Techdirt Reading List: Knowledge And The Wealth Of Nations: A Story Of Economic Discovery

from the the-economics-of-information dept

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also helps support Techdirt.

Okay, this is one of my absolute favorite books for understanding economics -- and especially the economics of information. Have you ever read a book where you keep finding yourself excited because you've discovered that other people had independently worked out a bunch of the ideas that had been sifting through your brain? That's what Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery by David Warsh was for me. It almost made me giddy, because I had just been working through my own mental model for the economics of abundance, and then I discovered that some pretty well known economists had been sorting the same things out themselves. It was exciting.

The book is really well written too. Most of the first half is a fun look at historical economists (going beyond just the economics of information and growth, but using that as a sort of central theme). And then the rest focuses on the work of the economist Paul Romer, who basically brought things around in a very useful way when it comes to the economics of information. Actually, one of the things that bothered/stunned me a little was that this work had been done so recently. As I had been sorting through it, I kept thinking back to applying work from much earlier economists, without realizing that it was still considered such a challenging issue. A key point in the book is understanding how information is the key to economic growth, and in particular, the fact that information itself is abundant, rather than scarce. It's that abundance, and the ability to spread it, that creates new ideas, better efficiency, more growth and a better overall world. Before all that, many economists had actually been confused as to why some economies grew, and others didn't -- and they were equally confused about the role of technology in enabling economic growth. This book lays out a lot of points around this in a really useful manner. I reread it every few years and recommend it highly.

Filed Under: david warsh, economics, growth, information, paul romer, reading list, techdirt reading list

DOJ Finally Going To Force Law Enforcement Agencies To Hand Over Info On People Killed By Police Officers

from the better-late-than-never dept

At long last, the federal government is getting serious about tracking the use of deadly force by law enforcement officers.

For most of the last two decades, the DOJ has been collecting this information from local law enforcement agencies, but only on a voluntary basis. As a result, the federal numbers have nearly no relation to the real numbers -- which have been compiled by a handful of private actors, including The Guardian, a UK-based journalistic entity.

Last June, legislators introduced a bill (that promptly went nowhere) which would replace voluntary reporting with mandatory reporting. The FBI expressed its concern about the government's inability to collect accurate information on citizens killed by police officers, offering on multiple occasions to replace its voluntary system with a better voluntary system.

The Guardian is reporting that the voluntary system is finally being replaced with something that will create actual accountability.

Police departments will be required to give the US justice department full details of deadly incidents involving their officers each quarter, under a new government system for counting killings by police that was influenced by the Guardian.

Announcing a new program for documenting all “arrest-related deaths”, federal officials said they would actively work to confirm fatal cases seen in media reports and other open sources rather than wait for departments to report them voluntarily.

This still lets local PDs off the hook in terms of immediate self-reporting. But that's probably ok, as there's nothing in the reporting of deaths at the hands of police officers that encourages urgency or transparency from law enforcement agencies. With the feds independently verifying reported deaths -- i.e., those reported by journalists -- delays between reports and their addition to the federal numbers will be decreased dramatically.

Law enforcement agencies aren't completely off the hook, however. They'll still be required to report in custody deaths to the Justice Department. The difference is that the DOJ will no longer wait around for agencies to self-report. Local agencies heavily reliant on federal funding will probably be the agencies filling out these reports the fastest.

In their Federal Register article, officials cited their authority under the death in custody reporting act – a law that states local departments must report all deaths in custody to the justice department or lose 10% of their federal funding. The law has been largely ignored since being reauthorized in December 2014.

The other change of note is that this will no longer be a year-end tabulation after all the self-reporting is completed. Agencies can fill out one form for 2016's total deaths, but going forward will be required to hand these in quarterly.

Agencies will also be responsible for collecting a lot of data they've never had to previously. Details about the deadly incident will need to be provided, along with demographic data on the deceased. Coroners and medical examiners serving law enforcement agencies will also need to turn over information to the government and will be asked to confirm local news reports on officer-involved deaths.

