Daily Deal: ScaffoldHub Developer Plan Subscription

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

ScaffoldHub is a full-stack JavaScript/typescript web application generator directed for JavaScript/typescript developers. It lets you create a project or app with the modeling tool and preview it online. The "download the source code" means that you can download and use the source code, subject to the ScaffoldHub license. ScaffoldHub also comes with API documentation, authentication, security, audit logs, forms, lists, filters, and many other features. An unlimited subscription is on sale for $110.

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

NY Legislators Offer Up Bill That Would Allow Cops To Sue People For Not Doing Enough Bootlicking

from the when-i-think-about-[cops],-i-touch-myself-...-i-touch-myself dept

I'm not sure what's happening in the New York legislature, but a whole lot of NY politicians appear to believe law enforcement officers -- some of the most powerful public servants in the nation -- are some ultra-rare species of easily frightened lagomorphs, incapable of performing their jobs without being protected from the people they serve.

Last week, US Congresswoman Claudia Tenney served up a bill that would codify qualified immunity for law enforcement, claiming this was necessary because people whose rights have been trampled are too litigious and cops are dying at an alarming rate. Ignored were the uncomfortable facts that qualified immunity is an enabler of the bad apples who spoil the cop bunch and cops are dying of communicable viruses, rather than the guns and bullets of bad guys.

Following in the footsteps of Tenney's bad bill and an unseemly amount of so-called "Blue Lives Matter" laws, comes this terrible legislative pitch from a handful of Nassau County (NY) lawmakers. Having utterly failed to read the room, these legislators think the time is right to convert cops (and other first responders) into a protected class. (via Adam Steinbaugh)

Here's the bill's [PDF] pitch in all-caps form:

A LOCAL LAW TO AMEND THE NASSAU COUNTY ADMINISTRATIVE CODE IN RELATION TO AMENDING THE NASSAU COUNTY HUMAN RIGHTS LAW TO PRECLUDE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST FIRST RESPONDERS

How does one "discriminate" against a "first responder," which is an employment choice, rather than an immutable characteristic? Good question. But you're not going to get a straight answer. Instead, you're going to get gaslighted. Up is down, left is right, anti-police brutality protests violate the rights of citizens. Yes, you just read exactly what you think you read.

It is the judgment of this legislature that the recent widespread pattern of physical attacks and intimidation directed at the police has undermined the civil liberties of the community at large. It has been reported that over seven hundred federal, state and local law enforcement officers have sustained injury in civil unrest since the close of May of last year, according to United States Department of Justice data.

Even if it is accurate to say that nationwide protests against police violence resulted in an inordinate number of officers being injured, that should be expected. 2020 saw more than its share of protests -- the sort of spike that could only produce a spike in officer injuries. But that is part of this job, just like qualified immunity, arbitration, lax oversight, the backing of powerful government officials, and a separate and unequal "bill of rights" are. The good comes with the bad. That's the way it goes. But making this assertion ignores the inevitable result of an increased number of protests, as well as the years of nonexistent oversight and biased policing that led to the protests stemming from the casual murder of an unarmed black man by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The pro-cop fanfic continues for several paragraphs. This would be normal if this were a Facebook group post rather than legislation being introduced by Long Island legislators. Dogs and cats living together indeed.

This Legislature notes with extreme concern that in many jurisdictions, outbreaks of destructive rioting and lawlessness have deliberately targeted and victimized law enforcement officers and other first responders. This Legislature further recognizes that the clear intent of some of these attacks is to hinder or prevent the police from performing their duty to enforce the law and safeguard society rom chaos and mass violence.

Ok. Whatever. Brace yourself. It's gets even stupider.

It is the emphatic judgment of the Legislature that no law enforcement officer should be subjected to actual or threatened physical assault and abuse in the performance his or her duties ~ not only because police officers are human beings deserving of respect, dignity and equal protection of Law, but also because they are the indispensable first line of defense for everyone's fundamental civil and human rights.

LOL. Cops are the protectors of civil and human rights. OK, Karen. Maybe if you think "protecting civil rights" means "oppressing anyone not as rich or as white as me." Police are not about protecting rights. They love to violate those rights, resting peacefully in the fact that qualified immunity will get them off. Failing that, their extremely advantageous contracts with the cities they serve will allow them to be reinstated as law enforcement officers. Again and again and again. If cops really cared about human rights and civil liberties, they wouldn't violate them so often. And they wouldn't be so abjectly terrible about solving crimes perpetrated on the citizens they're supposed to be acting as a "thin blue line" to protect against.

#NotAllCops tweeted the legislators:

Importantly, this Legislature expressly disavows any intent to excuse or minimize the ‘gravity of incidents of police misconduct that have occurred in this country, especially those which may be motivated by racial intolerance. Because these wrongful acts are done in the name of law, they are especially corrosive to the rule of law. We believe that our law enforcement personnel join us in condemning such misconduct. Yet acts of misconduct by individual officers can never under any circumstances justify the vilification of all law enforcement personnel or acts of violence directed at police.

Liars. You're all liars. You won't even "vilify" the "bad apples" you feel don't represent the whole bunch. Until law enforcement is willing to clean up its own act, vilification of all police officers is justified. The presence of "good apples" does not un-rotten the rest of the barrel. Until law enforcement agencies are willing to treat abusive cops as the abusers they are, nothing will change.

You can read the rest of the preamble if you have a kink for vomiting in your own mouth. When you're done, join the rest of us in reading the goddamn proposal, which is as dumb as it is stupid.

It shall be an unlawful discriminatory practice for any person to harass, menace, assault or injure an individual due to such individual's status as a first responder and such unlawful discriminatory practices are hereby prohibited. Where such first responder is in uniform, or is otherwise dearly identified as a first responder, there is an irrebuttable presumption that such harassment, menacing, assault or injury is motivated by such individual's status as a first responder.

