Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the chitchat dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Darkness Of Course with a response to the everpresent complaints from one... prolific commenter about supposedly being censored:

You are spamming the site with repeated falsehoods, and lies. Additionally you are insulting TechDirt and everyone in it, quite often because you do not understand the very basics of how networks, the internet, the web, web sites, and web site commenting works.

You generate spam. Many respond via the "spam flag" on the insightful/funny/copy functions/flag <- Spam filter flag.

You are a spammer. And a liar. And a nutjob. See, simple to explain, difficult for an idiot to understand.

My 1st Amend rights align with Mike's. We don't want to be associated with you: Read the 1st, Dummy. The 1st Amendment that is. If you need help, see your doctor.

In second place, it's Thad with some thoughts about the political situation in Arizona:

Under the leadership of Kelli Ward, the AZGOP has taken a hard turn toward the fringe. They've alienated voters and donors; the current leadership is somehow too far-right for the party of Evan Mecham, Fife Symington, and Joe Arpaio.

And they see which way things are going. Democrats have held a majority of Arizona's seats in the US House for years, and now both our US Senate seats have gone to Democrats. Statewide offices are increasingly going to Democrats as well (though governor has been a tough nut to crack), and while Republicans still hold both chambers in the state legislature, they've gone from supermajorities to a majority of just 2 seats in each house.

They're panicking.

And much like the GOP at the national level, they really only have two choices if they want to keep winning elections: either they can stop being racist conspiracy whackjobs and start appealing to more mainstream voters, or they can engage in mass-scale voter disenfranchisement efforts and make sure only racist conspiracy whackjobs get to vote.

They've made their choice.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with one more comment from Thad, this time on our post about FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr's op-ed in Newsweek calling for big tech to subsidize big telecom:

Reminder: Newsweek is a fringe right-wing conspiracy magazine, using a once-respectable name to deceive people into thinking it's a respectable publication.

Newsweek and the Rise of the Zombie Magazine

Next, it's another response to that same post, this time from MathFox who flipped the suggestion on its head:

I think that "big telecom" should pay "big tech" because "big tech" generates the content that drives bandwidth usage, enabling the ISP to sell high-bandwidth connections to their customers... (and collect fees for exceeding the bandwidth cap...)

If there was no YouTube, Steam, etc. everyone could still get by with a dial-in modem.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous commenter with another response to complaints of censorship in our comments section:

IKR? I never see your inane comments like this one i can't see either.

In second place, it's Thad yet again, with a link regarding Florida's unconstitutional social media moderation law:

Evergreen: Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment about the notion that people can be convicted of crimes based on DNA analysis software that they can't examine:

I have a secret magic box into which I can place my hand and pull out names on slips of paper that are guaranteed to be the names of pedophiles. The prosecutor of this case is one of those names. No, you can't see the box. If you see it, the box stops working. Also the pedophiles will win. Don't let that happen!

Finally, it's Bloof with a response to the suggestion that Democrats rigged elections in Arizona:

You know the people controlling Maricopa county's elections were republicans, right? So in your mind, democrats pretended to be lifelong republicans, got elected as republicans and spent years doing thankless jobs so they could unseat a republican by making voters in a democratic area vote for a democrat... Talk about cunning!

That's all for this week, folks!

This Week In Techdirt History: May 23rd - 29th

from the memory-palace dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, Paramount announced its intention to back down from its lawsuit against the fan film Axanar, though not before the filmmakers got their next filing in. The legal battles over the FBI's hacking tools and malware continued, while the Senate Intelligence Committee was expanding the bureau's NSL powers with a secret amendment.