This is a huge step forward for a federal agency that has long relied on voluntary reporting from compliant law enforcement agencies to tabulate the use of deadly force by officers. It's a sign that the federal government finally realizes the good people in law enforcement can't be relied on to hand over data on incidents that make them look less that perfect on a voluntary basis. Targeting federal funding is a smart move because that's the sort of money that gets spent on surveillance tools and 1033 acquisitions that agencies normally couldn't afford without it.

The real test will come when it's implemented, as it often takes more than federal mandates to alter entrenched cultures where accountability and transparency are considered weaknesses.

Filed Under: data, doj, information, police, shootings

Sweden Considers Making DNA Donated Purely For Medical Research Available To Police And Insurance Companies

from the so-what-if-we-promised-we-wouldn't? dept

When it comes to biometrics, you really can't beat DNA. You can always erase your fingerprints, or wear contact lenses to fool iris scanners, but there's no way of changing all your DNA enough to make it unrecognizable (even with the new CRISPR technique). Couple that with the fact that we are shedding DNA everywhere we go -- leaving tell-tale markers on everything we touch -- and you have the perfect surveillance mechanism. That's why earlier UK plans to give police access to medical databases are problematic, to say nothing of Kuwait's mandatory DNA database for all citizens, residents and visitors. Now Rick Falkvinge has written a post about troubling moves in Sweden:

Since 1975, Sweden has taken a DNA sample from all newborns for medical research purposes, and asked parents’ consent to do so for this research purpose. This means that over time, Sweden has built the world's most comprehensive DNA database over everybody under 43 years of age. But now, politicians are considering opening up this research-only DNA database to law enforcement and private insurance companies.

As Falkvinge points out, this is not just a betrayal of a trust, it is totally counterproductive:

This is, of course, an outrageous and audacious breach of contract with the parents who were promised the sample would be used only for the good of humanity in terms of medical research. The instant there's a mere suspicion that this will be used against the sampled newborn in the future -- as is the case now -- instead of being used for the good of humanity as a whole, people won't provide the DNA database with more samples, or at least not enough samples to provide researchable coverage.

The risk that Sweden might proceed down this road is also a reminder that once such huge databases are created, it is almost inevitable that one day someone will come along and say: "since we have this information, surely nobody could object to it being used to catch terrorists/pedophiles/rapists etc. etc." And as the news from Sweden shows, initial promises that such sensitive data will only be used for research are worthless, since they can always be revoked later on, and there is no easy way of removing the data once it is on the database.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: dna, information, insurance, law enforcement, medical research, police, privacy, sharing, sweden

Appeals Court Tells Government It Must Extend Educational Institution FOIA Fee Price Break To Students

from the you-can-always-make-it-up-with-student-loan-interest dept

The perennial FOIA Reform Masquerade Ball is again under way, with legislators attempting to dodge blustery requests to "cut in" by administration officials and similarly-motivated federal agencies. The dance usually ends with Congressional committee chairmen yanking needles from records and booting everyone out of the dancehall.

Meanwhile, limited headway is being made in another branch of the government, far from the muffled protests of overwhelming majorities who have been shouted down by parties of one. The DC Appeals Court has just ruled that the government must extend its FOIA fee discounts to students at educational institutions, rather than just to instructors and administration.

The Department of Defense has fought this the whole way. It wanted a clear-cut delineation between students and staff for reasons only it comprehends, as that would mean saddling those with fewer financial resources (students) with higher fees.

The decision starts out by noting that FOIA fees -- if high enough -- are an effective deterrent to requesters. It then goes on to examine the government's assertion that the category of "educational institution" does not include these institutions' student bodies.

We thus must decide whether the statutory term “educational institution” is properly read, as the Government reads it, to include teachers but exclude students from the category of preferred requesters who are eligible for reduced fees. We conclude that the Government’s reading is inconsistent with the statute. Indeed, we think the Government’s reading makes little sense at all.

[...]

It would be a strange reading of this broad and general statutory language – which draws no distinction between teachers and students – to exempt teachers from paying full FOIA fees but to force students with presumably fewer financial means to pay full freight.

