AI Company Has Access To Pretty Much Every Piece Of Surveillance Tech The State Of Utah Owns

from the good-time-was-had-by-all-surveilled dept

A stash of documents obtained from Utah government agencies has exposed another surveillance tech purveyor who's threatening to disrupt privacy for unquantified law enforcement gains. Banjo is the innocuous name the company does business under, led by a CEO sporting a ZZ Top beard and an urban camo sports coat.

The public this is going to affect wasn't cut in on the deal. But nearly everything their tax dollars pay for was. Banjo's proprietary panopticon -- with servers located on Utah government property -- draws from nearly every piece of surveillance tech already deployed by cities and law enforcement. Banjo's contribution is the algorithms it drops on top of all of this:

The state of Utah has given an artificial intelligence company real-time access to state traffic cameras, CCTV and “public safety” cameras, 911 emergency systems, location data for state-owned vehicles, and other sensitive data.

The company, called Banjo, says that it's combining this data with information collected from social media, satellites, and other apps, and claims its algorithms “detect anomalies” in the real world.

This isn't surveillance creep. This is a surveillance sprint.

Banjo has installed its own servers in the headquarters of the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT), a civilian agency, and has direct, real-time access to the thousands of traffic cameras the state operates. It has jacked into 911 systems of emergency operations centers all over the state, according to contracts, emails, and other government documents obtained by Motherboard using public record requests, as well as video and audio recordings of city council meetings around the state that we reviewed.

There's more to it than this long list. Banjo also pulls in data from social media, autonomous vehicles, flight info, and "data signal ingestion for IoT sensors." Anything that crosses the internet or the state's government intranets is converted into data points for Banjo's thirsty software.

The state of Utah has already agreed to sprinkle Banjo's surveillance dust over all 29 counties in the state, as well as its 13 largest cities and 10 other cities that have the misfortune of being deemed "significantly relevant" to the state's spyware deployment plans.

Banjo promises a mixture of predictive policing and real-time alerts, with an eye on the worst crimes of course. Banjo's reps and executives talk a lot about how much child abduction this thing could stop -- or at least bring to an end quickly. But there's nothing on the record showing Banjo has done any crime prevention or crime solving, despite the breadth of its access and the state's explicit blessing of its unproven tech.

Banjo also literally unbelievably claims it can do all of this without engaging in massive amounts of privacy violations. It says it anonymizes all data it scoops up from dozens of sources, pointing cops at crime, rather than people. First of all, anonymization is a myth that has been debunked several times. Second of all, this:

Banjo's pitch to Utah from the beginning has been that it finds crime without identifying criminals. It looks for cars without looking for who is inside the cars. It detects riots and protests without telling cops who is at them. It detects drug use hotspots without identifying the drug user. Patton often mentions his company has patented technology to strip PII from publicly available data, but patents Motherboard found do not go into detail about how that is done.

Pitching its product, Banjo talks a lot about child abductions, mass shootings, acts of terrorism… all the things we always hear about when law enforcement wants to extend its reach and grasp. Plenty of surveillance tech has been purchased using these noble goals, only to be deployed to do normal crime stuff like seek out drug dealers and robbery suspects. Meanwhile, the sacrifices made in the name of public safety haven't resulted in net public safety gains, and mass shootings (in particular) still routinely go unthwarted, no matter how much round-the-clock surveillance is in place.

Banjo says it will save lives -- the only metric it claims to care about. So far, it can't even seem to solve crimes.

While it's still very early days for its implementation in Utah, we have no idea whether it has been useful in the real world. [Attorney General Chief of Staff Ric] Cantrell couldn't identify a single case that Banjo's technology had helped on. A public records request sent to Utah's Highway Patrol requesting any case reports in which Banjo was used returned no documents. Police departments who have signed up for Banjo told Motherboard that they have not actually used it.

While it's true the state won't know how effective Banjo is until it deploys it, that doesn't explain its willingness to deploy it all over the state before it has any idea how well it's going to work and what negative side effects turning everything into fodder for surveillance software might produce. That's incredibly irresponsible and it indicates the state clearly didn't factor residents' concerns into the equation.

