Most Used Electric Car Buyers Have No Way To Confirm Vehicle Battery Health

from the this-could-be-a-problem dept

As we make the shift from gas to electric vehicles, there are a few issues we still haven't really paved the way for. One is the fact that, with gas taxes being the primary way we fund highway infrastructure, we need to develop alternative infrastructure funding (not a topic that tends to get priority in a hype and flash-obsessed culture, as John Oliver has been quick to remind everyone). The 18.4 cents a gallon federal gas tax hasn't been raised since 1993, and the Congressional Budget Office says that if the funding system doesn’t evolve by 2030, federal transportation funding will exceed its budget by a cool $188 billion.

The other problem, highlighted by Aaron Gordon at Wired, is that used car buyers and sellers currently have no way to confirm the battery health of a used electric car. Given the used car market is twice as big as the new car market, you can probably see how this could become a notable problem. Especially given that the battery health meter on most of these vehicles can be reset, allowing the seller of the car to effectively lie to buyers about how much life the battery has left:

"Churchill noticed something was wrong on his drive back home. When he left, the car estimated it had 80 miles of range. By the time he finished his 25-mile commute, it said it had 30 miles of range left. And in the next few days, Churchill said the battery health meter lost two bars. When he called the dealer to complain, he was shuffled between departments and ultimately ignored.

After doing some research, Churchill learned the battery health meter can be reset using a car diagnostic tool. After resetting, the meter will display all 12 bars for a short period before recalibrating after some use, just as Churchill's did. During this time, the car is essentially lying about its battery health."

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there are 17 million new cars sold in the US every year, compared to 40 million used vehicles. Currently only the Nissan Leaf even has a battery health meter customers can view. Every other electric vehicle currently on the market restricts that information to proprietary devices that typically only the sellers or dealers have access to, which will likely in time tether this whole discussion to the right to repair debate, and the obnoxious ways car makers restrict your ability to repair (or even have transparency into) things you own.

While the California Air Resources Board is cooking up a set of rules (pdf) aimed at protecting consumers from fraud on this front, the vast majority of states are... not doing that. What could possibly go wrong?

Filed Under: car batteries, electric cars, used cards

Instagram's Big Experiment With De-Prioritizing 'Likes' Fizzles As Some People Apparently Really Like 'Likes'

from the ah-well-nevertheless dept

Back in the fall of 2019, we wrote about how Instagram was experimenting with hiding "likes" from US users, to try to cut down on the awkward incentives it created -- such as people obsessing over who and how many people liked the pictures they posted. It was an interesting move, and we appreciated the willingness to experiment with making sure the platform wasn't just encouraging socially problematic behavior. However, now the company has announced that some people really got upset without their likes.

What we heard from people and experts was that not seeing like counts was beneficial for some, and annoying to others, particularly because people use like counts to get a sense for what’s trending or popular....

I mean... that seems obvious? It's not clear why you needed to run a test to find that out. And wasn't part of the point of the experiment to move away from people obsessing over "trending" or "popular" content? Either way, Instagram's solution is to pass the decision on to users.

So... now it's all optional. Perhaps that's better than forcing it on everyone, but it is interesting:

Starting today, we’re giving you the option to hide like counts on all posts in your feed. You’ll also have the option to hide like counts on your own posts, so others can’t see how many likes your posts get. This way, if you like, you can focus on the photos and videos being shared, instead of how many likes posts get.

To some extent this is great. Having more options is good and giving more powers to the end users is obviously good. But it sure sounds like the defaults will still be to include likes, and that means the vast, vast majority of users will still have them.

Casey Newton has some more details about what happened, and says that despite Instagram boss Adam Mosseri really thinking this was going to be a big deal, it turned out that people just didn't really care one way or the other.

“It turned out that it didn't actually change nearly as much about … how people felt, or how much they used the experience as we thought it would,” Mosseri said in a briefing with reporters this week. “But it did end up being pretty polarizing. Some people really liked it, and some people really didn't.”

