The Real Threat To US Supporters In Afghanistan May Be The US-Funded Biometric Database Compiled By Their Former Government

from the and-it-may-have-been-compromised-well-before-the-Taliban-took-over dept

American armed forces entered Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago, bringing with them weapons, vehicles, and a vast amount of war tech. After 20 years, we're finally out of Afghanistan, but much of what the US military brought to the country has been left behind.

Obviously, the best way to prevent this eventual outcome was no longer an option after October 7, 2001. Clean exits are impossible. The solution is to never enter. What was left behind to be used by the Afghanistan military (or simply because it was logistically impossible to remove) is now mostly in the hands of the Taliban.

As was reported earlier, devices used for the collection of biometric data are now possessed by the Taliban. Originally tasked with collecting data to be used to recognize and track insurgents and terrorists, the devices' purpose expanded to include friendly locals who worked with the US military to help it identify and hunt down insurgents and terrorists.

The devices themselves may be of limited value, at least in terms of containing data the Taliban can use to identify local allies of the now-departed US military. That's according to this new report from MIT Technology Review.

As the Taliban swept through Afghanistan in mid-August, declaring the end of two decades of war, reports quickly circulated that they had also captured US military biometric devices used to collect data such as iris scans, fingerprints, and facial images. Some feared that the machines, known as HIIDE, could be used to help identify Afghans who had supported coalition forces.

According to experts speaking to MIT Technology Review, however, these devices actually provide only limited access to biometric data, which is held remotely on secure servers.

Good news? Well, maybe if the Taliban's intel acquisition plans were limited to whatever it can recover from these biometric scanners. Unfortunately, a whole lot more information on Afghan residents who aided the US and/or fought the Taliban is contained in Afghan government databases, some of which were constructed with the US government's help. Those are almost certainly already in the Taliban's control.

MIT Technology Review spoke to two individuals familiar with one of these systems, a US-funded database known as APPS, the Afghan Personnel and Pay System. Used by both the Afghan Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defense to pay the national army and police, it is arguably the most sensitive system of its kind in the country, going into extreme levels of detail about security personnel and their extended networks.

A rough equivalent of the US government's Office of Personnel Management, the database was created to cut down on fraud by collecting verifiable info on Afghanistan military members, gradually reducing the number of paychecks issued to nonexistent soldiers. But the database contains far more information than the OPM's stash.

[I]t also contains details on the individuals’ military specialty and career trajectory, as well as sensitive relational data such as the names of their father, uncles, and grandfathers, as well as the names of the two tribal elders per recruit who served as guarantors for their enlistment.

The Tablian's possession of this information doesn't just threaten the lives of soldiers who fought against the Taliban during the war, but their extended families. A lot of this is tied to biometric markers that can't be altered (or at least not altered easily or painlessly) like fingerprints and retina scans. Adding the biometric scanners to access to government databases is a potent combination. While the biometric scanners may not allow the Taliban to connect to US-controlled servers containing sensitive info, they can be used to collect more biometric data, which the Taliban can then attempt to match to records contained in this comprehensive database.

If there's a silver lining, it's that this database is, like a lot of things created by huge bureaucracies, kind of lousy.

Ultimately, some experts say the fact that Afghan government databases were not very interoperable may actually be a saving grace if the Taliban do try to use the data. “I suspect that the APPS still doesn’t work that well, which is probably a good thing in light of recent events,” said Dan Grazier, a veteran who works at watchdog group the Project on Government Oversight, by email.

This, too, was an inevitability of the extended conflict. Governments and their militaries are extremely interested in both their allies and their enemies. Amassing vast amounts of data was always going to be the answer. But this is how everything ends when a war effort ends in a loss after 20 years. The bad guys get all the stuff the good guys left behind. And in this day and age, the most powerful tools are portable, electronic, and bursting with information that makes it so much easier to mop up what's left of the resistance.

Filed Under: afghanistan, biometrics, surveillance, taliban, us

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

The All-Access CompTIA A+ And Network Certification Prep Bundle has 12 courses designed to help you prepare for various certification exams. Courses cover CompTIA A+, PenTest+, Security+, Network+, and more. It's on sale for $45.