Filed Under: facial recognition, law enforcement, privacy, social media, surveillance, utah
Companies: banjo

As The World Frets Over Social Media Tracking For Advertising, Young People Are Turning Fooling Sites Into Sport

from the the-games-we-play dept

As the techlash continues to rage against tech and social media companies, one of the more common criticisms has been how sites track users in order to feed them advertising. Now, I won't pretend to believe that these concerns are entirely unfounded. There is something creepy about all of this. That perception is also not helped by the opaque manner in which sites operate, nor the manner in which these sites often barely inform users of the tracking that is in place. Through it all, those that have the worst opinions of the internet and tech companies often couch their concerns in hand-wringing over how these sites handle younger users.

Except that, as per usual, younger users are way ahead of the adults. Rather than waiting to rely on some half-brained "for the children!" legislation, at least some youth are instead making a sport out of beating social media sites at their own game. The CNET post focuses on one teenager, Samantha Mosley, and her use of Instagram.

But unlike many of Instagram's users, Mosley and her high school friends in Maryland had figured out a way to fool tracking by the Facebook-owned social network. On the first visit, her Explore tab showed images of Kobe Bryant. Then on a refresh, cooking guides, and after another refresh, animals.  Each time she refreshed the Explore tab, it was a completely different topic, none of which she was interested in. That's because Mosley wasn't the only person using this account -- it belonged to a group of her friends, at least five of whom could be on at any given time. Maybe they couldn't hide their data footprints, but they could at least leave hundreds behind to confuse trackers.

These teenagers are relying on a sophisticated network of trusted Instagram users to post content from multiple different devices, from multiple different locations.

Here's how this works. One person creates an Instagram account, or maybe more than one. Then that person requests a password reset and sends that link to a trusted friend without closing their own session. Now that both people have active sessions, person two begins uploading photos, which triggers Instagram's tracking on this new device. Rinse and repeat and suddenly you've given Instagram, which assumes it is tracking one person, a ton of data from many people. The end result is the site has no real insight into the behavior of any one person. This can be further gamed by posting photos of people that are not those operating on the account. If these users are geographically disperse, that too adds confusing data for Instagram's tracking.

"They might be like, 'Hey, you posted from this hamburger place in Germany, maybe you like Germany, or hamburgers, or traveling, we'll just throw everything at you,'" Mosley said. "We fluctuate who's sending to what account. One week I might be sending to 17 accounts, and then the next week I only have four."

Facebook said that this method was not against its policies, but didn't recommend it to people because of security concerns.

So, why are these young people doing this? Part of it is something of a sport. The other part is a desire by young people for privacy. Despite all the concerns of the older generations, young people are better than average when it comes to being aware of how tech companies and social media sites are using their data, tracking them for advertising purposes, and all the rest. I imagine that part of this is these young people thumbing their noses at these companies thinking they will blindly allow this intrusion on their desired privacy.

Either way, even the adults who would instead like to go the regulation or legislative routes admit this is all fairly brilliant.

Teens shouldn't have to go to those lengths to socialize privately on Instagram, said Liz O'Sullivan, technology director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

"I love that the younger generation is thinking along these lines, but it bothers me when we have to come up with these strategies to avoid being tracked," O'Sullivan said. "She shouldn't have to have these psyop [psychological operations] networks with multiple people working to hide her identity from Instagram. The platform should just have an account that works and lets people feel safe about being on social media."

All well and good, but you can wish for that in one hand and spit in the other, and see which one fills up faster. Meanwhile, the kids are handling this just fine.

Filed Under: adaptation, groups, kids, privacy, social media
Companies: instagram

Copyright Troll Richard Liebowitz Drops Case After Suing On Behalf Of The Wrong Party And Trying To Swap Plaintiffs

from the why-do-people-still-hire-this-guy? dept

Why oh why do people still hire copyright troll Richard Liebowitz? There are just so many stories of him messing up cases and getting scolded by judges, you'd think that people would think twice. But then, yet another story of Liebowitz messing up comes to light. The latest is a real doozy. It involves the somewhat controversial person, Rachel Dolezal (who now goes by Nkechi Amare Diallo -- a name that has spun up plenty of controversy itself) , who made a lot of news five or so years ago when it was exposed that, despite calling herself a black woman for years, she was actually white. Last summer, she made some news again, when she declared on Instagram and Twitter that she was bisexual. I'm not entirely sure I understand why this was newsworthy, but some publications ran with it -- including Paper Magazine (though, it appears the story has since been deleted).