The government -- in making its nonsensical argument that students are not part of educational institutions -- relies on two different pull quotes. One is from a statement Sen. Charles Leahy made way back in 1986 during his legislative push to amend the FOIA to reduce fees for schools.

“A request made by a professor or other member of the professional staff of an educational or noncommercial scientific institution should be presumed to have been made by the institution.”

The government has chosen to believe this excludes students. The court, however, points out that Leahy was actually expanding the definition from what was originally assumed: that only top-level representatives of education institutions (presidents, chairpersons, etc.) could benefit from the lowered fees. The amendment, as written, makes no delineation between staff and students, no matter what the government feels Leahy must have meant when he made that statement.

The second pull quote is from an OMB (Office of Management and Budget) FOIA guideline.

“A student who makes a request in furtherance of the completion of a course of instruction is carrying out an individual research goal and the request would not qualify” as a request made by an educational institution.

With this, you'd figure the DoD has a point. But it doesn't, as the court explains. There are questions that need to be answered and one of them is, "How does the OMB arrive at this conclusion without a single statutory leg to stand on?"

In our view, OMB’s rule for student requests is inconsistent with the statute. FOIA refers broadly to an “educational institution.” As we have explained, we see no good basis in the text or context of FOIA to draw a line here between the teachers and students within the educational institution. The Guideline’s ipse dixit distinction of students from teachers is entirely unexplained and unpersuasive. The Guideline says that a geology teacher seeking information about soil erosion to support her research is entitled to reduced fees. But why not the geology student seeking the same information for the same reason? Crickets. We discern no meaningful distinction for purposes of this statute between the geology teacher and the geology student.

As the court sees it, the OMB's diversion from the statutory mean may be more motivated by its position (the "Budget" part of OMB) to seek higher fees from more requesters -- allowing it to make more money while deterring a certain percentage of FOIA requesters. If so, that's its own problem and one it fixes immediately. The FOIA isn't supposed to be a profit-making enterprise, much less a reliable revenue stream.

But this statute, as we read it, does not empower the Government to pursue fiscal balance or provide relief for the FOIA bureaucracy on the backs of students. The statutory text and context lead us to this simple conclusion: If teachers can qualify for reduced fees, so can students.

The court cautions that its take on the "educational institution" price break is not meant to be read as FOIA: Student Edition and used by attendees to obtain cheap documents for personal or commercial use. It says the government can take steps to prevent abuse by requiring things like copies of student IDs, letters from instructors, etc. That being said, the court is similarly not granting agencies the power to follow the letter of ruling while doing everything they can to break its spirit.

We caution agencies against requiring hard-to-obtain verifications that will have the practical effect of deterring or turning away otherwise valid student FOIA requests.

This is a win for student Kathryn Sack and for all others similarly situated. It returns a fee exemption to a more logical place, rather than leaving it in the shape it was, where it could be used to deter requesters with limited means.

Filed Under: education, fees, foia, information, prices, students

No, The FBI Does Not 'Need' The Info On Farook's iPhone; This Is Entirely About The Precedent

from the stop-saying-that dept

Over and over again as people keep talking about the Apple / FBI encryption stuff, I keep seeing the same line pop up. It's something along the lines of "but the FBI needs to know what's on that phone, so if Apple can help, why shouldn't it." Let's debunk that myth. The FBI absolutely does not need to know what's on that phone. It might not even care very much about what's on that phone. As the Grugq ably explained last week, there's almost certainly nothing of interest on the phone. As he notes, Farook destroyed his and his wife's personal phones, indicating that if there were anything truly important, he would have destroyed the last phone too. Also:

FBI already has a massive amounts of data, all of which indicates that Farook and Malik were not in contact with a foreign terrorist organisation, nor were they in contact with any other unknown terrorists.

Even if, despite all evidence to the contrary, Farook and Malik were somehow in invisible traceless contact with an ISIS handler, that handler would not have revealed information about other cells, because that would violate the most basic tenet of security — need to know.

Other information, including things like who they were in contact with could be obtained from other sources -- either service providers for metadata or from the phones of those they were in contact with.