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Filed Under: daily deal

Where Texas' Social Media Law & Abortion Law Collide: Facebook Must Keep Up AND Take Down Info On Abortion

from the fucking-idiots dept

It's always astounding to me how little most policymakers consider how many of the policies they push for contradict one another. On Wednesday, the Texas Senate easily approved its version of HB20, the blatantly unconstitutional bill that tries to prevent social media websites from moderating content that Texas Republicans want kept up -- explicitly saying that Facebook must leave up vaccine misinformation, terrorist content, and Holocaust denialism. While the bill does include some language to suggest that some content can be moderated, it puts a ton of hurdles up to block that process. Indeed, as the bill makes clear, it does not want Facebook to moderate anything.

The legislature finds that:

(1) each person in this state has a fundamental interest in the free exchange of ideas and information, including the freedom of others to share and receive ideas and information;

(2) this state has a fundamental interest in protecting the free exchange of ideas and information in this state;

Of course, you may have also heard the other big of news out of Texas this week, which is that after the Supreme Court refused to block it, Texas' extreme anti-choice law has gone into effect, more or less banning all abortions. But the law goes even further than that. It also says you cannot "aid and abet" someone getting an abortion, and "aiding and abetting" is defined quite broadly under the law:

Any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state, may bring a civil action against any person who:

knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this subchapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter

This is bizarre on multiple levels. First, it's allowing anyone to sue anyone else, claiming that they "aided and abetted" an illegal abortion if they merely "induced" someone to get an abortion.

So... let's say that someone posted to a Facebook group, telling people how to get an abortion. Under Texas's social media law -- remember "each person in this state has a fundamental interest in the free exchange of ideas and information" -- Facebook is expected to keep that information up. However, under Texas' anti-choice law -- remember, anyone can sue anyone for "inducing" an abortion -- Facebook theoretically faces liability for leaving that information up.

So who wins out? Well, it should be that both bills are found to be unconstitutional, so it doesn't matter. But we'll see whether or not the courts recognize that. Section 230 should also protect Facebook here, since it pre-empts any state law that tries to make the company liable for user posts, which in theory the abortion law does. The 1st Amendment should also backstop both of these, noting that (1) Texas' social media law clearly violates Facebook's 1st Amendment rights, and (2) the broad language saying anyone can file civil suit against anyone for somehow convincing someone to get an abortion also pretty clearly violates the 1st Amendment. Update: As has been pointed out, the abortion law does say, explicitly, that the aiding and abetting rule should not apply to 1st Amendment protected speech, so there is something of an escape hatch here, and the state can say that it never intended the law to target speech as "aiding and abetting." I don't see that as making much of a difference in the long run because (1) the 1st Amendment already protects such speech so you don't need a law to say that and (2) it's unlikely to stop people from suing over speech that they claim is aiding and abetting...

But, until the courts actually rule on this, we don't just have a mess, we have a contradictory mess thanks to a Texas legislature (and governor) that is so focused on waging a pointless culture war against "the libs" that they don't even realize how their own bills conflict with one another.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, abortion, aiding and abetting, content moderation, free speech, section 230, texas
Companies: facebook

GOP Hollowly Threatens To 'Shut Down' Telecom Companies For Cooperating With Legal January 6 Inquiries

from the good-luck-with-that dept

If you've spent any real time digging into Trump GOP era tech policies, you've probably noticed they're a jumbled mess of contradictions and inconsistencies, cloaked in a lot of performative propaganda. The same party that thought net neutrality (the FCC holding telecom giants vaguely accountable) was a government hellscape, pivoted on a dime to try and force the FCC into regulating social media companies. The same GOP that whines incessantly about "big tech" via performative populism, routinely runs for the hills any time somebody actually tries to rein in corporate power or implement genuine antitrust reform.