"Assault" already means inadvertently bumping into a police officer during an altercation/interaction. "Menace" tends to mean some officer states in court they felt "afraid." Harassment is such a broad term that anything from phoning in bomb threats to "sent a couple of heated DMs" will be considered a violation. "Injure" is the only term that can be defined solidly by its results, but even then, it only means an officer sustained an injury in the line of duty -- something that is bound to happen. But with this law in place, it means the officer can sue the person who injured them.

This isn't just asinine. It's also redundant. The definition of assault in this bill cite Sec. 120 of New York law -- a section that already covers everybody being given even more legislative shielding by this bill. Brace yourself yet again, but this time for a fucking wall of text that already says assaulting "first responders" is its own crime.

With intent to prevent a peace officer, a police officer, prosecutor as defined in subdivision thirty-one of section 1.20 of the criminal procedure law, registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, sanitation enforcement agent, New York city sanitation worker, a firefighter, including a firefighter acting as a paramedic or emergency medical technician administering first aid in the course of performance of duty as such firefighter, an emergency medical service paramedic or emergency medical service technician, or medical or related personnel in a hospital emergency department, a city marshal, a school crossing guard appointed pursuant to section two hundred eight-a of the general municipal law, a traffic enforcement officer or traffic enforcement agent, from performing a lawful duty, by means including releasing or failing to control an animal under circumstances evincing the actor's intent that the animal obstruct the lawful activity of such peace officer, police officer, prosecutor as defined in subdivision thirty-one of section 1.20 of the criminal procedure law, registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, sanitation enforcement agent, New York city sanitation worker, firefighter, paramedic, technician, city marshal, school crossing guard appointed pursuant to section two hundred eight-a of the general municipal law, traffic enforcement officer or traffic enforcement agent, he or she causes physical injury to such peace officer, police officer, prosecutor as defined in subdivision thirty-one of section 1.20 of the criminal procedure law, registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, sanitation enforcement agent, New York city sanitation worker, firefighter, paramedic, technician or medical or related personnel in a hospital emergency department, city marshal, school crossing guard, traffic enforcement officer or traffic enforcement agent.

What this law does is make it way more expensive for citizens to interact with officers who feel more offended than usual that someone bumped into them during the policing of a protest or traffic stop or an unjustified pat down or whatever

In addition to civil liability under subsection three of this section, any ‘person found to have violated the provisions of this section shall be subject to a civil penalty of no more than twenty-five thousand dollars per violation that shall be recoverable for and pavable to the aggrieved first responder. Where such violation is committed in the course of participating in riot. the penalty shall be no more than fifty thousand dollars.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL. Civil penalties also apply:

A first responder claiming to be aggrieved by a discriminatory practice under "subsection one of this section may commence a civil action in a court of competent jurisdiction for declaratory and injunctive relief and to recover ‘compensatory damages, punitive damages and attorney's fees and costs and for ‘such other relief as the court may deem appropriate. Where violations of this section occur during the course of a riot in response to which the first responder is deployed such monetary damages shall be trebled. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this title, such civil action mav be commenced without ‘exhaustion of any administrative remedies which may be available to the first responder. A court of competent jurisdiction is hereby authorized to determine and award attorney's fees to a prevailing first responder in such a civil action. A civil action commenced under this section must be within three years after the occurrence of the alleged unlawful discriminatory practice.

It's a garbage law written by garbage legislators that will be embraced by garbage people, many of them also garbage legislators and garbage people currently employed as law enforcement officers. These legislators have gazed upon the current national climate and decided it's the people they serve who are wrong. And, in fact, they have abdicated their responsibility to serve them. Instead, they will serve their own interests: fellow government employees who have seen multiple days of reckoning all over the nation and decided (as always) that it's the governed who have stepped out of line.

Filed Under: blue lives matter, discrimination, first responders, nassau county, police, protected class

US Press Softsells The Real Scope Of AT&T's Merger Incompetence, Ensuring It Will Happen Again

from the not-with-a-bang-but-with-a-whimper dept

Under former CEO Randall Stephenson, AT&T spent nearly $200 billion on mergers with DirecTV and Time Warner, hoping this would secure its ability to dominate the pay TV space through brute force. But the exact opposite happened. Saddled with so much debt from the deal, AT&T passed on annoying price hikes to its consumers. It also embraced a branding strategy so damn confusing -- with so many different product names -- it even confused its own employees.

All told, AT&T lost 9.5 million customers in just over four years. Not exactly the kind of "domination" the company envisioned. Meanwhile, employees also paid the price. Despite billions in regulatory favors (killing net neutrality and broadband privacy rules) and a $42 billion tax break from the Trump administration for literally doing less than nothing, AT&T has also laid off more than 50,000 employees since 2017. The company also took an axe to several well-loved brands (Mad Magazine, DC's Vertigo Comic imprint) as its executives crashed and bounced their way around unfamiliar businesses.

Last week AT&T finally completed its spinoff of DirecTV. Kind of a sad little whimper to the company's original vision. Yet somehow, much of the sterile news coverage of the whole mess doesn't capture the real scale or scope of the failure.

The New York Post, for example, can't be bothered to mention a single layoff or a cite a single AT&T misstep. The same thing over at CNET, where the final chapter in AT&T's ugly saga is framed in this detached, oddly clinical way, completely avoiding pointing out AT&T incompetence or the human wreckage these deals left behind. This is how spending $200 billion on mergers that resulted in massive layoffs and utter organizational chaos is described by the outlet:

"The DirecTV transaction is just one of two major media shake-ups at AT&T, which is in the process of restructuring itself after spending billions of dollars acquiring media companies in recent years."