As Casey notes, this seems to go along with a lot of recent research suggesting that some of the early panic about how "the kids these days" were all obsessing about likes and trends and what not... turns out to not really be that true. It certainly has a lot of the hallmarks about a moral panic involving a new technology and "the kids these days."

Casey concludes that the unexpected lesson from the varied response to this experiment is really that users want more control over their own experience, which is certainly a message some of us have been banging the drum on that point for years. Of course, it remains to be seen if Instagram (and Facebook) bakes that lesson into other parts of the platform going forward...

Filed Under: favorites, likes, social media
Companies: instagram

FBI, Australian Police Ran A Backdoored Encrypted Chat Service For Three Years

from the we've-got-a-server-on-the-inside-[wink] dept

Recently unsealed documents have revealed the FBI and the Australian Federal Police ran a backdoored encrypted communications service for more than three years, resulting in dozens of arrests and several large drug busts. Here's a brief summary via Joseph Cox for Motherboard.

For years the FBI has secretly run an encrypted communications app used by organized crime in order to surreptitiously collect its users' messages and monitor criminals' activity on a massive scale, according to a newly unsealed court document. In all, the elaborate operation netted more than 20 million messages from over 11,800 devices used by suspected criminals.

This honeypot/chat app went into development following law enforcement's takedown of other encrypted phone providers like Phantom Secure and Sky Global. According to the unsealed warrant [PDF] targeting a Gmail account of a suspect, the backdoored communications offering was the direct result of the indictment of Vincent Ramos, the CEO of Phantom Secure.

After Ramos was arrested, San Diego FBI agents recruited a Confidential Human Source (“CHS”) who had been developing the “next generation” encrypted communications product, poised to compete for market share against established hardened encrypted device competitors. At the time, the void created by Phantom Secure’s dismantlement provided a new opportunity for criminal users to switch to a new, secure brand of device. The CHS previously distributed both Phantom Secure and Sky Global devices to TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] and had invested a substantial amount of money into the development of a new hardened encrypted device. The CHS offered this next generation device, named “Anom,” to the FBI to use in ongoing and new investigations. The CHS also agreed to offer to distribute Anom devices to some of the CHS’s existing network of distributors of encrypted communications devices, all of whom have direct links to TCOs.

ANoM was first distributed to criminals in Australia by the FBI's source. But not before both the FBI and AFP added interception capabilities.

The FBI opened a new covert investigation, Operation Trojan Shield, which centered on exploiting Anom by inserting it into criminal networks and working with international partners, including the Australian Federal Police (“AFP”), to monitor the communications. Before the device could be put to use, however, the FBI, AFP, and the CHS built a master key into the existing encryption system which surreptitiously attaches to each message and enables law enforcement to decrypt and store the message as it is transmitted. A user of Anom is unaware of this capability. By design, as part of the Trojan Shield investigation, for devices located outside of the United States, an encrypted “BCC” of the message is routed to an “iBot” server located outside of the United States, where it is decrypted from the CHS’s encryption code and then immediately re-encrypted with FBI encryption code. The newly encrypted message then passes to a second FBI-owned iBot server, where it is decrypted and its content available for viewing in the first instance.

The investigation began in Australia with the AFP intercepting messages, utilizing the expanded powers given to it by 2018's Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (TOLA) to secure permission to intercept every communication carried by the ANoM devices. But the permission it received had limits. It was only able to "discuss generally" the content of the intercepted communications, rather than share them directly with the FBI.

As more devices made their way into the hands of suspected criminals, the FBI began performing its own interceptions. But it didn't do it directly. Instead, it asked an unnamed third country to perform the interception for it with the understanding it would hand over intercepted communications to the FBI.