Either way, in the fall, an operation called Polaris Images, represented by Liebowitz, sued Paper Mag's parent company, Enttech Media, because it had posted an image of Dolezal's Instagram post referenced above. According to the lawsuit, Dolezal had provided Polaris with an "exclusive licensing agreement" concerning various images of herself -- including the one in the Instagram post. Paper Magazine's lawyer, Robert Tauler, pointed out (among other things) that Polaris couldn't possibly be the exclusive licensee, because in posting the image to Instagram, Dolezal had granted a non-exclusive license to Instagram as well, and if you've granted a license to more than one party, you can't claim one is "exclusive" any more.

Tauler also pointed out that the copyright in the image wasn't registered until a month after the article in question, and pointed out that it's almost certainly fair use for a news organization to show a social media post in a news story about that social media post. Liebowitz, in typical Liebowitz fashion, responded that "the fair use defense is borderline frivolous." No, Richard, it's not.

But, you know what is frivolous? Trying to swap plaintiffs midstream. But that's what Liebowitz tried to do.

Apparently the issue of whether or not Polaris actually had the right to sue over this image made Liebowitz realize that the case was in trouble. So he filed an "amended" complaint, but part of the "amendment" was to completely drop the plaintiff Polaris from the complaint and just swap in Dolezal as the new plaintiff. That... is not how things are done. Paper Mag's lawyer sent quite a letter to the court highlighting the many, many, many problems of such a filing:

At the December 19, 2019 pre-motion conference regarding Plaintiff’s motion to dismiss Polaris’ original Complaint (the “Polaris Complaint”), the Court granted leave to Polaris to amend its Complaint. However, Polaris did not amend its Complaint. Instead, Polaris removed itself as plaintiff and added non-party Dolezal as the Plaintiff, alleging new facts that contradict the Polaris Complaint and the representations of counsel at the December 19, 2019 pre-motion conference, namely that Dolezal, not Polaris, has standing to sue....

[....]

As Plaintiff’s counsel made clear at the December 19th hearing, “Polaris and Ms. Dolezal entered into an exclusive licensing agreement on December 15th of 2017, and pursuant to that agreement any photographs that Ms. Dolezal provides to Polaris are subject to an exclusive license. So, what that means is that Polaris has the exclusive right to distribute or display those images to third parties.” (Transcript, p. 3 (Exhibit A)). Polaris’ counsel further articulated his knowledge of the law at the December 19th hearing, stating “if we [Polaris] have an exclusive license, we have standing to sue. That’s the statute.” (Transcript, Ex. A, p. 12). Despite the foregoing, the Amended Complaint not only abandons Polaris’ theory of the case, it abandons Polaris altogether.

As Tauler points out, you can't just swap in a brand new plaintiff like that either:

First, the Dolezal Complaint runs afoul of FRCP 15 which provides that only a party may amend a pleading. Thus, Dolezal did not have the right to amend the Polaris Complaint. Second, the Dolezal Complaint violates FRCP 21 requiring leave of Court. See Spencer v. Dixon, 290 F. Supp. 531, 535 (W.D. La. 1968)(“Attempt to add additional parties fails where Amended Complaint contains no request for any order to add additional parties because Rule 21 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires that additional parties may be added or dropped from an action only on motion of any party and order of the court.”). Third, a non-party may not participate in an action without filing a formal motion to intervene. See Spangler v. Pasadena City Bd. Of Ed., 552 F.2d 1326, 1329 (9th Cir. 1977). See Recht v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studio, Inc., No. CV 0806612 RGKMANX, 2008 WL 11409588, at *2 (C.D. Cal. Nov. 17, 2008)(Striking amended complaint as an improper attempt by a non-party to intervene in the action where a non-party amended a pleading.). Finally, Polaris failed to dismiss its case prior to filing the Dolezal Complaint. Dolezal should have filed a new case when Polaris dismissed itself as the sole Plaintiff.

This doesn't even get into the question of how Liebowitz claiming to represent both Polaris and Dolezal could create some conflict of interest.

Perhaps recognizing that he was about to get into serious trouble yet again, Liebowitz did one of the things he's best at: turning tail and running. He sent a petulant angry letter saying that he'll dismiss the case "in order to avoid unnecessary motion practice" but still wanting to make sure he got in the last, nonsensical word. First, he claims that despite first claiming that Polaris had sole standing to sue, he later recognized he made a mistake, and therefore decided to swap in the new plaintiff:

Defendant argues that Dolezal does not have standing to sue because Plaintiff’s counsel previously represented that Polaris is the exclusive licensee to the Photograph at issue. We respectfully aver that subsequent to the first pre-motion conference, we re-analyzed Polaris’ exclusive agreement with Dolezal in light of prevailing caselaw and determined in good faith that it was Dolezal, rather than Polaris, who has standing to sue. The issue ultimately comes down to one of contractual interpretation and the timing of when Dolezal transmitted her Photograph to Polaris. It is a complex issue, and presents a question of first impression, so we have attempted to navigate the issue based on our good faith application of the law to the facts.

