Perhaps no state has unrolled and rolled up a welcome mat set out for a federal guest faster than Utah. What was once a shiny new installation with 5-10,000 jobs attached swiftly became a PR black eye after Ed Snowden exited the NSA and sprung a leak.
Suddenly, the sweetheart deal on water given to the NSA seemed like an attempt to curry favor with domestic spies, placing local politicians on the receiving end of reflected wrath from the general public. Utah's government reversed course, setting itself up as a champion of the people. An attempt was made to shut down the spy center's water supply. It never made its way into law, but the anti-panopticon tone was set. But the state is still moving forward with efforts taking on the federal government, engaged in the always-awkward grappling of the The Man sticking it to The Man.
On March 12, Utah legislators voted unanimously to pass landmark legislation in support of a new privacy law that will protect private electronic data stored with third parties like Google or Facebook from free-range government access. The bill stipulates that law enforcement will be required to obtain a warrant before accessing “certain electronic information or data.”
The shift towards greater privacy protections may have been prompted by the NSA data sinkhole currently hoovering up water outside of Bluffdale, but this law would affect every other state and federal agency that has made use of the Third Party Doctrine ever since its unwelcome appearance over 40 years ago.
This is very good news for Utah residents, considering the number of third parties collecting data has expanded exponentially over the past two decades. The same court that handed the government the Third Party Doctrine recently gave a little something back to the people, ruling that cell site location info has an expectation of privacy. This alters the contours of third party/government interactions, with every record grabbed without a warrant could result in a legal challenge that restores a bit more of the Fourth Amendment.
Until then, states are free to limit government access to these records on their own. Voluntarily turning over info to private third parties should not be interpreted as citizens turning over this information to everyone and their government-deputized dog.
More states should be like Utah -- a phrase that's probably never been uttered before. Hopefully, more states will follow this lead and get out ahead of the tech curve by providing their residents with these same protections.
US telco CenturyLink is under fire for temporarily disabling the broadband connections of broadband customers in Utah unless they click on an ad for CenturyLink security software. Even more oddly, the telco is repeatedly (and falsely) trying to blame a new Utah law for its ham-fisted behavior.
It began when a CenturyLink user in Utah posted to Twitter that his CenturyLink broadband line suddenly and mysteriously stopped working. Using what appears to be JavaScript ad injection (an already contentious practice), Centurylink then sent the user a notice stating his broadband connection would not be restored until he acknowledged receipt of the message, which appears to be a glorified advertisement for CenturyLink's @Ease filtering and security software:
Just had @CenturyLink block my internet and then inject this page into my browser (dns spoofing I think) to advertise their paid filtering software to me. Clicking OK on the notice then restored my internet... this is NOT okay! pic.twitter.com/NtCZUeJF8I
In a blog post first spotted by regional Utah news outlets and subsequently Ars Technica, the user explains how he was initially under the impression that CenturyLink had tried to block him from visiting a phishing website, only to realize later that the ISP was really just temporarily holding his connection hostage until he engaged with a product ad:
"At first glance I was worried that I had somehow been redirected to a malicious website and that this was some kind of phishing attempt... After all, I didn't navigate here. I attempted to do another search but still ended up at this same notice. I considered the idea that maybe my ISP had detected some kind of threat coming from my network and that's why I was seeing this official looking page. Eventually, after reading over the page several times, I clicked "OK" and my internet was back."
When criticized, CenturyLink repeatedly told the user and many reporters (myself included), that it had to block user access in this fashion due to a new Utah law:
Legislation requires us to notify Utah consumers of content filtering options to protect minors in a conspicuous method. To protect those most vulnerable, the most conspicuous method is a pop-up. We did not engage in DNS hijacking. - Zac
Except that's false. Utah is, Techdirt readers will be aware, home of what has been a near-constant stream of ridiculous efforts to filter porn, a technically impossible task (something backers of the idea refuse to learn). And while this new law in question is dumb, it's not quite that dumb. The law requires ISPs to inform users that filtering software is available to them as a sort of half-measure toward combating porn. ISPs can do this in a number of ways; the law specifically recommends either including mailers in user bills or sending an email.