[T]he FBI itself was not yet reviewing any of the decrypted content of Anom’s criminal users. Also by summer of 2019, the investigative team engaged representatives from a third country to receive an iBot server of its own and obtain the contents of communications occurring between Anom users… The third country agreed to obtain a court order in accordance with its own legal framework to copy an iBot server located there and provide a copy to the FBI pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (“MLAT”). Unlike the Australian beta test, the third country would not review the content in the first instance. FBI geo-fenced the U.S., meaning that any outgoing messages from a device with a U.S. MCC would not have any communications on the FBI iBot server.

[...]

In October 2019, the third country obtained a court order which enabled the copying of the iBot server and the receipt of its contents every two to three days. The initial MLAT between the U.S. and the third country authorized FBI to receive data from October 7, 2019, through January 7, 2020. [...]

Since October 2019, the third country has obtained additional court order pursuant to its own laws to copy the iBot server and the United States has obtained the server data pursuant to additional MLATs. The third country provides Anom server data to the FBI every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and will continue to do so until the expiration of the third country’s court order on June 7, 2021. This data comprises the encrypted messages of all of the users of Anoms with a few exceptions (e.g., the messages of approximately 15 Anom users in the U.S. sent to any other Anom device are not reviewed by FBI).

The 15 or so users in the US were monitored by the Australian Federal Police for "any threats to life" and this information "shared generally" with the FBI. Once this was all in place, the FBI was soon swimming in intercepted messages from all over the world.

Since October 2019, the FBI has reviewed the content from the iBot server in the third country pursuant to the MLAT. They have translated the messages (where necessary and where translations are available) and have catalogued more than 20 million messages from a total of 11,800 devices (with approximately 9000 active devices currently) located in over 90 countries.

The affidavit notes that most of ANoM's users reside in Serbia, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, and Australia. Other than Australia, no other country (or their applicable laws/legal processes) are discussed.

There's a whole lot of criminal activity being discussed using these devices. And not all of it is directly drug-related.

[T]he review of Anom messages has initiated numerous high-level public corruption cases in several countries. The most prominent distributors are currently being investigated by the FBI for participating in an enterprise which promotes international drug trafficking, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.

[...]

From those messages, more than 450,000 photos have been sent detailing conversations on other encrypted platforms discussing criminal activity, cryptocurrency transactions, bulk cash smuggling, law enforcement corruption , and self-identification information.

Yep. Law enforcement corruption.

Information reviewed on the platform has revealed law enforcement sensitive information passed to TCOs, such as reports and warrants. TCOs have also been notified of anticipated enforcement actions against the TCO or other criminal associates.

This multi-national investigation shows it's still possible to take down criminal organizations despite their use of encrypted communications. One solution for law enforcement appears to be to "roll your own" -- one that allows investigators to listen in on conversations as they happen.

Filed Under: australia, backdoor, encrypted chat, encryption, fbi, honeypot
Companies: anom

State Court Confirms The Obvious: There's No Expectation Of Privacy In Text Messages Sent To Other People

from the yet-another-'going-dark'-option dept

A Massachusetts court recently sent out the useful reminder that a person's reasonable expectation of privacy does not extend to other people. In other words, there's an expectation of privacy in sent communications, but only up to the point that someone receives them. (via FourthAmendment.com)

In this case [PDF], the defendant in a drug conspiracy hoped to suppress evidence against him obtained from another person's phone. The lower court allowed Jorge Delgado-Rivera to join a motion to suppress filed by another defendant whose phone was searched by law enforcement following a traffic stop.

The higher court says this was the wrong thing to do.

We conclude that, in the circumstances at issue here, the judge erred in deciding that Delgado-Rivera could join in the motion to suppress to challenge the stop and subsequent search.

Delgado-Rivera should not have been allowed to join in the motion to suppress because he enjoyed no reasonable expectation of privacy, under either State or Federal law, in the text messages sent by him that were stored on a cellular telephone belonging to, and possessed by, another person.

