Daily Deal: The All-Star Mac Bundle Featuring Parallels Pro

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

The All-Star Mac Bundle has 5 apps to help boost your Mac's productivity. It features a one year subscription to Parallels Pro, an app that lets you run thousands of Windows apps like Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Access, and even graphic-intensive games and CAD programs without compromising on performance or rebooting. Other apps included will help you manage contacts, navigate and manage PDFs, learn how to animate, and more. The bundle is on sale for $50.

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

Worried About Tracfone Merger Approval, Verizon Pretends It Didn't Exploit COVID Emergency Program

from the with-friends-like-these dept

Prodded by Congress, a few months back the FCC launched the Emergency Broadband Benefit, a $3.2 billion program designed to provide folks struggling economically during COVID a little extra help affording broadband. Under the program, users get a $50 discount off their broadband bill, a total that jumps to $75 for those living on tribal areas. As we've well covered, regional telecom monopolization and corruption results in Americans paying some of the highest prices in the world for broadband, a problem that hits low income consumers and marginalized communities the hardest.

While the program does little to fix US broadband's bigger competition issue, it's certainly helping folks; roughly a million folks signed up the first week. And while the majority of the 825 participating ISPs are engaging in the program in good faith, it's not particularly surprising that some ISPs decided to try and game the system to make an additional buck. Charter, for example rejected users from signing up if they didn't agree to pay for a more expensive broadband tier once the program ends, which appears to violate the program rules.

More problematic is Verizon, which got caught forcing users to sign up for even more expensive tiers if they wanted to apply to the program, resulting in some users being forced to pay more for broadband than if they'd never signed up for government help in the first place:

"Annie Styles from Arlington, Va., who pays $79 per month for her Internet, says Verizon told her she would have to switch to a plan that would cost her closer to $95. “I stopped pursuing it with them after the math didn’t work out,” she says."

Not too surprising coming from a company criticized in 2018 for capping California firefighters' "unlimited" wireless plan during an historic wildfire, then trying to upsell them to more expensive plans as they tried to battle the blaze. Only once the press highlighted Verizon's latest COVID relief gamesmanship did they back away from it, issuing an odd press release pretending that none of this had ever happened, and any changes to their approach were entirely of their own making. The company has also been trying to do damage control at the FCC, claiming people didn't experience the thing they clearly experienced:

"Verizon is defending its practice of forcing customers to switch plans to get a government-funded $50-per-month discount, telling the Federal Communications Commission that this is not the same thing as "upselling." Verizon has partially backtracked from this restrictive policy but told the FCC it will take "about a month" to deploy a billing-software update that will let more home-Internet customers get the discounts without changing plans."

Again, not too surprising for a company that spent millions of dollars trying to neuter the FCC and net neutrality, then used a fake journalist to pretend it wasn't actually doing that.

Verizon's particularly sensitive because the company is currently trying to gain regulatory approval for its acquisition of Tracfone, a prepaid wireless carrier predominately used by low income Americans. Consumer groups like Public Knowledge have been warning the FCC (pdf) that a company that thinks nothing of exploiting a program designed for low income Americans might just not be the best steward of a company catering to low income consumers. But I'd wager the Biden FCC approves the deal anyway, given America's obsession with the illusory benefits of near-mindless telecom consolidation.

Filed Under: broadband, covid, emergency broadband benefit, fcc
Companies: tracfone, verizon

Google, Facebook And Chaos Computer Club Join To Fight New German Law Allowing Government Spies And Police To Use Trojans Against Innocent Citizens

from the strange-bedfellows dept

One of the curious aspects of Germany's surveillance activities is the routine use of so-called "state trojans" -- software that is placed surreptitiously on a suspect's system by the authorities to allow it to be monitored and controlled in real time over the Internet. The big advantage of this approach is that it lets intelligence agencies get around end-to-end encryption without needing backdoors in the code. Instead, the trojan sits at one end of the conversation, outside the encryption, which lets it eavesdrop without any problem. This approach goes back at least a decade, and now seems to be an accepted technique in the country, which is rather surprising given Germany's unhappy history of state surveillance and control during the previous century. The German government likes state trojans so much it wants to give the option to even more of its services, as Netzpolitik explains (original in German, translation by DeepL):

At the end of each grand coalition's legislative period, there was always a small fireworks display of further surveillance measures. Unfortunately, you can always bet on that, and this thesis is confirmed this time as well.