This is also the week we first heard the rapidly-confirmed accusation that Peter Thiel was financing Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker, and started writing about how worrying the situation was.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, ICE kicked off round four of its domain seizures and we continued looking at why the whole program is unconsitutional and how the Justice Department was stalling to avoid lawsuits in response. Meanwhile, the Patriot Act renewal moved forward, with only eight Senators presenting an obstacle and Harry Reid procedurally routing around attempts to fix it, eventually leading to a successful renewal.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, a desperate attempt to declare open source licenses a violation of antitrust law predictably failed as the lawsuit was thrown out, while the RIAA's lawsuit against XM radio appeared to be generating publicity for the company's newest device, and TV networks and studios launched a new suit against Cablevision over its network-based DVR. People were beginning to predict the death of MySpace, Verizon was trying to claim that passing on info to credit agencies was a gift to consumers, and we noted how crime reporting would often pointlessly focus on Wi-Fi if it was even tangentially involved. Also, this appears to be the very first time we wrote about a newfangled buzzword: "crowdsourcing".

Filed Under: history, look back

Unofficial Amiibo Guidebook Will Be Released With Changes To Appease Nintendo

from the officially-unofficial dept

Just a couple of weeks ago, we discussed a Kickstarter project for an unofficial guidebook to Nintendo's Amiibo product line. While no regular Techdirt reader could have possibly have been surprised that Nintendo issued threats and a DMCA on the project, it was a bit odd for two main reasons. First, Nintendo's main gripe appeared to be the use of some of the corporate iconography and other "design marks" proposed for use in the publication, rather than any wholesale copyright or trademark claim to literally everything in the book. Nuance of that kind is not the norm for the notably litigious and protective Nintendo. Second, this whole fight looked to be something of Nintendo shooting itself in the foot, as the project is essentially one giant advertisement for Amiibo products. Why in the world, we wondered at the time, would Nintendo not want such a book to be released to the public?

Well, it seems that perhaps the company does in fact understand all of this. Reports now indicate that the author of the project and Nintendo have resolved all issues the company had and the book will in fact get its release as an "unofficial" guidebook.

The webpage for the Kickstarter project led by Paul Murphy and Ninty Media that was previously entangled in a legal dispute with Nintendo has finally been reinstated. Murphy sent an e-mail to backers of the project, explaining that Nintendo had taken issue with the use of copyrighted materials. While there was some uncertainty about whether the project which had raised over £36,000 GBP would see the light of day, Murphy had reassured backers that they would be refunded if he was forced to halt the project completely.

It seems as though fans no longer need to worry, as changes have been made to the project, with the name of the book being transformed into "The Unofficial amiibook", so as to prevent potential readers from confusing the fan project with official Nintendo merchandise. Though Murphy stated that he could not go into the specifics of the legal dispute, he confirmed that it was a copyright strike focused on "the use of a design too close to a trademark owned and registered by Nintendo."

Here we need to employ a bit of nuance ourselves as we analyze what this all means to the Techdirt community. On the one hand, it's nice to see Nintendo appear to have worked relatively amicably with the project author so that this project could still get a release at all. Again, Nintendo has a reputation for employing every possible avenue to exert as strict a level of control over all references to its properties as possible. I'll be frank: a week ago I would have told you there is a near-zero chance this project ever sees the light of day. Nintendo appears to have proved me wrong on that. Good on them.

On the other hand, does anyone really believe that any changes the author agreed to make at Nintendo's request will have an actual material impact on whether buyers of the book confuse it with some kind of official Nintendo release? Of the roughly 15,000 backers of the Kickstarter project, how many previously thought that Nintendo was now crowdsourcing guidebooks like this?

The answer is, for all statistically relevant purposes, "no" and "none." So, sure, it's good that this project is allowed to exist at all, but it sort of sucks that this question ever had to be asked.

Filed Under: amiibo, copyright, design marks, fan creations, guidebook, trademark
Companies: nintendo, ninty media

WhatsApp Sues The Indian Government Over New Laws That Would Force It To Break Encryption

from the backdoors dept

For many years now, we've reported on efforts by the Indian government to demand that WhatsApp break its encryption to give the government access. Much of this comes from the fact that the Indian government wants to pin the blame for certain violence and disinformation on WhatsApp, rather than on those actually responsible. WhatsApp has, in the past, pushed back on individual demands to break its encryption.

However, things have stepped up a notch. The Indian government recently put in place new regulations that are, to put it mildly, quite troubling. India has framed the laws -- like so many other laws like this around the globe -- as being about stopping "abuse." But, of course, the government gets to decide what is abuse.

