Hillary Clinton Looks At Her Campaign's Many Missteps, Decides To Blame James Comey For Her Loss

from the #NeverMyFault dept

Hillary Clinton has stepped forward to officially (such as it were...) blame FBI Director James Comey for robbing her of an election win.

“There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” Clinton told top donors on a farewell conference call Saturday.

“But our analysis is that [FBI Director James B.] Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum,” she said.

Clinton is referring to Comey taking it upon himself to step into the breach and declare to Congress there might be something suspicious about emails he hadn't seen (and his agency hadn't yet acquired a warrant to look at) discovered on former Congress member Anthony Weiner's laptop. Comey's announcement arrived with only a couple of weeks left until the election, prompting nearly everyone to criticize his decision to insert himself into a normally hands-off pre-election period.

Clinton blaming Comey, though, looks more like a candidate looking for anyone else to blame but herself, her staff, and the DNC, which aided her run greatly by agreeing to sandbag her competition.

Comey's belated announcement (and even more belated "never mind") arrived far too late to push undecided voters into Trump's corner. Those who had already decided who they were voting for wouldn't have been swayed either, as it either confirmed their beliefs that Clinton was a crook who would never be punished, or that Clinton was being baselessly persecuted by a politicized FBI.

What data has been gathered from talking to voters about their sentiments pre- and post-election shows barely any correlation, much less causation. Clinton says her campaign's "analysis" points to Comey. But what exactly have they "analyzed?" Marcy Wheeler takes a good look at the information currently available and finds nothing that indicates Comey's announcement played a part in the election results.

What these two pieces — from Trump’s data analyst and Hillary’s pollster — suggest is a correlation between the Comey letter and Trump’s improved chances. But there’s no proof of causation — certainly not that Comey is the primary explanation.

In fact, temporally, the correlation is not perfect. Trump’s analysts say the trend started before the Comey letter. This was a weird election, but it is still highly unlikely that a letter released on October 28 can entirely explain a trend that started before October 28.

Even shifting the focus entirely to swing states does nothing to solidify either party's claims that Comey's announcement swayed the election. Late-deciding voters went for Trump in several key states, but voters also broke in the other direction -- at odds with the narrative the Clinton campaign has decided to push. In Virginia, where beltway security clearance holders might have felt more animosity towards a candidate who skated on a federal investigation involved the mishandling of classified documents, late-deciders opted more often for Clinton than Trump.

None of this really adds up to anything, which would be fine if Clinton's camp wasn't so ready to insist that it does. While it did seem Clinton would have grabbed an insurmountable lead in the wake of Trump's post-"grab 'em by the pussy" debate flame-out, the real issues affecting undecided voters the most weren't Trump's sexism or Clinton's private email server, but far more common worries: the economy, crime, and a distrust for anything considered to be part of the government establishment.

Clinton does list something in her "blame Comey" speech that should have been obvious all along -- something that pretty much undercuts her narrative that the FBI director cost her the election.

“Just as we were back up on the upward trajectory, the second letter from Comey essentially doing what we knew it would — saying there was no there there — was a real motivator for Trump’s voters,” Clinton said.

No matter what Comey said -- nor what was found during the Email Investigation 1.5 -- would have changed the minds of entrenched voters. Those supporting Clinton saw more exoneration. Those supporting Trump saw more evidence of a rigged system. It just didn't matter.

As for the rest of the undecided nation, the original email investigation and its last-minute sequel were too far off in the weeds to be considered worth examining more closely. Writing for Techdirt and conversing with like-minded individuals tends to give the impression that everyone follows these developments closely, but a majority of Americans simply don't care about the wonkish details. If something can be explained simply (Hillary is/is not a crook), then the nuances aren't important. Clinton thought those nuances should have mattered. Trump knew they wouldn't.

Blaming Comey is handy but does nothing to help future candidates better prepare for this fractured American landscape we still call "united." It is, in fact, its own form of denial.

The Democrat focused on the outside events she said affected her campaign in the last three weeks of the election. She said nothing about other, larger forces at work — Trump's message of change in a restive time, his pledge to represent the aggrieved working class, the difficulty of any political party winning a third consecutive presidential term, her own limited attention to economic anxiety, or the sexism and discomfort that surrounded her attempt to become the first female president.

[...]