There's another post by forensic scientist Jonathan Zdziarski that provides even more reasons why there's almost certainly nothing of use on the phone -- noting that Farook left the "track my phone" feature on, even though it's on the same settings page as turning off the iCloud backup, which the FBI claims he turned off.

But let's get beyond even that. Assume that there actually is something interesting or useful on the phone. That still doesn't mean the FBI "needs" the information. In basically any situation where crime has occurred, there is a ton of information that might be useful, but that is far from mandatory. Hell, in this case alone, there were the destroyed phones. It's much more likely that there would have been useful information on those phones. But no one's talking about how the FBI "needs" that information, because everyone knows the FBI can't get it. And, since much of the planning for this attack must have happened between Farook and Malik in their home, the FBI is never going to know what they said to each other as they sat around the kitchen table, or on the sofa, or in bed. And, again, no one is upset about this information that is "not accessible" because there's always information that's not accessible.

In some cases, it's because it was destroyed. In some cases, it's because it was verbal communications that were never stored anywhere. In some cases, it's because people communicated in a code that only they know. In some cases, it's because information wasn't found. There are dozens of reasons why information that might be useful isn't accessible to the government during criminal investigations.

And you know what: it's not the end of the world.

Hell, in almost every criminal case, there's a ton of missing information. The cases are about taking all the evidence that they do have and making inferences on the rest. And no one whines about that.

So why are so many people insisting that the FBI "needs" the information on this particular phone?

There are a few possible reasons, but none of them are very convincing or compelling. There's just the simple fact that the information is there and, it appears, if Apple is forced to create this special operating system (creatively called FBiOS by some), it will remove the security features that otherwise block the FBI from brute forcing Farook's passcode. Of course, no one seems to be mentioning that if he has a really long passcode, brute forcing it might not work either (perhaps because that's unlikely). But, again, that's another situation under which the information wouldn't actually be available.

Honestly, the only reason that the FBI wants to force Apple to create the special operating system for this particular phone is the precedent that it can go to court and force a company to build special hacking tools to remove security features from customers. That's a big deal. The information on the phone is almost certainly not a big deal at all.

Filed Under: encryption, evidence, fbi, going dark, information, investigations, leads, syed farook
Companies: apple

No, Strong Crypto Is Not Making The World 'Go Dark' For Intelligence Agencies: Here's Why

from the don't-be-afraid-of-the-dark dept

Last year, Techdirt noted that there was something of a concerted campaign to paint strong encryption as a real threat to intelligence agencies. That's continuing, except that for a number of recent attacks "encryption" has become a generic excuse for intelligence failures. To the extent that there was any real logic behind the attacks on crypto, the main one was that it was making things "go dark" by preventing the authorities from accessing vital information that could have stopped the attack/saved lives/led to arrests etc. if only it had been available. You can see why this phrase is such a favorite: it cleverly reminds us that once things have gone dark, all kinds of scary stuff could start happening, just like in our childhood nightmares. The only problem with this metaphor is that it is exactly wrong, as Phillip Rogaway points out in a recent interview in The Atlantic:

law enforcement has an extraordinary set of tools available to them now. An unprecedented set of capabilities, both for law enforcement and intelligence services. These aren't somehow the dark times for either law enforcement or intelligence. These are the times of extraordinary information. Nowhere in history has it been so easy to learn so much about everybody.

Critics might counter that it's easy to say that, but how are the authorities supposed to gather vital information when strong encryption has been used? An excellent column in The Washington Post by Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the International Computer Science Institute, provides step-by-step instructions that the intelligence services can follow if they are afraid of the gathering dark:

Let's examine a hypothetical investigation into Johnny Badguy. To plan and execute his crimes, Johnny uses an iPhone with encrypted features -- such as disk encryption that prevents anyone without the pass code from accessing the data and iMessage which encrypts messages in transit -- that have drawn the ire of FBI Director James Comey.

As Weaver points out, the communications metadata is actually much more useful than any encrypted content that has "gone dark":

If the investigator knows everything Johnny does, everyone he talks to and everywhere he goes, how much does it matter that the investigator doesn't know what Johnny says?