Of course in the mainstream press (in this context usually The New York Times, Axios, The Washington Post, Politico, and friends), the inconsistency of the GOP's policy platforms is never really explained. It's part of the "view from nowhere" disease that has infected mainstream U.S. political coverage, where everything is portrayed in a "he said, she said" frame of perfect symmetry, leaving your readers completely uncertain where the truth actually lies. It's driven by a fear of upsetting sources and advertisers, and results in a media that simply refuses to call a duck a duck (or bullshit bullshit) when urgently required.

That bubbled up again this week as the GOP bristled at the fact the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob has been asking telecom and tech companies to retain relevant communications between lawmakers and organizers. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Signal, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile have all received requests. As Mike has noted there are concerns that the requests are worryingly broad, including troves of internal communications at the companies' themselves.

At the same time, many of the requests (especially those looking at the text message and call logs from telecom companies) are perfectly legitimate, and if investigators can find text messages showing coordination between the violent Capitol-assaulting mob, its organizers, and the GOP, that kind of seems arguably important in terms of a functioning democracy and avoiding even worse scenarios down the road. After all, guys like Jim Jordan are nervously babbling in interviews like this one for a reason:

Several GOP members seem particularly nervous about text messages and phone logs, and are now taking to television threatening to "shut down" telecom companies if they cooperate with the probe in any way whatsoever:

This is, of course, utterly nonsensical, zero calorie, idiot theater. Congress as a whole worships the ground companies like AT&T walk on, and the GOP in particular has never stood up to AT&T on any issue of substance. Ever. Why? Because AT&T's extremely politically powerful (thanks in large part to its cozy relationship with the NSA), and a major GOP campaign contributor. There's legitimately a 0.0% chance that AT&T or Verizon see any meaningful penalties for cooperating with legal requests, especially from a party with a thirty year track record of mindlessly kissing telecom's ass.

The GOP for years has opposed privacy protections and embraced expansive government surveillance. And its entire brand has been built on the worship of purportedly "free markets" without the imposition of government intervention. And the entire Trump GOP has been to take "political norms" in the alleyway and beat the ever loving piss out of them, repeatedly. Yet this morning we saw the Rupert Murdoch editorial pages pretending to care about both telecom privacy and (gasp!) "political norms":

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also took to Twitter to threaten to shut down private companies for complying with legal information requests (you know, "free markets!" and all that):

Nobody's violating federal law. It's a valid inquiry into an extremely dangerous, precedent setting event. And "federal law" on privacy is weak in the first place largely courtesy of forty years of DC policy choices. There's just layers of gibberish here, particularly the pretense that the GOP gives two flying shits about rampant government surveillance or "political norms." If Congress is doing something illegal that violates privacy, anyone can sue to stop them. Instead, the GOP is having yet another toddler moment, engaging in hollow bullying to shut down private businesses they know they'll never actually follow through on.

As Ken White notes, one could argue that this kind of behavior, while likely not prosecutable, qualifies as corruption and obstruction of justice:

Granted, this most likely ends (like the mythical GOP support for "antitrust reform") with zero penalties for telecom companies, because there's nothing to penalize. Still, letting a bunch of mindlessly ambitious authoritarians try to overthrow elections with zero meaningful penalty sets a clearly dangerous precedent. As does threatening companies for complying with perfectly valid legal requests.

Shutting down AT&T is a non-starter, so what is the GOP going to do to "punish" telecom companies? Re-establish the FCC's ability to hold telecom monopolies accountable? Stop blocking efforts to impose broadband privacy rules? Finally start holding them accountable for fraud? Rein in their overly enthusiastic participation in our domestic surveillance program? Force AT&T and Verizon to close up shop and go home? Give me a break.

It's just empty-headed bullying by GOP lawmakers clearly nervous about what these requests could reveal about one of the dumbest yet most dangerous days in recent U.S. history. And yet courtesy of DC beltway press' "he said, she said" framing of the situation, a reader walks away from most terrible coverage of this dispute with the impression that the GOP's position here could be perfectly reasonable. ("Bob the authoritarian says a valid investigation into him is illegal, but his colleague Jane says that's not true. Who's right? Who knows?" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

U.S. press outlets need to dramatically improve their ability to call out bullshit or this stuff is all going to get significantly worse. Bad faith bullshit only works when you refuse to identify it as clearly bad faith bullshit. Corruption thrives when your press is too timid to clearly call it corruption when required. And by and large the nation's biggest media outlets continue to fail painfully at the task of highlighting the GOP's hard right authoritarian swerve, or the bullshit faux-populist propaganda they're using to make it happen.

