Canadian Cops Blow Off Drone Operation Laws, Crash Their Drone Into A Landing Airplane

from the laws-must-be-for-other-people-eh dept

Someone finally hit an airplane with a drone while flying it near an airport. And of all people, it was the cops. (h/t Justin England, via Hackaday)

The Transportation Safety Board is investigating after a York regional police drone collided with an airplane approaching Buttonville Airport in Markham last week.

Police confirmed to CityNews they had deployed a Remote Piloted Vehicle (RPV), known more commonly as a drone, as part of an investigation near the airport on August 10.

While it was being operated, the drone collided with a Cessna 172 operated by Canadian Flyers International that was attempting to land. There was an instructor and student pilot on board.

No injuries were reported and the plane was able to land without any further incidents.

This may sound like an open and transparent response by the York police about its irresponsible drone piloting, but this admission about the incident at the Toronto airport was prompted by the Canadian government's report on the incident, which was released eight days after the accident.

And the police haven't had much else to say about its errant drone, which apparently came only inches from killing everyone on board.

Dario Matrundola, who is one of the owners of the flight school Canadian Flyers, said had the drone struck a few inches further away, both occupants could’ve been killed.

“It would have been a tragedy, it would’ve been loss of life or injuries for sure. The pilots are very lucky they were able to land the plane and avoid injuries,” said Matrundola.

Here's Transport Canada's summary of the accident:

The instructor for a Canadian Flyers International Inc. Cessna 172N (C-GKWL) reported that they had just turned from base leg to final for Runway 15 at Toronto/Buttonville, ON (CYKZ) and were established and stable at 1100 ASL, or about 500 AGL, when they felt a jolt that pushed them back on their seat. They thought they had hit a large bird. They proceeded to land. There was no change in configuration or power since they were about to land. When exiting the aircraft, they were shocked to see a major dent on the left underside of the engine cowling. The airbox was also bent. A few hours later, a police detective confirmed a York Regional Police drone had struck their aircraft. The aircraft suffered major damage, including a propeller strike.

The report also points out NavCanada, which oversees the country's civil air navigation system, was not made aware of the drone flight nor the York Police's interest in sending a drone up into the airport's airspace to engage in an investigation.

If this had been a "civilian" drone, the public would have been informed immediately and regularly updated with progress on catching the perp. But this was a cop flight, so the cops acknowledged the flight when they could no longer deny it, and only because they were now the subject of an investigation by another government body.

It is indeed illegal to fly a drone within three nautical miles of an airport. This ban on operation can only be temporarily lifted with the explicit permission of NavCanada. Obviously this didn't happen. The only question now should be whether the York Police is an individual or a corporation.

Fines for individuals

• up to $1,000 for flying without a drone pilot certificate

• up to $1,000 for flying unregistered or unmarked drones

• up to $1,000 for flying where you are not allowed

• up to $3,000 for putting aircraft and people at risk

Fines for corporations

• up to $5,000 for flying without a drone pilot certificate

• up to $5,000 for flying unregistered or unmarked drones

• up to $5,000 for flying where you are not allowed

• up to $15,000 for putting aircraft and people at risk

And don't forget to stack the charges!

If you break more than one rule, you could receive multiple penalties.

Supposedly, everyone is just waiting for the TSB to conclude its investigation. And then there will be more waiting while the York Police engages in its own investigation. Possibly in the next few weeks or months, the news will have cycled often enough someone can fire off a press release late in the afternoon just ahead of the next convenient bank holiday.

Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe someone will get rung up for being completely irresponsible on top of actually violating federal law. But I doubt it. When a citizen does it, nothing can get the police to shut up about it. But when the police do it, no member of the public can get them to start talking, much less treat their own internal lawbreaking as seriously as they treat lawbreaking by outsiders.

Filed Under: airplanes, canada, drones, police, surveillance, york regional police

Copyright Scammers Getting More Sophisticated, Just As The US Is About To Make It Easier For Them

from the giving-more-power-to-the-scammers dept

Back in May, we wrote about the growing number of pure copyright scammers, using completely made up claims of copyright infringement as a form of a phishing technique. As I mentioned in a comment, we get multiple such messages every week here at Techdirt -- with almost identical comments being placed (or attempted at least -- since our spam filter seems to have caught all or most of them) on various Techdirt articles claiming infringement. They always came with a link to "the evidence," (which we never clicked of course).

