Rockstar's GTA Retro Games Was Completely Broken And Support Was Ghosting Everyone

from the more-like-grand-theft-notto-amirite? dept

You may recall that a couple of months ago we discussed Rockstar and Take2, the game studio and publisher behind the Grand Theft Auto series, taking down a fan-made GTA4 mod that aimed to put all of the cities from previous games in one massive map. While this was a labor of love by dedicated fans of the GTA series, it escaped nobody's attention that this action was taken on a mod started in 2014 just as Rockstar was about to release GTA Trilogy, consisting of remastered versions of GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas. The very cities the mod looked to input into GTA4. In other words, the fan project was only shut down when the game companies decided to try to make money off this retro love themselves.

So how's it going? Well, not too fucking great on the PC side considering that the PC version was pulled down basically everywhere.

Something has gone very, very wrong since yesterday’s launch of GTA Trilogy on PC. As of last night, all mention of a PC version has been removed from Rockstar’s own site, and the Rockstar Games Launcher app has gone completely offline. Anyone who bought the remastered collection before it vanished is currently unable to play.

It has been at least 18 hours since the sudden disappearance of the PC’s GTA Trilogy, and Kotaku can confirm that the Launcher is not working. Which means all Rockstar PC games, including Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA Online, are currently impossible to play.

You read that right. The PC Rockstar Launcher, responsible for letting gamers play the games they bought, was borked. On Twitter, Rockstar's support had only been so transparent as to say that the launcher is down due to "maintenance". Unscheduled or unannounced maintenance, as it turns out. And maintenance that lasted several days. Now, you could get the launcher to work in offline mode... for those who know how to do that. But paying customers were left to figure it out for themselves because Rockstar's support only sent two tweets out during that downtime with barely any details.

As of Monday, Rockstar finally got its launcher working again and the GTA Trilogy back to being available for purchase and play. But as to what caused all of this, Rockstar is as opaque as ever. Whether something related to the GTA Trilogy title is somehow related to all of this isn't entirely known...

...but it is the case that people recently bought those titles and couldn't play them. Bad communication from the company to the public is compounding, at least in this writer's head, with the effort it put into shutting down a fan-made work and labor of love that would have given GTA fans some retro thrills.

And to make matters a bit stranger, Rockstar had previously delisted its PC version from all 3rd party marketplaces.

For whatever reasons, Rockstar chose to remove all versions of GTAs III, Vice City, and San Andreas from alternative PC stores—including Steam—ahead of this launch, meaning its bespoke software is now the only way to buy and play the games. Or indeed, the only way to not play it.

And so Rockstar customers were left to the tender mercies of a company that doesn't seem to feel like telling them what's going on. All while trying to prevent fan-made game mods from being a thing. Not a great look.

Filed Under: availability, broken, customer support, gta, gta trilogy, video games
Companies: rockstar games

DEA Racks Up Two Forfeiture Losses In One Week, Returns $100,000 In Stolen Cash To Victims

from the real-loser-here-is-still-US-citizens-and-their-tax-dollars dept

In the past week, the federal government has twice(!) been forced to return money it stole from travelers just because it could. In both cases, American citizens were trying to board domestic flights at US airports. And in both cases, despite it not being illegal to carry large amounts of cash on domestic flights, the government decided the cash had to have been illegally obtained, and moved forward with forfeiture proceedings.

The first case involves 58-year-old Kermit Warren, a New Orleans native who was accosted by federal agents at the Columbus, Ohio airport. Warren had $30,000 on him which he had planned to use to buy a tow truck for his scrap metal business. Unfortunately, the sale fell through, forcing him to purchase a one-way flight back home.

Warren's cash caught the eye of a TSA screener. Screeners are supposed to look for threats to transportation security (that's right in the agency name) and/or contraband. US currency is not contraband but it is definitely on the TSA's radar, thanks to the DEA's purported "anti-drug" efforts. The DEA actually pays screeners to search for cash. Screeners have responded by locating cash far more frequently than explosives or contraband.