The bill to amend the law on the protection of the [German] constitution is about to be passed by the grand coalition [of the CDU/CSU and SPD parties]. This will give all German intelligence services hacking powers and allow them to use state trojans in the future. At the same time, the Federal Police Act will also be passed, which will not only allow the authorities to use state trojans, but will also give them the power to hack people who have not committed a crime or are suspected of having done so.

The new law would require Internet service providers to cooperate actively in installing trojans on their customers' devices. Such an obligation would radically change and undermine the relationship between Internet suppliers and their customers. It's such a bad idea that it has managed to bring together the most unlikely bedfellows -- including Google, Facebook and the archetypal hacker group Chaos Computer Club. In a joint letter to the German government (original in German, translation by DeepL), they call for:

Not taking any further legal measures that would weaken or break encryption.

In particular, to waive the obligation for companies to cooperate in the reform of the Federal Law on the Protection of the Constitution, which would make companies the extended arm of the intelligence services and significantly jeopardize cybersecurity.

Not to rush the adaptation of the constitutional protection law with the duty to cooperate through the parliamentary procedure, but to involve the business community and civil society. This requires a dialog with citizens, civil society and industry.

In addition, we call on the federal government and the [national parliament] to strengthen encryption to protect private and professional communications in the medium and long term

It's good to see such a united front against this terrible idea. But the German government's love of state trojans is probably too ingrained now for an open letter to have much effect.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: federal police act, germany, hacking, surveillance, trojans, wiretap
Companies: ccc, facebook, google

Twitch Manages To Get Out Some 'Disappointment' With Music Industry Over Latest Round Of DMCA Claims

from the oooooh-disappointment! dept

The saga that has been Twitch's last six or so months is long and somewhat varied, so you should go read up on our historical coverage if you're not familiar with it, but we need to at least preface this post with the origins of how Twitch's bad time began. What has been a tumultuous several months began when it absolutely freaked out over a flood of DMCA takedown notices it received, mostly from the music industry. In response to that, and without warning to its creative community, Twitch nuked a bunch of content from the platform, mostly ignored the outcry from its creators, and did very little to put anything in place that would keep such a disastrous situation from happening again.

So of course it happened again. Twitch recently sent out an email that it had received roughly 1,000 additional DMCA takedown notices, almost all of them again over music playing in the background of recorded Twitch videos.

Said Twitch in its email on Friday: “We are committed to being more transparent with you about DMCA. We recently received a batch of DMCA take down notifications with about 1,000 individual claims from music publishers.

“All of the claims are for the VODs and the vast majority target streamers listening to background music while playing video games or IRL streaming. Based on the number of claims we believe these rights holders used automated tools to scan and identify copyrighted music in creators VODs and clips, which means that they will likely send further notices."

Of course they will. Twitch invited them to when it showed itself to be a willing partner in treating Twitch creators like a testing ground for DMCA cluster bombs. There are platforms out there that manage to both treat DMCA requests seriously and also provide some protection, or at least communication, to its users. A few tools for creators aside, Twitch's inaction on behalf of its creative community amounted essentially to greenlighting ever more DMCA takedowns from the music industry. Any surprise at that by the Amazon-owned company is laughable.

But this neutered, throwaway line from that same email is simply maddening.

“This is our first such contact from the music publishing industry (there can be several owners for a single piece of music) and we are disappointed that they decided to send takedowns when we were willing and ready to speak to them about solutions.”

As the old saying goes, be disappointed at the music industry's aggressive copyright enforcement in one hand and spit in the other and see which fills up faster. There is no substance to this disappointment. Of course the music industry has gone kazoo filing DMCA notices at Twitch. Twitch has made it clear its on their side, even making it easier than before to file these notices.

The real disappointment here is that Twitch, and by extension Amazon, has so wildly left its creative community out to dry when it comes to copyright enforcement and DMCA takedowns. It's simply not doing enough.

Filed Under: background, dmca, music industry, streaming
Companies: twitch

Man Sues After Field Drug Test Says His Daughter's Ashes Are Meth And Ecstasy

from the if-prosecutors-have-any-shame-at-all,-they'll-start-tossing-some-convictions dept

Cops like cheap field drug tests. They don't like them because they're accurate. They like them because they're cheap. And since you get what you pay for, they're way cheaper (in the long run) then sending for a drug dog.

Field drug tests are probable cause at $2 a pop. They're even more unreliable than drug dogs when it comes to correctly identifying drugs. That's why some prosecutors -- the nominal best friends of law enforcement -- are refusing to accept plea deals for drug charges stemming solely from field drug tests.