These scams are different than standard copyright trolling, in which there may even be a kernel of truth in the initial copyright claim. Here, the scammers are just phishing for logins or other private data, and using the ridiculously overbroad power of copyright statutory damages to frighten people into coughing up the information. And, not surprisingly, the scam is evolving. Sophos recently reported that it's now seeing scammers sending the copyright threats with phone numbers to call, rather than phishing links.

In this case, the crooks are deliberately avoiding using a “call to action” link that leads to a fake login page or an unlikely domain name, which could easily be blocked by cybersecurity products or even by your browser.

They’ve copied a trick that tech support scammers have been using for years, and that some ransomware scammers have recently adopted, namely giving you a toll-free phone number to call for “help”.

Given that the call is free, and given that phoning up doesn’t directly expose your computer or your browser to fake websites or booby-trapped downloads…

…it feels as though dialling the number ought to be a low-risk option by means of which you can quickly find out whether this is a scam or not.

All we can say is, “Don’t do it!”

Never feel bullied, pressurised, lured, seduced or cajoled into contacting someone you don’t know on their say-so.

Remember that the crooks at the other end of the phone line in this case are almost certainly not in the US, even though the contact number is directed via a US tollfree service.

And these scammers take calls like this for a living, so they know every trick in the social engineering book.

The best that can happen if you do call back is that you will reveal nothing about yourself that you didn’t mean to; the worst is that you might just blurt out something you later wish you hadn’t.

Of course, what's really concerning about all this is that, very soon, these scammers will have another tool to use to intimidate people. At the end of this year, the Copyright Office is supposed to be launching the Copyright Claims Board, the key part of the CASE Act that Congress slipped into a "must pass" government funding bill at the end of last year.

Defenders of the CASE Act insisted that the system can't be abused, because it includes an "opt-out." We've already detailed why that's not going to work -- but it also ignores that not all abuse actually involves using the system in the first place. Instead, merely threatening people with taking them to the Copyright Claims Board will almost certainly be added to the playbook of these scammers. Since there will be news articles and coverage about the CCB and what it means for people, it will feel that much more "legitimate" to potential victims of these scammers.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, links, phishing, phone calls, scammers, scams

PSA: Universal Music Group Has Copyrighted The Moon. That is All.

from the universal-indeed dept

We have seen and covered a great many ridiculous copyright issues here at Techdirt. It is, after all, sort of our thing. Still, some attempts at enforcing copyrights are so ludicrous that they take your breath away. Now, granted, often times the most egregious of these stories arise out of the use of automated bot systems that troll all the places for copyright infringement and often times get it completely wrong. But that isn't so much an excuse for those situations as it is a spotlight on how brutally terrible the current iteration of copyright enforcement has become and how despicable it is that the wider copyright industries just shrug their shoulders at all the collateral damage they cause.

And then there's the moon. I know, I know, you're thinking, "The moon? Is Timothy having another stroke while writing a post?" First off, my personal health is none of your concern. And secondly, nope, because a video recording of the moon as seen from Greece, which included no audio, was blocked all over the place due to a copyright claim made by Universal Music Group.

British filmmaker Philip Bloom recently filmed the Moon during sunset Skiathos in Greece. After sharing it on social media, he was surprised when the video was blocked due to a claim by Universal Music Group, which claimed copyright to the generic shots of the Moon. Here’s the audio-less video that Bloom shared to his personal Facebook account while on his holiday:

Yup, that's it. So, how did this get flagged for copyright by UMG? Well, according to the block notification, UMG says the video contains "30 seconds of video owned by UMG". How? Well, who the hell knows. If I had to guess, I would speculate that there is some music video out there or something that also contains footage of the moon and that somehow has resulted in an automated system flagging this video of the moon as copyrighted content.

But, just so everyone is clear, UMG does not actually own footage of our nearest celestial neighbor. The person who filmed the footage, filmmaker Philip Bloom, is understandably not pleased.