The Indian government says the rules are designed to prevent “abuse and misuse” of social media. “The new rules instead seek to empower the users of social media by requiring these platforms to put in place a robust public grievance redressal mechanism,” a representative of India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in a March 17 letter to TIME. “It brings digital media outlets at par with print and electronic media with the underlying principle of self-regulation to ensure compliance to existing laws of India.”

And one thing that the Indian government believes is abuse... is encryption (remember, again, those earlier stories of the government blaming WhatsApp for violence). Exactly what the rules mean for encryption has been a bit... unclear. The rules do require that encrypted services keep certain information about who the "first originator" of a message is and to provide that to the government on demand. The Indian government insists this is not about breaking encryption. It claims they only need certain metadata and only in extreme circumstances. The government also claims that WhatsApp did not object to this proposal when it was first put forth and there was an open consultation period.

WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) claims that's completely bogus, because in order to find the "first originator" of a message you have to track everything:

“Traceability” is intended to do the opposite by requiring private messaging services like WhatsApp to keep track of who-said-what and who-shared-what for billions of messages sent every day. Traceability requires messaging services to store information that can be used to ascertain the content of people’s messages, thereby breaking the very guarantees that end-to-end encryption provides. In order to trace even one message, services would have to trace every message.

That’s because there is no way to predict which message a government would want to investigate in the future. In doing so, a government that chooses to mandate traceability is effectively mandating a new form of mass surveillance. To comply, messaging services would have to keep giant databases of every message you send, or add a permanent identity stamp -- like a fingerprint -- to private messages with friends, family, colleagues, doctors, and businesses. Companies would be collecting more information about their users at a time when people want companies to have less information about them.

And now, WhatsApp is suing the Indian government, claiming that the law violates India's privacy rights.

Of course, this is also against the backdrop of even bigger conflicts between social media platforms and the government of Narendra Modi, including threatening to jail Twitter employees for not taking down criticism of Modi's policies, and then raiding Twitter's local offices for daring to fact check a tweet by a government spokesperson.

Tragically, these attacks on social media moderation and encryption are becoming a toolkit of angry regulators around the globe, as they seem perpetually put out by the fact that the public actually has a voice. Whatever you might think of Facebook, this is a scenario where you should be rooting for WhatsApp to win this case to protect basic privacy rights.

Filed Under: encryption, going dark, india, private messaging, traceability
Companies: facebook, whatsapp

Citizen Continues Its Push To Become Cops-For-Hire By Leaking Sensitive Data... Twice

from the another-confidence-boosting-PR-debacle dept

The bad news keeps coming for Citizen, the app that really wants to be a cop.

Not only is its desire to become some sort of private party/law enforcement hybrid generating it some bad press, but its prior incarnation as "Vigilante" suggests it has always wanted to be in the business of taking down bad guys, with or without the requisite lawfulness.

The former "Vigilante" proved true to its past moniker following a wildfire in California, promising a $30,000 bounty to any user or employee who took down the bad guy identified by Citizen. Well… misidentified. After calls from CEO Andrew Frame to "GET THE FUCKER," Citizen had to offer up a bunch of apologies for turning an innocent person into a prime suspect.

Coming on the heels of all of this bad news is even more bad news. First off, as Joseph Cox reported late last week, Citizen leaked a bunch of users' COVID-related data following its expansion into contact tracing late year under the name "SafePass."

Crime and neighborhood watch app Citizen, which also launched a COVID-19 contact-tracing feature and broader citywide COVID surveillance program, exposed users' COVID-related data to the public internet, allowing anyone to view specific users' recent self-reported symptoms, test results, and whether their device had recorded any close contacts with other people using the feature. The information is directly linked to a person's username, which often is the person's full name.

Hacker collective Anonymous was able to access the data and pointed Motherboard in its direction. The exposure of this data runs contrary to Citizen's security claims.

The feature's privacy policy says that "We have specific systems to control data access, and all access is logged and regularly audited." The SafePass website says "Data is private and encrypted" and that contact tracing data is deleted after 30 days (some of the data in the exposed cache dates from earlier than 30 days ago).

