Albuquerque Police Officers, Supervisors Accused Of Deleting, Altering Video Of Use Of Force Incidents

from the we-control-the-vertical dept

The most famous recording of Albuquerque police in action shows them shooting and killing a homeless man -- a shooting that began as a normal rousting for the crime of "illegal camping." From there, the police turned it into a "standoff" with a cooperative person unsure of which direction to move next out of the very justifiable fear of being shot.

This was just another in a long line of killings by APD officers, not many of which were captured on video. The DOJ issued a report stating that a "majority" of shootings by the city's police officers were "unreasonable and violated the Fourth Amendment."

The police department does have a variety of cameras in its possession, which should have generated a wealth of footage for examination by public records requesters, attorneys, and police supervisors -- just in case they wanted to get a handle on the PD's problematic deadly force usage. The Albuquerque Police Department has shot more citizens than the NYPD since 2010, despite policing a city sixteen times smaller.

The footage of use of force incidents is the PD's best-kept secret. A lawyer representing a family suing the city over the killing of Armand Martin by APD officers was given a copy of footage captured by the police. He was given password-protected files but not the password, despite repeated requests. In addition to representing the widow of Armand Martin, the law firm is now also engaged in an open records lawsuit against the city.

Apparently, the Albuquerque police department doesn't feel the city's doing enough to shield them from accountability. Sure, forcing records requesters to file lawsuits just to see public records is a good deterrent, but the only sure way to prevent incriminating recordings from ending up in the public's hands is to make sure said footage doesn't exist.

This goes far beyond simply tampering with devices or "forgetting" to activate them in crucial situations. According to an affidavit filed by a former police department employee, Albuquerque officers are tampering with the recordings that actually make their way back to the PD's cloud storage.

Three officers’ body camera videos that captured events surrounding the fatal shooting of 19-year-old suspected car thief Mary Hawkes in April 2014 were either altered or partially deleted, according to former police department employee Reynaldo Chavez’s nine-page affidavit.

[...]

Another allegation is that surveillance camera video from a salon showing Albuquerque police officers shooting Jeremy Robertson in June 2014 bore “the tell-tale signs that it has been altered and images that had been captured are now deleted. One of the deleted images captured the officers shooting Jeremy Robertson.” Robertson was a police informant and suspected probation violator.

The allegations contained in the affidavit [PDF] show APD officers aren't interested in the accountability that recordings could theoretically create. The former employee stated he had heard a police supervisor discussing making a camera's SD card "disappear." Supervisors also urged officers not to write reports until after viewing captured footage, and if the footage contained "problematic" uses of force, officers were told not to mention the recordings in the report or simply claim the equipment had malfunctioned.

No one from the department wants to go on record about these allegations. The only thing that has been confirmed is that anyone with admin privileges can alter or delete footage using the Evidence.com portal for its cloud storage services. Officers may have had little trouble erasing problematic footage or altering it into uselessness, but it's unlikely they've taken care to scrub Evidence.com activity logs. These are a key part of Chavez's claims and, unlike the recordings discussed here, they're likely still intact.

Chavez's affidavit also claims he was directed to stonewall requests and that city officials were more than happy to blow tax dollars on settlements, rather than turn over requested documents and footage.

In response to IPRA requests related to the deaths of James Matthew Boyd, Jeremy Robertson, and Mary Hawkes, Deputy City Attorney Kathy Levy, and/or a Deputy Chief, told me to deny, withhold, obstruct, conceal, or even destroy records from matters being produced in contravention of IPRA by:

A. telling me that records would not be released without any explanation other than "this won't be released" or words to that effect. Deputy City Attorney Kathy Levy frequently stated simply, "there are items we just will not release and we will just pay the fines or lawsuits."

B. Deputy City Attomey Levy told me to creatively identify an allowable exception to IPRA to withhold production of responsive public records in an effort to "baffle" or frustrate the requestor or otherwise burden them.