The law does not require that ISPs sever access to the internet in order to show them ads for an ISP's own software, something CenturyLink executives appear to have come up with on their own. That's something the bill's author himself confirmed when asked by the impacted user on Twitter:
I’m sorry you are having problems. SB134 did not require that — and no other ISP has done that to comply with the law. They were only required to notify customers of options via email or with an invoice.
Users on Reddit indicate this wasn't isolated to just this user -- all Utah CenturyLink customers appear to be experiencing this unnecessary, heavy-handed nonsense. Now it's possible CenturyLink could argue it was just over-complying to adhere to the law, but since the law is pretty clear an email is ok, this argument doesn't hold up. More likely, CenturyLink executives either thought they'd use the law as a marketing opportunity, or wanted to bring attention to the dumb new law. Unfortunately that's not really accomplished by behaving stupidly yourself.
Of course this is the kind of ISP behavior our since-discarded net neutrality rules were designed specifically to prevent. And while a few days of press shame may drive Centurylink away from the policy if users are lucky, that's really no substitute for an attentive FCC that actually cares about keeping the internet free from idiotic monopoly ideas exactly like this one. The battle over net neutrality has always been about slippery slopes, and letting an ISP interrupt internet traffic to market its own products--and then lie about it--is slippery as hell.
A win for at least one resident -- and victim of shady forfeiture practices -- has been handed down by Utah's top court. Kyle Savely had $500,000 taken from him by Utah law enforcement during a traffic stop. No charges were filed and Savely was never arrested, but a dog told the Utah Highway Patrol it could search the vehicle and seize the cash, even though the search failed to produce any drugs. (h/t The Newspaper)
An early forfeiture reform initiative, voted into law by Utah residents in 2000, says the government must return forfeited property if no criminal charges are filed within 75 days. The Utah Highway Patrol apparently had no charges to file, but rather than return the money when Savely requested it back, it chose to hand it over to the DEA via equitable sharing. Equitable sharing with the feds allows state agencies to bypass more restrictive state laws and help themselves to 80% of whatever's seized.
The DEA pitched in, too, hoping for 20% of the seized cash, further demonstrating the perverse incentives of the federal forfeiture loophole. From the decision [PDF]:
On February 10, 2017, seventy-five days after UHP’s seizure, Mr. Savely filed a petition in state district court seeking the release of his property. In a hearing on February 21, 2017, the state district court ruled in favor of Mr. Savely, concluding that UHP was required by the Act to procure an order from a state district court that authorized UHP to release the seized cash to the DEA and, thus, that UHP had unlawfully transferred the funds. Additionally, the state district court concluded that UHP had failed to take one of the actions required by Utah Code section 24-4-104(1)(a) and therefore ordered UHP to return the funds to Mr. Savely.
UHP immediately stopped payment on the January 24, 2017 check sent to the DEA. In response, the DEA served UHP with a second federal seizure warrant on February 23, 2017, after which UHP requested that the state district court reconsider its initial ruling.
Savely challenged this move, claiming the state had jurisdiction over the seized cash and could not use equitable sharing to route around state law. The court agrees for the most part, but notes the initiative isn't the "model of clarity" and the government can present plausible arguments for federal jurisdiction over the cash, even with the lack of required charges at state level.
That being said, the court sides with Savely. It points to one clause of the law, along with its intent -- "to protect property owners" during forfeiture proceedings -- as evidence the state government (and its residents) were seeking to close the federal loophole that would have erased the protections it had enacted.
Importantly, the transfer provision expressly prohibits a district court from “authoriz[ing] the transfer of property to the federal government if the transfer would circumvent the protections of the Utah Constitution or of this chapter that would otherwise be available to the property owner.” UTAH CODE § 24-4-114(1)(d). This provision, along with the grant of in rem jurisdiction to the state district court over property held for forfeiture, ensures that the authority to seize and hold property for forfeiture under the Act is limited by the protections provided in the Act. This comports with the legislative intent and purpose of the Act.