“I uploaded some shots of the moon to Facebook late last year shot with the Canon R5 but it was a 2/3rds moon,” Bloom tells PetaPixel. “It looks like their AI is looking for full moon shots.”

Bloom then filed a dispute against the copyright infringement block, explaining to Facebook: “It’s a shot of the moon I personally filmed tonight!!! UMG doesn’t own the moon!”

But because, again, the way copyrights are enforced currently is a goddamned nightmare, the footage is still offline for those social media channels in all those countries while Bloom is going through the appeals process. And it's very much worth considering that this isn't an isolated case, either.

Bloom says that after he shared about what happened on social media, one of his followers shared that the exact same thing happened to them.

And so here we are. During the appeals process for Facebook at least, it appears that the assumed state of things is such that UMG owns the copyright on footage of the moon. If the fact that the setup of the DMCA and our enforcement of it allows this result makes any sense at all to you, then perhaps you'd be better off living on UMG's moon.

Filed Under: copyfraud, copyright, dmca, philip bloom, takedowns, the moon
Companies: facebook, umg, universal music group

Why Are We Letting School Administrators Use Qualified Immunity To Escape Accountablity For Violating Free Speech Rights?

from the when-time-isn't-a-factor,-I-guess-just-keep-fucking-up dept

Administrators of publicly-funded schools have a strange habit of misunderstanding the limits of their power and failing to respect the freedoms extended to their students by the Constitution. Naturally, this has resulted in lawsuits. Lots of them. And lots of losses for administrators, including one recent notable loss delivered by none other than the US Supreme Court.

But administrators aren't actually feeling these losses, for the most part. As government employees, they have access to qualified immunity, which gives them a chance to avoid being sued as long as they've violated rights in a non-clearly-established way. (Not only that, but if this shield somehow fails, it's taxpayers who foot the bill for courtroom losses.)

An op-ed for USA Today, written by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) members Greg Lukaniaoff and Adam Goldstein, asks why we're allowing administrators to avail themselves of this protection, given they're not asked to make speedy decisions under tremendous pressure.

Qualified immunity was invented to protect public employees from being unfairly sued for doing their job in good faith. It was intended to be applied in situations where a government employee such as a police officer has to make a split-second decision and couldn’t be expected to know they were violating the law when they acted. In a sense, qualified immunity is the name we’ve chosen for the grace we grant public officials for unintentionally wrong decisions that otherwise would merit discipline, termination or damages paid to victims of violations of constitutional rights.

But campus administrators are not generally in situations like our hypothetical officer. Most are, in fact, in positions not unlike a judge, with ample time, staff expertise and opportunity to reflect on the constitutional implications of their decisions. And yet, qualified immunity is consistently invoked to protect those decisions, no matter how transparently unconstitutional.

While it makes (limited) sense to give cops a little leeway when dealing with possibly deadly situations, it makes very little sense to pretend school administrators are in the same position. The circumstances in which they find themselves on the wrong side of the Constitution never deal with life-and-death situations. Nor are they under any pressure to make hasty decisions on matters involving students' rights. They have ample opportunity to examine the issue before them and consider the implications (including the Constitutional ones) of their proposals and decisions.

And yet, they ask for qualified immunity, aligning themselves with government employees who don't enjoy the same luxuries they do. The pleas for immunity work often enough that the threat of lawsuits is rarely a deterrent. The fact that the public foots the bill to defend public employees from accusations of rights violations makes deterrence an even more abstract idea, leading administrators to treat violations like victimless crimes. As long as they aren't personally harmed, there's been no foul.

Without effective deterrents in place, terrible, bad, dumb stuff happens.

Administrators rely on qualified immunity to avoid consequences when they engage in intentional, considered and collaborative efforts to violate civil liberties, such as when they punished a University of New Mexico medical school student for a pro-life Facebook post; investigated two University of South Carolina student groups for holding a pre-approved demonstration specifically about freedom of speech; and denied an Arkansas State University-Jonesboro student the right to table for her student group because administrators censored all speech outside a “free speech zone” covering 1% of the campus.