C. I was told to arbitrarily delay production of responsive public records without justification supporting such delay and to fabricate reasons to burden requestors with additional requirements when such requirements were not needed…

As we've seen far too often elsewhere, government entities believe transparency and accountability are forms of damage and actively search for ways to route around these obligations to the public. And given the allegations here, it appears the APD has no interest in cleaning itself up, not even with the DOJ looking over its shoulder.

Filed Under: albuquerque, altering videos, body cameras, new mexico, police, videos

Electronic Arts Unveils New Policy For Marking YouTube Videos As 'Supported' Or 'Advertisement'

from the huh dept

While the past few years have seen a torrent of criticism heaped on the video game journalism world, far too little of it has been focused on the cozy contractual deals being worked out between publishers and YouTube personalities that review games. With some of these arrangements having come to light, most notably concerning Nintendo and Warner Bros. games coverage, it's fairly safe to assume that many other publishers do something of this sort. These arrangements work something like this: the game publisher will offer access to the games for review by the YouTuber, so long as the YouTuber agrees to offer generally positive reviews to the product. The YouTuber benefits by being first to market with reviews, the publisher benefits from positive coverage, and the public gets spit in the eye while losing their trust in the personalities they have followed. Add to it all that some of these arrangements fail to follow FTC guidelines on marking paid-for material and you're left with the inevitable understanding that this is an arrangement that can only last for a short period of time, as the public trust in the reviewers will torpedo to the point of losing the audience completely.

It's devolved to the point where even companies from which we've come to expect the worst are trying to get out ahead of all this. Electronic Arts, for instance, best known for its annual rivalry with Comcast over the "Worst Company" award, has developed a new policy for marking YouTube videos produced under this arrangement that is actually quite good.

In a post on EA’s German news blog (translated by NeoGAF), EA announced that they’re stepping up their disclosure game by contractually requiring content creators to disclose with EA-provided hashtags and watermarks. The watermarks are pictured above. I reached out to EA in North America, and they confirmed that it’s a company-wide thing, though some rules vary by region.

“Supported by EA” is to be used in situations where EA has paid for access to the game (travel, review copies, etc), but did not influence the video/stream itself. “Advertisement,” on the other hand, is exactly what it sounds like: EA provided material or directly influenced the direction of the content’s, um, contents.

The disclosure logos themselves, seen at the link, are simple and clear. It's actually the exact kind of transparency we would hope for. No longer should potential customers wonder if a review has been influenced in any way by EA, or even if EA has taken some actions to ingratiate itself to the reviewer. It's clearly labeled.

Now, we'll have to see how this ends up working in practice. Questions remain, such as how big the logos will be, whether YouTubers will take things a step further and call attention to the disclosures, or if nefarious omissions of the disclosure logos will occur. But in concept, it's quite good, and perhaps not the kind of thing we would expect to be pioneered by EA. So good on them.

Filed Under: advertisements, sponsored content, video games, videos
Companies: ea, youtube

YouTube Finally Buries The Hatchet With GEMA, Meaning People In Germany Can Watch Videos Again

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

Almost four years after we noted that the fight between German collection society GEMA and YouTube had gone on way too long, it looks like it's finally been settled. If you don't know, way back when, GEMA, which is effectively a mandatory copyright royalty collector in Germany, demanded insane rates for any music streaming on YouTube. Apparently, it initially argued that a stream on YouTube was no different than a purchase on iTunes, and thus it should be paid the same rate. In 2009, it asked for 17 cents per video view (which was a decrease from the 37.5 cents per stream it had asked for earlier). 17 cents. Anyone who knows anything about how the internet works and how advertising works knows that's insane. YouTube was paying out a decent chunk of its advertising revenue to other collection societies at a fraction of a penny per view, which is inline with the potential ad revenue.

This created a huge mess in Germany, where tons of YouTube views were blocked -- even when the creators have properly licensed the music. GEMA just threw up a big "no." This is why, when I was in Berlin a few years ago, talking with musicians, one of them showed me how his band had an "official" website that GEMA knew about and an unofficial secret "real" website, where his band could actually distribute its own music, without GEMA interfering. Think about that for a second. GEMA was regularly blocking musicians from doing what they wanted with music so it could try to shake down YouTube/Google for ransom.