Filed Under: due process, empty threats, evidence, gop, investigation, january 6th, jawboning, kevin mccarthy, marjorie taylor greene, obstruction of justice, subpoena, telcos
Companies: at&t, verizon

Nintendo Shuts Down Another 'Smash' Tournament Due To Mod Use, With No Piracy As A Concern

from the nintendon't dept

Late last year, we discussed a predictably odd move by Nintendo to shut down a Smash Bros. tournament called The Big House over its use of a mod called "slippi." Slippi essentially unbreaks the 20 year old game when it comes to competitive online play. Otherwise, the whole thing basically doesn't work from a online play perspective. And, with all kinds of events going virtual, The Big House attempted to run its tournament virtually, meaning that participants would have to use a digitized version of the game they owned, along with the mod, in order to participate. After it nixed the tourney, Nintendo put out the following statement:

Unfortunately, the upcoming Big House tournament announced plans to host an online tournament for Super Smash Bros. Melee that requires use of illegally copied versions of the game in conjunction with a mod called ‘Slippi’ during their online event. Nintendo therefore contacted the tournament organizers to ask them to stop. They refused, leaving Nintendo no choice but to step in to protect its intellectual property and brands. Nintendo cannot condone or allow piracy of its intellectual property.

Many of us rolled our eyes at the statement. After all, digitizing your own owned game in order to participate in the tournament is not "piracy." The game was bought and paid for by participants. The use of slippi doesn't really factor into the equation and, yet, its use seemed to be the deciding factor in the shut down. In other words, the target seemed to be the mod and not piracy.

Well, that appears to be confirmed now that Nintendo has shut down a tournament called "Riptide", hosted at a waterpark in Ohio in-person, due to its use of a mod called "Project+".

The inaugural Riptide Smash Bros. event was supposed to happen last year but was postponed due to the pandemic. But 2021 has introduced another hitch. The three-day fighting game extravaganza at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio will now no longer feature Project+, a variant of the popular Project M mod for Smash Bros. Brawl that makes the 2008 Wii game fit for high-level competitive play.

“Riptide was contacted recently by a Nintendo of America, Inc. representative regarding our Project+ events,” the event’s organizers wrote on Twitter last Friday. “As a result of that conversation, there will be no Project+ tournaments or setups at Riptide.”

Note that the event was scheduled to go off on September 10th. Participants are getting refunds for their entry fees, given the last minute cancellation, but not for any money spent on transportation or accommodations needed to attend the event. Flights, hotels, etc. are all going unrefunded. And, understandably, people are pissed.

“Super cool of @NintendoAmerica to cancel an event that’s been planned for months just 2 weeks before it happens!” wrote Melee pro JoSniffy on Twitter. “It’s so considerate to all of the people that bought plane tickets and hotels months ago, which are now useless. Keep up the great work Nintendo!”

Notably, there are zero piracy concerns at play here. The event and mod require disc copies of the game to play. The entire competition was to be conducted in-person, with no online play. Nintendo has made no public statement at the time of this writing as to why the tourney was cancelled, leaving it completely open to confusion and speculation.

“This is unforgivable at this point,” wrote past Melee champion Hungrybox on Twitter. “There’s no legitimate reason for @Nintendo to do this that doesn’t include a complete disconnect with the current culture of their consumers. Insanity.”

And so the rest of the Riptide event will go on as scheduled, but this one tournament is shut down, leaving participants that paid for accommodations in the lurch. Why?

Control, obviously. With no piracy to be concerned about, all we're left with is the use of the Project+ mod. Nintendo quite famously hates modding communities and takes every opportunity to retain strict control over how its games are played. Why it wants to go to war with its own fans and customers in this way, meanwhile, has been an open question for years.

