn’t think you can (or should) call most people inherently […]
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Marine vet Stephen Lara’s lawsuit against the Nevada Highway Patrol (NHP) and forfeiture abuse in general in that state has paid off. Not just for Lara, whose $86,900 was returned to him shortly after he filed this lawsuit, but for all residents of the state, who are now less likely to see cops walk off […]
For a long while there it was good to be a lumbering U.S. cable monopoly. Companies like Comcast and Charter pretty much enjoyed a monopoly on broadband at “next generation” speeds (over 100 Mbps) in most towns. So while they were losing traditional cable TV customers to streaming (or piracy), they could still extract their […]
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
Sycophants do sycophantic things, that much is known. But the level to which newly-minted FCC chairman Brendan Carr has voluntarily debased himself purely to achieve his current station is extraordinary. We knew during the campaign season that Carr was eager to be America’s chief censor of any content the Dear Leader disliked. That the same […]
News moves fast… While this post was getting finalized came news that Marko Elez has resigned after his racist tweets were found and publicized. Nevertheless, the point made herein still stands. Amidst all the news today is news suggesting that Musk and his lackeys have had their access to the federal government’s payment systems limited. […]
A mirror returns exactly what stands before it. No amount of wealth can bribe it, no volume of threats can intimidate it, no technological innovation can reprogram it. A billionaire’s reflection shows the same unaltered truth as a beggar’s. This fundamental democracy of reflection—this absolute fidelity to physical reality—makes mirrors uniquely immune to power. They […]
In 1872 California enacted a law declaring that “every one who offers to the public to carry persons, property, or messages, excepting only telegraphic messages, is a common carrier of whatever he thus offers to carry.” In 2022 the Republican National Committee sued Google, alleging that, by shunting GOP fundraising emails into Gmail spam folders, […]
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Remember when Donald Trump and the MAGA universe wanted to “lock her up!” over Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server for State Department business? Let’s be clear, we found Clinton’s use of a personal email server, which she claimed to have used “for convenience”, deeply problematic but pretty clearly not criminal. And, as […]
It’s understandably not going to get the same attention as the dismantling of numerous government agencies at the hands of rich unelected manbabies, but the Trump administration is also taking aim at all the promising parts of the 2021 infrastructure bill. Especially as it relates to broadband. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) contained […]
It’s very rare to see a cop charged with any crime in a shooting, much less charged with murder. It’s even rarer to see a cop convicted. It’s been happening a bit more recently, but that may just be recency bias now that more of the country is actively involved in combating police violence. In […]
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