And it went on until now. Six or seven years ago, Germany was the only major country where the local collection society could not come to an agreement with YouTube and it took until now to finally sort this out. There's no word on the final amount, though I imagine it will come out at some point. GEMA is crowing about the fact that this will cover payments back to 2009, though, since so many videos on YouTube in Germany were blocked from that point onward, think of all the views and all the money that GEMA deliberately blocked users from ever receiving. Either way, the common practice of seeing that a video is "not available" in Germany is now mostly over. There are apparently some videos, for music not represented by GEMA that will remain blocked, but this is a big step forward.

Filed Under: collection society, copyright, germany, videos, youtube
Companies: gema, google, youtube

Facebook Video Metrics Crossed The Line From Merely Dubious To Just Plain Wrong

from the fix-it-so-it's-just-normal-broke-again dept

Earlier this week, when I explained how basically all audience metrics are garbage both online and off, I trimmed the specifics on several platforms since knocking them all down in detail would have made that already-hefty post even longer. But, recent revelations about Facebook's long-running inflation of a key video metric call for a deeper look at the world of Facebook video content and why, yet again, nobody has any idea how many people really see something (and this time, advertisers are unhappy):

Several weeks ago, Facebook disclosed in a post on its "Advertiser Help Center" that its metric for the average time users spent watching videos was artificially inflated because it was only factoring in video views of more than three seconds. The company said it was introducing a new metric to fix the problem.

... Ad buying agency Publicis Media was told by Facebook that the earlier counting method likely overestimated average time spent watching videos by between 60% and 80%, according to a late August letter Publicis Media sent to clients that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. ... Publicis was responsible for purchasing roughly $77 billion in ads on behalf of marketers around the world in 2015, according to estimates from research firm Recma.

What happened here is actually pretty subtle, so bear with me. Facebook distinguishes "plays" from "views" -- with the former being every single play of the video, including those auto-plays that you scroll straight past and never even look at, and the latter being only people who actually watched the video for three seconds or longer. Of course, there are still a million ways in which this metric is itself broken (I've certainly let plenty of videos play for more than three seconds or even all the way through while reading a post above or below them) but the distinction is a good one. All of the more detailed stats are based on either plays or views (mostly views) and are clearly labeled, but the one metric at issue was the "Average Duration of Video Viewed." This metric could be fairly calculated as either the total amount of time from all plays divided by the total number of plays, or the same thing based only on time and number of views -- but instead, it was erroneously being calculated as total play time divided by total number of views. In other words, all the second-or-two autoplays from idle newsfeed scrollers were being totalled up, and that time was being distributed among the smaller number of people who stayed on the video for more than three seconds as part of their average duration, leading to across-the-board inflation of that figure.

Now, in some ways this error is minor: it had no impact on billing for promoted videos, since average view time is not a factor there, and all the other more-detailed metrics about view duration were accurate, including a per-second graph of viewer drop-off for each video. But, indirectly, it's a pretty big deal, because average view duration is a top-line metric for publishers figuring out which content is the most engaging. Beyond that, it's the key metric for determining whether Facebook Video is truly engaging as a whole, and given the massive explosion of both publishers and advertisers putting all their focus on video recently, it's worrying to think they might have been doing so at least in part based on a broken, inflated metric.

Of course, none of that changes the fact that even when the metrics are working properly, they most likely still suck. Much of the Facebook video boom has been in the live streaming arena, where publishers like BuzzFeed have been, well, buzzing about "peak concurrent viewer" numbers that rivaled the ratings of major cable networks. But television ratings represent something entirely different from this "peak" figure, and a similar system would likely peg these streams' audiences at closer to zero. But then again, what we're talking about here is Nielsen ratings, and I don't need to reiterate just how many problems those have. All we're doing is comparing a bunch of vague, hard-to-support and impossible-to-confirm numbers with each other, and ending up with almost no new insight into the reality of audiences.

Still, if the system is going to run on bullshit, it should at least be internally consistent bullshit -- so it's good that this latest Facebook error has been caught and fixed.