Filed Under: mods, smash bros, tournament, video games
Companies: nintendo

Ninth Circuit: Sorry, But We Have No Way To Hold Border Patrol Agents Accountable For Killing People In Mexico

from the only-exact-replicas-of-Bivens-are-accepted dept

Thanks to the Supreme Court, it's pretty much legal for US law enforcement officers to kill people in Mexico. I know, that doesn't seem right but that's the way it plays out. So long as only bullets cross the border, the extraterritorial, extrajudicial killings are incapable of being remedied by a civil rights lawsuit.

Early last year, the Supreme Court upheld a Fifth Circuit decision refusing to extend Bivens to cover the killing of Mexican teen Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca by US Border Patrol agent Jesus Mesa, Jr. According to the agent, a group of teens were running back and forth across a culvert to touch the border fence. He also claimed they were "pelting" him "with rocks." (Cell phone footage of the killing contradicted Mesa's rock-throwing claim.) Apparently, this conflict could not be resolved without deadly force. Mesa shot across the border, killing the fifteen-year-old.

After two passes at the civil rights suit at the appellate level, it moved forward to the Supreme Court, which ruled that Bivens does not cover cross-border shootings. Without a cause of action, there can be no lawsuit. Mesa escaped even a limited form of justice and the Supreme Court's recommendation was basically to avoid being shot on the wrong side of the border. The nation's top court further refused to insert itself in this sort of international matter, recommending only that both governments (US/Mexico) try to work something out that will possibly allow people to seek justice for extraterritorial, extrajudicial killings.

This decision has now paid off for another perpetrator of an extrajudicial, extraterritorial killing. In 2011, US Border Patrol agent Dorian Diaz shot and killed Jose Alfredo Yanez, claiming Yanez tried to hit him with a nail-studded table leg through a hole in the border fence before mounting the fence to throw rocks at him. Rather than retreat beyond rock-throwing distance, Diaz shot Yanez, who landed literally across the border line.

If he had landed wholly in the United States, his survivors might have had a case. But the US government definitely didn't want his survivors to sue successfully, so it hired a surveyor to map out Yanez's dead body to determine how much of it was laying in which country. The final call? Mostly in Mexico. (You can see that surveyor's photo here. [Content Warning: blood/death])

And the Ninth Circuit's final call [PDF]? This killing isn't enough like the original Bivens case to be pursued as a Bivens case. Because killing people at the border isn't like a warrantless search of a house, the Border Patrol agent will be allowed to walk away from this lawsuit.

Here we confront a new Bivens context because the claims against Fisher and Diaz “differ[] in a meaningful way” from prior Bivens cases. The most analogous Supreme Court case—and the only one to approve a Bivens remedy for an excessive force claim—is Bivens itself.4 There, the plaintiff alleged that federal narcotics agents violated his Fourth Amendment rights by arresting him, handcuffing him in his home, and searching his home without probable cause or a search warrant. Bivens, 403 U.S. at 389–90. This case, by contrast, involves a fatal shooting, at the border, by a federal agent, of a Mexican national who crossed into the United States. The shooting allegedly occurred pursuant to the “Rocking Policy,” an executive policy authorizing deadly force in response to rock throwing. Though there are similarities between this case and Bivens, the differences suffice to satisfy the Court’s permissive test for what makes a context “new.”

Once again, the message being sent by the courts to foreign citizens is: try not to get killed by a federal agent. Our hands are tied, even though we did most of the knot-tying ourselves.

This case is a paradigmatic example of congressional parameters and Supreme Court precedent defining the scope of relief. The Alien Tort Statute does not reach the challenged conduct and the request for relief under the Federal Tort Claims Act came too late. And in accord with Abbasi and Hernandez, we conclude that a special factor precludes relief under Bivens.

The Supreme Court's decision also means another case handled by the Ninth Circuit involving the killing of a Mexican citizen by a US federal agent has also been dismissed. The Appeals Court originally stripped immunity from Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz, who fired 16 bullets through a fence at 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez. Ten of those bullets hit Rodriguez, killing him. Again, the excuse for the shooting was rock-throwing. That case is now terminated, with the Ninth Circuit dismissing it with prejudice in early July in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Hernandez.