The op-ed doesn't argue qualified immunity is a good thing for cops -- people who have plenty of training and experience, but apparently very little know-how when it comes to respecting rights. They shouldn't have it either. But, at least in some cases, mistakes are made during fast-moving situations that have the potential to be deadly. Administrators have all the time in the world to research applicable case law before taking action that affects students' speech. But they so very rarely perform due diligence and, with qualified immunity in place, can be rewarded for their willful ignorance.

Strip it all away. But if we have to start somewhere, why not take qualified immunity away from people who have the time and resources to carefully consider their actions, but appear more willing to do whatever they want and roll the dice on an early escape from litigation?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, civil liberties, civil rights, free speech, qualified immunity, schools

The Externalization Of Content Moderation: Facebook Explores 'Election Commission'

from the maybe-that's-not-a-bad-thing dept

We've covered plenty of stuff about the Oversight Board that Facebook set up. While we recognize the cynicism towards it and still think it's somewhat early to judge, for many of us following the Board's decisions closely, it's been really kind of eye opening how much the Board has really pushed Facebook to make real changes. Of course, there are many real structural issues with the way the Oversight Board is set up -- but the initial results have been fascinating.

And that's why it's interesting to hear that the company is considering creating another oversight board like setup for dealing with the challenges of moderation and elections, according to a report in the NY Times.

Facebook has approached academics and policy experts about forming a commission to advise it on global election-related matters, said five people with knowledge of the discussions, a move that would allow the social network to shift some of its political decision-making to an advisory body.

The proposed commission could decide on matters such as the viability of political ads and what to do about election-related misinformation, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential. Facebook is expected to announce the commission this fall in preparation for the 2022 midterm elections, they said, though the effort is preliminary and could still fall apart.

I already know (and have seen) some people responding cynically, that this is, once again, Zuckerberg trying to avoid responsibility by fobbing off the tough choices on other people. And, honestly, given Zuckerberg's own past comments that might be exactly a key motivation for him.

But, here's the crazy thing: this could be good even if it's done for cynical, responsibility-avoidance reasons.

First, even if it's Facebook trying to dodge responsibility, um, since no one trusts Facebook at all, shouldn't we want the responsibility taken away from Facebook? Lots of companies that don't want to take responsibility just throw up their hands and do nothing. Here, at least, Facebook is looking to hand it off to others to actually do the hard work that the company itself doesn't want to do. And, even better, it wants to hand it off to a bunch of actual subject matter experts rather than a stressed out, overworked internal team that gets no respect in the first place and has to deal with all sorts of competing interests and incentives.

Second, a huge part of the problem that everyone is facing regarding the internet giants and their moderation choices is that there is zero transparency involved, and that's a big part of what makes things so uncomfortable for people. From the outside, the big decisions (especially on the content moderation policy side) are suddenly announced by the company, with no insight into who is making these decisions or how. Indeed, the few leaks from behind the blue curtain have not been pretty. Letting actual experts figure out better ways forward, where the public knows who they are, and (hopefully) gets to see some of the reasoning and thought process, might not only come up with better overall policies, but also create more transparency and understanding about the policymaking process itself.

So, yes, sure, this very well may be a cynical move. And maybe Zuckerberg gets to laugh at people for letting him off the hook, but frankly, I don't want Zuckerberg personally to be on the hook for these kinds of decisions. Hand it off to experts, make the process public, let us learn about it and see what happens, rather than trusting Mark or his band of former political operatives to make the decisions.

Filed Under: content moderation, election commission, elections, mark zuckerberg, responsibility, transparency
Companies: facebook, oversight board

Daily Deal: xFyro Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds

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

The xFyro Active Noise Cancelling Pro Earbuds utilize active noise canceling not just to block out ambient noise but optimize your listening experience by calibrating it based on a 4-mic system that listens to your surroundings and music. The ANC Pro also features a conversation mode that allows you to selectively amplify conversations and alarms so you can stay alert while you're immersed in your music. It has 7mm graphene-powered drivers, 100-hour battery life, and custom engineered ergonomic fit. It's on sale for $40.