Filed Under: advertising, metrics, social media, videos
Companies: facebook

Facebook's ContentID Clone Had A Vulnerability That Opened Up Ability For Users To Game Others' Videos

from the this-stuff-ain't-easy dept

Earlier this year, we noted that Facebook had launched its own ContentID clone, called Rights Manager, which was a response to a bunch of angry YouTubers who were annoyed at people "freebooting" popular YouTube videos onto Facebook. We noted that, like ContentID, we fully expected the system to be abused to take down content. While we haven't heard examples of that just yet, it does appear that Rights Manager had some serious vulnerabilities that enabled anyone else who was signed up for Rights Manager to manipulate the information and rules on any other video in the system (including, obviously, those claimed by other users).

Simply put, an imposter could easily wander into your anti-imposter pages without logging in first.

According to Muthiyah, pirates could actually have used Rights Manager to rip off their own copies of your reference copies, thus freebooting directly via the anti-freebooting interface

To its credit, Facebook fixed the problem and paid the researcher who found it a bug bounty of $4,000.

However, this does point out something rather important. Building these kinds of systems is really difficult. Beyond the problem of abuse that we frequently talk about, bugs and security flaws are a real risk as well. And yet, many in the film and recording industries still insist that it's "easy" to build a filtering system like this and that all sites should be legally required to do so. And, sure, Facebook and Google and the likes can afford to pay lots of money to build systems -- even buggy ones -- and then have bug bounties and such. But smaller companies aren't able to do so. Requiring them to do so basically wipes out the possibility of smaller startups entering the space and cedes the market, permanently, to the giant companies that everyone complains about.

Filed Under: contentid, copyright, filters, rights manager, security, videos
Companies: facebook

Even The Usual Defenders Of The RIAA Are Pointing Out They're Simply Lying About YouTube

from the look-at-that dept

Paul Resnikoff's Digital Music News site is a worthwhile read, often turning up some really interesting news. However, the site pretty consistently takes the legacy music industry's point of view in the various debates on copyright and music services. To me, it has a somewhat unfair bias against many of the new innovators and music platforms that have helped drag the industry (kicking and screaming all the way) into the internet era. But it's still well written and thoughtful, and I appreciate the work that Paul does, even if I don't always agree with his opinion. So consider it quite a surprise to see Resnikoff call out the RIAA on its completely bullshit attacks on YouTube over the past few months. Resnikoff isn't pulling any punches. He points out that basically all of the music video views on YouTube are licensed, and ContentID (for better or for worse) has basically made it easy for the labels to do a "notice and staydown" like they've been demanding for the past few years:

But new data not only shows that YouTube isn’t breaking the law, they aren’t even abusing existing copyright law. A recent report from music industry research group Midia revealed that just 2% of YouTube’s music video content is unauthorized. These are illegal UGC uploads of concerts, lyrics videos, the actual videos, or other material that rights owners didn’t green light beforehand. The rest, about 98%, are not only completely authorized, about 75% of them are high-quality and supplied by the labels themselves through Vevo, according to the same dataset.

So, if just 2% of music videos are unauthorized and can be taken down using DMCA procedures, what’s the problem here? The Recording Industry Association of America, an organization that represents the three major labels, has been leading the charge against widespread DMCA abuse by video giant. “YouTube takes advantage of the dysfunctional DMCA to do less about piracy than it could and pay unfairly low royalty rates,” RIAA chief executive Cary Sherman declared. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

But is that even true? Adding to the confusing is Content ID, a system created by YouTube to allow content owners to automatically flag their content if it appears on YouTube without permission. Once identified, the owner has the option to remove that content, monetize it, or even strip the audio out of it (for example, if paired with a group of people singing karaoke). YouTube says that system, part of a self-contained copyright ecosystem, makes the DMCA irrelevant in most situations. In other words, if you don’t want your video on YouTube, then you should just remove it.

To be clear, looking at the details from Midia itself, it's not saying that only 2% of the videos are unauthorized, but 2% of music video views on YouTube are of unauthorized videos. And that's still an important point. It suggests that, contrary to what the industry likes to claim, the kids these days aren't spending very much time at all using YouTube to watch unauthorized streams. It's almost non-existent. The same report also found that music represents just 12% of all YouTube viewing time. That kinda shows how the claims of the industry about how YouTube is supposedly only successful because of music uploads is complete hogwash.