Richard, Richard, Richard. It is not a particularly complex issue. You fucked up. Again.

Either way, Tauler has now announced that he's going to seek attorneys fees for Paper Magazine, and notes that he expects to "challenge" Liebowitz's silly claim that this was all "just a misunderstanding."

Either way, this is yet another "misunderstanding" to throw on Liebowitz's ever growing pile of bad lawyering. Note that this all happened just weeks after Liebowitz had to bring a family friend with him to court to tell the judge that young Richard was too inexperienced to be handling cases like this and that he'd promised to get help from more experienced lawyers. By all appearances, it does not seem that Richard has followed through on that.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright troll, exclusive license, rachel dolezal, richard liebowitz, robert tauber, social media
Companies: enttech media, paper magazine, polaris images

Academic Consensus Growing: Phones And Social Media Aren't Damaging Your Kids

from the another-techno-panic dept

We've pointed out for a while now that every generation seems to have some sort of moral panic over whatever is popular among kids. You're probably aware of more recent examples, from rock music to comic books to Dungeons and Dragons to pinball machines (really). Of course, in previous generations there were other things, like chess and the waltz. Given all that, for years we've urged people not to immediately jump on the bandwagon of assuming new technology must also be bad for kids. And, yet, so many people insist they are. Senator Josh Hawley has practically trademarked his claim that social media is bad for kids. Senator Lindsey Graham held a full hearing all of which was evidence free, moral panicking about social media and the children -- and because of that he's preparing a new law to completely upend Section 230 in the name of "protecting the children" from social media.

Not that it's likely to stop grandstanding politicians, but over in academia, where they actually study these things, there's a growing consensus that social media and smart phones aren't actually bad for kids. While some academics made claims about potential harm a decade or so ago, none of their predictions have proven accurate, and even some of those academics have revised their earlier research, and in one case even admitting that they caused an unnecessary panic:

The debate about screen time and mental health goes back to the early days of the iPhone. In 2011, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a widely cited paper that warned doctors about “Facebook depression.”

But by 2016, as more research came out, the academy revised that statement, deleting any mention of Facebook depression and emphasizing the conflicting evidence and the potential positive benefits of using social media.

Megan Moreno, one of the lead authors of the revised statement, said the original statement had been a problem “because it created panic without a strong basis of evidence.”

A few different "studies of studies" are showing that there's little to no evidence to support harm from these popular technologies.

The latest research, published on Friday by two psychology professors, combs through about 40 studies that have examined the link between social media use and both depression and anxiety among adolescents. That link, according to the professors, is small and inconsistent.

“There doesn’t seem to be an evidence base that would explain the level of panic and consternation around these issues,” said Candice L. Odgers, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the lead author of the paper, which was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

There's a lot more in that NY Times article, or you can read through pretty much all of the recent academic research on the topic.

Of course, the real question is just how silly will Senators Hawley, Graham and others look as they continue to insist that social media and phones are harming the children?

Filed Under: democracy, kids, moral panic, social media, techno panic, think of the children

In This Time Of Techlash, It's Important To Remember That Sometimes Social Media Is Actually Good

from the quite-often-in-fact dept

It feels like pretty much every day there's some sort of new "techlash" story, about how awful social media is, about how it's dragging down democracy, destroying lives, and that we'd all be better off without it. We've been arguing for quite some time now that while there are real issues of concern about social media, most of the narrative is exaggerated to downright misleading. So it's actually surprising, but nice, to see the NY Times (which has been among the most vocal cheerleaders of the "internet is bad" narrative) have an excellent opinion piece by Sarah Jackson outlining how Twitter, in particular, has "made us better."

Jackson has recently co-authored a book, #HashtagActivism that details what a wonder Twitter has been for traditionally marginalized groups. It has allowed them to communicate, to organize, and to bring their messages into the mainstream.

We found that movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, while they had pre-Twitter origins, were pushed into mainstream consciousness by networks of ordinary people sharing firsthand stories, making demands and developing shared political narratives on the site. Without Twitter, these campaigns for race and gender justice would still exist, but they wouldn’t have nearly the same momentum.