This is kind of the status quo in American megamerger business coverage. Many major outlets are simply terrified of offending advertisers or sources at these companies. So they'll happily parrot most pre-merger promises of "synergies," but when things go south (as they usually do in mindless telecom and media consolidation) they just... don't mention the real world human impact at all, then hope nobody notices. I tend to notice having covered telecom and media for 20 years, and witnessed more bungled, regulator rubber stamped megadeals than I care to remember.

A little side irony: the hundreds of billions of dollars (often taxpayer subsidized) AT&T and Verizon repeatedly throw at bungled mergers and doomed projects (crappy app stores, Go90, mobile payment platforms with the same names as terrorist organizations, news outlets that ban reporters from talking about important things) could have funded fiber to every home in America (a consistent, massive revenue source) several times over. That just gets forgotten as Congress bickers over whether $65 billion in broadband investment is wasteful.

Of course the press isn't the only one who will rabbit hole AT&T's failures. The regulators, politicians, judges, pundits, and think tankers that cheered on these deals will pretend none of this ever happened, and will never have to reckon with the real world harm of mindless consolidation and a "growth for growth's sake" mindset. In part because the US press generally won't require them to. If journalism is really about clearly explaining the truth to people, avoiding essential context because it might make your event donors, advertisers, and sources mad is... not that.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, content, mergers, spinoffs, telcos
Companies: at&t, directv, time warner

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the think-and-laugh dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Blake C. Stacey with a comment highlighting the extreme breadth of the internet services the Canadian government wants to regulate with a heavy hand:

"Through this framework, "Online Communications Services" (the government lists Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter as examples)"

But it sure as hell isn't limited to those examples. Quoting item 1(A).2:

"The Act should define the term Online Communication Service (OCS) as a service that is accessible to persons in Canada, the primary purpose of which is to enable users of the service to communicate with other users of the service, over the internet.

That's every forum, bulletin board, fediverse instance and comment section. Once again, lawmakers act as though Facebook is the Internet ... and propose a regulatory regime under which it will be.

In second place, it's That One Guy with a comment about the situation Daniel Hale was in when he made his plea:

'Our murders aren't the crime, you exposing them is.'

"His plea followed the judge's declaration that the court would not allow Hale to offer any public interest defense for his actions -- something that's almost always the case in espionage prosecutions."

At that point you might as well drop the farce entirely and declare that the only outcome that will be considered acceptable or valid will be a guilty one because the outcome had already been decided before the trial even started and they're just going through the motions to twist the knife even more.

Why is often more important than what, being the difference between self-defense and murder as an example, so completely barring context like that is blatantly rigging the trial and ensuring that only the desired outcome will be reached.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment also about Daniel Hale, bringing in the full context of his words of "apology" for doing the right thing:

Maybe I should have included the full quote:

“I am here because I stole something that was never mine to take — precious human life,” Hale said. “I couldn’t keep living in a world in which people pretend that things weren’t happening that were. Please, your honor, forgive me for taking papers instead of human lives.”

Here is just one source:

DANIEL HALE SENTENCED TO 45 MONTHS IN PRISON FOR DRONE LEAK

Next, it's TKnarr with a response to Biden's comments about the next war being started by a cyberattack:

I actually think Biden's right, the trigger that sets things in motion for the next major war will be some sort of cyber-attack. Not because the US or any other power intends to start a shooting war over it, but just because that event started a chain of misunderstandings and judgemental errors that will result in the shooting starting. Remember that the last time we were on the verge of a nuclear war (1995, Boris Yeltsin had actually retrieved the launch codes and was prepared to issue launch orders) it was because of the launch of a Norwegian research rocket. And Russia had even been told about the launch beforehand, the information simply hadn't been passed up the chain of command. My guess is it'll be the same thing: a cyber-attack (or more than one) gets everyone finger-pointing and causes disruptions that could be taken advantage of, then something else happens on one side that gets misinterpreted by the other side, someone in the chain decides that if they wait long enough for solid confirmation it'll be too late to act, or a couple of opposing pilots get a little too rambunctious and an accidental missile release triggers itchy trigger fingers on both sides, or an innocent vehicle gets misidentified as a threat and shot which triggers retaliation...

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Bobvious with a comment for all the people who try to abuse the law to hide negative reviews:

Negative reviews

There are those who think that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and that they can engage companies to fix their reputations through it.

Well, for far too many it stands for Streisand Effect Outcomes.

In second place, it's an anonymous comment about Apple's announcement that it will be compromising its device security... for the children:

Apple, Google, Facebook and their ilk are clearly not the ones at fault here. It is time we face the fact who our true enemies are: The Children. Techdirt, since time immemorial, have hinted at their ungodly powers to sway the will of the most powerful corporations and governments. We need to stop them.

Personally, I have never seen one of these little fuckers so I have no idea how we can defeat them but we have to try.

Because if we don't, then... The Children have already won.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Chris Brand in response to the latest argument against Section 230:

Thanks, Philip

"Section 230 privileges tech communication over print and in-person communication by excusing tech companies from liability in the courts. In contrast, paper and in-person communication is still fully subject to liability. The result has been to accelerate and accentuate tech dominance over other modes of speech"

I always wondered why why online communication was so predominant these days - whether it was the speed, or reach, those "network affects", or something else. Now I know - it was section 230.

Finally, it's LACanuck with a response to a commenter insisting, perhaps while forgetting the context of GETTR fighting against jihadist propaganda, that "getting censored proves your opinion is the strongest" (and equal mention also goes to an anonymous commenter who made the exact same point):

I'm confused. You're suggesting that Islamic Jihadist propaganda is the strongest because GETTR is censoring it?

