We’ve noted for decades that U.S. telecom security and privacy standards aren’t great. T-Mobile has been hacked so many times in the last five years it’s easy to lose count. AT&T not long ago had a breach impacting the data of 73 million users it initially tried to pretend hadn’t happened. Telecoms have lobbied relentlessly […]
It’s a big week for anonymous commenters. We start out with our first place winner on the insightful side, an anonymous reply to an irrelevant comment: Speaking of bad actors, will you stop acting like your pet issue justifies spamming unrelated comments? In second place, it’s an anonymous comment about those who pledge to protect […]
If you’ve been following the Kickstarter campaign for our new card game, One Billion Users, then you know we’re not quite on track on to hit our goal — but we haven’t given up! We’ve now passed the halfway mark in funds raised, and we’re doing everything we can to make a final push before […]
Those of you who still believe the nation’s courts are capable of handling the constitutionally-guaranteed redress of grievances, prepare to be disabused of those notions. While the courts may occasionally care about rights, they’re far more willing to protect the government status quo than allow mere citizens to upset the status quo apple cart. We’ve […]
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 […]
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office in Florida thinks (or, at least, thought) it could make a dent in crime by engaging in “broken windows policing” by way of an Excel spreadsheet. I wish I was making this up but I’m absolutely not. The end result of this ad hoc “predictive policing” program was… well… predictable. […]
There are lots of ways for an individual person or entity to err when it comes to intellectual property enforcement such that it negatively impacts a website or business. But if you want to get really frustrated, what you need is several entities demonstrating complete incompetence in how they do business and making a victim […]
Whether you’re a science enthusiast, history buff, or technology geek, Curiosity Stream has something for everyone. Unleash the power of on-demand streaming that allows you to choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, and where you want to watch it. From the comfort of your living room to the remote […]
There are few Senators quite as pathetic as Richard Blumenthal. He has a long history of an ignorant vendetta against tech companies (even pre-dating his time in the Senate), and he never ever bothers to actually understand the underlying policy issues or the implications of the legislation he passes. In his latest cynical ploy, Blumenthal […]
Four years years ago AT&T, a company that, for years, cheapened out on upgrading its broadband lines to fiber, effectively stopped selling DSL. While that’s understandable given the limitations of the dated copper-based tech, the problem is that thanks to concentrated telecom monopolization, many of these customers were left without any replacement options due to a […]
Confidential informants (CI) are considered useful to law enforcement investigations, so society is just expected to bear the burden of criminal acts committed by informants in (dubious) furtherance of public safety goals. CI’s are just criminals with more immunity than most — even when they happen to be some of the worst criminals imaginable. In […]
It’s been the biggest year for elections in human history: 2024 is a “super-cycle” year in which 3.7 billion eligible voters in 72 countries had the chance to go the polls. These are also the first AI elections, where many feared that deepfakes and artificial intelligence-generated misinformation would overwhelm the democratic processes. As 2024 draws to a close, […]
You ain’t seen nothing yet regarding how some MAGA politicians are going to harass and attack journalists. This week, it was revealed that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (who already has a history of trying to punish speech he dislikes) had issued a subpoena to 404 Media, an independent, journalist-owned-and-run news site that we link […]
ShotSpotter spent a few years feeling really sure its tech was capable of detecting gunshots. It felt so confident it didn’t mind (allegedly) fudging detection data to help cops secure criminal charges against people who might not have been actual criminals. Then it all started falling apart. Lots of cop shops and the cities that […]
Project Management is global. This is one of those professions similar to being an accountant, where your skills and talents can be applied to any industry in any place. The 10-course Complete PMP Training Bundle provides a comprehensive training path for all things project management, including the most update to date courses including PMP 6th […]
Here on Techdirt, we write a lot about content moderation and even did a whole big series of content moderation case studies. However, here’s an interesting one that involves Techdirt itself from a couple weeks ago. It’s also a perfect example of Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem in action and a reminder of how the never-ending flood […]
As we recently noted, the Biden FCC has announced that it is finally “taking a look at” broadband usage caps. We’ve noted for decades how such limits are completely artificial, technically unnecessary constructs that exist specifically so your local telecom monopoly can rip you off. They don’t “manage congestion” or anything else; they exist exclusively to […]
Here we go again. Another cop given a free pass on brutality because established law had yet to inform Deputy Vincent Castoro that body-slamming a 13-year-old weighing less than 120 lbs. to the ground might violate the minor’s right to be free of immediate and permanent injuries simply because he didn’t immediately comply with an […]
Of all the kinds of stupid that exist out there, certainly it’s the predictable stupid that is the most frustrating. And of all the kinds of predictable stupid that exist, one of the most predictable forms of stupid is how video games are linked to mass shootings and murders on a clockwork-like cadence. As I’ve […]
NSO Group may be on the ropes but its flagship product continues to satisfy its customers — customers that include some of the worst human rights abusers in the world. Sure, recent developments have managed to land the company on US blacklists and forced the Israeli government to limit who the home team can sell […]
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