The short op-ed highlights numerous stories that likely would not have received the attention they did without Twitter. Indeed, despite all the people who mock the "internet utopians," it certainly looks like the idea of tearing down gatekeepers and giving a voice to all were ideas that worked for many communities:

Twitter users have disrupted a media landscape where gatekeepers — in an industry that has always fallen short when it comes to race and gender diversity — were for too long solely responsible for setting the agenda of what we talked about as a country. While most Americans do not have Twitter accounts, journalists and politicians often do, and they have turned heavily in the past decade to the activists, scholars and people of color on Twitter to inform their coverage and policies. When they haven’t done so, these communities have responded resoundingly online. And America has listened.

Twitter has fundamentally altered the ways many communities interact with the media, as users feel empowered to challenge harmful framing. “I think the presence of Asian-Americans on Twitter has actually really showed journalists, editors and people in general in the newsroom how it is important to cover Asian-American issues,” one user told my colleagues and me in an interview for a report published by the Knight Foundation. “With Twitter, you can call out a publication if they mess up, or if they don’t cover certain topics. Now there’s accountability.”

Yes, the same tools can (and sometimes are) abused, but the point we keep trying to make here is that we shouldn't throw out the tools that do so much good just because sometimes they are abused. It's nice to see at least some acknowledging this.

Filed Under: activism, connections, disenfranchised, social media, voices

Losing Streak Continues For Litigants Suing Social Media Companies Over Violence Committed By Terrorists

from the twelve-straight-losses-to-open-the-season dept

According to Eric Goldman's count (and he would know), this is the 12th ridiculous "blame Twitter for terrorism" lawsuit to be tossed by a federal court. The dubious legal theory -- one so dubious it has yet to find any judicial takers -- is that Twitter and other social media platforms "allow" terrorists to converse and radicalize and do other terrorist things. What no one has successfully alleged is that Twitter, Facebook, etc. are directly or indirectly responsible for terrorist attacks.

This lawsuit was one of the dumbest. The brain geniuses at Excolo Law convinced a client this would be a winning strategy: claim the shooting of some cops by a shooter in Dallas was Twitter's fault because possibly the shooter thought terrorist group Hamas was pretty cool. 96 pages of lawsuit and this was the tenuous allegation plaintiffs Jesus Retana and Andrew Moss thought might finally prove social media companies are providing material support to terrorists.

Micah Johnson was radicalized by HAMAS’ use of social media. This was the stated goal of HAMAS. Johnson then carried out the deadly attacks in Dallas. Conducting terrorist acts in the United States via radicalized individuals is a stated goal of HAMAS.

Not only did the lawsuit fail to include anything linking Twitter to the killing of Dallas police officers, it failed to include anything linking the shooter to Hamas. That didn't stop Excolo Law from claiming that the only thing propelling the shooter to start killing Dallas police officers was Hamas' social media presence, aided and abetted by Twitter.

As Goldman points out, the court "expressly does not reach the Section 230 defense." That's not because it's not a good defense. It's because the lawsuit -- and the law firm shoveling as many of these into federal courts as possible -- is so awful.

The court opens its dismissal [PDF] by noting the string of courtroom failures Excolo Law (and 1-800-LAW-FIRM) doesn't seem to be interested in discussing when pursuing another lost cause in a federal court.

This case is the latest in a string of lawsuits that Plaintiffs’ lawyers have brought in an attempt to hold social media platforms responsible for tragic shootings and attacks across this country—by alleging that the platforms enabled international terrorist organizations to radicalize the attacks’ perpetrators. In fact, Plaintiffs’ lawyers brought a suit in the Northern District of California, Pennie v. Twitter, Inc., 281 F. Supp. 3d 874 (N.D. Cal. 2017), concerning the same Dallas shooting this Court is confronted with here, albeit with different plaintiffs. The court in that case dismissed the claims with prejudice, finding that there was no connection between the shooting and Hamas, the terrorist organization at issue. Id. at 892. Yet, Plaintiffs’ counsel made no mention of that case in their briefing; counsel discussed the case only after the Court questioned about it at oral argument.

The court then notes it can do its own research if the law firm isn't willing to discuss past work that hews super-closely to the case at hand. GTFO, says the Texas federal court.