The court concludes the state has jurisdiction over the seized cash, despite the DEA's belated involvement. As such, the cash must be returned to Savely because the state government failed to bring charges in 75 days.
A state district court has in rem jurisdiction over any property held for forfeiture under the Act. And property becomes property held for forfeiture, at the very least, when a seizing agency serves a notice of intent to seek forfeiture under the Act. Because Mr. Savely was provided with a notice of intent to seek forfeiture long before any federal seizure warrant was issued, we conclude that the state district court was the first to properly exercise in rem jurisdiction to the exclusion of any other court. Therefore, we reverse the state district court’s conclusion that it lacked in rem jurisdiction and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
"Consistent with this opinion" adds up this way: 1 seizure + 0 criminal charges = $500,000 returned to Savely. The intent of the state law is clear: protecting citizens whose property has been seized by the government. If the government can't find a reason to criminally charge the property's owner, the property has to be returned. Asking the feds to take over circumvents state protections.
Local law enforcement knows this. The law's effect was very noticeable. As Radley Balko notes in his post about Utah's back-and-forth forfeiture reform efforts, the elimination of federal forfeiture adoption hit local agencies right in the pocketbook.
The year before it passed in FY 2000, Utah received $226,524 from the federal Asset Forfeiture Fund (AFF). In FY 2002, that number plunged to $3,357. The very next year, it was $0.
Since then, things have been loosened up a bit by legislators, but the 2000 initiative still prevails 18 years later. Local cops can't use the federal government to launder forfeitures in exchange for a 20% cut. If the state seizes the property, it still has to bring criminal charges if it hopes to keep it. That's the way it should be. Fortunately, the unclear law is being interpreted by the state's highest court as a bulwark against government abuse. Closing the federal loophole and requiring criminal charges fulfills the intent of the law and makes it far less likely forfeiture programs will be abused.
Todd Weiler, a state Senator in Utah, has appeared on our pages before. When last we checked in with the good senator, he was quite oddly attempting to purge his notoriously prudish state from the dire threat of pornography. His plan was more than a bit heavy-handed in that it centered on mandating porn-filtering software on all smartphones under his stated theory that "A cell phone is basically a vending machine for pornography." This tragic misunderstanding by a sitting state senator of what a phone is and exactly what its primary functions are aside, government mandates that infringe on free and legal expression are kind of a no-no in these here secular United States. Even setting constitutional questions aside, attempts like these are immediately confronted by the obstreperous demands from the public for a definition of exactly what constitutes "pornography."
Well, for Senator Weiler, it appears we may have something of an answer. See, Weiler has more recently decided to try to revive Utah's long-defunct Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman position, or "porn czar", that Utah once filled but has left vacant for the better part of two decades.
For the past 14 years, Utah has made do without a "porn czar." The position—officially known as the "Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman"—has been vacant since 2003, though it was never officially eliminated. Now state Sen. Todd Weiler (R–Woods Cross) may revive it, even as the Utah attorney general suggests legislators strike it from the books. Weiler suggests that an obscenity ombudsman could focus on things like providing guidance to retailers. But the position also has the power to monitor and punish business owners for daring to display magazines that mention sex.
If all of that seems so broad a mandate that non-pornographic magazines might accidentally be caught up in the fray, you're wrong. Those innocent magazines aren't collateral damage at all, in fact, but rather the primary targets apparently of Weiler's ire.
Weiler's definition of porn is apparently broad enough to encompass mainstream women's magazines. Weiler "says he became convinced that the obscenity and pornography complaints office may be needed because of an ad campaign attacking Cosmopolitan magazine as illegal porn," The Salt Lake Tribune reports.
"I've received some complaints...that stores are selling Cosmo at eye level to a child," he told the Tribune. "There's no blinder rack on it, even though we have some blinder rack language in the state code."