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

Filed Under: daily deal

Google Report Shows 'Reverse Warrants' Are Swiftly Becoming Law Enforcement's Go-To Investigative Tool

from the Pokemon-Go,-but-for-cops dept

Thanks to its never-ending collection of location data, Google has become a prime target for law enforcement investigators. Using so-called "reverse warrants," investigators ask Google to turn over information for all devices in a geofenced area, with the hope of working their way backward from these data points to actual criminal suspects.

They're called "warrants" but they can't possibly be supported by probable cause. Treating everyone in the area of a suspected crime as a criminal suspect until things can be sorted out inverts this concept. And the government isn't always honest with courts about how many innocent people these "reverse warrants" can ensnare. Fortunately, we've seen some courts engage in more active reviews of these requests, which has led to a few notable rejections.

Google has released some details [PDF] on reverse warrants, which show they're an increasingly-popular option for law enforcement agencies. Zack Whittaker breaks down the data for TechCrunch.

The figures, published Thursday, reveal that Google has received thousands of geofence warrants each quarter since 2018, and at times accounted for about one-quarter of all U.S. warrants that Google receives. The data shows that the vast majority of geofence warrants are obtained by local and state authorities, with federal law enforcement accounting for just 4% of all geofence warrants served on the technology giant.

According to the data, Google received 982 geofence warrants in 2018, 8,396 in 2019 and 11,554 in 2020. But the figures only provide a small glimpse into the volume of warrants received and did not break down how often it pushes back on overly broad requests.

Well, every request could be considered "overly broad," seeing as the only probable cause used is the presumption that it's probable Google has the data investigators are looking to obtain. Crimes that occur in heavily trafficked areas or during daylight hours produce the biggest haystacks, increasing the odds of someone being wrongly arrested for literally being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They're also overly broad in the sense that they make the assumption that the criminal suspect would be carrying a device utilizing Google location services. And they tend to gloss over the fact that this location data isn't nearly as accurate as cell site location data, which means there's just as much of a chance for a false negative as there is for a false positive.

But, if this report is any indication, geofence warrants aren't going away. It's up to legislators to change that. And until legislators are willing to ban or restrict use of these warrants, it's up to the courts to thoroughly vet these requests that burden hundreds of people with a presumption of guilt until the thousands of data points gathered by a third party can exonerate them.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, location data, privacy, reverse warrants, surveillance
Companies: google

States Wouldn't Be Pushing Inconsistent Tech Laws If Congress Wasn't So Corrupt

from the cycle-of-stupid dept

You might recall after the telecom lobby convinced Congress to obliterate both privacy and net neutrality rules (despite both having bipartisan public support), there was a lot of industry whining about the various state replacement efforts that popped up. For example when California popped up with its own net neutrality rules, AT&T whined incessantly about how a "discordant network of state laws" would harm puppies and innovation. Ignored, of course, is that states were simply rushing to fill the consumer protection void created by federal apathy, itself a direct result of lobbying (aka corruption).

The same thing happened with broadband privacy guard rails. In 2015, the FCC proposed some fairly basic broadband privacy rules largely focused on making sure what was being collected and sold would be transparent to consumers. But the telecom lobby was easily able to lobby the GOP-controlled Congress to use the Congressional Review Act to kill those rules before they could even take effect. And again, giants like AT&T whined about the discordant landscape of imperfect state legislative efforts that popped up in its wake, hoping you'd ignore that they helped create the problem by attacking even the most basic federal protections.

The same thing of course is now playing out in the broader tech sector as well. For years, the tech, healthcare, marketing, insurance, and telecom sectors have worked to uniformly battle any meaningful federal privacy protections on the federal level. Not just the bad proposals. All of them. And, unsurprisingly, after years of this, states have started filling the void with their own solutions, many of which are less than perfect. This, as we saw with telecom, is causing all manner of consternation and constipation at major tech companies:

"There's little question state and local policy moves get the attention of both tech companies and Congress. David Edmonson, vice president for state policy and government relations at the trade group TechNet, said that the "impact of a 50-state patchwork" is among the group's highest concerns.