This is a simple enough finding -- one that hasn't been contradicted by any case law here in the United States. (The Supreme Court of Canada, however, has decided the expectation of privacy of the sender carries over to the recipient of communications.) The only analogous case -- cited by the lower court in its ruling-- deals with the findings of the Washington state Supreme Court, which held in 2014 that a message's sender still retains an expectation of privacy. But the twist there is that it only covered messages sent -- but never received -- by the intended recipient. That finding deals with law enforcement's interception of these messages, with an officer posing as the intended recipient in hopes of collecting incriminating communications.

In this case, the messages were sent to the person whose phone was searched. And once they're sent and received, the recipient is free to share the communications with anyone, including law enforcement. That's what happened here, although the "sharing" question has been answered in another opinion, granting the message recipient his motion to suppress. That's detailed in a footnote which shows the supposedly consensual search of the phone most likely wasn't.

At an evidentiary hearing on his motion to suppress, Leonel Garcia-Castaneda argued that Officer Jose Tamez's search of his cellular telephones was non-consensual, at least in part because Garcia-Castaneda can speak and read only in Spanish, and the consent form he signed to authorize the searches was in English. The Commonwealth called Tamez to testify on this issue, but he invoked his right not to incriminate himself under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and therefore was not available to testify regarding the details of the stop and the subsequent searches. The Commonwealth presented no other evidence regarding the stop. The judge thus determined that the fruits of the search in Texas could not be used as evidence against Garcia-Castaneda.

This raises a question that is never answered in this opinion. If messages being used as evidence against Jorge Delgado-Rivera were obtained with an apparently illegal search of Garcia-Castaneda's phone, wouldn't this invalidate the evidence obtained against Rivera from Castaneda's phone? Apparently not. The court notes it in passing and makes no further mention of it in the rest of the ruling.

It does, however, suggest it would view the expectation of privacy in sent communications a little differently if the messages were encrypted or otherwise protected from being seen by anyone other than the intended recipient:

The Commonwealth notes the absence of evidence suggesting "that [Delgado-Rivera] took any steps to protect the contents of those messages [he sent to Garcia-Castaneda] by, for example, using encrypted messaging applications like Signal or Telegram, or an application that defaults to content deletion such as Snapchat." While the use of such applications, or similar efforts to enhance the privacy or security of the messages at issue, likely would be relevant to the extent that it reveals a defendant's efforts to protect his or her privacy, we leave for another day an issue that was not briefed by the parties and is not presently before us.

But the addition of encryption/self-destruction to messaging won't necessarily establish an expectation of privacy. Recipients can decrypt messages and share them or take screenshots of messages before they're destroyed. The senders of messages generally aren't expecting to share the contents of those communications with law enforcement, but there's very little preventing law enforcement from obtaining the contents from the receiving end of those communications.

Even with the seemingly illegal phone search in the mix, the court is right: there's no expectation of privacy. But there appears to be an unanswered question about the legality of the evidence being used against Delgado-Rivera. If was obtained via an illegal search, it should be suppressed, even if there's no expectation of privacy in messages he sent to someone else. But from what's said here, it appears Rivera will need to submit his own motion to suppress, rather than hitchike on his codefendant's suppression attempt.

Filed Under: 3rd parties, expectation of privacy, privacy, recipients, text messages

Daily Deal: The Essential Microsoft SQL Server Training Bundle

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

The Essential Microsoft SQL Server Training Bundle will help you learn the fundamentals of Microsoft SQL and the keys to handling big data clusters. You'll learn about SQL Server installation, data storage, data recovery, monitoring, security, and maintenance. You'll also learn how to use Big Data Clusters to combine large volumes of streaming data for analysis along with data stored in a traditional database, and more. It's on sale for $30.