He notes that most musicians themselves recognize the promotional value of YouTube as well, and they'd probably freak out if the labels removed their videos from YouTube (remember, for all the hype about Taylor Swift removing her music from Spotify and other streaming services... she kept her YouTube videos up). As Resnikoff points out, the labels are upset about the amount of money that YouTube pays, but it's pretty clear that the overall value that YouTube provides in terms of audience, exposure, marketing and, yes, some money, is clearly worth it:

It’s a simple economic calculation: YouTube offers more value than just a fractional penny rate, and artists and labels are making a calculation that it’s worth it. Otherwise, they would leave.

He goes on to point out that the RIAA's complaints make no sense other than as whining because they're upset that Google is so rich... and they're not.

In the end it's good to see this data. To hear some in the recording industry explain things, you'd think YouTube is entirely built off of pirated music. I've literally seen some musicians complain that YouTube deliberately allows piracy because that's the only thing that keeps the site afloat. That appears to be based on conspiracy theories, not reality.

Filed Under: authorized, cary sherman, contentid, paul resnikoff, unauthorized, videos, youtube
Companies: google, riaa, youtube

Two Days, Two Shootings, Two Sets Of Cops Making Recordings Disappear

from the command-control dept

There are cameras everywhere. But when cops start shooting, it's usually bullets and never footage. The first recordings that ever make their way to the public are those shot by bystanders. Anything else captured during a shooting remains under strict control of law enforcement… even when the recordings don't belong to law enforcement.

Minutes after two cops killed Alton Sterling outside of a convenience store, police confiscated all surveillance video of the incident without a warrant and allegedly without permission.

An attorney for the owner of the Triple S Mart, Abdullah Muflahi, told The Daily Beast a hard drive containing the complete recording of the Sterling’s death at the hands of Baton Rouge Police Department Officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake was unlawfully taken by police. Muflahi showed The Daily Beast the barren cabinet where the hard drive had been.

All that’s left of the storage unit is a sole barren wire.

If this tactic sounds familiar, it's because we've seen it on multiple occasions. After Laquan McDonald was shot by Chicago police officers, several cops went to a nearby restaurant and seized its surveillance recordings. It took the city of Chicago over a year to release dashcam footage of the incident -- footage that was oddly missing the audio that normally would have been captured when the camera was turned on.

In California, cops raided a marijuana dispensary. Before helping themselves to edibles and playing a game of darts, officers attempted to disable the store's surveillance cameras and seized recording devices.

In Baton Rouge, officers were wearing body cameras. Chances of seeing this footage is nil. According to reports, the cameras "came loose" during the shooting and apparently did not record "quality" footage of the incident. And, as of now, city attorneys, the police department, and the FBI (which is conducting its own investigation of the shooting) are refusing to discuss the missing surveillance equipment.

When The Daily Beast requested both the surveillance video and the supposed warrant from the Baton Rouge Police Department, a lawyer from the department first denied the request by saying they could not turn over any documents from a “criminal investigation.” When told that a warrant is a public court document and could not be withheld, the lawyer then outright refused to confirm or deny if a warrant for the surveillance video even existed.

After backtracking on the existence of the warrant, the attorney backtracked on the possession of the surveillance video, saying that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had the hard drive.

“My client has not been informed of that,” said Porter, the attorney for the store owner.

The FBI refused to confirm or deny the police department’s claim.

What has been confirmed is that it was a warrantless seizure. Both the Baton Rouge District Attorney and the clerk of courts have admitted there is no record of a warrant being issued or even an affidavit submitted.

Another controversial shooting, following one day after the Baton Rouge incident, has also resulted in missing footage -- albeit only temporarily.