The TSA alerted the DEA. Agents showed up and questioned Warren. They didn't like his answers -- some of which were untruthful (he falsely claimed to be a retired cop). But it really wouldn't have mattered what Warren's answers were. The DEA wanted the cash and even sworn affidavits from multiple family members and business associates wouldn't have changed what happened next.

The DEA brought in a drug dog as a seizure permission slip. The dog (completely unsurprisingly) "alerted" on the money, having "detected" the odor of drugs. Almost all cash in circulation has drug residue on it. That should not be considered probable cause, much less reasonable suspicion. Despite making vague allegations Warren was involved in the illicit drug trade, the DEA let him go. But it kept the money.

Warren fought back, a move the government clearly didn't anticipate. It lost spectacularly.

[P]rosecutors eventually backed down after Warren’s lawyers presented them with several pieces of exonerating evidence, including text messages with the owner of the truck and financial documents showing his income over the years.

In addition to returning all of the seized money – $28,180 – prosecutors agreed to dismiss the case against him with prejudice, meaning they cannot go after the money at a later date.

However, it wasn't a total loss for the government. It managed to deter any future losses from this case by getting Warren to agree not to sue agents for violating his rights.

As part of the deal, Warren agreed not to pursue legal action against the government.

And, even though the government agreed to return his money, it still hasn't. Apparently it needs a few more weeks to find the money it took from him. On top of that, the government has no apology for stealing a citizen's cash and then sticking him with the burden of proof. All the government needs is an unproven allegation to take cash, which is completely the opposite of the way the judicial system is supposed to work.

The second case involves the same elements: a US airport, a domestic flight, some cash, the TSA, the DEA, unsubstantiated claims about drug dealing, and the theft of tens of thousands of dollars from an innocent citizen.

On January 7, 2020, [New York filmmaker Keddins Etienne] was flying from John F. Kennedy International Airport to California, where he planned to work on two projects: a documentary about the impact of forest fires on cannabis producers in Mendocino County and a remake of Takeshi Kitano's 2000 film Brother, about a Japanese gangster who flees to Los Angeles after his boss is killed in a battle with another Yakuza clan. Etienne had lined up interviews for the documentary, and he had about $69,000, mostly in hundreds and fifties, to hire crew members, rent equipment, and cover other expenses.

Because his work would take him to some "shady places," Etienne says, he stashed the money inside an old, broken Xbox that he put in his carry-on bag. "I didn't want anyone to suspect that I had any type of cash on me," he says. "I was hiding the money from the usual suspects, so to speak." Instead, the money was snatched by a DEA agent, Antonio LoGrande, who arrived at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint where Etienne was screened after Etienne told a TSA officer what was inside the Xbox.

Agent LoGrande then made some coy remarks ("You know what this looks like, right?") and then sent Etienne packing, albeit without the cash he had packed.

Etienne fought back. He secured the representation of longtime TSA critic/current lawyer Jon Corbett, who started the process of recovering the stolen money. The government fought back as well, digging through Etienne's bank accounts, apparently in hopes of finding transactions to hang a "structuring" charge on, since it was unable to find anything linking the seized cash to illegal sources.

The DEA also offered to give Etienne some of his money back if he would just walk away from the forfeiture after the feds took their 10% skim ($6,852) off the top. Etienne and Corbett rejected this offer, maintaining their original assertion that the government was entirely in the wrong. Shortly before the deadline to move forward with its forfeiture, the government decided to return all of Etienne's money to him -- eight months after it helped itself to his cash at an airport checkpoint.

Unlike the Warren case, the government wasn't able to talk Etienne into not suing the government over this bullshit forfeiture. The government tried to escape from that, too, but -- for once -- the attempt to dodge a civil rights lawsuit failed. DEA Agent LoGrande argued he should be immunized from the suit by qualified immunity, but federal judge Frederic Block wasn't willing to entertain the government's specious rationalizing.

According to Corbett, Block "made it clear that he did not like the government's position at all" and "basically told the government that they really want to consider settling." Through mediation, the government agreed in August to pay Etienne an additional $15,000, a bit more than the $13,749 in "legal fees and costs" that the lawsuit said he "spent defending against the abusive process instituted against him."