Neither [Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri] nor Clinton herself addressed how Clinton's decision seven years ago to use a private system for her government communication had opened the door to the FBI inquiry in the midst of her second run for the White House.

While government agencies sounded the alarm about hackers attacking voter data and infrastructure, Trump pushed a rigged election narrative. And for no apparent reason, the FBI felt it just couldn't wait to inform Congress about something it knew next to nothing about, less than two weeks before election day. There were plenty of reasons for voters to feel less than confident about candidates and the process of electing them, but campaigns were won and lost without the FBI's assistance -- no matter how gratifying it might be to pass the buck in the wake of a surprising loss.

Filed Under: blame, hillary clinton, james comey

In The Rush To Blame Facebook, Come The Calls To Suppress Ideas People Disagree With

from the this-won't-end-well dept

Yesterday I wrote that people rushing to blame Facebook for the election results were being ridiculous, and it generated a fair bit of discussion (much of it on Twitter). And this was before NYMag's Max Read went out and wrote an article literally titled Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook. Here's the crux of Max's argument, which is similar to the argument many others have been making:

The most obvious way in which Facebook enabled a Trump victory has been its inability (or refusal) to address the problem of hoax or fake news. Fake news is not a problem unique to Facebook, but Facebook’s enormous audience, and the mechanisms of distribution on which the site relies — i.e., the emotionally charged activity of sharing, and the show-me-more-like-this feedback loop of the news feed algorithm — makes it the only site to support a genuinely lucrative market in which shady publishers arbitrage traffic by enticing people off of Facebook and onto ad-festooned websites, using stories that are alternately made up, incorrect, exaggerated beyond all relationship to truth, or all three. (To really hammer home the cyberdystopia aspect of this: A significant number of the sites are run by Macedonian teenagers looking to make some scratch.)

All throughout the election, these fake stories, sometimes papered over with flimsy “parody site” disclosures somewhere in small type, circulated throughout Facebook: The Pope endorses Trump. Hillary Clinton bought $137 million in illegal arms. The Clintons bought a $200 million house in the Maldives. The valiant efforts of Snopes and other debunking organizations were insufficient; Facebook’s labyrinthine sharing and privacy settings mean that fact-checks get lost in the shuffle. Often, no one would even need to click on the story for the headline to become a widely distributed talking point, repeated elsewhere online, or, sometimes, in real life.

Meanwhile Bloomberg had a big piece, saying that Facebook (and Twitter) employees are "grappling with their role" in helping to elect Trump.

Online (on Facebook, of course), current and former employees debated the company's role as an influencer. Bobby Goodlatte, a Facebook product designer from 2008 to 2012, according to his LinkedIn, today said the company's news feed was responsible for fueling “highly partisan, fact-light media outlets” that propelled Donald Trump's ascension to the presidency. “News feed optimizes for engagement,” Goodlatte wrote. “As we’ve learned in this election, bullshit is highly engaging.”

These stories sound convenient. And my Twitter feed is chock full of people -- often people in the media who are already "angry" about Facebook "stealing" their ad revenue -- making similar noises about how Facebook needs to "fix" this. And these stories tell a neat and convenient tale, a pre-packaged "thing" to blame. And they're all bullshit. Yes, Facebook had lots of people passing around fake news stories, or misleading news stories. And, yes, lots of people live in bubbles where they only see/read/hear stuff that they are prone to agree with. But this narrative that it was Facebook's "primed for engagement, not truth" algorithm that got people to go out and vote for Trump is both simplistic and dangerous. Let's take each problem separately.

Too Simplistic:

Blaming the Facebook algorithm for sharing fake news is too simplistic in that it gives the algorithm too much power and takes the responsibility away from human beings as living, thinking creatures. We love to blame the tools. It's practically a national pasttime, searching for the moral panic du jour to blame for people doing things that some other people don't like or find problematic. It's much easier to blame the tools.

Even worse is that it assumes millions of people are pure idiots. And, I know, among many people this may be a popular opinion right now. That if they supported "the other side" they must be complete idiots. But that's wrong. There are idiot supporters of every candidate in this election -- and we can all highlight our favorite that somehow got onto the news. But lots and lots and lots of people who voted for Trump weren't doing so because some Facebook algorithm "tricked" them, but because they legitimately believed that the status quo wasn't working and was problematic, and an awful lot of "the establishment" wanted them to shut up about what wasn't working. You can argue that they were misled about what was and what wasn't working, but again, that goes back to the idea that tens of millions of people are so stupid that they change their minds based on fake stories on Facebook.