Field drug tests have said donut crumbs, cotton candy, and honey are methamphetamines. They've said bird poop on a car's hood (!!) and bog standard aspirin are cocaine. Whatever a cop imagines to be drugs can usually be "confirmed" by the test kits they carry with them. Once the vial says it's drugs, the cops are free to search, seize, and arrest.

Cops don't need to be this wrong about drugs. But there's no penalty for being this wrong. So, it continues. Prosecutors may have to drop a few cases when the drug lab says the supposed drugs aren't actual drugs, but plea deals tend to go into place before labs get around to testing the evidence. And that's if the evidence even makes its way to a lab. Cops aren't the best at paperwork, which is convenient when it's their word against yours. Even if a cop gets sued for turning non-contraband into contraband and drug charges, they're usually indemnified by the city they work for or granted qualified immunity for relying on what they thought was actual science.

And, because no one seems too interested in ending the reliance on unreliable drug tests, this is the sort of travesty we've come to expect.

Newschannel 20 and FOX Illinois obtained new body camera video of the incident sparking Dartavius Barnes to sue the City of Springfield.

In the suit, Barnes claims his vehicle was unlawfully searched on April 6, 2020 when he was pulled over near Laurel and 16th Streets in Springfield.

He says officers placed him in handcuffs while they searched his vehicle without consent, valid warrant, or probable cause.

During the search, Barnes says officers took a sealed urn of his daughter's ashes, unsealed it, opened it without consent, and spilled out the ashes.

If you think that's terrible, just wait for the backstory. Barnes' daughter Ta'Naja Jones was only two when she died. And she may have been killed. The girl's mother and her current boyfriend were both arrested on murder charges.

The ultimate insult to Ta'Naja Jones and her father happened here. Ta'Naja Jones' final resting place wasn't in the urn Barnes kept in his car. It was in a field drug test that officers performed because they just couldn't bring themselves to believe it might be the last remains of a loved one.

According to law enforcement's favorite faulty test equipment, the ashes of Ta'Naja Jones were possibly ecstasy. And that conclusion was reached after the ashes failed to test positive for cocaine.

An officer presented the officer whose body camera was rolling with a narcotics test kit.

"I checked for cocaine, but it looks like it's probably molly," the officer said.

"X pills," the other added, citing the street name for ecstasy.

In the end, the cops decided the ashes were a combination of meth and ecstasy because that's how drug users carry their drugs: all mixed together in a single container. What even the fuck.

Field drug tests allow cops to work backwards from their conclusions. If it doesn't test positive for one drug, it's probably some other drug. And if it doesn't test positive for anything, it might still be drugs because sometimes drugs are carried in containers. "Based on training and experience" and all of that horseshit. The stuff that says criminals sometimes act like normal non-criminals. And if criminals act like non-criminals on a regular basis, every non-criminal is guilty until proven otherwise.

Barnes has sued [PDF]. It's a short lawsuit and it looks like it will be an uphill battle to win. Barnes admitted to having marijuana in the car and apparently consented to a search. The end result was this horrendous violation of his daughter's remains, but everything up to that point was "reasonable" enough (utilizing the courts' definition of this word rather than the definition citizens use) that it will be hard to prove the officers crossed Constitutional boundaries.

The problem here is the field drug tests and the officers believing they can actually positively identify drugs with them. They were "reasonable" to rely on the drug test results because everyone who benefits from the use of faulty tests told them the tests were reliable, even when they're obviously not. If a child's ashes are not just one, but two different illegal substances, anything can be anything whenever a cop wants it to be something.

Filed Under: dartavius barnes, drug tests, evidence, field drug tests, prosecutors

Now That Amazon Has Bought MGM, Will It Turn Against The Internet?

from the hopefully-not dept

As you may have heard, Amazon recently reached a deal to buy MGM Studios for $8.5 billion, expanding its in-house content studio, which is already quite massive, given its efforts to build up its Prime Video streaming service. For a variety of reasons (notably, everything Amazon has done with Prime, as well as increasing video streaming competition from Disney, NBC Universal, Warner Media/Discovery, etc.), the deal isn't that surprising.

I do wonder, however, if this deal brings Amazon a step closer to turning its back on the open internet. I mean, we already had Netflix join the MPA and start overreacting to piracy after being a good internet steward for many years. At this point, it seems like it may only be a matter of time until Amazon goes down that path as well -- though I'd hope they think better of it.