That's all for this week, folks!

This Week In Techdirt History: August 1st - 7th

from the back-then dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, it was revealed that the FBI's hacking tool compromised dozens of computers in Australia, while new FOIA documents showed that the FISA court once refused the FBI's request to scoop up communications along with metadata, one FBI official was comparing encryption guru Moxie Marlinspike to the KKK, and the Manhattan DA was claiming he didn't want encryption backdoors even though he certainly did. Meanwhile, we were wondering why the Copyright Office was helping to protect the cable industry's monopoly on cable boxes, and why it was so intent on changing the part of copyright that protects libraries and archives. The RIAA's latest attacks on YouTube were drawing criticism even from usual defenders of the association, and the DOJ made a smart decision about music licensing that caused music publishers to freak out.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, we highlighted the latest evidence that copy protection does not increase sales, and discussed the question of whether ISPs should cut off the entertainment industry over its constant attempts to convince them to engage in censorship — just as a new paper was arguing that ISPs should be made liable for cybercrime efforts, and the Justice Minister in Switzerland decided that ISPs should have to retain data despite no legal basis for forcing them to do so. A court found that Megaupload could be guilty of direct infringement in the Perfect 10 case, but the biggest and most important Perfect 10 ruling from the 9th Circuit said that proving copyright infringement doesn't automatically mean irreparable harm was done. We also saw a major episode in the interminable (and fascinating) Mattel lawsuit over Bratz dolls.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, we marveled (and wondered) at the absurd glut of video sharing services appearing (a bunch of them specifically from Time Warner) while YouTube took the world by storm, and also noted the interesting (but likely unimportant) fact that MSN was technically considered the leader over YouTube. There was an early discussion about the influence of Google AdSense policies on journalism, Norway was talking about banning iTunes, and — in a somewhat historic move — AOL finally became a free portal with free email addresses. Also, as expected, Limewire got sued, beginning the first big fight over the inducement standard recently set down in the Supreme Court's Grokster decision.

Filed Under: history, look back

CCO Of Activision Blizzard Busy Blocking Everyone, Including Employees, On Twitter Amid Fair Employment Lawsuit

from the maybe-try-blocking-the-harassment-instead dept

Good public relations, when mired in a controversy, isn't always easy, but it does tend to be quite simple. If you have a controversy on your hands, be direct, be honest, be transparent, do not attempt to paper over the controversy with other good works already done, and for the love of god do not give any indication that you're turning a deaf ear to those who are upset over the controversy.

Or, if you're Activision Blizzard, do the exact opposite of all of the above and definitely trot out your own Chief Compliance Officer to do so. The context around this is that Activision Blizzard was recently sued by the state of California over its workplace practices, with specific issues revolving around reported treatment of women and people of color that, if true, are absolutely horrific.

Bloomberg reports that the suit, filed on July 20, is the culmination of a two-year investigation into the publisher by the Department, which says that Activision Blizzard’s “compliance with California’s broad workplace protections is long overdue.”

“To enforce such compliance,” the case says, “DFEH brings this government enforcement action seeking to remedy, prevent and deter [Activision Blizzard’s] violations of state’s civil rights and equal pay laws.”

The accusations contained in the suit and in the statements by purported victims range from the unfortunately common, women and PoCs not being paid and promoted at the rate of their white male counterparts, to the far more extreme and horrific. The other end of that spectrum includes accusations the "cubicle crawls" performed by male employees in which they crawl under the desks of female coworkers and grope them, women having to ward off unwanted sexual advances on the regular, and at least one female employee killing herself after a supervisor showed up on a business trip with sexual devices for reasons too obvious to need to state.

In a particularly tragic example, a female employee committed suicide during a business trip with a male supervisor who had brought butt plugs and lubricant with him on the trip.

The lawsuit, brought by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing, was filed on July 20th. On July 23rd, Activision Blizzard's Chief Compliance Officer, Frances Townsend, is reported to have sent an email out to Blizzard staff that takes great pains to do the opposite of much of what I mentioned would have been good PR: talked about how great the company is on workplace and equality issues, downplayed the lawsuit, etc.

So, not a good start. Other Blizzard execs appeared to be trying to portray a listening posture to all of this, while Townsend instead downplayed and papered over the whole thing. Then, on July 30th, again in the context of the company she's the CCO for, she tweets out the following.

Reaction to Townsend's combined actions ranged from curious as to what in the world she was attempting to accomplish to the far more common reaction of absolute disgust and anger with her actions and statements. The Twitter reaction to her has been quite scathing. Duly so, in this writer's opinion. This, again, is the time when good PR needs to take over: apologize directly, be transparent, build a plan for doing better.

But Townsend's gonna Townsend, I guess, so instead:

Taking all this into account, along with the content and timing of her tweet, public reaction has not been positive! It has been almost universally challenged or mocked, which is expected, it’s Twitter and that happens every day, it’s what the ratio is there for. But what’s notable here is that rather acknowledging that she, as an executive employed in a leadership position at a company in turmoil, had made a bad tweet and responded accordingly—by doing something like locking her account, deleting the tweet or simply ignoring the criticism and getting on with whatever the rich do on the weekend—she began systematically blocking anyone even mildly critical of her decision to share a story about the perils of whistleblowing while her company is in the midst of historically shocking allegations brought on by employees testifying confidentially.

That includes multiple journalists and developers from outside companies, but also many current and former employees of Activision Blizzard as well. Her employees, and colleagues. Now is as good a time as any to take a look at Blizzard’s core corporate values, one of which is “every voice matters”.