It's up to Congress to do something about this. It's highly unlikely the Supreme Court will revisit this issue anytime soon. Until then, it's open season on Mexican residents, provided they do all of their dying in their own country.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, bivens, cbp, cross border killing, jesus mesa, mexico, sergio adrian hernandez guereca, supreme court

Hacker Taunts T-Mobile, Calls Its Security 'Awful'

from the fool-me-once dept

It's historically always been true that however bad a hack scandal is when initially announced, you can be pretty well assured that it's significantly worse than was actually reported. That's certainly been true of the recent T-Mobile hack, which exposed the personal details (including social security numbers) of more than 53 million T-Mobile customers (and counting). It's the fifth time the company has been involved in a hack or leak in just the last few years, forcing the company's new(ish) CEO Mike Sievert to issue yet another apology for the company's failures last Friday:

The extra apology didn't come unprompted. It came after the hacker involved in the data breach conducted an interview with the Wall Street Journal (paywalled, here's an open alternative) in which he explained T-Mobile's overall consumer privacy and security protections as "awful":

Binns gained access to the servers after discovering an unprotected router by scanning T-Mobile's internet address for weak spots, The Journal reported. Over 53 million people had personal information compromised in the hack such as names, addresses, dates of births, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and driver's license information."

In short he didn't so much as "hack" T-Mobile as he walked straight through an open door. Customers say they didn't know about the breach until the media did, prompting them to wonder why, if privacy and security is such a priority for a company like T-Mobile, they had to learn about the incident from somebody else:

"It just frustrates me, honestly," Richards said. "If our data is a priority for you guys to keep safe, how come I haven't gotten a notification or anything like that?"

Of course T-Mobile, like countless other American companies, isn't incentivized to actually secure user data because we don't have a meaningful privacy law for the internet-era. In most cases, the most companies like this see are a week of bad headlines and a few regulatory wrist slaps -- assuming U.S. regulators have the time or resources to pursue any kind of meaningful investigation at all. Without meaningful oversight and penalties the impact on consumers is often little more than an afterthought, and the most they get is another round of "free credit reporting" -- something they've already obtained from the last seven times their personal information wasn't properly secured.

Then of course there's the relentless "growth for growth's sake" mindset in telecom and other sectors that results in a near-mindless obsession with consolidation (often at the cost of anything else). T-Mobile has spent much of the last five years kissing Donald Trump's ass to gain regulatory approval for its job and competition eroding merger with Sprint. How much of the time spent pursuing their heavily criticized megadeal (and the follow up network integration) could have gone toward actually securing the company's servers, routers, and overall network?

Filed Under: data breach, hackers, leak, mike sievert, security
Companies: t-mobile

eBay's FOSTA-Inspired Ban On 'Adult Content' Is Erasing LGBTQ History

from the it's-not-just-onlyfans dept

There was plenty of attention paid OnlyFans decision recently to ban "sexually explicit" content -- a policy the company suspended following an outcry. However, more and more people are noticing that the same kind of thing is happening across the internet due to FOSTA.

The New Yorker has a very interesting article describing how eBay recently banned almost all adult content on its website, and one of the consequences is that important historical LGBTQ content is disappearing. Yet again, this appears to be one of the very much intended consequences of FOSTA. You may recall that one of the major backers of FOSTA were pretty explicit that they saw it as part of their plan to stop all pornography from existing.

And, it's working:

Recently, eBay has shifted company policy in ways that will make further acquisitions of erotica difficult. In May, the platform banned the sale of “sexually oriented materials”—including magazines, movies, and video games—and closed its “Adults Only” category to new listings in the United States. There are a few explicit exemptions, including Playboy; Penthouse; the gay art zine Butt; the satirical, women-run erotica magazine On Our Backs; and something called Fantastic Men, which appears to be a misspelling of the PG-rated men’s style magazine Fantastic Man. “Nude art listings that do not contain sexually suggestive poses or sexual acts are allowed,” the policy states. Materials falling afoul of such distinctions—which could presumably include anything from reproductions of Michelangelo’s horned-up “The Expulsion from Paradise” to back copies of Black Inches—are, apparently, now beyond the pale.