Citizen fixed its leak shortly thereafter, claiming the exposure only affected a limited number of users. But that set the stage for a larger breach and another successful hacking of Citizen's databases.

A hacktivist has scraped a wealth of data from the crime and neighborhood watch app Citizen and posted it on a dark web site, Motherboard has learned. The data includes a huge amount of data related to 1.7 million "incidents"—events that Citizen informs users about concerning crime or perceived crime in their area—such as the GPS coordinates of where the incident took place, its update history, a clip of the police radio that the incident relates to, and associated images.

Posted with the accompanying slogan of "Fuck snitches, fuck Citizen, fuck Andrew Frame and remember, kids: Cops are not your friends.", the data appears to contain plenty of what's already publicly-available through Citizen's online portal. The difference here is it's all in one place, which makes it much easier for researchers and journalists to parse the data for patterns and analyze user behavior.

And there's also some stuff Citizen doesn't make available to users and site visitors in this data dump.

The list appears to include videos that have been marked for removal from public consumption on the app by Citizen's content moderation team, with some including the tag "Moderator Blocked Stream," according to the hacker and Motherboard's viewing of the files. These videos are still accessible if visited with the direct link included in the scrape.

Not exactly a confidence booster, especially when the app's founder wants Citizen to become a crucial part of the law enforcement experience, if not actually law enforcement itself. But a combination of PR blunders and data breaches sounds about par for the (government) course, so maybe this is just Citizen inadvertently laying the groundwork for its move into the public sector.

Filed Under: data breach, leaks, private law enforcement, snitching, vigilante
Companies: citizen

Starlink Reviews Show The Limitations Of Musk's Broadband Play

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

So we've already noted several times that while Elon Musk's Starlink internet broadband service will be a great thing for folks certainly out of the range of existing broadband options, it's not going to be the massive disruption many people assume. For one thing, the service is only going to serve around 800,000 subscribers in a country where up to 42 million Americans lack broadband access and another 83 million consumers live under a broadband monopoly. So even at the high-end, extremely optimistic, longer term goal of 6 million total Starlink subscribers, we're talking about a small dent in a very big problem.

Another problem is that for many of America's underserved populations, the real issue is cost. And given its $500 initial down payment for hardware, and $100 monthly price tag, the service is going to be well out of range for many folks who really need it. That said, if you can actually get it, and actually afford it, and currently have no access to fixed line service, it's going to be an upgrade. Probably, anyway.

New reviews at outlets like The Verge have taken some additional bloom off the rose, noting that line of sight and other technical issues are marring the service, at least during its current, ongoing 10,000 user beta. Says The Verge's Nilay Patel:

"Starlink, a new satellite internet service from SpaceX, is a spectacular technical achievement that might one day do all of these things. But right now it is also very much a beta product that is unreliable, inconsistent, and foiled by even the merest suggestion of trees."

Throughout the review, Patel makes it clear these problems aren't small potatoes:

"I am going to emphasize the line-of-sight requirement, since it is crucial to understanding what Starlink can and cannot do right now, and it’s an important reality check on what it might be able to do in the future. Like the similarly over-hyped mmWave 5G, Starlink is remarkably delicate. Even a single tree blocking the dish’s line of sight to the horizon will degrade and interrupt your Starlink signal. Whatever satellite internet dreams you may have will run crashing into this reality until you can literally rise above."

It's likely things will improve, but even at max capacity (see above) we're talking limited impact. It's clear Musk is mostly interested in using Starlink to fund and market Space X, even though he's acknowledged that profitability will be difficult and the low orbit satellite broadband market is paved with failure. There's also that whole polluting the night sky and derailing scientific research both Musk and US regulators seem largely apathetic to. So this system, while promising and assuming it survives, will impact business interests (shipping, nautical) far more than residential broadband.