The driver of the car in which passenger Philandro Castile was shot by police officers posted a horrifying video of the aftermath to Facebook using its live-streaming option. Not too long after it was posted, the video vanished. Facebook blamed it on a "technical glitch" and restored the recording an hour later. The details behind the video's disappearance now suggest this wasn't a glitch, nor was it Facebook inappropriately flexing its content policies.

Castile, his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, and her four-year-old daughter were pulled over by police in the Falcon Heights suburb of Minneapolis for a broken tail light. Using her cellphone and Facebook Live, Reynolds web-streamed footage of her dying boyfriend after he was shot by a police officer as he reached for his ID in his wallet. The video was mysteriously removed from her Facebook profile as it went viral across the internet.

On Thursday, Facebook said a “technical glitch" caused the recording to be pulled from its social network. However, Reynolds claimed officers seized her phone and took over her Facebook account to delete the evidence.

Multiple sources with knowledge of the event have tonight confirmed to The Register that someone – highly suspected to be the city's police – used her phone to remove her recording from public view shortly after the shooting.

This, too, is a common occurrence. While the Supreme Court's Riley decision may provide an easy way to determine whether someone's Fourth Amendment rights have been violated by a search/seizure of their cell phone, it doesn't prevent an officer from simply taking a cell phone and deleting incriminating footage. The path for redress is clearer, but it's powerless against those whose first reaction is to vanish away evidence of their misconduct. [Update: For what it's worth, Facebook is standing by its "technical glitch" story and says the cops did not delete the video]. To quote law professor Butler Shaffer [h/t Faultline's Matt Brown]:

The Constitution is that sacred document which prevents the government from doing all the terrible things it does.

Fortunately, a number of streaming options and cloud services will keep some recordings from disappearing just because a phone is illegally seized and accessed. But both of these shootings -- and their responses to "uncontrolled" recordings -- show law enforcement has a long way to go before it can be considered trustworthy.

Filed Under: alton sterling, evidence, philandro castile, police, shootings, videos
Companies: facebook

This Will Backfire: Google/Facebook Using Copyright Tools To Remove 'Extremist' Content

from the slippery-slippery-slope dept

They've been pressured to do this for a while, but according to a Reuters report over the weekend, both Google and Facebook have started using some of their automation tools to start automatically removing "extremist" content. Both are apparently using modifications to their copyright takedown technology:

The technology was originally developed to identify and remove copyright-protected content on video sites. It looks for "hashes," a type of unique digital fingerprint that internet companies automatically assign to specific videos, allowing all content with matching fingerprints to be removed rapidly.

In other words, the companies aren't (yet) using these tools to automatically determine what's "extremist" and block it, but rather they're just keeping it from being posted. Of course, we're all quite familiar with how badly this can fail in the copyright context, and it's quite likely the same thing may happen in this context as well. Remember, in the past, under pressure from a US Senator, YouTube took down a Syrian watchdog's channel, confusing its documentation of atrocities with extremist content. And, hell, the same day that this was reported, a reporter on Twitter noted that her own Facebook account was suspended because she posted a picture of a friend of hers who had been killed in Syria. And that's a big part of the issue here: context totally matters. One person's extremist content may be quite informative/useful in other contexts.

Yes, I know that there's a big push for "countering violent extremism" online these days. And the government, in particular, has been putting lots of pressure on the big tech companies to "do something." But I'm curious what anyone thinks this is actually doing. The people who want to see these videos will still see these videos. It still seems like a fairly exaggerated threat to think that someone just watching some YouTube videos will suddenly decide that's why they're going to join ISIS. And, if that is the case, it seems like a much better response is counterspeech -- put up other videos that rebut the claims in the "extremist" videos, rather than blocking them across the board. Of course, if they're being matched via ContentID, even someone offering commentary on a video to debunk claims may suddenly find out that their videos are being taken down as well. I can't see how that's at all helpful.