The group, which is known for its state-level advocacy work, said it worries about the compliance costs and impact of patchwork regulation on small businesses — although its membership is primarily midsize and large companies. It also fears the potential impact on consumers who may be confused about their rights or who remain completely uncovered because of where they live, according to Edmonson."

"A 50-state patchwork of state-based privacy laws creates more problems than it solves both for consumers and the digital economy," he said. "A single federal standard that applies to all 50 states is better for both consumers and businesses."

AT&T and Comcast are both members of Technet, it should be noted, and are both particularly guilty of this practice of lobbying against all federal consumer protections, then whining incessantly about the resulting escalation in state proposals. So basically, large companies work tirelessly to fight pretty much any meaningful federal consumer protections, then complain via their proxy groups about the end result, namely an inconsistent patchwork of discordant state consumer protection rules. At no point is there any awareness that their own actions may have contributed to the outcome they're now complaining about.

Yes, there's some valid business concerns about having to comply with a massive patchwork of often inconsistent legislative solutions. And there's certainly ample concerns with how many of these laws are written, as California's often problematic privacy law can attest. And yes, there's also plenty of valid concerns that legislating many of these problems is well beyond the core competency of many modern q-anon-era elected officials.

But what I've noticed missing from any of these conversations is how this is all largely a byproduct of Congressional corruption. Or, quite often, any mention that the very problem companies are complaining about (states passing discordant legislation) was the direct byproduct of their lobbying influence on federal lawmakers.

Congress is so broken and corrupt, even very popular proposals (see: net neutrality) can't survive for long. And that's particularly true of policy issues that see broad, cross-industry opposition like privacy. There's an army of industries, all with near unlimited budgets, laser-focused on not just opposing bad federal privacy rules, but any federal privacy rules at all. It's virtually impossible for activists, academics, and truly solution-focused, objective experts to combat efforts backed with those kinds of resources. Again, we can call that specific problem a lot of things, but it's predominately a byproduct of corruption.

Those with the power and resources to truly dictate U.S.tech policy very much like the current unaccountable adtech paradigm that involves over-collecting data, selling access to it to any nitwit with a nickel, failing repeatedly to secure it, then occasionally getting a piddly wrist slap from underfunded and understaffed U.S. regulators as a modest cost of doing business.

If you look at the steady drumbeat of hacking, location data, and other scandals, that approach isn't working out that well for the rest of us. And yet we still somehow can't seem to get even a basic federal privacy law on the books (one that mandates some very basic transparency requirements, or erects some very clear but meaningful penalties for companies that refuse to secure their networks and servers). The primary reason for that is clearly corruption, but again, that's often rarely mentioned in discourse.

At some point you'd think many of these large companies would realize that it would be better to concede on some issues and support basic, decent, federal solutions even if there's a revenue hit. But because they know Congress is ethically malleable, they know they don't have to do that.

So instead, as we saw in telecom, you'll have a company like AT&T lobby to kill meaningful federal and state consumer protections (privacy, net neutrality), then try to push their own shitty federal proposals written by their lawyers. Proposals so filled with intentional loopholes as to be useless beyond one core function: supplanting better, stronger, consensus-driven federal and state legislative solutions. But whether it's Facebook or AT&T, if they truly claim to want consistent federal guidelines, maybe, I don't know, stop throwing millions of dollars at lawmakers who then fight tooth and nail against absolutely every effort to do that?

Filed Under: broadband, congress, corruption, privacy, regulations, soft corruption, states

Doing It Right: Bethesda Likes 'Fallout' Mod So Much It Hires Some Of The Team That Made It

from the mod-squad dept

How gaming companies treat their modding communities that spring up around their games is something of a fault line in the industry. Game studios tend to be either pro-modding or not, with very little space in between. Nintendo, for instance, is notoriously anti-modding of its games. Bethesda, on the other hand, has traditionally been quite open-minded when it comes to the modding communities that have sprung up around its games. We've made the point for a long, long time that embracing modding communities is typically a massive boon to gaming companies and the restrictive attitude companies like Nintendo take makes little sense. Mods extend the shelf life and interest of games, driving attention and elongating the sales cycle and windows for those games. Giving up a little control for more sales seems to only make sense.