The ban appears to be related to the House’s Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Senate’s Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act, known together as FOSTA-SESTA, an effort by victim’s-rights advocates and right-wing activists to crack down on sex work. One feature of the legislative package was to make Web sites liable for hosted content that might “promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person.” After Donald Trump signed FOSTA-SESTA into law, in 2018, Craigslist shut down its personals listings, Tumblr banned sexual content, Facebook prohibited the formation of groups organized around sexual encounters, and Instagram ramped up its policing of user content, especially that which includes any hint of human nudity. Also of possible relevance: eBay recently began using the Dutch fintech company Adyen for electronic payment services. Like many payment-processing companies, Adyen refuses to participate in the sale of adult materials. Similar concerns by payout providers were reportedly at the center of the recent decision by OnlyFans, the content subscription platform, to ban sexual content—a move they reversed after considerable outcry led by the sex workers who, in large part, helped the company build a valuation of some one billion dollars. In a written statement to me about the change in policy at eBay, a spokesperson said, “eBay is committed to maintaining a safe, trusted and inclusive marketplace for our community of buyers and sellers and we are continually reevaluating product categories allowed on the platform.”

Congrats to Amy Schumer, Tony Shalhoub, Seth Meyers and Josh Charles for the success in your "advocacy" for FOSTA.

As the New Yorker notes, the impact here is pretty significant. Researchers, archivists, historians, and museums are now all missing out.

Drew Sawyer, a curator at the Brooklyn Museum, said that he has “often turned to eBay for printed matter, magazines, zines, and photographical reproductions” when preparing exhibitions. “Even if—if—they’re archived in libraries, they’re often easier to buy on eBay from logistical and registrarial perspectives. And also cost.” For an upcoming retrospective, Sawyer won a copy of the photographer Jimmy DeSana’s self-published 1979 monograph, “Submission: Selected Photographs.” It’s one of only a hundred or so copies ever made, and a crucial document of a moment when queer sexuality and conceptual art intermingled. “DeSana is an artist whose work would fall under this new policy,” Sawyer said.

And it's especially important regarding important LGBTQ historical materials, since institutions, like libraries, didn't much care about that content in the past, meaning they don't have much of it.

In researching his book “Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and Contemporary Art,” Andy Campbell, an associate professor of critical studies at the Roski School of Art and Design, used both eBay and the Johnson/Carter Library, in addition to other archives around the country. “Bound Together” argues that queer archives are particularly precarious, as they often lack institutional support structures and their content is at odds with community guidelines. Yet, by making queer culture accessible, they also increase the likelihood of that more positive erasure: assimilation. The same kind of harness that once strained across a hairy chest in Tony DeBlase’s DungeonMaster magazine ends up, some four decades later, on Taylor Swift in a paparazzi shot or Timothée Chalamet on the red carpet. Campbell can still trace those historical lines of sex, style, and commerce without eBay, but it’s more difficult. “When looking at an issue of the leather magazine Drummer, I think about all the coordinated efforts of so many writers, artists, readers, and editors to represent, month after month, their experiences in this community,” he told me, over e-mail. “With DungeonMaster, which was a near-solo labor of love for DeBlase, I think about the radical abilities of one extremely-driven person to educate and titillate his community. That either exists is a miracle.” When it comes to finding them, “It’s a bummer that eBay won’t be that platform any longer.”

There's a lot more in that New Yorker piece, but the summary is that this important bit of history is being stamped out thanks to a bunch of prudes and "well meaning" supporters of FOSTA who were sold a bill of goods that Section 230 was evil.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, archives, culture, fosta, free speech, history, lgbtq, section 230, sex
Companies: ebay, onlyfans

Daily Deal: The 2021 Complete Video Production Super Bundle

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

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Filed Under: daily deal