Too Dangerous:

I write an awful lot about Section 230 of the CDA and the idea of "intermediary liability" protections and I know that some people's eyes glaze over at those terms. But there's a fundamental underlying principle behind those things and it's this: if you blame a platform for the actions of its users, you end up with massive censorship and dangerous limits on free speech and innovation.

The people calling for Facebook to "fix" this problem don't see where this leads, but it's not good. In various conversations I've had in response to yesterday's article, I keep drilling down and trying to see what people think the "solution" to this "problem" is, and it inevitably comes back to something along the lines of "well, Facebook needs to stop the fake news from spreading." If only it could. Fake news, rumors, conspiracy theories, echo chambers and "bubbles" predate Facebook by a long shot. While the musical Hamilton is reminding people that some of our founding fathers were known to fight hard against each other, not everyone is aware of the spreading of rumors and lies between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams as they campaigned for the presidency in 1800:

Jefferson secretly hired the famed pamphleteer James Callendar, who had previously seriously damaged the reputation of Adams' fellow Federalist Alexander Hamilton, to paint Adams and the Federalist party as a friend to British royalty and Adams as being bent on starting a war with France in order to further an alliance with King George. More to the point, Callender described Adams as a "hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

Adams' Federalist surrogates also brought out the proverbial long knives. A Federalist publication described Jefferson as "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." Allegations were made that he cheated his British creditors, was a supporter of French radicalism and assassinations of the aristocracy, and that he made a habit out of sleeping with his female slaves.

Or read about the history of the 1828 election between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, and you might notice more than a few parallels to today -- including the spreading of fake stories about each candidate by surrogates. Here's just a snippet:

One Adams newspaper even wrote, "General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute, brought to this country by the British soldiers! She afterward married a mulatto man, with whom she had several children, of which number General Jackson is one!"

In 1876, opponents of Rutherford B. Hayes spread the rumor that he had shot his own mother. In 1928, supporters of Herbert Hoover started spreading rumors that (the Catholic) Al Smith was connecting the newly built Holland Tunnel in NY all the way to the Vatican so that the Pope would weigh in on all Presidential matters. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower supporters distributed pamphlets claiming that his opponent, Adlai Stephenson had once killed a young girl "in a jealous rage."

Point being: fake news is spread in basically every election for the US President in history. It didn't take Facebook's algorithms, and it won't go away if Facebook's algorithms change.

In fact, it's likely to make things even worse. Remember the mostly made up "controversy" about Facebook suppressing conservative news? Remember the outrage it provoked (or have you already forgotten?). Just imagine what would happen if Facebook now decided that it was only going to let people share "true" news. Whoever gets to decide that kind of thing has tremendous power -- and there will be immediately claims of bias and hiding "important" stories -- even if they're bullshit. It will lead many of the people who are already angry about things to argue that their views are being suppressed and hidden and that they are being "censored." That's not a good recipe. And it's an especially terrible recipe if people really want to understand why so many people are so angry at the status quo.

Telling them that the news needs to be censored to "protect" them isn't going to magically turn Trump supporters into Hillary supporters. It will just convince them that they're even more persecuted.

Other than "censoring" certain content, the only other suggestion I seriously heard was someone suggesting that Facebook should force-feed its users opposing views. Like that's actually going to change anyone's mind, rather than get them pissed off again. And, once again, this seems like people failing to take responsibility for their own actions. If you don't have any friends who supported Trump, don't lump that on Facebook.

There are legitimate questions about whether you can better inform a populace. But censorship and force-feeding information is general paternalistic nonsense that totally misunderstands the issue and misdiagnoses the problem. As Clay Shirky noted earlier this year, too many Hillary supporters thought that "bringing fact checkers to a culture war" would win out, when that's never going to happen. Fighting Facebook's algorithim is more of the same nonsense. It's based in the faulty belief that those who voted for "the other" are simply too dumb to understand the truth, and if they just got more truth, they'd buy it. It's not understanding why they voted the way they did. It's looking for easy scapegoats.

Facebook's algorithm is an easy target, but it's even less likely to solve a culture war than fact checkers.