Cosmo is and has been the butt of many a joke, but pornography it most certainly is not. And, jokes aside, the magazine is a source and platform for women to discuss and learn about both women's general and sexual health. Painting a porn target on a magazine such as that says everything about why these sorts of efforts must be defeated. No matter how uncomfortable it might make a Utah state senator for women to be real live human beings with body functions about which they need to learn, and no matter how distasteful that senator might find women discussing their health and sex lives in print, it should be plainly obvious that Cosmo is not remotely pornographic by any traditional understanding.
Utah and Idaho -- two states with more in common than a border -- have been enforcing First Amendment-trampling liquor laws preventing adults viewing certain films from enjoying adult beverages while doing so. I'm not talking about porn theaters, although the use of the word "adult" certainly leads the mind in that direction. No, I'm talking about regular, old-fashioned R-rated films no one really has much objection to adults viewing, even those who often object to adults viewing films rated X and up.
In a clear waste of public funds and law enforcement resources, officers are sneaking off to R-rated films at movie houses serving alcohol in hopes of catching them engaged in double-devilry. The movie houses have been fighting back, noting (in lawsuit form) the enforced laws are unconstitutional and inconsistently enforced. Theaters in Utah and Idaho could expect visits from undercover prudes for films like "50 Shades of Grey" and, apparently, "Deadpool."
Theaters in both states sued their respective state alcohol boards. Brewvies -- the theater suing the state of Utah -- has been handed a win. Elizabeth Nolan Brown reports on the federal court's decision in the delightfully-titled article "First Amendment Protects Cinema's Right to Show Unicorn Masturbation Scene While Serving Alcohol, Says Judge."
A Utah movie theater that dared to serve alcohol during a sexually explicit movie has won its legal battle against the state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (DABC).
"The State has violated the First Amendment by bringing an administrative enforcement action against a mainstream motion picture theater showing an R-rated movie," U.S. District Judge David Nuffer wrote for the court Thursday.
The decision [PDF] details a lot of the backstory, which includes state officials singling out Brewvies to score cheap wins for the state alcohol board. It also shows the state, after harassing Brewvies multiple times, suggesting it could preview all movies before showing (the court calls this "untenable"), alter the movies it shows to edit out "obscene" content (forbidden by contracts with motion picture studios), or just stop serving alcohol (lose a great deal of its profits).
It also shows an attorney at the state's attorney's office was the source of the sole complaint against Brewvies' showing of Deadpool -- the end result of which was even more harassment of the theater and, consequently, this lawsuit.
Between February 12, 2016, and March 24, 2016, Brewvies showed the movie Deadpool on one of its screens. A friend of Sheila Page, the attorney at the Attorney General’s Office who represents the DABC in enforcement proceedings, mentioned to Ms. Page that Brewvies was showing Deadpool. Once Ms. Page received the information from her friend, she sent an email to Defendant Margaret Hardie, who has been the DABC Compliance Officer assigned to Brewvies since 2014. In her email to Ms. Hardie, dated February 22, 2016, Ms. Page wrote: “I hate to bring this up, but it is just too blatant to ignore. Brewvies is showing Deadpool. The reviews describe explicit sex scenes and male and female frontal nudity. I know some people who have seen it, and they confirm that it is very raunchy amid the bloody violence. Perhaps you should refer it to [the State Bureau of Investigation].” That email, which was the only complaint received by the DABC about Brewvies showing Deadpool, triggered a referral to the State Bureau of Investigation.
Undercover officers were sent to "investigate." It would have been cheaper to keep them home. All three had already seen the movie, one of them multiple times. But their attendance generated an inadvertently-hilarious report on all the naughtiness contained in Deadpool... and gave Brown's article its unforgettable title.