And it's not just about metadata: unless switched off, Johnny's iCloud backup will include a copy of all undeleted messages, all his contacts, his email accounts and his photographs. Moreover, Weaver notes, Google provides even more useful info:

Every IP address used to log into the Google account can recreate Johnny's movements -- the same information used by the FBI to unmask former CIA head David Petraeus's affair. If Johnny stays logged into Google through his browser, investigators have access to Johnny's search history and, thanks to how the Google+ button operates, a large number of the pages Johnny has viewed.

On top of that, a warrant to the phone company will provide:

the movements of the phone itself, as every call, text or push notification records at least the cell tower and sector, which says Johnny was in a particular wedge-shaped location occupying a few square miles.

As Weaver concludes:

Taken together, and further combined with other sources (such as the near-ubiquitous license plate readers and toll-tags), investigators have a nearly complete picture of Johnny's behavior, movements and associates without having to ever worry about the effects of cryptography.

As well as confirming that metadata is in general far more revealing than content -- despite what the UK government likes to insist -- Weaver's tale of Johnny Badguy brings out something that is insufficiently appreciated: the fact that today's mobile devices provide an amazing treasure-trove of information about their owner that is without precedent historically. In fact, Weaver's helpful analysis shows that the real threat to the intelligence agencies is not that the bad people might start using strong encryption, but that they might stop using smartphones.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: detective work, encryption, going dark, information, investigations, law enforcement

Twitter Just Cut Off Politwoops In Another Effort To Keep The Platform Closed

from the twits dept

Mike recently made the case that in the information age, platforms would do better to be open rather than closed. Being open means allowing that thing you started to branch off in many directions making you more useful to more people. Being closed means you get control. Yay. One of the examples of a platform that had initially been open and has since been becoming more closed is Twitter. What once began as a platform that was built up by users and outside groups all making even better use of Twitter than Twitter had managed for itself, has since devolved into stories of staunch refusal to allow the evolution to continue.

The most recent example of this is, sadly, that Twitter appears to have eighty-sixed Politwoops, the wonderful project for preserving the tweets deleted by government officials and public officials.

Twitter’s decision to pull the plug on Politwoops is a reminder of how the Internet isn’t truly a public square. Our shared conversations are increasingly taking place in privately owned and managed walled gardens, which means that the politics that occur in such conversations are subject to private rules. (In this case, Twitter’s terms of service for usage of its API.) Days after Politwoops launched in 2012, Twitter contacted the Sunlight Foundation and told us, "Your service violates our API Terms of Service on a fundamental level." We explained the goals of the project and agreed to create a human curation workflow to ensure that the site screened out corrected low-value tweets like typos, links and Twitter handles. We implemented this layer of journalistic judgment with blessings from Twitter and the site continued.

We are truly mystified as to what prompted the change of heart, and it's deeply disappointing to see Twitter kill a project they had supported since 2012. It is also disturbing to us that our feed was cut almost three weeks ago and our only direct communication came from Twitter last night, when we were told that their decision was not something that we could appeal, and, most surprisingly, they were not interested in reviewing any of the email conversation from 2012. Clearly, something changed — and we’re not likely to ever know what it was.

You can sense the boiling anger and pure confusion beneath the surface of the text. Twitter, which had been fully aware of what Politwoops was, did, and why, had allowed the service to operate for years and then suddenly pulled the plug for the same reason it gave initially before dismissing that reason. This would be enough to infuriate any developer, nevermind one focused solely on creating more openness and accountability. It must feel like a slap in the face to the Sunlight Foundation to have the opposite of their aims be utilized in the shuttering of their service.

That said, why did Twitter do this? Well, in a statement to Gawker, who had reported on the topic, Twitter indicated this was all about user privacy.

Earlier today we spoke to the Sunlight Foundation, to tell them we will not restore Twitter API access for their Politwoops site. We strongly support Sunlight’s mission of increasing transparency in politics and using civic tech and open data to hold government accountable to constituents, but preserving deleted Tweets violates our developer agreement. Honoring the expectation of user privacy for all accounts is a priority for us, whether the user is anonymous or a member of Congress.