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

Not As Surprising As You May Think: Garland DOJ Says That Trump Denying Raping E. Jean Carroll Was Official Presidential Business

from the the-doj-is-gonna-doj dept

Late last year, we covered the story of the DOJ stepping in to take over a defamation case for President Trump. As we noted at the time, the defamation case itself was pretty weak, though it's similar to a series of other defamation cases we've seen in recent times. E. Jean Carroll claimed that Donald Trump had sexually assaulted her many years ago. Trump later denied the claim, saying that it was "totally false" and saying (incorrectly, as it turns out) that he "never met this person in my life." Carroll then sued for defamation based on the denials. As noted, this kind of defamation case has popped up a few times, including a high profile one against Bill Cosby by one of his accusers as well.

What was perhaps somewhat different about the Carroll case, was that it was against the sitting president, and under the Westfall Act, if the Attorney General "certifies" that an action taken by federal employees that leads to a lawsuit against them was "within the scope of his office or employment," then the DOJ gets to insert itself into the case instead of the initial defendant (and, in a defamation case, then the case would be automatically dismissed, as you can't defame "the United States.")

So, the big question in this situation is whether or not Donald Trump denying sexually assaulting (or even meeting Carroll) was done as part of his official duties as president. I think it's a huge stretch to argue that it does -- and last fall, a judge agreed with me, denying the DOJ's attempt. The judge, Lewis Kaplan, noted that if Trump were talking about policy issues, it would be different, but denying a sexual assault from long before he was president doesn't appear to be official government business. I recognize that some people have argued otherwise, noting that since the accusations came up while he was president, and could potentially impact his job as president, commenting on the claims magically becomes the duty of the president, but that seems incredibly weak, and would effectively make the president immune from defamation claims in most instances.

Judge Kaplan went even further, though, in saying that he didn't think the president is even covered by the Westfall Act. This was surprising, but the argument was pretty compelling, with the key points being:

The president is a constitutional officer. He occupies the highest office in our nation, which is created by Article II of the Constitution. But that is not what Section 2671 requires. It speaks only of “officers . . . of any federal agency,” not officers of the United States within the meaning of the Constitution....

[....[

Because the president is at the apex of the executive branch, many think of him, in a colloquial sense, as the “head” of many federal departments, agencies, and organizations. At the very least, one might imagine that he leads some agency at the core of the executive branch. The government has not attempted to identify any such agency in its papers, but the two most obvious candidates are the Executive Office of the President (“EOP”) and the president’s cabinet. But neither entity fits the bill. The head of the EOP, which is a network of agencies, is the president’s chief of staff. And even if one were to call the cabinet an “executive department” or “independent establishment” – a dubious contention – the president himself is not a member of the cabinet, although the vice president is.

After Biden won the election, many assumed that the new DOJ, under Merrick Garland, would let the matter drop. After all, would a Biden administration really want to be in court trying to kill a defamation case against Donald Trump?

But, of course, that ignores how the DOJ functions, and the importance the DOJ puts on making sure it retains this power in other, future cases. So, while it surprised many, it shouldn't be at all surprising that the DOJ is appealing the decision.

The thing that seems most important to the DOJ is whether or not the Westfall Act applies to the president. For fairly obvious reasons, any presidential administration probably wants that to remain in place:

The district court held that the President is not an “employee of the government” for purposes of the FTCA and, hence, for the Westfall Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2679(b)(1). If that were correct, no action taken by the President could give rise to tort liability on the part of the United States. And the United States could never be substituted as the defendant in a tort action against a President in his or her personal capacity, even when the conduct at issue was incontrovertibly taken within the scope of employment.

Basically, the DOJ says that even if the Court technically read the law properly, no one else has ever read the law that way.

To our knowledge, the United States has never disclaimed liability for torts committed by an executive branch employee on the ground that the employee was not employed by one of the fifteen cabinet level departments identified in 28 U.S.C. § 451. To the contrary, all three branches of government have long construed the statute broadly.

And then it argues that the district court also should have allowed the DOJ to take over the case on the grounds that Trump denying the assault was, in fact, official business. The DOJ brief notes that it was discussing "reprehensible conduct," but that it could still be done within the scope of the President's duties.