Officer Bullock’s report describes certain scenes of the movie in terms of the prohibitions of Subsection 7. For instance, he states that the male and female characters were “shown numerous times engaging in acts or simulated acts of sexual intercourse” and that the male character “is shown on his back under bed sheets briefly engaged in masturbation or simulated masturbation using a stuffed unicorn toy.” He also describes a scene where the woman was wearing a leather bikini, with an imagined strap-on penis “that isn’t shown,” and “has her groin area pressed against the man’s posterior,” and she tells him to relax as he is sweating and grimacing. She then bends down and says, “Happy Women’s Rights Day” during what Officer Bullock calls “the sodomy or simulated sodomy scene.”
Officer Bullock also says that during one sex scene, the male character fondled the woman’s bare breasts and, finally, during the credits, Officer Bullock describes “a drawing of the main character (male) . . . ‘as he rides on the back of a unicorn, he rubs its horn briefly until the horn shoots out rainbows (simulating orgasm).”
Officer Bullock (along with Officer Cannon -- Utah's pro prudes seem to have the porniest of surnames…) presented their "findings" and the state went to work getting itself sued. In the end, it's the state hearing a judge whisper "It's First Amendment Day every day!" in its ear as it drives its point home.
The State offered only one governmental interest in support of Section 7’s restrictions: avoiding potential negative secondary effects from combining sexually explicit images with alcohol. Though this may be a compelling governmental interest, Section 7 is not the least restrictive means for accomplishing it.
Section 7 is overinclusive. A statute is overinclusive, and thus facially invalid, if there is a showing that the “law punishes a substantial amount of protected free speech, judged in relation to the statute’s plainly legitimate sweep.” If the statute is found to be overinclusive it will “invalidate all enforcement of that law, until and unless a limiting construction or partial invalidation so narrows it as to remove the seeming threat or deterrence to constitutionally protected expression.”
Section 7 is overinclusive because it captures mainstream content.
The court continues, pointing out how the state's alcohol regulations serve to unconstitutionally regulate speech, a definite forbidden (government) act.
Section 7 reaches “many films that are far removed from what is colloquially termed ‘hard core,’ or even ‘soft core,’ pornography.” The State admits this. It makes no contention that Deadpool is pornography. The State only argues that by analogy short portions of Deadpool are like the films typically found in an adult theater.
Unlike the statute in Baby Dolls Topless Saloons, no language limits Section 7’s application to those businesses that are characterized by regularly showing sexually explicit material, who make that their essential nature. The State has violated the First Amendment by bringing an administrative enforcement action against a mainstream motion picture theater showing an R-rated movie. That demonstrates the breadth of Section 7’s reach. Section 7’s restrictions impose unacceptable limitations on speech that the State admits should be accorded full First Amendment protection.
State booze regulators will have to go back to the drawing board. The statute needs to be severely narrowed before it can be considered constitutional. Undercover officers Bullock and Cannon will have to start watching R-rated movies on their own time, on their own dime, and presumably without a notebook in one hand and a hard on for free speech oppression in the other.
We've been following the evolutionary milestones for eSports for some time now. What was once an event class considered equal parts fringe and foreign has made impressive strides towards the mainstream in mere years. It started with a small university granting scholarships for eAthletes, progressed into the realm of coverage on sports broadcasting giant ESPN, and made yet another leap with an eSports section of the pie being carved out by the NBA.
Not all progress towards the mainstream needs to be of a new type, of course, and eSports reached another milestone harkening back to its first, with the announcement that the University of Utah, a member of the Pac-12 Conference, has started its own varsity eSports program.
The University of Utah has announced a varsity esports program, starting with League of Legends. Part of the Pac-12 Conference, Utah is the first Power Five school to sponsor this type of program, and it doesn’t plan on stopping at one game.
The team, sponsored by the EAE video game development program, hopes to expand to a total of four games, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Students from the current campus esports group Crimson Gaming, as well as high school recruits, will be part of the team. Players will receive partial scholarships, with an eventual goal of over 30 student-athletes and coaches to be on scholarship.
There will always be arguments about whether eSports are sports in the traditional sense, as well as how good a thing it is that colleges are getting in on this at all, but from a market and industry standpoint the progression is all about interest and advertising dollars. For a school like the University of Utah to invest in this sort of thing, it's likely it required the broadcasting success ESPN has had and the nod to that success that the NBA showed to push this along. And now that eSports has been formally introduced to one school in a Power Five conference, you should absolutely expect many of the other schools to follow suit.