The Court dismisses this lawsuit with prejudice. Although the complaint here alleges additional facts not found in Pennie, the complaint nonetheless suffers from many of the same deficiencies discussed in Pennie. Plaintiffs here have not and after multiple attempts, clearly cannot connect Hamas to the Dallas shooting.

Need more? No link between the cop killer and Hamas:

Simply put, the SAC does not allege any facts that show that Hamas radicalized Johnson to commit the Dallas attack, not to mention by using Defendants’ websites. Plaintiffs’ injuries,therefore, were not “by reason of” Hamas, or Defendants’ alleged support of Hamas.

No link between the claimed violation of the ATA (Anti-Terrorism Act) and the Dallas shooting, either:

Plaintiffs’ secondary liability claims fail for an additional, yet similar, reason: Plaintiffs do not allege that the Dallas shooting was an act of international terrorism.

[...]

[T]he SAC is devoid of allegations connecting Hamas to the shooting, even after it occurred. There is no transnational component to Johnson’s planning and execution of the shooting. Instead, this tragic shooting appears to be an act of domestic terrorism.

The case is dismissed with prejudice, continuing Excolo Law's losing streak. This obviously won't keep the firm from trying again, not as long as it can convince victims of violence they have a shot at extracting a large settlement from social media companies. Sure, it hasn't worked yet. But that can only mean Excolo, et al are due for a win! Right?

Filed Under: andrew moss, intermediary liability, jesus retana, material support, section 230, social media, terrorists
Companies: 1-800-lawfirm, excolo law, twitter

Twitter Makes A Bet On Protocols Over Platforms

from the well-this-is-nice dept

It looks like Twitter is making a bet on protocols over platforms for its future.

Nearly five years ago, I first wrote about the idea of why protocols are a better approach than platforms for various internet platforms struggling with content moderation issues. In that first post discussing it, I talked about two companies that I thought might benefit most from such an approach: Twitter and Reddit. Over the intervening years, I've been thinking, talking, and writing on this subject quite a bit, including the big paper I released with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech. That details a variety of different ideas regarding how we might move to a world dominated by protocols, rather than just centralized, proprietary, siloed platforms.

In the paper I talk about whether or not it makes sense for a larger company to adopt a protocol approach and to move away from a platform-based world. I've been talking this over with a variety of folks in and out of the tech world for years, and kept getting told that there was no way any company would voluntarily move in such a direction. And, after watching Facebook's weird approach with Libra (which is already looking like a flop), it only seemed to confirm that many of these companies are simply too entrenched in the platform model.

And yet... just a little while ago, Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey has announced that Twitter is going to start experimenting with protocols as a different approach to how the company might architect its business (and, yes, he cites my paper in his announcement). This is not, by any means, them jumping off the high dive into the world of protocols, but more a toe in the water. Basically, Twitter is going to seed fund an outside team, called BlueSky, that will be charged with creating an open and decentralized protocol standard for social media which Twitter might eventually use for its own system.

There are a lot of challenges here -- and many reasons why this project could fail. There are a bunch of existing teams trying to build their own protocol approaches for this as well. But, I think it is notable that Twitter, specifically (the same company I first wrote about regarding this approach five years ago) has decided to take a serious look at moving in this direction. I appreciate that Twitter is not shying away from the challenges and potential pitfalls to this approach, but going in with eyes wide open, suggesting that this is an experiment worth exploring.

If you're worried about the dominance of certain social media platforms, or if you're concerned about privacy online, or if you're uncomfortable with leaving the decisions for how content moderation works in the hands of a few internet company bosses -- this is big news and something you should be paying attention to. It won't change the way the web works overnight. Indeed, it might never have that big of an impact. But it certainly has the potential to be one of the most significant directional shifts for the mainstream internet in decades. Keep watching.

Filed Under: distributed, jack dorsey, platforms, protocols, social media
Companies: bluesky, twitter

DHS Sued Over First Amendment-Trampling Social Media Vetting Program

from the chilling-effect-IS-the-point dept

The DHS continues with its social media vetting program targeting foreign visitors despite questions about its Constitutionality and its effectiveness. Once a government agency decides to do something, it's difficult to talk it out of it, even if it appears to be throwing money down an unconstitutional hole.

That's not to say a government agency can't be deterred from doing something awful. It's just that deterrence seems to be more effective prior to deployment than after a program is already in place.