But, speaking of Bethesda, some developers go even further. For instance, there is a forthcoming Fallout mod made by an independent team that is entitled Fallout: London, and it looks amazing.

Now, I am very much a fan of this franchise, so I'm comfortable saying that if you can see a quality difference between what appears in this trailer and what has appeared in official trailers for the franchise, you're a much bigger stickler for details than I am. The mod changes more than just the location, though. It puts an emphasis on different types of gameplay to reflect a more British sensibility.

Fallout: London is an ambitious Fallout 4 modification that was officially revealed earlier this year. Taking place in the time between the first two games and set leagues away from the franchise’s traditional Americana-inspired stomping grounds, Fallout: London features a massive new map to explore, fresh-faced factions to join, and an added focus on melee weapons over firearms.

Now, the whole thing has been created on a volunteer basis and I haven't seen any request for money or monetary support on its website, so there is that. Still, little would stand in Bethesda's way if it wanted to shut this whole thing down. Plenty of gaming companies have done that sort of thing with fan-made projects in the past, citing copyright and/or trademark concerns. So, really, are we just waiting for the Bethesda hammer to drop on this project?

If so, it won't be the hammer you were expecting. Instead, Bethesda's folks seemed to be so impressed by the work on the mod that it is hiring some of its team directly.

Stephanie Zachariadis, head writer of the highly anticipated Fallout: London mod, is leaving the development team after being hired as an associate quest designer at Bethesda Game Studios, project lead Dean Carter announced recently.

“This is utterly fantastic news and something that all of the team here at Fallout: London stand behind and we wholeheartedly wish her the best on her endeavors,” Carter wrote in the mod’s official Discord server. “We hope that she will give them the same groundbreaking story and quests that she gave us.”

We often talk about how companies can be cool and human with their own fans, rather than restrictive assbags, and what a boon this can be to the company. It's a whole new level when a gaming company decides to take that same tact with its modding community. Bethesda obviously recognizes the value in its modding community and is now leveraging it in multiple ways.

1. The mod itself makes Fallout 4 continue to be relevant and perhaps even more relevant for the UK audience.
2. Allowing the work on the mod to come to fruition revealed a talent-hiring opportunity for Bethesda in the form of Zachariadis.
3. That hiring decision should only encourage the modding community to work on labors of love even harder, with the understanding that Bethesda is both cool with it and might even reward them for it down the road.
4. The public gets to see the company behave in a human and awesome way, a PR benefit.

I am failing to see a single downside for Bethesda to any of this, making me wonder yet again why other companies ever do it differently than this.

Filed Under: fallout, fallout london, modding, video games
Companies: bethesda

Massachusetts District Attorney Delays Forfeiture Proceedings For Years, Some Involving As Little As $10

from the bringing-down-crime-lords-at-$10-a-pop dept

We all know how lousy civil asset forfeiture is. In lieu of actual criminal charges, cops (and feds) just seize any property they can get their hands on, turning other people's money into pure profit for law enforcement agencies. Money they can often spend with little to no oversight.

It's a profitable venture. Cops steal more than actual crooks do, netting billions a year across the nation. The legal process for forfeiture asks very little from law enforcement -- rarely more than a mild hunch the seized funds are linked to criminal acts. The government has a very low bar to meet in most cases. For the people who've suddenly seen their money taken away, the bar is much higher.

In most cases, the government gets to decide when forfeiture proceedings begin. It also doesn't have to make much of an effort to notify forfeiture victims that proceedings have begun. That leads to a lot of default wins for government agencies. The amount of money it takes to hire a lawyer to challenge a forfeiture is often more costly than the funds seized, leading to even more government "wins." Every cheap win is treated like a victory in the war on crime, even when it's usually nothing more than the government making some random person poorer.

In the state of Massachusetts, one particular District Attorney is ensuring there's no due process when it comes to asset forfeiture. Thanks to severely lax laws, there's no lower limit for seizures, which means the DA's office is more than happy to help cops nickel-and-dime people to figurative death. There's also no legal obligation for the office to move forward with forfeitures in a timely fashion.