Filed Under: blame, cda 230, censorship, donald trump, fake news, intermediary liability, presidential elections, section 230, social media
Companies: facebook

Journalists Blaming Facebook For Decline Is Just As Tiresome As When They Blamed Craigslist & Google

from the time-to-innovate dept

The Guardian's Roy Greenslade recently published a column about "why Facebook is public enemy number one for newspapers in journalism." It's a bunch of complete nonsense. I won't go through the whole thing, but here's just a snippet:

Facebook’s increasing dominance over advertising is causing the laying off of journalists, the people who produce the news that it transmits to its users.

The logical conclusion to that process is not only the destruction of old media, legacy media, mainstream media, whatever you want to call it, but the end of journalism as we know it.

Yeah. Okay. Let's be clear: this is bullshit. As Ben Thompson pointed out, the decline of newspaper revenue predates Facebook, by a lot: Indeed, it seems that as newspaper revenue has declined, screaming newspaper reporters have been looking for a "dot com" to blame, every step of the way, rather than looking inwardly at their own failures to adapt to a changing marketplace. I remember, not too long ago, when it wasn't Facebook that was killing the news business, but Craigslist. I mean, everyone said it was true:

• The Rise of Craigslist and How It's Killing Your Newspaper
• How Craigslist killed the newspapers' golden goose
• Another study shows Craigslist is killing newspapers
• Newspaper Billions Become Craigslist Millions
• Pew Center Illustrates how Craigslist is killing newspapers
• Craigslist Is Killing Newspapers
• Sorry, Craig: Study Finds Craigslist Took $5 Billion from Newspapers

And, of course, after it was all Craigslist's fault, it was, undoubtedly, the fault of Google and its Google News product. That's why Europe is so busy trying to force Google to pay for newspapers that it links to. And, of course, once again, lots of media folks jumped on the blame Google bandwagon:

• Bob Woodward accuses Google of killing newspapers
• Google will destroy local newspapers
• Trevor Ncube Says Google Killing News Industry
• Blame Google for news decline
• More on Google, Craigslist, and who's killing newspapers
• Google dubbed internet parasite by WSJ editor

A few notes on some of the above links. The "study" that is cited in some of the first batch about how Craigslist is "killing" newspapers was from the Pew Research Center -- the very same research shop that Greenslade points to in the link up at the top of this article blaming Facebook. Second, that first article in the second list, about Bob Woodward blaming Google... is also by Greenslade. Yet, in that case, Greenslade mocks Woodward for blaming Google (and very kindly provides a link to me mocking Woodward's silly claims.

So let's get a few things out of the way here: Newspapers are struggling. They absolutely are. But it's not "because" of Facebook (or Craigslist or Google). Newspapers were going to struggle with the rise of the internet no matter what, because it laid bare the basic coincidence that made newspapers profitable despite themselves. For many, many years, we've been pointing out that the true business of newspapers was a community business, rather than a news business. It's just that in the pre-internet days, newspapers had a bit of a monopoly on being able to build communities -- often local communities -- around the news. But they had very little competition in that business, other than maybe a few other local newspapers (though consolidation took care of that in most markets). The business, then, of newspapers was taking the attention they received from that community, and selling it to advertisers.

The internet structurally changed all of this, by creating all sorts of other areas where people could congregate and build communities. That's kind of what the internet is good at. And suddenly there's a ton of competition in the community space. But newspapers, incorrectly thinking they were in the "news" business, often made decisions that actively harmed the community aspect. They put up paywalls. They took away the ability to comment. They made it harder for local communities of interest to form.

So what happened? The communities and their (valuable) attention went elsewhere. And, these days, much of that "elsewhere" when it comes to communities is Facebook.

And, just like Google before it, Facebook has actually created a pretty valuable channel for sending people to your news website. Many publishers haven't figured this out yet -- or how to harness it. Hell, just a month or so ago, I was talking about how we here at Techdirt haven't figured this out at all (we get depressingly little traffic from Facebook compared to many of our peers). But you won't see us blaming Facebook for this. It's on us. Have our ad rates dropped off a cliff? Yes. Is that Facebook's fault? Hell no. Even if all the advertising money that used to go to newspapers and news sites magically shifted to Facebook (which it hasn't), then it would be because of a failure on the part of those news companies to offer a better overall product for advertisers.

It's time for publications to stop blaming every new technology site that comes along, and to focus on actually adapting, changing and finding new business models that work. It may not be easy. And many will crash and burn completely. But that's not the "fault" of these new companies at all.