Every voice matters, unless the CCO doesn't like what that voice is voicing, in which case she will happily block even her own staff on social media. A staff that has staged walkouts over all of this. A staff that has reportedly been failed by its executive leadership, of which Townsend is a part. A staff that makes it possible for women like Townsend to make the salaries they do.

Hiding from your own staff and journalists isn't good PR. In fact, it isn't good anything. If Activision Blizzard wants to start doing good, it may want to start with a staffing problem it has at the CCO position.

Filed Under: chief compliance officer, frances townsend, lawsuits, workplace conditions
Companies: activision blizzard

Citizen Is Paying Users To Run The App And Their Mouths At Crime Scenes And Medical Emergencies

from the patron-of-the-arts-I-guess dept

The app formerly known as "Vigilante" is surreptitiously redefining the term "citizen journalist." The new definition will probably be capitalized and trademarked. The crime reporting app that once entertained plans to become part of the law enforcement community by partnering with private security companies is paying users to head out to crime scenes and annoy civil servants.

Want to make $200 a day in New York City? Rush to the scene of a murder, a three-alarm fire or a traffic accident — then pull out your phone and start filming.

That’s the pitch from Citizen, a controversial neighborhood watch app that’s quietly hiring New Yorkers to livestream crime scenes and other public emergencies in an apparent effort to encourage more ordinary citizens to do the same, The Post has learned.

This seems like a bad idea. It's one thing for people to happen upon one of these incidents and start livestreaming. It's quite another to pay people to put themselves at risk in service of an app hoping to increase its user base and repair its reputation. And it's yet another thing to be dishonest about what's happening, as both Citizen and its paid contributors are doing.

In June, the Daily Dot uncovered a Los Angeles Citizen app user who appeared to be a paid content contributor. The user known as Landon1129 just happened to be at the scene of eight separate incidents spanning 30 miles in a single day -- a day that also featured "Landon1129" being interviewed twice by Citizen's own live show. Eight incidents covered by the same user -- a user who frequently reminded viewers that he was "live on the Citizen app." What was probably supposed to look organic looked fake as fuck.

Now, there's some confirmation, albeit obliquely. Citizen claims it has always used "street teams" to expand coverage, generate content, and, I assume, increase brand awareness. But it has never made this explicit and its ads seeking contributors make no mention of the app.

Citizen says that it doesn’t hide its use of paid field team members.

But:

The company also doesn’t post the jobs on its own Web site. And Citizen’s name was not included in a since-deleted job posting Thursday on career board JournalismJobs.com seeking “field team members” to work for an unnamed “tech company with user-generated content.”

It's probably not a good idea for a company with both a literal and figurative background in vigilantism to pay people to head to crime scenes and other emergencies. There are plenty of people who get paid to do that already, and they're better at doing their jobs and not getting in the way of others trying to do theirs than the average respondent to a vague Craigslist ad. Stringers may be interlopers seeking sellable content but at least they have some idea of what to expect when they arrive on the scene and (usually) have cultivated good relationships with the public servants they'll be working with (and around).

To be sure, journalistic efforts shouldn't be restricted by gatekeepers who only believe certain people can perform journalism. But Citizen's history, along with its blatant desire to capitalize on people's fears, makes it a particularly questionable patron of the journalistic arts. If Citizen really wanted to put its resources behind expanding journalistic coverage of newsworthy incidents, it would do it without the use of a third-party contractor bound by an NDA that forbids telling journalists, who hired the contractor to place ads looking for journalists, who may ultimately not be pleased they're now working for an app with a terrible reputation.

Filed Under: citizen journalist, crime scenes, private security, vigilante
Companies: citizen

Facebook Acting Badly: Shuts Down Researchers Accounts Over Claims Of Privacy Violations That Don't Stand Up To Scrutiny

from the oh-stop-it dept

Last year we wrote about Facebook threatening NYU researchers who had set up a browser extension that would allow users to voluntarily collect information about ads and ad targeting on Facebook -- information that Facebook does not publicly reveal -- and provide it to the researchers' "Ad Observatory" project. As we noted at the time, Facebook's threats were definitely going too far, though you could see how it came about, as it could be argued that there were technical similarities to what the NYU researchers were doing, and what an academic from Cambridge did many years ago that turned into... the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which resulted (in part) in a massive fine from the FTC for privacy violations.

But, as we explained then, the NYU Ad Observer story is clearly distinguishable from the Cambridge Analytica story. The Ad Observatory involves people installing an extension on their own computer in their own browser, and choosing to share that information. That's not something Facebook should have any right to block.

Unfortunately, this week, Facebook took things up a notch and shut down the accounts of everyone associated with the project, effectively cutting off all their access to Facebook's Ad Library and other tools they were using in their research. Facebook's own explanation for this is... to claim that it was compromising people's privacy, though that appears to be bullshit (as we'll get to in a moment). Here's part of what Facebook said:

We told the researchers a year ago, in summer of 2020, that their Ad Observatory extension would violate our Terms even before they launched the tool. In October, we sent them a formal letter notifying them of the violation of our Terms of Service and granted them 45 days to comply with our request to stop scraping data from our website. The deadline ended on November 30, long after Election Day. We continued to engage with the researchers on addressing our privacy concerns and offered them ways to obtain data that did not violate our Terms. 

Earlier this year, we invited researchers, including the ones from NYU, to safely access US 2020 Elections ad targeting data through FORT’s Researcher Platform. This offered the Ad Observatory researchers a more comprehensive data set than the one they created by scraping data on Facebook. The researchers had the opportunity to use the data set, which is designed to be privacy-protective, instead of relying on scraping, but they declined.

We made it clear in a series of posts earlier this year that we take unauthorized data scraping seriously, and when we find instances of scraping we investigate and take action to protect our platform. While the Ad Observatory project may be well-intentioned, the ongoing and continued violations of protections against scraping cannot be ignored and should be remediated. 