Which tells us nothing, exactly as I'm sure Twitter intended. This is simply a recitation of the excuse, not the reason why the decision made in 2012 suddenly got reversed with very little communication to the Sunlight Foundation. So what's the answer?

Control, of course. The doors that close on once-open platforms operate on greased hinges, it seems, where the smallest thrust on those doors causes them to slam shut. Twitter is allowed to do this, of course, but closing the platform that still uses the "@" symbol and retweets, both conceived of by people outside of Twitter, isn't a recipe for continued relevance.

Filed Under: api, closed, information, open, politwoops, transparency
Companies: sunlight foundation, twitter

Should People Be Told Key Results Of Genetic Tests They Never Took?

from the ethical-dilemmas dept

The population of Iceland is unusual in a number of ways. Icelanders are descendants from a relatively small group of early settlers that remained isolated for hundreds of years. They have unmatched genealogical records that allow the family tree of many Icelanders to be traced back a thousand years, and thus for familial interrelationships on the island to be established with unprecedented completeness. Put those together, and you have a population that offers unique advantages for studying human genetics. That fact led to the founding of the Icelandic company Decode, which was set up in the hope that it would be possible to use Iceland's population to pinpoint genes associated with medical conditions, and then come up with new ways of diagnosing, treating and preventing them.

That didn't work out, and in 2012, Decode was bought by Amgen. But technology has advanced hugely since Decode's founding in 1996. The cost of sequencing the human genome has fallen dramatically, allowing the DNA of thousands of people to be compared -- something prohibitively expensive 20 years ago. The New York Times reports on research by Decode that has resulted in the sequencing of the genomes of 2,636 Icelanders, the largest collection ever analyzed in a single human population. Because of the completeness of Iceland's genealogical records, Decode's scientists were able to do something rather remarkable: work out the full genomes of another 100,000 Icelanders, a third of the entire country, without collecting any of their DNA.

With a technique called imputation, the researchers say they are able to ascertain the full genomes of people they have not even examined. Dr. Stefansson said that means that his firm could generate a report for genetic disease on every person in Iceland.

Once those "imputed" genomes have been constructed using computers, they can be interrogated in novel ways:

With the push of a button, for instance, the firm can identify every person with the well-known BRCA2 mutation, which dramatically raises the risk of breast and ovarian cancer -- even if they have not submitted to genetic testing themselves.

Currently, that information is withheld from Icelanders, but Dr. Stefansson hopes that the government will change its policy. “It’s a crime not to approach these people,” he said.

That raises an interesting ethical question. Should people who have never had their genome sequenced be told the results of this kind of computer-based analysis? Although the Icelandic case might seem unique, it is only a matter of time before sequencing costs fall so far that millions, rather than thousands of individuals can be sequenced within a population. And the more genomes that are available, the more imputed genomes that can be calculated, making the ethical dilemmas faced in Iceland something that people in other countries will soon have to confront too.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: data, ethics, genetic tests, information, privacy
Companies: amgen, decode

Verizon Latest To Balk At Weather Channel Rate Hikes For 'Weather Coverage' That's 70% Fluff And Nonsense

from the tropical-storm-nitwit dept

Last year, we noted how The Weather Channel was starting to have a hard time getting cable operators to pay the kinds of carriage fee increases the channel is looking for. That's of course in large part thanks to the fact that The Weather Channel increasingly focuses on fluff and nonsense (photos of the world's sexiest beaches, anyone?) instead of oh, forecasting the weather. These struggles have only been compounded by the fact that these days, all manner of apps can quickly tell you the weather while The Weather Channel is busy talking about wacky buffalo with "ginormous" tongues.

When The Weather Channel demanded a steep carriage fee hike from DirecTV last year, the satellite TV company responded by laughing and offering its customers channels that actually delivered the weather for a change. After many customers stated the loss of The Weather Channel was an improvement, the channel buckled and settled for significantly less money.