Filed Under: censorship, contentid, copyright, isis, platforms, radical extremism, videos
Companies: facebook, google

Netflix Reveals It Throttles AT&T, Verizon Customers To Save Them From Usage Caps, Overage Fees

from the neutrality-soap-opera dept

Netflix this week admitted that the company has been throttling the video streams of most wireless customers around the world to 600 kbps, a practice the company claims is necessary to protect users from usage caps and wireless overage fees. It was the first time Netflix acknowledged the practice, which the company said it's been engaged in for five years. The more interesting part? The company admitted to the Wall Street Journal that it's apparently not throttling the video streams of companies whose consumer policies Netflix agrees with:

"Netflix said it doesn’t limit its video quality at two carriers: T-Mobile and Sprint Corp., because “historically those two companies have had more consumer-friendly policies.” When customers exceed their data plans on Sprint or T-Mobile, the carriers usually slow their network connections, rather than charge overage fees."

The Netflix reveal came after T-Mobile CEO John Legere spent last week defending T-Mobile's controversial Binge On service, which throttles partner video streams to 1.5 Mbps or 480p. Legere spent much of the week poking various news outlets with claims that AT&T and Verizon throttle video streams even further than Binge On, something both companies spent much of last week denying. It didn't apparently take long for the Journal to dig deeper and get an admission out of Netflix that it was the one doing the throttling.

Despite the clear admission from Netflix that it's the one throttling, Legere continues to take to Twitter to blame AT&T and Verizon, meaning he either didn't understand the story he'd read, or he's intentionally being misleading in an attempt to redirect people from recent Binge On criticisms:

2/ I called out @verizon and @att just last week about this – they denied, tried to make it about throttling and called me ‘dopey’!

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) March 24, 2016

AT&T, meanwhile, hoping to cash in on the story and paint Netflix as a hypocrite, had its top lobbyist pretend to be "outraged":

"We’re outraged to learn that Netflix is apparently throttling video for their AT&T customers without their knowledge or consent,” said Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs."

AT&T's "outrage" likely stems from the fact that the throttling kept AT&T users from hitting their usage caps and incurring overage fees sooner, costing AT&T money.

After revealing its throttling to the Journal, Netflix posted a new blog post in which it pretended it was revealing its throttling practices by choice, "announcing" it was working on tools that would help customers better manage their data consumption:

"We believe restrictive data caps are bad for consumers and the Internet in general, creating a dilemma for those who increasingly rely on their mobile devices for entertainment, work and more. So in an effort to protect our members from overage charges when they exceed mobile data caps, our default bitrate for viewing over mobile networks has been capped globally at 600 kilobits per second. It’s about striking a balance that ensures a good streaming experience while avoiding unplanned fines from mobile providers.

This hasn’t been an issue for our members. Our research and testing indicates that many members worry about exceeding their mobile data cap, and don’t need the same resolution on their mobile phone as on a large screen TV to enjoy shows and movies. However, we recognize some members may be less sensitive to data caps or subscribe to mobile data plans from carriers that don’t levy penalties for exceeding caps. As we develop new technologies, we want to give all our members the choice to adjust their data consumption settings based on their video preferences and sensitivity to their ISPs data overage charges. We’ll provide more details as we get closer to launch.

So to be clear: Netflix should have been more transparent about what it was doing and provide users with better controls (desktop users can adjust streaming quality rather easily), especially if it's going to lecture ISPs on transparency. That said, given Netflix's positions on net neutrality and usage caps, you're sure to see the story blown up into more than it is by ISPs and their various mouthpieces, who'll likely either call this a net neutrality violation itself (it's not; throttling yourself isn't like throttling a competitor, and users have a choice of streaming services) or continue the industry claim that Netflix is a shady villain that treats giant, lumbering telecom duopolies unfairly.

But the crux of the problem here remains usage caps, not Netflix. Sure, Netflix isn't being entirely altruistic. Annoyed customers banging their heads against usage caps watch less streaming video, which for many fixed-line ISPs like Comcast is the entire point. For wireless carriers it's obviously different, with the goal being to drive consumption however possible. But the fact that a company was forced to offer a lower quality service -- instead of competing to provide the best stream possible -- shows how arbitrary usage caps by their very nature distort and damage markets. And that's before you even get to the anti-competitive implications of zero rating.