The growth at this point may tend towards the exponential. Once the broadcasting and advertising revenues really start to kick in, eSports will be here in a very big way.
Like many bad laws, I'm sure this bill lying on the Utah governor's desk has its heart in the right place. But, like many bad laws, its head is completely up its ass. Eugene Volokh reports there's Yet Another Cyberbullying Bill on the threshold of passage. Like many that have come before it, it's full of constitutional issues and easily-abusable language.
Here’s Utah SB118, which passed both houses of the legislature unanimously and is awaiting the governor’s signature:
A person is guilty of electronic communication harassment and subject to prosecution in the jurisdiction where the communication originated or was received if with intent to intimidate, abuse, threaten, harass, frighten, or disrupt the electronic communications of another, the person: …
(e) electronically publishes, posts, or otherwise discloses personal identifying information of another person, in a public online site or forum, without that person’s permission.
This sounds like it's meant to deter doxing. But that's only if you don't read the section detailing "personal identifying information," which includes such innocuous items as "names" or "photos." In between everything else no one should be posting online without that person's permission (Social Security number, driver's license number, "electronic identification number," etc.) are bits of "personal information" that could criminalize a great number of social media posts.
So if someone posts something in Utah that is intended to insult a politician or engages in “excessive and unfounded criticism, humiliation, and denigration” of the politician, that would be a crime — it would be “electronically … post[ing]” “personal identifying information” (the target’s name) without his permission and with the intent to “abuse” (or perhaps “harass,” especially if one does it several times). After all, “personal identifying information” may include a person’s name.
Likewise if someone sharply condemns some government official, indicating the place where the official works (e.g., “Judge X in Courthouse Y is biased and incompetent”). Likewise if someone illustrates an article harshly critical of some official, businessperson, celebrity or anyone else with the person’s photograph.
To their credit, legislators at least trimmed back a bit of the broad language before passage, keeping it from criminalizing posts that merely "annoyed" or "offended" complainants. But what's left in it still carries huge potential for abuse. And it will be abused if allowed to pass. It won't protect the hundreds of people who've been targeted, harassed, and doxed, but it will give the powerful yet another tool to deploy to shut down critics. It won't be normal citizens availing themselves of this law first. It will be politicians, government officials, law enforcement officers -- basically anyone with more power than skin thickness.
Hopefully, it will be vetoed. But it received support from both sides of Utah's legislature, and Utah's government has been known to humor laughable/harmful legislation with alarming frequency. Should it receive the governor's signature, it will swiftly find itself on the receiving end of a temporary restraining order while the state's court determines its constitutionality. As written, it's unlikely to survive this scrutiny.
When we've talked in the past about government attempting to outright block pornography sites, those efforts have typically been aimed at sites hosting child pornography. Blocking child porn is a goal that's impossible to rebel against, though the methods for achieving it are another matter entirely. Too often, these attempts task ISPs and mobile operators with the job of keeping this material out of the public eye, which is equal parts burdensome, difficult to do, and rife with collateral damage. Other nations, on the other hand, have gone to some lengths to outright block pornography in general, such as in Pakistan for religious reasons, or in the UK for save-the-children reasons. If the attempts to block child porn resulted in some collateral damage, the attempts to outright censor porn from the internet resulted in a deluge of such collateral damage. For this reason, and because we have that pesky First Amendment in America, these kinds of efforts attempted by the states have run into the problem of being unconstitutional in the past.
But, as they say, if at first you don't succeed, just try it in an even more conservatively prudish state again. Which brings us to Utah, where state Senator Todd Weiler is leading the effort to purge his state of any access to porn on mobile devices.