Collecting data via scraping is an industry-wide problem that jeopardizes people’s privacy, and we’ve been clear about our public position on this as recently as April. The researchers knowingly violated our Terms against scraping — which we went to great lengths to explain to them over the past year. Today’s action doesn’t change our commitment to providing more transparency around ads on Facebook or our ongoing collaborations with academia. We’ll continue to provide ways for responsible researchers to conduct studies that are in the public interest while protecting the security of our platform and the privacy of people who use it. 

This is... nonsense. I challenge the idea that "data scraping" is a problem, first of all. I mean, that's what the entire search engine business is built on. It's all data scraping. The problem is when private information is somehow exposed. But that's different. And here we're talking about individuals installing an extension in their own browsers, to collect information that is sent to their own computers. That's not Facebook's data to control. Once it's in my browser, it's mine to make use of. Facebook's argument here makes no sense.

And, indeed, a few others have stepped in to point out the same thing. For one, Mozilla, makers of the Firefox browser, called bullshit on the claims pretty directly:

Facebook claims the accounts were shut down due to privacy problems with the Ad Observer.  In our view, those claims simply do not hold water. We know this, because before encouraging users to contribute data to the Ad Observer, which we’ve done repeatedly, we reviewed the code ourselves. And in this blog post, we want to explain why we believe people can contribute to this important research without sacrificing their privacy.  

Anytime you give your data to another party, whether Facebook or Mozilla or researchers at New York University, it is important that you know whether that party is trustworthy, what data will be collected, and what will be done with that data. Those are critical things to consider before you potentially grant access to your data. And those are also key factors for Mozilla when we consider recommending an extension. 

Before Mozilla decided to recommend Ad Observer, we reviewed it twice, conducting both a code review and examining the consent flow to ensure users will understand exactly what they are installing. In both cases the team responsible for this add-on responded quickly to our feedback, made changes to their code, and demonstrated a commitment to the privacy of their users. We also conducted an in-depth design review of Ad Observer, the results of which can be found here. 

We decided to recommend Ad Observer because our reviews assured us that it respects user privacy and supports transparency. It collects ads, targeting parameters and metadata associated with the ads. It does not collect personal posts or information about your friends. And it does not compile a user profile on its servers. The extension also allows you to see what data has been collected by visiting the “My Archive” tab. It gives you the choice to opt in to sharing additional demographic information to aid research into how specific groups are being targeted, but even that is off by default.

You don’t have to take our word for it. Ad Observer is open source, so anybody can see the code and  confirm it is designed properly and doing what it purports to do.

And then, the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection weighed in with a letter to Mark Zuckerberg also calling bullshit on the idea that the Ad Observatory extension might somehow violate Facebook's various consent decrees with the FTC regarding privacy protection.

I write concerning Facebook’s recent insinuation that its actions against an academic research project conducted by NYU’s Ad Observatory were required by the company’s consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. As the company has since acknowledged, this is inaccurate. The FTC is committed to protecting the privacy of people, and efforts to shield targeted advertising practices from scrutiny run counter to that mission.

While I appreciate that Facebook has now corrected the record, I am disappointed by how your company has conducted itself in this matter. Only last week, Facebook’s General Counsel, Jennifer Newstead, committed the company to “timely, transparent communication to BCP staff about significant developments.” Yet the FTC received no notice that Facebook would be publicly invoking our consent decree to justify terminating academic research earlier this week.

Had you honored your commitment to contact us in advance, we would have pointed out that the consent decree does not bar Facebook from creating exceptions for good-faith research in the public interest. Indeed, the FTC supports efforts to shed light on opaque business practices, especially around surveillance-based advertising. While it is not our role to resolve individual disputes between Facebook and third parties, we hope that the company is not invoking privacy – much less the FTC consent order – as a pretext to advance other aims.

I do think that some of the pressures that people put on Facebook about "protecting" privacy do more harm than good and lead to situations that backfire and actually give Facebook more control and less transparency. But this case seems to be Facebook cynically using this as an excuse to shut down academic research they were uncomfortable with and punish the researchers.

There are two simple answers here: give the academic researchers access to the data they need to do this research (Facebook's claims of making the data accessible leave out that not everything the researchers are asking for is actually in those data sets) and don't block people from installing things on their own computer. That's not Facebook's job.

Filed Under: ad observatory, data, excuses, ftc, privacy, scraping, transparency
Companies: cambridge analytica, facebook, mozilla, nyu

Apple Undermines Its Famous Security 'For The Children'

from the this-is-dangerously-dumb dept

Apple is somewhat famous for its approach to security on its iPhones. Most famously, Apple went to court to fight the FBI's demand that they effectively insert a backdoor into its on-phone encryption (by being able to force an update to the phone). Apple has tons of goodwill in the security community (and the public) because of that, though not in the law enforcement community. Unfortunately, it appears that Apple is throwing away much of that good will and has decided to undermine the security of its phone... "for the children" (of course).

This week, Apple announced what it refers to as "expanded protections for children." The company has been receiving lots of pressure from certain corners (including law enforcement groups who hate encryption), claiming that its encryption was helping hide child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on phones (and in iCloud accounts). So Apple's plan is to introduce what's generally called "client-side scanning" to search for CSAM on phones as well as a system that scans iCloud content for potentially problematic content. Apple claims that it's doing this in a manner that is protective of privacy. And, to be fair, this clearly isn't something that Apple rolled out willy-nilly without considering the trade-offs. It's clear from Apple's detailed explanations of the new "safety" features, that it is trying to balance the competing interests at play here. And, obviously, stopping the abuse of children is an important goal.