That said, Patel's review of Starlink does something tech coverage of broadband often doesn't do: he clearly acknowledges that US broadband is a busted and uncompetitive market thanks to decades of failed US telecom policy. He then uses that historical context to properly frame the potential promise Starlink offers:

"Starlink also represents something else: the American telecom policy establishment’s long-standing, almost religious belief that consumers are best served by something called “facility-based competition.” Starlink is a new facility for accessing the internet, one that does not rely on existing infrastructure. “Facility-based competition,” telecom lobbyists feverishly whisper while handing out their dirty, sweat-stained checks in Congress. “That is the American way.”

AMERICAN BROADBAND POLICY STINKS, AND WE ALL PAY TOO MUCH MONEY FOR SLOW SPEEDS AND TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE Of course, the only thing a decades-long commitment to “facility-based competition” has brought to most Americans is… a total lack of competition. Reality, as I have said, is quite irritating.

(By contrast, in Europe, where the prevailing philosophy is called “service-based competition,” large incumbent providers are required to lease fiber access to competitors and there is a thriving market for internet access with much lower prices for much faster speeds. If the United States were in Europe, it would have the most expensive broadband in the region.)"

FCC data has long shown that open access networks (where multiple ISPs compete over a single, centralized fiber network) results in better, faster, cheaper service. But because that would bring competition to regional monopolies, we've never really embraced that approach. We did try to hack together some flavor of line sharing as part of the 1996 Telecom Act, but it was dismantled by telecom lobbyists before the ink was even try, resulting in an absolute bloodbath for smaller broadband providers.

Which brings us to the most important thing: the reality is you're just not going to fix US broadband dysfunction with spit, innovation, and elbow grease. That's because what's driving US broadband dysfunction is two major things: extremely politically powerful regional telecom monopolies (most of which are tied directly into our intelligence gathering apparatus, shielding them from accountability), and the state and federal corruption that protects this broken mess. Innovative tech can help, but it's not going to truly get to the root of the problem because the problem is human ethical failure, not technical.

For decades, telecom monopoly lobbyists have argued that you don't need functional FCC or FTC regulatory oversight of telecom -- or pro-competition policies that disrupt monopolization -- because a miracle technology is waiting in the wings to fix everything. Back during the big deregulation push in the early aughts, broadband over powerline (BPL) was hyped as a holy grail. Former FCC boss Mike Powell (now a top cable lobbyist) told anyone who'd listen that his decision to deregulate lumbering telecom monopolies was wonderful, because BPL would act as a competitive layer that would fix everything.

But BPL wound up being aninterference prone mess. And instead of telecom Utopia as promised, we just saw regional monopolies double down on the same bad behavior, now free of both functional regulatory oversight and competition.

These days it's 5G that's being treated as a miracle market panacea, despite the fact that 5G isn't a competitive silver bullet either for a number of reasons we've well explored. The real solution to improving U.S. broadband involves driving as much residential fiber to homes as possible, regardless of whether that's the private sector or community broadband

That's not to say 5G and Starlink can't help! But again, the problem at this point is incompetent and corrupt policymakers on the state and federal level. Policymakers in mindless sway to monopolists. We could have delivered fiber to every home in America several times over by now for less than AT&T spent on its bungled AT&T Time Warner merger. We don't do that not because it's all that expensive and hard, but because this would upset dominant regional monopolies that effectively own US broadband policy and despise anything even resembling real world competition.

Filed Under: competition, satellite broadband, starlink
Companies: spacex, starlink

Daily Deal: The 2021 WordPress Wizard Bundle

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

The 2021 WordPress Wizard Bundle has 6 courses to help you learn how to build your own site with no coding experience required. The focus is on creating a WordPress site with your own domain and Web hosting and doing it the right way. While it is possible to use free online hosted blog solutions, the goal here is to build something that you control, manage, and can grow at your own pace. You'll learn how to work with Elementor, how to work with WordPress themes, how to secure your website, and how to use it to run a business. 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

Citizen -- The App That Wants To Be A Cop -- Offered A $30,000 Bounty For The Apprehension Of An Innocent Person

from the nice-going,-fuckos dept

Citizen -- an app for reporting crime and other suspicious events -- wants to be in the police business. The app developers have purchased at least one faux patrol vehicle -- co-branded with Los Angeles Professional Security -- and have been driving it around Los Angeles, California.