Utah Senator Todd Weiler has proposed a bill to rid the state of porn by adding Internet filters and anti-porn software on all cell phones and requiring citizens to opt-in before viewing porn online. It's to save the children, he says. Weiler successfully pushed an anti-porn resolution through the state Senate earlier this year, declaring porn a "public health crisis." He now hopes to take his movement a step further by making it harder for Utah citizens to have access to digital porn.
"A cell phone is basically a vending machine for pornography," Weiler told TechCrunch, using the example of cigarettes sold in vending machines and easily accessed by children decades ago.
This is where we'd usually talk about how this sort of thing is almost certainly unconstitutional, not to mention how easily circumvented the attempt would be. And both of those remain true for this case. But I would like to instead focus on the lazy analogies Weiler chooses to make and let them serve as an example of how easily twisted people's opinions can become if you simply add "saving the children" to the goals of a particular piece of legislation.
Let's start with the quote above, although I promise you there is more from Senator Weiler that we'll discuss. He claims that a cell phone is basically a porno vending machine, like a cigarette vending machine. The only problem with his analogy is how wildly untrue it is. A cigarette vending machine has no other purpose than, you know, vending smokes. A cell phone, on the other hand, has a few other purposes. Like playing video games, for instance. Or serving as a music device. Or making god damned phone calls. A claim that a phone is simply a vending machine for porn shows either a tragic misunderstanding of basic technology or, more likely, is simply a veiled hate-bomb at the internet itself. Regardless, it is not upon government to decide how our property is used lawfully. And it isn't on government to parent children. We have people for that. They're called parents.
But Weiler wasn't done.
The senator says England was successful in blocking porn on the Internet. Prime Minister David Cameron pushed legislation through in 2013 requiring U.K. Internet service providers to give citizen's the option to filter out porn.
The good Senator must have a strange definition for success, because the UK law is easily circumvented, has managed to censor all kinds of educational and informational non-pornography sites and material, and was created by a lovely chap who was later arrested on charges of child pornography himself. If one wishes to draw upon the success of something in order to push his own interests, that something probably shouldn't be a complete dumpster fire.
Local Utah ISPs are already calling the plan unrealistic and comparing it to censorious governments that I am certain Senator Weiler would recoil from. Not that this matters, I guess, since Senator Weiler fantastically admits that he has no idea how this will all work under his law.
Weiler says he doesn't know how it would work but just wants to put the idea out there and that his main concern is kids looking at porn.
"The average age of first exposure to hard-core pornography for boys is eleven years old," he said. "I'm not talking about seeing a naked woman. I'm talking about three men gang-raping a woman and pulling her hair and spitting on her face. I don't think that's the type of sex ed we want our kids to have."
Look, I usually like to back up my rebuttals to these types of things with facts and figures, but I just don't have them in this case. That isn't going to stop me from declaring that the average first exposure to pornography is an eleven year old boy seeing exactly three men gang-raping a woman is a line of bullshit so deep that the Utah Senate certainly must provision knee-high boots to its membership for such a thing to even be suggested. And this should tell you everything you need to know about Senator Weiler's plans: he doesn't know how successful it's been elsewhere, he doesn't know how it works, and he's willing to sell it to the public on the basis of a scary lie.
Oh, and it's unconstitutional, so screw your law altogether.
In the US, you can be given a gun and a chance to catch bullets for your country at age 18. Three years after that, the US government will finally allow you to purchase your own alcohol. At 21, you can finally be the "adult" in "adult beverages." Except in some states. Some states tie booze purchases to morality. (I mean, even more so. It's subject everywhere to "sin taxes.")
As we covered here earlier, the state of Idaho says adults can drink booze and watch movies meant for mature audiences, but not always simultaneously. In Idaho, state police have been busting theaters for showing certain movies while serving alcohol, thanks to statutes that say it's illegal to serve up both booze and "simulated sexual acts."
In Idaho, theaters are trying to get the law ruled unconstitutional -- pointing out that the law is only selectively enforced (cops raid theaters showing "Fifty Shades of Gray" rather than "American Sniper," even though both contain depictions of sexual acts) and allows the state to use liquor statutes to regulate speech.