That said, it is notable that MGM is not a member of the MPA. It somewhat famously left in 2005. So maybe that helps keep Amazon on a path of actually supporting the open internet, and remembering the rest of its business (and how much it relies on an open internet). Still, watching how much the internet and the entertainment business has converged over the past decade or so suggests that we might finally get a realignment on these issues. It would be nice if that came with Hollywood finally recognizing the open internet is not the enemy, rather than the new tech players turning their backs on the open internet... but I'm not at all confident that's how this will play out.

Filed Under: content, copyright, internet
Companies: amazon, mgm, mpa, mpaa, netflix

Corporations Are Being Forced To Take Consumer Complaints Back To Court After Arbitration Push Backfires Spectacularly

from the the-devil-you-know dept

For years, AT&T worked tirelessly to erode its customers' legal rights, using mouse print in its terms of service preventing consumers from participating in lawsuits against the company. Instead, customers were forced into binding arbitration, where arbitrators, chosen and paid by the companies under fire, unsurprisingly rule in favor of companies more often than not. Initially, the lower courts derided this anti-consumer behavior for what it was, noting that however brutally flawed the class action is, binding arbitration, at least the way we let companies designed it, in many ways made things worse.

But these lower court roadblocks quickly evaporated when the Supreme Court ruled in 2011 (Mobility v. Concepcion) that what AT&T was doing was perfectly OK. While lower courts saw this as an "unconscionable" abuse of consumer rights and the law, the Supreme Court bought into the ongoing myth that binding arbitration is a hyper-efficient, modern alternative to class actions. In reality, it shifted things to a form of binding arbitration that was costly, lopsided, and cumbersome for consumers, and less transparent for those used to visiting Pacer to dig up legal histories.

Fast forward to a few years ago, when a growing number of companies and services (like Fairshake) began streamlining the arbitration process, making it easier and less expensive for consumers (and yeah, class action lawyers). This shifted the balance of power back toward consumers, and starting in 2018 or so companies like Uber, AT&T and Comcast began to complain they were being swamped with arbitration feuds. Now, a year later, even giants like Amazon are being forced to take consumer complaints back to the courtroom, in part because a system they constructed to dodge accountability is no longer helping them do that:

"With no announcement, the company recently changed its terms of service to allow customers to file lawsuits. Already, it faces at least three proposed class actions, including one brought May 18 alleging the company’s Alexa-powered Echo devices recorded people without permission.

The retail giant made the change after plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded Amazon with more than 75,000 individual arbitration demands on behalf of Echo users. That move triggered a bill for tens of millions of dollars in filing fees, according to lawyers involved, payable by Amazon under its own policies."

To be very clear, the existing class action system is broken as well, usually doling out relatively pathetic payouts to impacted consumers, while class action lawyers get new boats. But the premise that the binding arbitration system (at least as implemented) was somehow better, at least in the way we implemented it in the States, has never been true. If you ask lawyers that represent companies like Amazon and AT&T, the fact that folks developed new systems that shifted the balance of power ever so slightly back toward consumers and class action lawyers is seen as terribly unfair:

"It has the potential to be pretty unfair to the company,” said Patrick Bannon, an employment lawyer at Seyfarth Shaw LLP who has represented clients facing mass arbitrations. The arbitration fees put intense pressure on businesses to settle, he said, “whether the claim is valid or not."

But if you ask the folks actually fighting for consumers (and not all of them are ambulance chasers), they see it as fair play:

"Companies thought they were getting out of liability altogether,” by adding arbitration clauses, said Chicago lawyer Travis Lenkner, whose firm filed the majority of the Amazon claims. “Now they’re seeing exactly what they bargained for, and they don’t like it."

In short, corporations (beginning with AT&T) spent the better part of the last decade fighting for an arbitration system that resulted in fewer payouts, fewer successful complaints, and less overall transparency. And while happy about that initially, the second the internet and technology shifted the balance of power in the other direction, they were eager to flee back to the devil they knew. It should be curious to see if other giants like AT&T also begin stripping binding arbitration out of their end user agreements, or if this is just a temporary setback on the path toward less accountability.

Filed Under: arbitration, binding arbitration, class action, class action lawsuits, consumer rights, consumers

How Predictive Policing Got A Chicago Man Shot Twice

from the putting-someone-in-peril-in-the-name-of-public-safety dept

The Chicago Police Department is already seriously awful. Its reliance on software to decide who and where to police isn't making it any better. Predictive policing is only as good as the input data, and if the data is being input by police departments with long histories of biased policing, it's only going to generate algorithmic excuses for future biased policing.