The problem is that, even with all of the balancing Apple has done here, it's definitely moved down a very dangerous, and very slippery slope towards using this approach for other things.

Apple's brief description of its new offerings are as follows:

Apple is introducing new child safety features in three areas, developed in collaboration with child safety experts. First, new communication tools will enable parents to play a more informed role in helping their children navigate communication online. The Messages app will use on-device machine learning to warn about sensitive content, while keeping private communications unreadable by Apple.

Next, iOS and iPadOS will use new applications of cryptography to help limit the spread of CSAM online, while designing for user privacy. CSAM detection will help Apple provide valuable information to law enforcement on collections of CSAM in iCloud Photos.

Finally, updates to Siri and Search provide parents and children expanded information and help if they encounter unsafe situations. Siri and Search will also intervene when users try to search for CSAM-related topics.

Some of the initial concerns about these descriptions -- including fears that, say, LGBTQ+ children might be outed to their parents -- have been somewhat (though not entirely) alleviated with the more detailed explanation. But that doesn't mean there aren't still very serious concerns about how this plays out in practice and what this means for Apple's security.

First, there's the issue of client-side scanning. As an EFF post from 2019 explains, client-side scanning breaks end-to-end encryption. In the EFF's latest post about Apple's announcement, it includes a quick description of how this introduces a backdoor:

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again now: it’s impossible to build a client-side scanning system that can only be used for sexually explicit images sent or received by children. As a consequence, even a well-intentioned effort to build such a system will break key promises of the messenger’s encryption itself and open the door to broader abuses.

All it would take to widen the narrow backdoor that Apple is building is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content, or a tweak of the configuration flags to scan, not just children’s, but anyone’s accounts. That’s not a slippery slope; that’s a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change. Take the example of India, where recently passed rules include dangerous requirements for platforms to identify the origins of messages and pre-screen content. New laws in Ethiopia requiring content takedowns of “misinformation” in 24 hours may apply to messaging services. And many other countries—often those with authoritarian governments—have passed similar laws. Apple’s changes would enable such screening, takedown, and reporting in its end-to-end messaging. The abuse cases are easy to imagine: governments that outlaw homosexuality might require the classifier to be trained to restrict apparent LGBTQ+ content, or an authoritarian regime might demand the classifier be able to spot popular satirical images or protest flyers.

We’ve already seen this mission creep in action. One of the technologies originally built to scan and hash child sexual abuse imagery has been repurposed to create a database of “terrorist” content that companies can contribute to and access for the purpose of banning such content. The database, managed by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), is troublingly without external oversight, despite calls from civil society. While it’s therefore impossible to know whether the database has overreached, we do know that platforms regularly flag critical content as “terrorism,” including documentation of violence and repression, counterspeech, art, and satire.

It's actually difficult to find any security experts who support Apple's approach here. Alec Muffett sums it up in a single tweet:

This is the very slippery slope. If we somehow believe that governments won't demand Apple cave on a wide variety of other types of content, you haven't been paying attention. Of course, Apple can claim that it will stand strong against such demands, but now we're back to being entirely dependent on trusting Apple.

As noted above, there were some initial concerns about the parent notifications, but as EFF's description notes, the rollout here does include some level of consent by users before their parents are notified, but it's still quite problematic:

In these new processes, if an account held by a child under 13 wishes to send an image that the on-device machine learning classifier determines is a sexually explicit image, a notification will pop up, telling the under-13 child that their parent will be notified of this content. If the under-13 child still chooses to send the content, they have to accept that the “parent” will be notified, and the image will be irrevocably saved to the parental controls section of their phone for the parent to view later. For users between the ages of 13 and 17, a similar warning notification will pop up, though without the parental notification.

Similarly, if the under-13 child receives an image that iMessage deems to be “sexually explicit”, before being allowed to view the photo, a notification will pop up that tells the under-13 child that their parent will be notified that they are receiving a sexually explicit image. Again, if the under-13 user accepts the image, the parent is notified and the image is saved to the phone. Users between 13 and 17 years old will similarly receive a warning notification, but a notification about this action will not be sent to their parent’s device.

This means that if—for instance—a minor using an iPhone without these features turned on sends a photo to another minor who does have the features enabled, they do not receive a notification that iMessage considers their image to be “explicit” or that the recipient’s parent will be notified. The recipient’s parents will be informed of the content without the sender consenting to their involvement. Additionally, once sent or received, the “sexually explicit image” cannot be deleted from the under-13 user’s device.

Whether sending or receiving such content, the under-13 user has the option to decline without the parent being notified. Nevertheless, these notifications give the sense that Apple is watching over the user’s shoulder—and in the case of under-13s, that’s essentially what Apple has given parents the ability to do.

It is also important to note that Apple has chosen to use the notoriously difficult-to-audit technology of machine learning classifiers to determine what constitutes a sexually explicit image. We know from years of documentation and research that machine-learning technologies, used without human oversight, have a habit of wrongfully classifying content, including supposedly “sexually explicit” content. When blogging platform Tumblr instituted a filter for sexual content in 2018, it famously caught all sorts of other imagery in the net, including pictures of Pomeranian puppies, selfies of fully-clothed individuals, and more. Facebook’s attempts to police nudity have resulted in the removal of pictures of famous statues such as Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid. These filters have a history of chilling expression, and there’s plenty of reason to believe that Apple’s will do the same.

There remains a real risk of false positives in this kind of system. There's a very worth reading blog post explaining how automated matching technologies fail, often in catastrophic ways. You really need to read that entire post as brief excerpts wouldn't do it justice -- but as it notes, the risk of false positives here are very high, and the cost of such false positives can be catastrophic. Obviously, CSAM is also catastrophic, so you can see how there is a real challenge in balancing those interests, but there are legitimate concerns that with this approach it's unclear if the balance is properly calibrated.