Over in Utah, the same problem exists. The theater targeted here -- Brewvies -- isn't taking the state to court. Yet. Instead, it's fighting to stay alive. It appears a bunch of cops went to see a movie they probably wanted to see anyway while on the clock and handed the theater an ultimatum.
Brewvies is facing a fine of up to $25,000 fine and could lose its liquor license after undercover officers attended a screening of Marvel's R-rated antihero film "Deadpool" in February.
The state says playing "Deadpool" while serving booze violates Utah law because the movie includes nudity and simulated sex, including a suggestive scene in the film's credits involving a cartoon unicorn. The obscenity law is generally used to regulate strip clubs, which are required to have dancers wear G-strings and pasties if the club serves liquor.
It also bans showing any film with sex acts or simulated sex acts, full-frontal nudity or the "caressing" of breasts or buttocks if at businesses with liquor licenses.
The theater is seeking $75,000 and Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds, has already pitched in.
The theater has since set up a gofundme page and has raised, at the time of writing, $17,352 out of its $75,000 goal. $5,000 of that came from Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds himself.
The underlying problem is the state's insistence on deciding what the right combination of booze and entertainment should be for a state full of adults who are legally allowed to do other things far more "adult" than having a beer while watching a movie that contains depictions of sexual activity. Why either activity is OK when enjoyed separately, but somehow a problem when combined, is something only the state pretends to comprehend. These are leftover laws meant to regulate sexually-oriented businesses like strip clubs and porn theaters, but they're being used to extract fees from theater owners who want to treat adults like adults. Like any other badly-written law, it's being enforced selectively with an eye on easy citations and excessive fines.
Utah Representative David E. Lifferth (R) has filed House Bill 225 which modifies the existing criminal code to include cyber crimes such as doxing, swatting and DoS (denial of service) attacks. According to the amendments, these crimes can now range anywhere from misdemeanors to second-degree felonies.
As is often the case when (relatively) new unpleasantness is greeted with new legislation, the initial move is an awkward attempt to bend the transgressions around existing laws, or vice versa. Lifferth's is no exception. As GamePolitics points out, only one of the new crimes is specifically referred to by its given name: DoS attacks. The other two can only be inferred by the wording, which is unfortunately broad.
Swatting becomes:
[making] a false report to an emergency response service, including a law enforcement dispatcher or a 911 emergency response service, or intentionally aids, abets, or causes a third party to make the false report, and the false report describes an ongoing emergency situation that as reported is causing or poses an imminent threat of causing serious bodily injury, serious physical injury, or death; and states that the emergency situation is occurring at a specified location.
It's the stab at doxing that fares the worst. In its present form, the wording would implicate a great deal of protected speech. This is the wording Lifferth would like to add to the "Electronic communication harassment" section.
electronically publishes, posts, or otherwise makes available personal identifying information in a public online site or forum.
Considering it's tied to "intent to annoy, alarm, intimidate, offend, abuse, threaten, harass, frighten, or disrupt the electronic communications of another," the amended statute could be read as making the publication of personal information by news outlets a criminal activity -- if the person whose information is exposed feels "offended" or "annoyed." Having your criminal activities detailed alongside personally identifiable information would certainly fall under these definitions, which could lead to the censorship (self- or otherwise) of police blotter postings, mugshot publication or identifying parties engaged in civil or criminal court proceedings.
It also would to make "outing" an anonymous commenter/forum member/etc. a criminal act, even if the amount of information exposed never reaches the level of what one would commonly consider to be "doxing." Would simply exposing the name behind the avatar be enough to trigger possible criminal charges?
While it's inevitable that lawmakers will have to tangle with these issues eventually, it's disheartening to see initial efforts being routinely delivered in terrible -- and usually unconstitutional -- shape. We expect our legislators to be better than this. After all, it's their job to craft laws and to do so with some semblance of skill and common sense. If nothing else, we expect them to learn something from previous failures to pass bad laws, whether theirs or someone else's.
