The Detroit PD is a case study in misuse of powerful surveillance tech. The department is notable for being involved in no less than three wrongful arrests, due to misuse/abuse of its facial recognition tech. The city has already paid out a $300,000 settlement in one of these cases. Worse, two of the three cases […]
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In recent weeks there has been a flurry of laws, regulatory proposals, and lawsuits regarding “deepfakes,” along with the usual rising levels of concern in the media about how the world won’t be able to handle this. For some perspective, the Pessimist’s Archive just published a story highlighting how a nearly identical fear gripped the […]
I know I’ve argued that not every Elon Musk brain fart warrants its own news cycle, but this one is particularly gross given recent events. We’ve noted repeatedly how in 2020, the Trump administration tried to give Elon Musk’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband company Starlink nearly a billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies to connect […]
Some of our nation’s finest Drug Warriors are at it again. And by “at it,” I mean doing seriously stupid, seriously unconstitutional stuff in hopes of finding drugs or (better yet!) cash that will somehow prove they’re doing anything at all to stem the flow of illegal drugs. And yet, they weren’t even after a […]
As someone who has evangelized for the video game industry and how games, long villainized by parents, politicians, and police, are actually either a neutral or positive force for the public and culture, I never shy away from sharing studies that demonstrate this. While a great deal of time has been spent on discussions of […]
A year ago, we wrote about how a challenge brought by the Free Speech Coalition against Utah’s (obviously unconstitutional) age verification law couldn’t go forward because the district court noted (regrettably) that the structure of the law prevented FSC from challenging it before it went into effect. The issue is that it’s a “bounty” law, […]
The “no-fly” list has many problems. Pretty much any fed can “nominate” someone for the list. Pretty much everyone on the list has almost zero chance of getting off it other than by filing a lawsuit. And even though the government has been forced by court decisions to offer a venue for challenges, the federal […]
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Well, things sure move fast in this world of AI regulations. Just last week, we noted that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a pretty obviously unconstitutional set of laws regarding the use of deepfake imagery around “election communications.” Then, just hours later, he was sued for it. This week, federal judge John Mendez has already […]
As noted a few times, recent Supreme Court rulings have thrown most U.S. regulatory enforcement into operational and legal chaos. The dismantling of Chevron in particular now dictates that regulators can’t implement new rules or reforms without the explicit approval of Congress. Two problems there: one, regulators ideally have very specific subject expertise Congress doesn’t […]
Going all the way back to 2020, we have been discussing one of a series of copyright disputes centered on video games and their faithful depictions of real-life tattoos within them. While the first of these were related to depictions of NBA players in Take-Two’s NBA2K series, which the company generally successfully defended, one outlier […]
The Institute For Local Self Reliance (disclosure: I have done writing and research for them) has released an updated interactive map of every community-owned and operated broadband network in the U.S. All told, there’s now 400 community-owned broadband networks serving more than 700 U.S. towns and cities nationwide, and the pace of growth shows no […]
These days, there’s a formula for articles pushing the unproven claims of harm from social media. Start with examples of kids harming themselves, insist (without evidence) that but for social media it wouldn’t have happened. Throw some shade at Section 230 (while misrepresenting it). Toss out some policy suggestions without grappling with what those policy […]
There is no crime apocalypse impending, incipient, or in progress in the United States. But you wouldn’t know by listening to Trump and his supporters. Former President Donald Trump is wildly distorting new statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump falsely claimed Friday and Saturday that the statistics are specifically […]
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Well, that was quite the end to last night’s Vice Presidential debate. While the overall debate was pretty boring (though hilarious when JD Vance flipped out and whined that the moderators had promised not to fact check him), towards the very end they had what might be the dumbest possible exchange regarding free speech. It […]
CNN, like most cable news networks, professes to provide users access to journalism. Instead, what you’ll most consistently find is a sort of generic drivel with the rough edges (read: truth) sanded off. On any given day you’ll find a rotating parade of lazy “view from nowhere” journalism that doesn’t inform so much as it […]
Taylor Swift is in the news, and not just because she has become the most decorated solo artist of all time. The fact that Taylor Swift has already been mentioned multiple times on Walled Culture underlines that she is also an important – if surprising – figure in the world of copyright. That’s because Swift has been re-recording her albums in […]
This isn’t a good look for the Las Vegas Metro PD, even if it’s completely supported by court precedent. No matter how often law enforcement agencies sling around the phrase “protect and serve,” they have almost no legal obligation to do either of those things. Sometimes a “failure to intervene” allegation might undermine a cop’s […]
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