Applying these established principles to this case, the statements by then- President Trump fell within the scope of his employment. The district court’s contrary conclusion was premised on an assumption that the statements were not within the scope because “President Trump’s views on [Ms. Carroll’s] sexual assault allegation” were not pertinent to his employment since “they reveal nothing about the operation of government” (SPA53) and “[n]either the media reports nor the underlying allegations have any relationship to his official duties” (SPA58). That premise was mistaken.

When members of the White House media asked then-President Trump to respond to Ms. Carroll’s serious allegations of wrongdoing, their questions were posed to him in his capacity as President. Likewise, when Mr. Trump responded to those questions with denials of wrongdoing made through the White House press office or in statements to reporters in the Oval Office and on the White House lawn, he acted within the scope of his office. Elected public officials can—and often must—address allegations regarding personal wrongdoing that inspire doubt about their suitability for office. Such wrongdoing can include not only the serious charges of criminal behavior leveled here, but a range of activities including fraud and malfeasance. Officials do not step outside the bounds of their office simply because they are addressing questions regarding allegations about their personal lives. Thus, in Ballenger, the D.C. Circuit concluded that a congressman acted within the scope of employment when he allegedly engaged in defamation during an interview to explain the reasons for his separation from his wife. 444 F.3d at 662. The district court’s contrary reasoning in this case fails to appreciate the responsibility that elected officials owe the public to respond to serious allegations that cast doubt on their fitness for office.

Once again, this is the DOJ and the administration doing what the DOJ and any administration is likely to do: protecting their own powers. It shouldn't be surprising, even if it feels weird that the Biden DOJ would continue down this path. It's likely going to be true in a number of other cases started by the Trump DOJ that the Biden DOJ might not have initiated, but doesn't want to hinder future powers.

Filed Under: defamation, doj, donald trump, e. jean carroll, joe biden, merrick garland, westfall act, william barr

Detroit The Latest City Forced To Cobble Together Working Internet Thanks To Telecom Market Failure

from the so-heartwarming! dept

Frustrated by slow speeds, high prices, and spotty broadband availability (read: market failure) more than 750 US towns and cities have explored some kind of home-grown broadband option. Sometimes that's a local cooperative. Sometimes it's an extension of the locally owned power utility. Sometimes it's a public/private partnership with an existing internet provider. And sometimes it involves building an entire local broadband network from scratch. But always it's motivated by one thing: an ever growing, multi-decade frustration at the lack of competition and options in the US broadband market.

Enter Detroit, which is the latest city where annoyed users are being forced to build an entirely new ISP block by block:

"Detroit has historically been one of the least connected cities in America, with about 40 percent of Detroit residents lacking any home internet access at all. Things are changing, though, thanks in large part to projects like the Equitable Internet Initiative (EII), a collaboration between the Detroit Community Technology Project and a network of community organizations."

The effort involves relying on voluntary bandwidth provided by local enterprise provider 123Net. From there, locals are getting speeds of 25 Mbps via point to point wireless. That's a notable improvement for the 40% of the city that has no access to broadband at all. Or other major chunks of the city, where aging AT&T DSL may be their only option. If you're really lucky, an expensive Comcast cable line is your only broadband option.

But there's something that grates on me about these stories and it's this: for whatever reason, most major press outlets covering broadband in 2021 act as if the "digital divide" is this thing that just dropped from the sky one day. But the reason it still exists in 2021 is due to the regional monopolization and the corruption (federal and local) that protects it. Consumer groups have repeatedly showcased how with no competition and feckless regulatory oversight, AT&T just often simply refuses to upgrade its aging network. They've also shown how this impacts marginalized and low-income communities the hardest:

But for whatever reason, The Hill writes an entire story about Detroit's broadband problems and... doesn't mention AT&T's regional monopolization or political and regulatory corruption at all. There's just no shortage of stories like this that cover America's broadband dysfunction and the ad hoc solutions people are forced to come up with to get online, yet just fail completely to explain why this is happening. And kind of like stories where a local kid has to crowdfund his open heart surgery because our medical system is broken, the press tends to frame these efforts as heartwarming.