With two failures in one week, you'd hope the government might be slightly deterred from seizing people's cash just because they tried to board a plane while carrying it. But it's likely this will have no effect at all. First off, the government is taking money that belongs to citizens and, at best, occasionally returning the same amount it seized. The percentage of cases that end with the government shelling out for legal fees is probably less than a rounding error. And even when the government is forced to pay for screwing over US citizens, it's US citizens who end up picking up the tab.

At no point is the government playing with its own money, so without intercession from Congress or court precedent finding forfeitures completely unmoored from criminal charges unconstitutional, the TSA and DEA will engage in business as usual. And that "business" does nothing to make travelers more secure or curtail the buying and selling of illicit drugs.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, cash, civil asset forfeiture, dea, jon corbett, keddins etienne, kermit warren, legalized theft, tsa

Supreme Court Takes A Pass On A Chance To Firmly Establish A Right To Record Police Officers

from the I-guess-try-to-exercise-your-rights-in-circuits-where-they're-respected dept

After taking some positive steps towards trimming the growth of qualified immunity it had itself encouraged for years, the Supreme Court decided to reverse course. Two more cases on the court's "shadow docket" were sent back to the appellate levels with instructions to reverse the stripping of qualified immunity from government employees accused of rights violations.

Note that refusing to grant qualified immunity does not guarantee a win for the plaintiff. All the removal of this immunity does is allow the court to consider more facts and place unresolved questions in front of a jury… you know, the sort of thing courts are supposed to be doing fairly often. Qualified immunity invocations short circuit the process, allowing courts to arrive at conclusions without further fact-finding by giving law enforcement officers the benefit of a doubt.

More bad news from the nation's highest court has arrived. As Radley Balko puts it in his editorial for the Washington Post, the Supreme Court has chosen to abdicate its obligations to the Bill of Rights. (non-paywalled link here)

The Supreme Court, having created the problem of qualified immunity to shield police from being held liable for their misconduct, keeps refusing to fix it.

This week, the court declined to review an especially outrageous ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit involving a Denver man who was detained for recording a traffic stop, then had his computer confiscated and searched.

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals clearly blew that decision earlier this year. Despite multiple appellate courts having established or upheld a First Amendment right to record police officers, the Appeals Court decided there wasn't enough circuit precedent to put Denver, Colorado police officers on notice that arresting a man and seizing his device simply because he was recording them was unconstitutional.

Additionally, the Tenth Circuit declared the cops could not have known this was unconstitutional despite having received specific training from their police department that explicitly said citizens have the right to record police and should not be prevented from doing so, much less arrested for doing so. The objective standard the Appeals Court applied said reasonable officers with this specific training would not have known that contradicting that training would result in rights violations.

The Supreme Court's rejection of this case is inexcusable. It's pretty difficult to generate a solid case that persuasively argues for an establishment of a right by the nation's top court. This was one of the better ones. The Supreme Court had a chance to clearly establish a right to record government employees but chose to ignore it. That means cops in this circuit -- even ones who have received explicit training advising them there's an assumed right to record -- can continue to harass and arrest people for filming them.

Radley Balko is right: this is an abdication of its responsibility to uphold the rights of citizens and act as a check against the government's desire to see those rights curtailed.

Filed Under: 10th circuit, civil rights, free speech, recording police, shadow docket, supreme court

EU's Latest Internet Regulatory Madness: Destroying Internet Security With Its Digital Identity Framework

from the just-stop dept

The EU is at it again. Recently Mozilla put out a position paper highlighting the latest dangerous move by busybody EU regulators who seem to think that they can magically regulate the internet without (1) understanding it, or (2) bothering to talk to people who do understand it. The issue is the Digital Identity Framework, which, in theory, is supposed to do some useful things regarding interoperability and digital identities. This could be really useful in enabling more end user control over identity and information (a key part of my whole Protocols, Not Platforms concept). But the devil is in the details, and the details are a mess.