Filed Under: mobile service, net neutrality, throttling, videos
Companies: at&t, netflix, sprint, t-mobile, verizon

Wikileaks Exaggerates Story About State Department Working With Google To Block Video

from the slow-down-folks dept

Just to be clear on a few things before I get into the meat of this post. (1) I tend to be a supporter of Wikileaks and its goals to help whistleblowers reveal important information, (2) I'm flabbergasted that Hillary Clinton would use a private server for her emails, (3) I think YouTube made a big mistake in blocking the ridiculous Innocence of Muslims video in various countries, and (4) I'm very concerned about public officials meddling in the affairs of companies in telling them to block certain content.

Given all that, I was quite intrigued when Wikileaks tweeted out a story this morning claiming that a recently released Clinton email "reveals that Hillary worked with Google's CEO to keep" the "Innocence of Muslims" video blocked on YouTube. That seemed like a big deal -- especially as I remembered, clearly, Google putting out a statement about all of this and rejecting the White House's request to censor the video. The problem, though, is that Wikileaks' tweet is vastly overstating the reality.

Clinton email reveals that Hillary worked with Google CEOs to keep #Bengazhi video blocked https://t.co/UWCbZarhWi pic.twitter.com/jcLklzM7Z3

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 18, 2016

The emails, which are also embedded below, don't seem to reveal nearly as much as Wikileaks would like them to say. First off, it's important to understand the timeline. The attack in Benghazi, Libya, happened on Tuesday September 11, 2012. By Wednesday, September 12, people were already (probably inaccurately) blaming the YouTube video which purported to be a "trailer" for a movie called "The Innocence of Muslims," which was a stupid and ridiculous video that mocked Islam (and eventually led to a whole different kind of legal fight involving copyright).

By Friday September 14th, there was widespread discussion about what Google/YouTube should do about this video, when (1) the White House confirmed that it had asked Google to "review whether the clip violated its policies" and (2) Google had announced that it would not block the video in the US, but would restrict access in Libya, Egypt, India and Indonesia. At the time, we argued this was a mistake by YouTube to take the video down at all.

So, by September 14th, it was now publicly known that the White House had asked Google to review the video and that Google had agreed to take it down in some countries, but leave it up in the US.

That brings us to the emails in question. The first is just an email from Denis McDonough, who was then the Deputy National Security Advisor (prior to becoming Obama's Chief of Staff), emailing a few people the phone numbers of both Google CEO Larry Page and then YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar. That email is on September 27th -- or basically two weeks after everything above had been confirmed.

The second email, sent an hour later, is from Nora Toiv, who worked for Clinton, responding and saying that "Sue just called back and the block will stay through Monday. They will not/not be unblocking it before then." It's not entirely clear who "Sue" is, but obviously someone who works at Google/YouTube. As a guess, it may have been Susan Wojcicki who is the current head of YouTube. She wasn't back then, but she was still a high ranking Google exec who had been involved with Google Video and the purchase of YouTube at the beginning, so it's possible she is the person in question.

Still, for all of the hubbub about this email, it doesn't seem to come even remotely close to revealing anything along the lines of what Wikileaks is implying. Again, this email was two weeks after it had already been confirmed that the White House had asked Google to review the video and Google had already publicly discussed its decision. At most, the email just reveals that people in the government were wondering if Google was planning to remove the geoblock in places like Libya and Egypt in order to be ready in case anything happened because of it.

I still think it was wrong for the White House to reach out and ask YouTube to review the video in the first place. And that it was wrong for Google to block the video in some places. But this email doesn't appear to be a smoking gun of Clinton "working with Google CEOs to keep Benghazi video blocked" as Wikileaks claims. It seems to be someone from the State Department reaching out to find out when the block might be lifted -- which, if anything, suggests that Google was making the decision on its own, rather than at the White House's request.

I'm all for revealing officials meddling in internet platforms and trying to get content blocked. That's bad news and we should discuss it and highlight it. But raising false alarms over things that aren't really there just makes you look like a tinfoil hat wearer. It's not worth it.

Filed Under: benghazi, blocks, censorship, denis mcdonough, first amendment, innocence of muslims, nora toiv, state department, videos
Companies: google, wikileaks, youtube