Obviously, Apple is trying to walk a fine line here. No one wants to be supporting CSAM distribution. But, once again, all the pressure on Apple feels like people blaming the tool for (serious) abuses by its users, and in demanding a "solution," opening up a very dangerous situation. If there were some way to guarantee that these technologies wouldn't be abused, or mess up, you could kind of see how this makes sense. But history has shown time and time again that neither of these things is really possible. Opening up this hole in Apple's famous security means more demands are coming.

Filed Under: client side scanning, csam, encryption, for the children, parent notification, privacy, security
Companies: apple

Appeals Court Says No Sovereign Immunity For Turkish Security Forces Who Attacked DC Protesters

from the stick-to-thugging-on-your-own-turf dept

In 2016, Turkish president Recep Erdogan visited the United States, bringing with him his security team, as most foreign dignitaries do. That much of the visit was normal. What wasn't so normal was his team's decision to attack protesters, critics, and journalists on US soil -- something that really wasn't necessary considering Washington DC's Metro police were already on the scene, keeping protesters away from Erdogan and the Turkish ambassador's residence.

After a face-off between pro- and anti-Erdogan protesters, peace was restored with the assistance of the Metro PD. Then violence broke out. And recordings of the incident indicate Erdogan's security personnel were the aggressors. Here's how the DC Appeals Court describes it in its review [PDF] of the Turkish government's attempt to have a lawsuit against it dismissed.

At approximately 4:10 p.m., President Erdogan’s vehicle arrived at the residence. What happened next is disputed. The plaintiffs claim that President Erdogan spoke with his head of security and ordered an attack on the protesters. Defendant Turkey denies this. What neither side disputes, however, is that the pro-Erdogan group—including the Turkish security detail—moved decisively against the protesters. The attack commenced at approximately 4:13 p.m., while President Erdogan remained sitting in his vehicle near the entrance to the residence.

The district court described it this way while ruling the lawsuit brought by the attacked protesters could proceed:

[T]he protesters remained standing on the designated sidewalk. Turkish security forces and other proErdogan individuals then crossed a police line to attack the protesters. The protesters did not rush to meet the attack. Instead, the protesters either fell to the ground, where Turkish security forces continued to kick and hit them, or ran away, where Turkish security forces continued to chase and otherwise attack them. The Turkish security forces violently physically attacked the protesters.

Erdogan's team attempted to justify its actions by claiming the protesters were close enough to harm the Turkish president if they had chosen to attack him. The lower court said that, even if it bought this explanation, by the time Erdogan's security team decided to attack the protesters, they were standing peacefully on a sidewalk across the street from Erdogan's vehicle and the residence he was visiting.

The Turkish government attempted to dodge this lawsuit by claiming foreign sovereign immunity. The district court rejected this defense, prompting this appeal. The Appeals Court doesn't find this argument any more persuasive than the lower court did. It agrees that foreign security forces have an obligation to protect officials and diplomats, but that doesn't mean these forces are free to do whatever they want to achieve those ends. The local laws apply, so it's usually a better idea to turn security over to the locals.

A sending state’s right to use force in defense of its officials, however, does not necessarily follow from the right of those officials to carry out their business unmolested. As the United States notes, “[t]here is good reason to assign receiving states the primary responsibility for protecting visiting foreign government officials.” We made a similar point when faced with a First Amendment challenge brought by individuals who sought to demonstrate outside the Nicaraguan embassy: “Peace and dignity would be destroyed outright” if “the task of repulsing invasions of the embassy and its grounds would be left largely to the foreign nation’s security forces.” In sum, the inviolability of diplomats suggests, but does not affirmatively establish, that a sending state has the right to use force in the defense of diplomats.

The court says it appears Erdogan's security guards broke the law.

Turkey allegedly violated several District of Columbia laws, including assault with a dangerous weapon and aggravated assault, see D.C. Code §§ 22-402, 404.01. After reviewing the entire record, including video footage of the confrontations, we think it clear that the plaintiffs’ allegations are plausible. We also note that fifteen members of the Turkish security detail were subsequently indicted by the United States on criminal assault charges.

Even that's not enough on its own to strip sovereign immunity. Security forces have leeway to exercise their discretion when performing their duties. But in this case, there was no perceivable justification for Erdogan's security team to engage in an unprovoked attack on protesters standing several feet away from the visiting president.

The nature of the challenged conduct was not plausibly related to protecting President Erdogan, which is the only authority Turkey had to use force against United States citizens and residents.

And even if Turkey can come up with a justification for these actions, it likely won't be able to find one that clears its personnel of wrongdoing in this case. Stripping it of immunity in this case won't harm Turkey foreign policy. It will only punch it lightly in the back pocket.

As explained, the immunity inquiry turns not on whether Turkey’s use of force was reasonable but whether it was the result of political, social or economic policy analysis. We can accept that Turkey has its own justification for responding vigorously to crowds that may endanger its President but nonetheless conclude that the specific attacks on the plaintiffs were “sufficiently separable from protected discretionary decisions.”

Notwithstanding Turkey’s attempted resort to its own foreign relations and antiterrorism policies as a basis for us to find a non-justiciable political question, this case is not about Turkey’s foreign relations. Instead, it is about its liability vel non for the actions of its own security officers. And that liability, if any, will not impinge on anything but Turkey’s fisc.

The lawsuit can continue. The defendants may still find some way to escape accountability for their actions, but they won't be able to exit the lawsuit early. The US court has jurisdiction to hear this case and the allegations -- now more than a half-decade old -- will move forward.

Filed Under: attacks, recep erdogan, security, sovereign immunity