Apparently, the company hasn't learned its lesson quite yet. Verizon this week decided to pull The Weather Channel from its channel lineup after the channel demanded notably higher rates. In a note to subscribers, Verizon was quick to point out that, hey -- it's not like reconstituting reports from the National Weather Service is really all that difficult in the Internet age:

"Verizon’s agreements to carry The Weather Channel and Weather Scan have expired, and have not been renewed. In today’s environment, customers are increasingly accessing weather information not only from their TV but from a variety of online sources and apps. Verizon is therefore pleased to launch the new AccuWeather Network, which will be available on FiOS® TV on channel 119/619 (HD) and on our free FiOS Mobile App starting March 10, 2015."

Like the DirecTV feud, most customers responded to the channel being pulled with either a shoulder shrug or declarations that they find the replacement apps and channels a marked improvement. Still, like it did with the DirecTV dispute, The Weather Channel quickly cobbled together a fake news story implying that pulling the channel is a safety hazard:

"Customers turned to social media and the Verizon website today, March 10, in support of The Weather Channel, which for more than 30 years, has been the most trusted resource for disseminating timely information to help prepare and protect families across the nation against weather-related emergencies."

Apparently nobody at The Weather Channel has been getting the memos stating that their increasing failure to actually report the weather has made the channel a laughing stock. Cable companies are having a harder time pushing off programming rate hikes to consumers awash with alternative options (whether that's a weather app or Netflix). As such, cable companies themselves are starting to push back harder at broadcasters like The Weather Channel (or post Colbert and Stewart Viacom) that demand higher programming fees for lower-quality product.

If you offer a smash hit product like "Breaking Bad" or "Mad Men," you can often demand higher carriage rates. If your claim to fame instead is programs like "Prospectors" -- or creating a nation of weather neurotics by naming every flimsy storm that comes down the pike -- you're going to have a harder time as the pay TV market begins to finally evolve.

Filed Under: cable tv, information, weather, weather channel
Companies: verizon

Law Enforcement Wants Google To Cripple Waze Because It Lets The Mean Old Public 'Stalk' Police Officers

from the I-can-see-you-parked-right-there dept

If you've tinkered with Waze at all you know the app allows users to post road conditions, lane closures, police locations, and other pertinent driving hazards with a heavy emphasis on the gamification of that information (i.e., you get points for reporting accurate information). I generally find the feature to be marginally useful if not annoying. Police move positions so quickly I find that crowdsourcing isn't particularly effective. As such, I generally just stick to my long-standing practice of flirting with a speed that's around six to seven miles over the speed limit (I know, I'm an absolute wild man).

Eager to protect a revenue generator, law enforcement has long wanted speed trap warning disabled in the app, though as we've noted, warning others of speed traps (whether that's flashing your lights or otherwise) is effectively protected speech. With previous arguments not working so well, the latest claim by the law enforcement community is that Waze is dangerous for police because it effectively facilitates stalking of officers. Or at least that's the argument being pushed forth by the National Sheriffs Association in their quest to make Waze much less useful to motorists:

"Sheriff Mike Brown of Bedford County, Virginia, said the police-reporting feature, which he called the "police stalker,'' presents a danger to law enforcement. "The police community needs to coordinate an effort to have the owner, Google, act like the responsible corporate citizen they have always been and remove this feature from the application even before any litigation or statutory action,'' said Brown, who also serves as the chairman of the National Sheriffs Association technology committee."

Of course, the police officers being "stalked" are parked in obvious line of sight on public motorways, and if a mentally-unstable person did want to cause problems, it's not too hard to find an opportunity. At the same time, the citizens using the app are simply having a perfectly-legal conversation. Combined with the fact that the quoted officers can't be bothered to cite a single instance where this sort of technology has ever been a problem in this regard, that's a pretty feeble justification for crippling an application by any measure. Regardless, it appears Google has already been making concessions; when it started porting Waze data into Google Maps earlier this year, police reporting data was notably absent.

Whatever, just as long as we're not talking about how much Waze location data gets shared with the law enforcement and intelligence communities, right?

Filed Under: free speech, google maps, gps, information, law enforcement, navigation, police, stalking, waze
Companies: google, waze