This has led to the DA's office waiting for as long as possible to initiate some proceedings. And, since the office takes home a percentage of every successful forfeiture, it does as little as possible to ensure those who've had their money seized are made aware that proceedings are imminent. Saurabah Datar and Shannon Dooling have done some digging to produce this enraging report for ProPublica. (h/t @pakanukeha)

In an investigation with ProPublica, WBUR also found that Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. regularly stockpiles seized money, including that of people not charged with a crime, for years, and sometimes decades.

In more than 500 instances between 2016 and 2019, WBUR found that funds had been in the custody of the DA’s office for a decade or more before officials had attempted to notify people and give them a chance to get their money back. One case dated back to 1990.

This is an obvious mockery of due process. And it has been the standard operating procedure for the Worcester County DA for more than 20 years. Not that anyone cares. Or could even be allowed to care. Nearly nonexistent reporting requirements means state and county oversight likely have no idea this is how the DA is handling forfeitures. Since there are no better rules on the books, there's nothing compelling DA Early to change how he handles his forfeiture business.

Operating in an accountability vacuum, the DA's office engages in bullshit like this:

Take, for instance, Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Twenty Eight Thousand Three Hundred Fifty Six Dollars Fifty Cents ($28,356.50) In United States Currency. At first glance, the sum seems to reflect proceeds from a substantial drug bust. But court documents actually list 109 separate names and seizures — including one as low as $11 — spanning nearly 20 years.

Among the names in this giant batch in 2018 was Jones-Bernier, whose $95 had been taken four years prior. He was listed in an ad the DA’s office ran in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, as having no known address. Jones-Bernier didn’t know his name had appeared there until he was contacted by WBUR. He said Early’s office could have sent a letter to his home address, which was on his driver’s license at the time of the arrest.

This is how you end up with default "victories" that ensure the DA's office scores some cash while doing nothing to serve the interests of the public. Nothing about this deters criminal activity. The DA's office isn't helping cops put bad people away and disrupt major criminal organizations. This is the work of a government-funded pickpocket.

WBUR’s analysis of Worcester County forfeitures from 2017 through 2019 found that more than half of the seizures in these cases were for less than $500. In one incident, Fitchburg police seized $10 from a man listed as homeless. In another, Sturbridge police took $10 from a 14-year-old boy.

Stealing is the DA's business. And business is good.

His office brought in nearly $4 million in forfeitures in just the latest four years, from fiscal 2017 through 2020, according to analyses by the state’s trial court.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, the DA continues to claim this is a worthwhile venture, rather than the petty theft it appears to be.

Early said he’s proud that his office has spent large sums of confiscated money on youth programs and drug prevention. “I love taking the drug dealers’ money. I love taking their lifeblood and putting it back into the community,” he said.

Taking $10 from a 14-year-old is giving back to the community? Did you at least throw the homeless person's $10 bill into the general fund to support shelters? Is your county more free of drugs since you've thrown your weight behind shaking down citizens for spare change?

All signs point to no. Here's the data: Worcester County is still one of the most dangerous counties in the nation. Lifting loose cash from random residents hasn't improved things at all. If there's any downward trend noticeable here, it's got nothing to do with the supposedly drug warring DA. It has to do with the general trend towards lower crime rates that has been ongoing for years all around the nation. Here's the county's crime rate per 100,000 people, sourced from the FBI's crime data.

And the cops in Worcester are just as lousy as the District Attorney.

Worcester taxpayers have paid more than $4 million since 2010 to settle almost 30 lawsuits against the police department, according to records gathered by the group Defund WPD.

[...]

The payouts across the 27 settlements range from as low as $8,000 up into the millions. There are also more than a dozen lawsuits against Worcester police that haven't been settled yet.

Seems like the $4 million forfeited by the DA's office over the last four years would have covered the PD's lawsuits for an entire decade. Maybe that's where those funds should go. But until legislators in Massachusetts get serious about reforming this obvious abuse of an ideal, government employees like DA Early will continue to treat residents like ATMs.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, district attorney, drug war, due process, joseph early, legalized theft, massachusetts