It would force browsers to support a specific kind of authentication certificate -- Qualified Web Authentication Certificates (QWACs) -- but as Mozilla points out, that would be disastrous for security:

At the same time, the types of website certificates that browsers would be forced to accept, namely QWACs, are based on a flawed certificate architecture that is ill-suited for the security risks users face online today. In the years since the original eIDAS regulation was adopted in 2014, an increasing body of research has illustrated how the certificate architecture upon which QWACs are inspired – namely, extended validation certificates – lull individuals into a false sense of security that is often exploited for malicious purposes such as phishing and domain impersonation. For that reason, since 2019 no major browser showcases EV certificates directly in the URL address bar.

As such, should the revised Article 45 be adopted as is, Mozilla would no longer be able to honour the security commitments we make to the hundreds of millions of people who use our Firefox browser or any of the other browser and email products that also depend on Mozilla’s Root Program. It would amount to an unprecedented weakening of the website security ecosystem, and undercut the browser community’s ability to push back against authoritarian regimes’ interference with fundamental rights (see here and here for two recent examples).

As Mozilla notes, the EU can still fix this. Whether or not it does is an open question.

Filed Under: certificates, digital identity, eu, regulations, security

Ninth Circuit Tells NSO Group It Isn't A Government, Has No Immunity From WhatApp's Lawsuit

from the law-harder! dept

Long before its current run of Very Bad News, Israeli malware purveyor NSO Group was already controversial. Investigations had shown its exploits were being used to target journalists and activists and its customer list included governments known mostly for their human rights abuses.

Facebook and WhatsApp sued NSO in November 2019, alleging -- among other things -- that NSO had violated WhatsApp's terms of use by deploying malware via the chat service. The arguments made by Facebook/WhatsApp aren't the best and they could allow the CFAA to be abused even more by expanding the definition of "unauthorized access."

Then there's the question of standing, which NSO raised in one motion to dismiss. The alleged harms were to users of the service, not to the service itself. While suing on behalf of violated users is a nice gesture, it's pretty difficult to talk a court into granting your requests for injunctions or damages if you're not the target of the alleged abuse.

NSO also pointed out it didn't actually violate anyone's terms of service. Its customers did when they used WhatApp to deliver malware to targets. NSO said WhatsApp was welcome to sue any of its customers, but was unlikely to get anywhere with that either, given the immunity from lawsuits generally handed to foreign governments.

Then NSO made a ridiculous claim of its own: it said it was immune from lawsuits since it provided this malware to foreign governments. By extension, it argued, the same immunity protecting foreign sovereigns (i.e., its customers) should be extended to the private company that sold them phone exploits. That argument was rejected by the district court. And the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has just affirmed [PDF] that rejection, which means NSO will have to continue to fight what is now one of several damaging fires.

The Appeals Court says no reasonable reading of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) supports NSO's argument in favor of it taking no responsibility for its actions or the actions of its customers.

Whether such entity can sidestep the FSIA hinges on whether the Act took the entire field of foreign sovereign immunity as applied to entities, or whether it took the field only as applied to foreign state entities, as NSO suggests. The answer lies in the question. The idea that foreign sovereign immunity could apply to non-state entities is contrary to the originating and foundational premise of this immunity doctrine.

[...]

Thus, we hold that an entity is entitled to foreign sovereign immunity, if at all, only under the FSIA. If an entity does not fall within the Act’s definition of “foreign state,” it cannot claim foreign sovereign immunity. Period.

NSO isn't a "foreign state." It is not operated by a foreign state. It simply sells products to foreign states, which legally makes it no different than the company that supplies toilet paper to the White House. Just because the product is used almost exclusively by governments, that fact does not make NSO a state actor or a foreign state proxy.