Speaking out against social media vetting hasn't really gotten us anywhere, so it's time to start suing. The Knight First Amendment Institute and the Brennan Center for Justice are suing the DHS on behalf of two US-based documentary film organizations, the International Documentary Association and the Doc Society. (via Just Security)

It's not just the privacy side of the Fourth Amendment that's affected by the DHS's social media deep dives and demands for account passwords. It's also the First Amendment. There's a definite chilling effect being felt now that the DHS can demand access to accounts during the visa application process or at the border when incoming foreign visitors arrive. From the lawsuit [PDF]:

Plaintiffs Doc Society and the International Documentary Association (“IDA”) bring this challenge because the Registration Requirement and related retention and dissemination policies violate their rights as well as the rights of their members and partners inside and outside the United States. Doc Society and IDA are U.S.-based documentary film organizations that regularly collaborate with non-U.S. filmmakers and other partners, including by inviting them to screen and discuss their work in the United States. For example, Doc Society hosts “Good Pitch” events throughout the year to facilitate filmmaking partnerships and launch social justice impact campaigns while raising funds to support these efforts. Similarly, IDA’s “Getting Real” conference brings hundreds of filmmakers from around the world together in Los Angeles to share their skills and their stories with each other.

The sort of things documentary filmmakers explore are the sorts of things US government agents might decide are "suspicious" when vetting social media accounts. On top of being mistaken for criminals or terrorists because they document criminal and terrorist activity, these organizations risk exposing confidential sources. And those confidential sources may risk blowing their own cover by acquiescing to demands for account info and passwords.

Many of Plaintiffs’ members and partners use social media to show their work; draw attention to human rights abuses; connect with other filmmakers, artists, and advocates; and engage with the same social and political issues that they address in their films. The Registration Requirement has a significant chilling effect on their use of social media, especially for political speech. Plaintiffs’ members and partners who anticipate applying for U.S. visas must consider the risk that a U.S. official will misinterpret their speech on social media, impute others’ speech to them, or subject them to additional scrutiny or delayed processing because of the views they or their contacts have expressed. Those who use pseudonymous identifiers must take into account that they will have to relinquish their online anonymity to U.S. officials when they submit their visa applications, and they must also consider the risk that U.S. officials will disclose their social media identifiers to foreign governments, reveal the identifiers inadvertently, or fail to protect the identifiers from third parties who might access them unlawfully. In recent months, authoritarian and other rights-abusing regimes, including some U.S. allies, have used information gleaned from social media to identify, locate, and detain human rights advocates, journalists, and political dissidents—and even, in some instances, to have them killed.

The chilling effect isn't theoretical. The lawsuit provides several examples of IDA or Doc Society members who have drastically altered their online activities in response to the DHS's social media vetting policy.

[O]ne IDA member currently residing in the U.S. Midwest reviewed three years of social media activity and deleted posts criticizing the current U.S. administration in order to avoid any delays on future visa applications.

[...]

A Doc Society partner who has shot two films and attended multiple film festivals in the United States applied for an I visa one week after the Registration Requirement took effect in the hope of continuing his work in the United States. Because of the Registration Requirement, he has all but stopped expressing his views and interacting with others on social media, though he previously used social media to promote his projects and to share his political views.

[...]

Because of the Registration Requirement, one IDA member has decided not to accept future work in the United States despite significant past work experience as a journalist here.

The lawsuit also points out the DHS's attempt to moderate immigration via social media vetting is bound to generate false positives and overlook genuine dangers. Vetting software strips posts of context and nuance. Translation software introduces errors. What's harmless in context may look harmful to the person vetting social media posts, due to language or cultural barriers. Emojis and other non-verbal cues may be misinterpreted. Content the government doesn't like might be shared, not because the person approves of what's happening, but because the person wants to inform others about criminal/terrorist activities. Combining automated processes with a non-adversarial process is the worst possible solution, but it's the one we're stuck with thanks to the endless ratcheting up of security efforts and the lack of manpower and/or interest to do the job properly.

The lawsuit asks for the court to find the vetting process unconstitutional and to block the DHS from enforcing it. It's a long shot but you can't get anything if you don't ask. If anything, it will hopefully result in some modifications of the program -- ones that allow those affected to challenge determinations made the DHS and that limit (or forbid) the sharing of information held by the DHS (for up to 100 years!) with other agencies. Just about anything would be an improvement over the program currently in place, which infringes on rights while not really doing much to make the nation more secure.

Filed Under: chilling effects, dhs, social media, social media vetting
Companies: doc society, international documentary association