But it's extremely rare you see major outlets clearly explain that US broadband dysfunction was an active policy choice. It's the direct result of 25 straight years of prioritizing the interests of regional monopolies, and coddling giants like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast. It's the direct result of signing off on mindless consolidation and harmful megamergers. It's the direct result of choosing not to embrace pro-competition policies. It's the direct result of repeatedly neutering telecom regulatory oversight under the (false) promise this somehow results in telecom Utopia (despite 25 years of evidence this isn't true).

At this point our broadband failures aren't a matter of technology, or cost. After all, we've thrown countless billions of dollars at these incumbent broadband giants for fiber networks that mysteriously always wind up half completed. They're the result of leadership failure and corruption. But instead of clearly acknowledging and fixing these problems, we seem obsessed with (as the Trump era made fairly clear) doubling down on the bad choices that created them. Then dismissing the high prices, spotty coverage, and substandard service as just something that appeared one day, utterly free of any meaningful causation.

Filed Under: community broadband, competition, detroit, fcc, municipal broadband

Denuvo Is Still Claiming It's In The Anti-Piracy Business Even As Games Continue To Strip Out Denuvo Post-Launch

from the useless dept

For a three year period or so, we had a ton of coverage on Denuvo, a DRM platform once touted as undefeatable. That era of invincibility soon crumbled completely, with cracking groups eventually figuring out how to get around the DRM. Cracking times on games went from months, to weeks, to days, to essentially games being cracked at launch. Games started patching Denuvo out of games, which is roughly the equivalent of admitting defeat. In response, Denuvo began claiming that it's platform was still a success because it could protect some games for some number of hours at the time of launch and the company apparently believed that really should be good enough. The company also announced a pivot to providing anti-cheat software for online games, though publishers began ripping that out of their games at record speed as well.

So, where are we now? Well, the new status quo appears to be this: Denuvo still advertises both its anti-piracy and anti-cheat platforms as successes while games that use the software are still having them peeled out via patches. Notably, Denuvo's marketing material now reflects the emphasis on the initial release window, where Denvuo claims its platform can protect a game for 14 days after launch, during which publishers earn "59% of their revenue from their new title."

As with all things Denuvo, this claim should be taken with enormous grains of salt for a variety of reasons. First, that revenue claim seems spurious, given how many games make revenue in how many different ways. Online games make their revenue on an ongoing basis, while single-player only games may make the largest chunk at release. But many single-player games make lots of money on an ongoing basis by embracing their modding community, updating games to keep them relevant to new buyers, releasing DLC, etc. It's also worth noting that Denuvo has failed spectacularly to protect many, many titles for anything close to 14 days.

But most important to note is that this represents the continued moving of the goalposts by Denuvo. The platform was once touted as "the end of gaming piracy." Now the focus is on 14 days of protection. Why? Well, the answer is that games long in existence are still patching Denuvo out.

When Monster Hunter: World launched on Steam in 2018 it came with a DRM system to deter pirates by requiring online activation to launch the game. This is often a source of ire for players because of a perception that it causes higher CPU usage and more frequent utilisation of storage devices that could affect gameplay or damages hardware. Denuvo has denied these claims.

Monster Hunter: World’s latest patch has removed around 500MB of files from the game, and the steam page no longer states that MH:W has some form of DRM.

That post, in addition to noting Denuvo's denial that the DRM has literally any performance impact on a gamer's machine, also goes on to claim that "it is not uncommon for companies to remove the DRM in a patch once it is no longer necessary."

That may be true for Denuvo's anti-piracy platform specifically, but it certainly is not the case for how DRM has been handled generally throughout gaming's history. In addition, think about what is being said in that claim. A DRM that has at least some utility and no performance impact on gaming machines is stripped by publishers like that of Monster Hunter: World because... why? Just because of public perception on gaming performance? A perception that exists at launch? Why, after a couple of years of the game being sold, would the publisher now even bother to strip out the DRM if it has no actual negative downside?