Law enforcement officials call predictive policing a game changer. In reality, it appears to be little more than a way to ensure some people -- due to the area they live in or the people they know -- endure endless harassment by law enforcement officers. The ideal is cities being steadily scrubbed of crime by proactive officers. The reality is officers making multiple visits a month to certain homes to issue tickets for uncut grass.

And that's kind of a best case scenario, believe it or not. It can get far worse. The Chicago PD has been using predictive policing software for years and it hasn't given the department better cops or done anything to reduce the violent crime rate. But it has made people miserable. And it has made -- at least in one case examined in depth by Matt Stroud for The Verge -- one Chicago man the target of criminal violence.

Robert McDaniel -- who was one of the first city residents to make the PD's "heat list" back in 2013 -- isn't a violent criminal. In fact, his criminal history consists of nothing more than pot possession and illegal gambling. But he made the list because of where he lives (a Chicago neighborhood in which 10 percent of the city's murders have taken place) and who he knows. But even the cops who informed McDaniel of his presence on the "heat list" weren't sure what to do with this data.

[T]hey told McDaniel something he could hardly believe: an algorithm built by the Chicago Police Department predicted — based on his proximity to and relationships with known shooters and shooting casualties — that McDaniel would be involved in a shooting. That he would be a “party to violence,” but it wasn’t clear what side of the barrel he might be on. He could be the shooter, he might get shot. They didn’t know. But the data said he was at risk either way.

The constant, unwanted contact with Chicago PD officers ensured the latter happened. Criminals and other neighborhood residents assumed he was snitching. Officers frequently stopped by his house or hung around the bodega he worked at. A visit by filmmakers producing a documentary on predictive policing made things worse, raising even more questions about McDaniel and his relationship with the police department.

Those questions got McDaniel shot… twice.

A day or two later, while hanging out at a neighbor’s house a block away from his home, McDaniel says, he got a call from someone who, he says, “was supposed to’ve been a friend.” The friend said they were outside McDaniel’s house and wanted him to come outside and explain it again — what the story was, how he’d gotten on the heat list, why people from CPD had visited his home, why he was now being documented by filmmakers.

McDaniel agreed — but as he headed back to his house, a car pulled up. A man fired multiple shots from inside the car. One hit McDaniel in the knee, and his leg gave out.

Last summer, it happened again.

Near midnight on August 13th last year, he walked into an alleyway a few hundred feet from where shooters nearly killed him years before. It was quiet, a half-block from his home. Checking text messages on his phone, he looked up to see himself ambushed. Two shooters in black, an attempted hit. A surveillance video from that night shows darkened figures walking through an alley, bursts of gunfire. A figure — McDaniel — falls into a brick wall, then slides down to the ground.

To some officers, these shootings might be viewed as proof the "heat list" works. After all, McDaniel has twice been the victim of gun violence, just like the gypsy lady foretold just like the software said he would. Of course, that conclusion conveniently ignores the unending interactions with police officers that gave McDaniel the snitch reputation that got him shot.

Other officers seem a bit more cynical about the heat list's ability to actually pinpoint criminals or crime.

Mocking the opaqueness of the operation and its seeming ineffectiveness, Second City Cop, a local blog written by anonymous Chicago police officers, began referring to the heat list and its team as the “crystal ball unit.”

The "heat list" was finally abandoned in 2019, but not before doing serious, multiple-bullet-wound damage to McDaniel and an untold amount of harm to others before being shut down. Predictive policing soldiers on, though, but it appears the PD is no longer sending officers to harass people simply because they have an increased chance of being a victim of a violent crime.

And the program's end doesn't do anything for McDaniel. People in his neighborhood still apparently believe he's a snitch. The cops may stop by less frequently now that he's no longer interesting, but they kept at it long enough to turn this offshoot of predictive policing into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Filed Under: chicago, chicago pd, police, predictive policing, robert mcdaniel

Daily Deal: The 2021 Complete All-in-One Adobe Creative Cloud Suite Course Bundle

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

The 2021 Complete All-in-One Adobe Creative Cloud Suite Course Bundle has 12 courses designed to teach you about video editing, animations, photography, design, and more. Courses cover popular Adobe products like Lightroom, After Effects, Photoshop, and Adobe XD. The bundle is on sale for $20.

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