NSO does not contend that it meets the FSIA’s definition of “foreign state,” and, of course, it cannot. It is not itself a sovereign. 28 U.S.C. § 1603(a). It is not “an organ . . . or political subdivision” of a sovereign. Id. § 1603(b)(2). Nor is a foreign sovereign its majority owner. NSO is a private corporation that provides products and services to sovereigns—several of them. NSO claims that it should enjoy the immunity extended to sovereigns because it provides technology used for law-enforcement purposes and law enforcement is an inherently sovereign function. Whatever NSO’s government customers do with its technology and services does not render NSO an “agency or instrumentality of a foreign state,” as Congress has defined that term. Thus, NSO is not entitled to the protection of foreign sovereign immunity. And that is the end of our task.

This heads back to the district court -- the court where NSO first argued that the court had no jurisdiction to handle the lawsuit since it was pretty much just a foreign government d/b/a a private malware manufacturer. It will have to continue facing WhatsApp's lawsuit over its alleged terms of service violations. And the longer the suit runs, the greater the chance NSO might have to divulge some more details on its dirty work and its even dirtier customers.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, immunity, malware, spyware
Companies: facebook, nso group, whatsapp

Daily Deal: AOMEI Backupper Professional Edition

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

AOMEI Backupper Professional Edition is a complete yet simple backup software for Windows PCs and laptops, which includes all features of AOMEI Backupper and supports system/disk/files/partition backup and restore, file sync, and system clone as well as scheduling backup, merge images, dynamic volumes backup, UEFI boot, and GPT disk backup. It's on sale for $29.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Facebook Whistleblower Testifies Before 'Grand Committee On Disinformation'; Which Includes Countries That Lock People Up For Criticizing The Gov't

from the sure-that's-wise? dept

It didn't get as much press as some of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's other high profile talks to government inquisitors, but last week, Haugen testified before the rather Orwellian International Grand Committee on Disinformation. This is a bizarre "committee" set up by regulators around the world, but its focus -- and its members -- are kind of notable. Considering that tons of evidence shows that cable news is a much larger vector of disinformation flows to the general public, it seems notable that the "International Grand Committee on Disinformation" seems to only want to pay attention to online disinformation. I mean, it's right in the group's mission:

The rapid, unregulated expansion of social media is causing lasting harm to the world’s societies and democracies. So long as the technology giants who own these platforms are permitted to put profits ahead of people, malevolent actors will continue to be able to use social media to spread disinformation, spew hate, and disrupt elections.

Hmm. Only online? Only social media? No traditional media? No cable news? How... interesting.

Ah, but it gets even more interesting. Because the International Grand Committee on Disinformation this time included Singapore Parliamentarians who were very excited to show how bad social media is.

Amidst growing international convergence on the need to regulate the internet to protect vulnerable communities from online harms, two Singapore Members of Parliament participated in the fifth meeting of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation (IGC5) in Brussels, Belgium on 9 November 2021. They were Ms Sim Ann, Member of Parliament for Holland-Bukit Timah GRC, and Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of National Development; and Ms Rahayu Mahzam, Member of Parliament for Jurong GRC, and Parliamentary Secretary for Ministry of Communications and Information and Ministry of Health. Ms Sim and Ms Rahayu are also the co-leads of Singapore’s Sunlight Alliance for Action

Great. Great. The readout from these Singaporean Parliamentarians made it clear that they are very, very concerned:

The key themes of this year’s IGC meeting were (i) COVID-19 misinformation and (ii) online hate directed towards historically marginalised groups.

They also note that it's clear that Facebook must be regulated:

There was a clear consensus among the participants that self-regulation by social media companies has not been effective, and regulation is necessary. There was also general endorsement of Singapore’s position that beyond regulation, multi-pronged, multi-stakeholder approaches such as the Sunlight Alliance for Action were necessary to combat online harms effectively.

Oh, great. So, let's see, how is Singapore fighting disinformation again? Oh, right, by jailing anyone who criticizes the Singaporean government.

In 2019, Singapore "regulated disinformation" online with its Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA). And how exactly has that worked there? According to Human Rights Watch, it's been a total disaster for free speech and has been used against opposition politicians and critics of the government:

Ministers issued several correction notices to opposition politicians or political parties during the nine-day election campaign in July.