But should private companies be in the business of enforcing the law? Most people would say no. We have enough problems with our actual cops -- ones who are supposed to remain on the right side of the Constitution. Private companies don't have these obligations. That's why they don't have the power (or the ability) to take other people's rights away. But the effort to cloud the lines between public and private is continuous, and it's going to do additional damage to citizens who are already subjected to the violations perpetrated by government employees.

Let's not forget that Citizen has always been willing to blur these lines. It debuted as "Vigilante" before its booting from Apple's app store forced a more friendly rebrand. But Citizen hasn't abandoned its vigilante principals. The people at the top of the organizational chart are aggressively pursuing private expansion into public law enforcement space and courting some of the nation's largest police departments.

They're also living up to the "vigilante" moniker. Prior to the leaks to Joseph Cox and Motherboard, Citizen was publicly and privately urging the public to take justice into their own hands, as Scott Morris reports for The Verge.

As wildfires raged through Southern California last weekend, an app called Citizen offered an unorthodox bounty over livestream and in push alerts to local residents: “hunt down” the alleged arsonist, and we’ll give you $30,000 cash.

This effort was pushed by none other than CEO Andrew Frame. Internal messages from Citizen's Slack channel show Frame wanted to put Citizen on the law enforcement map by turning users and employees into bounty hunters. Literally.

On Saturday afternoon, before the livestream was broadcast, Frame wrote in a company Slack thread that he would pay a $10,000 reward personally to catch an arsonist still in the area “as a test.”

“Let’s find this guy, activate safety network completely,” Frame wrote, according to screenshots of internal Slack messages obtained by The Verge. “This is a great transition of Citizen back to active safety. We are not a news company. We are safety and we make this sort of heinous crime impossible to escape from. That needs to be our mindset.” The bounty was later raised to $30,000.

LOL. "Safety network." Whatever. Frame saw this as a chance to turn Citizen from a news receptacle to a newsmaker, despite his mild protestations otherwise. If Citizen could catch a criminal, it would convert it from a receptacle for user videos and police scanner readouts into something that could actually combat crime. Employees were urged on by Frame, who made it clear he had a fever. And the only cure was "MORE VIGILANTISM!" Joseph Cox has obtained even more internal communications about this dangerous farce.

"first name? What is it?! publish ALL info," Frame told employees working in a Citizen Slack room who were working on the case.

"FIND THIS FUCK," he told them. "LETS GET THIS GUY BEFORE MIDNIGHT HES GOING DOWN."

"BREAKING NEWS. this guy is the devil. get him," Frame said. "by midnight!@#! we hate this guy. GET HIM."

Huh. Looks kind of like threats in interstate commerce or whatnot. But what do I know. I'm not a cop. Nor do I desire to be one. The plan of action was to fire up the home team. And then let it all burn. In the end, Citizen was just another Reddit, sending amped-up internet vigilantes in search of the wrong person.

In the hours that followed, it became clear the app was mistaken. The man pictured had no connection to the fires, and once he was located by law enforcement, he was quickly released for lack of evidence.

No harm? No foul? Wrong. A person was wrongfully detained as the result of an app's overzealous CEO and his promise of a $30,000 payout. Citizen apologized soon after, calling it a "mistake" it was "taking very seriously." It also promised to overhaul its "internal processes." It seems like the first overhaul should be to prevent its CEO from weaponizing his app and offering bounties for the information leading to arrests. That's not the business Citizen is in. Yet.

Clearly, Citizen wants more. Andrew Frame got his taste for blood. The blood may have been tainted but it hasn't deterred Frame and his app from pushing for its addition to law enforcement's arsenal. But this wielding of its power doesn't bode well for its intrusion into this space. Sure, cops arrest the wrong people all the time. But that doesn't mean private companies should get in on this racket. We need less of this, not more. And when apps like these encourage people to act on their impulses, they not only encourage physical manifestations of users' underlying biases, they place innocent people in harm's way.

Filed Under: bounties, crime reporting app, private law enforcement, vigilant
Companies: citizen