Well, there are three possible answers. One is that the game publisher knows that, in fact, Denuvo does have an effect on the game's performance on a buyer's machine. Another is that the game publisher realizes that the DRM does not in fact have any actual utility. The third option is that the game publisher concludes that both are the case.

Either way, a successful product doesn't get stripped out of games through patching. Unsuccessful products do that. No matter what Denuvo wants to claim for itself in its marketing material.

Filed Under: denuvo, drm, video games
Companies: denuvo

Ring Will Now Require Law Enforcement Requests For Camera Footage To Be Made Publicly

from the forcing-cops-to-form-a-better-relationship-with-those-they-serve dept

Ring, Amazon's doorbell camera acquisition, has long considered itself to be an integral part of law enforcement. It has aggressively pursued partnerships with local governments, offering up cheap (or free) cameras in exchange for recommendations and installations by law enforcement agencies.

Hundreds of law enforcement agencies have decided Ring provides a welcome new stream of surveillance footage, all captured by private cameras. Although Ring suggests users only capture their immediate doorsteps (or the interiors of their houses), plenty of cameras provide users (and law enforcement) with an insight into the movements of other people as they traverse nearby sidewalks and streets.

Ring has racked up an impressive amount of negative press over the last couple of years -- mainly because it appears to consider owners of cameras as little more than footage portals for government agencies. It has provided guidance to law enforcement agencies on how to bypass warrant requirements and given them cameras to hand out with the implicit suggestion the favor will be returned whenever officers come asking for recordings.

It appears Ring has realized its aggressive courting of law enforcement isn't doing much for its reputation. Its parent company, Amazon, recently extended its moratorium on providing facial recognition tech to government agencies. Its doorbell/camera subsidiary hasn't said much lately about its facial recognition plans (and there's nothing stopping cops from running Ring footage through their own tech), but it is stepping up to make its relationship with law enforcement more transparent. (via CNBC)

Beginning next week, public safety agencies will only be able to request information or video from their communities through a new, publicly viewable post category on Neighbors called Request for Assistance. Public safety agencies can use these posts to notify residents of an incident and ask their communities for help related to an investigation. All Request for Assistance posts will be publicly viewable in the Neighbors feed, and logged on the agency’s public profile. This way, anyone interested in knowing more about how their police agency is using Request for Assistance posts can simply visit the agency’s profile and see the post history.

This is the best way to approach this. And I assume there's a little bit of public pressure in play. Neighbors might lean on other neighbors when something violent or destructive goes down in their neighborhood but some Ring owners aren't playing ball with the local PD. That may increase "engagement," but probably only slightly.

On the other hand, it will deter law enforcement agencies from engaging in fishing expeditions for footage that they feel might provide some insight or just want to use for other purposes, like keeping an eye on people engaged in First Amendment activities.

Warrants served by law enforcement agencies won't be posted to this portal. This is just for informal requests for assistance. And that's fine. Warrants need probable cause and a judge's signature, which obviously doesn't guarantee probable cause exists to demand footage, but is far more oversight than the nothing at all that accompanies direct requests to Ring owners via Ring-enabled law enforcement portals. And law enforcement can always approach Ring directly with subpoenas and warrants, bypassing Ring owners completely, so there's a built-in way to avoid interacting with the public if that's what agencies prefer to do.

This is a positive step away from the precipice by Ring. The company has long considered its customers to be little more than contributors to ever-expanding law enforcement surveillance networks. Its move towards more transparency suggests it has been listening to its critics and the concerns of its customers, which is something it really hasn't done since its emergence as a major player in the home camera market.

Filed Under: cameras, law enforcement, police requests, ring, ring doorbell, video doorbells
Companies: amazon