Singapore authorities also use existing laws to penalize peaceful expression and protest, with activists, lawyers, and online media facing prosecution, civil defamation suits, and threats of contempt of court charges. In March, the Court of Appeal upheld the conviction of activist Jolovan Wham for contempt of court for stating on Facebook that “Malaysia’s judges are more independent than Singapore’s for cases with political implications.”

On July 28, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s nephew, Li Shengwu, was found guilty of contempt and fined S$15,000 (US$11,000) for a 2017 private Facebook post in which he said the Singapore government is “very litigious and has a pliant court system.”

Ah. Notably, while opposition party members kept getting notices about how they violated the law, the ruling party politicians were somehow free of such notices. How odd.

This same "regulation" against "disinformation" was used to block access to a website criticizing the Singaporean government's response to COVID.

So, yeah, sure, we can highlight the problems of misinformation online, but it's difficult to take the "International Grand Committee on Disinformation" particularly seriously when its members include nations that are using "disinformation" regulations as an excuse to suppress opposition political parties and those who criticize the government. It kind of undermines any credibility such a group might have.

Filed Under: disinformation, fake news, frances haugen, international grand committee on disinformation, singapore
Companies: facebook

Report: US ISPs Aren't Transparent About Prices And Speeds, And Regulators Generally Don't Care

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

By now we've well established that regional monopolization, limited competition, and the (state and federal) corruption that enables both (aka regulatory capture) are why US broadband is spotty, expensive, and slow. With neither competent regulatory oversight nor meaningful competition to drive improvements, regional dominant broadband providers simply... don't bother. The end result goes beyond high prices to substandard customer service, privacy violations, net neutrality violations, and unnecessary surcharges, usage caps, and fees they often don't clearly disclose.

A recent report from the Institute For Local Self Reliance took a look at how transparent U.S. ISPs are about broadband prices, line restrictions, and hidden surcharges. And the results are about what you'd expect. As in, most U.S. ISPs do a fairly terrible job (quite intentionally) of making it clear how much you'll pay for broadband, what your upstream and downstream speeds are, and whether there's any hidden restrictions or fees you'll face once you sign up.

Why? For one, big ISPs don't like making it easy to do direct price comparisons, lest people clearly understand the real impact of limited competition and regional market failure. They also routinely engage in false advertising where they advertise one lower price, then hit you with a bunch of bullshit fees. Big ISPs also tend to hide anything that doesn't make them look good or could showcase their network underinvestment, such as pathetic upload speeds:

This is, the report notes, much less of a problem with local community broadband networks. Previous studies out of Harvard had noted community broadband generally offers lower, more transparent prices than large ISPs, and that's showcased again here:

Again, this isn't just a failure of competition, but a failure of regulatory oversight and telecom policy. The FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules included a provision requiring that ISPs be transparent about pricing and line restrictions. And while the net neutrality aspect of their 2015 order was repealed by the Trump FCC, the transparency component was not. Still, despite the transparency rule having now existed for six years under two different political parties, the report notes how nobody at the FCC has bothered to enforce it:

"The Transparency Rule, however, is largely unenforced. It is commonly accepted that without effective government regulation or competitive market pressure, ISPs are in a position to abuse their power. The Internet access industry is governed neither by regulation nor market pressure in most communities. Because providers don’t have to answer to regulation or worry about their customers switching providers if they offer less than satisfactory service, providers are rarely held accountable for information that is missing or hard to find. Were providers held accountable for making accessible disclosures, customers could less easily be exploited.

The broadband component of the recently-passed infrastructure bill added some additional language requiring that ISPs provide a sort of "nutrition label" for their connections clearly disclosing all restrictions and sneaky fees. But again, rules are only useful if they're enforced, and the FCC historically under both parties... just hasn't bothered doing so. Big ISPs like AT&T aren't just politically powerful campaign contributors, they're effectively tethered to law enforcement and intelligence systems, reducing any incentive to hold them accountable for pretty much anything of note.

Filed Under: competition, false advertising, fcc, prices, speeds, transparency