Filed Under: ad rates, blame, journalism, news, social media, technology
Companies: craigslist, facebook, google

Netflix Tries To Blame Press Coverage Of Its Price Hikes For Lower Than Expected Subscriber Additions

from the shoot-the-messenger dept

Late last year, Netflix raised rates on the company's new streaming subscribers from $9 a month to $10 a month. Existing subscribers were grandfathered in at the previous rate until last May, when they too saw the price hike. Reporting the company's earnings this week, Netflix noted that it "only" added 1.7 million new subscribers worldwide. And while that's still pretty impressive at a time when most major cable companies are slowly bleeding subscribers, that's still well below the 2.5 million Netflix expected to add. The most likely reason for the dip? Price hikes (though foolishly blocking VPN users may have also played a role).

But in a Netflix letter to investors this week (pdf), the company tried its very best to try and blame the press coverage of its rate hikes -- not the rate hikes themselves -- for the company's slower than expected growth:

"Gross additions were on target, but churn ticked up slightly and unexpectedly, coincident with the press coverage in early April of our plan to un­grandfather longer tenured members and remained elevated through the quarter. We think some members perceived the news as an impending new price increase rather than the completion of two years of grandfathering."

It was the press coverage of your staggered rate hikes that annoyed users? It was member "perception" of that news that was to blame for people leaving? That's some very Comcast-esque spin from Netflix, who throughout the letter consistently replaces the phrase "price hike" with "grandfathering" as if the investors they're talking to aren't bright enough to tell the difference (and perhaps that's true):

"While un­grandfathering and associated media coverage may moderate near ­term membership growth, we believe that un­grandfathering will provide us with more revenue to invest in our content to satisfy members, thus driving long­term growth. Over the second half of this year, we’ll complete un­grandfathering. Our three ­tier pricing (in the US: $7.99 SD, $9.99 HD, and $11.99 UHD) is working well for us and for new members, and our gross additions remain healthy."

Of course to be fair, one small U.S. price hike isn't really much of a big deal for a company that just expanded into 130 more countries only back in January. Also, if you recall, the internet media went into histrionics a few years ago after Netflix bungled its DVD arm spin off (Qwikster, RIP) and imposed a different rate hike, one many analysts insisted spelled doom for the company. The reality is most people still find Netflix to be an incredible value in the age of soaring legacy cable TV prices, and the company still has some leg room on both international growth and pricing.

But just like its traditional cable counterparts, Netflix is going to start having to feed insatiable investors with either additional international growth (likely China), or price hikes on existing customers. And just like any innovator pressured by Wall Street's incessant hunger for more, the company's strategy will slowly but surely shift from disruption to turf protection as streaming competitors arise and cable figures out it needs to compete on price. And while these recent hikes may not be dramatic, they're arriving as Netflix's overall catalog has shrunk in the last few years by as much as 40% by some estimates.

So while the Netflix of today remains a better value and more consumer friendly on issues like net neutrality (usually), the decision to start charging more for less -- then blaming the press when consumers balk -- is a relatively Comcast-esque move that may not bode well for the Netflix of tomorrow.

Filed Under: blame, journalism, prices, streaming
Companies: netflix

Google Issues Its Latest 'Stop Blaming Us For Piracy' Report

from the target-on-its-back dept

Google is big and successful. Some legacy entertainment companies have been struggling. For whatever reason, many of those companies have decided that Google's success must be the reason for their downfall, and they've been blaming Google ever since. It's pervasive and it's deeply ingrained. A few years ago, I ended up at a dinner with a recording industry exec (and RIAA board member) who was so absolutely positive that Google was deliberately trying to destroy his business that it was reaching delusional levels. Of course, these legacy players have been banging on this drum for so long that they've convinced some others that it must be true, including some content creators and politicians. They all believe that the correlation of Google's success and their own struggles must be about Google, and not their own failures to innovate. And their number one argument seems to be (ridiculously) that Google "profits" from piracy and therefore Google encourages piracy.

As this drumbeat has gotten louder and louder, Google has felt the need to respond. The company has, for many years, actually done plenty to try to stop piracy, rather than encourage it, and it's reached the point where Google is (stupidly, in my opinion, though perhaps politically necessary) actively appeasing the legacy industries, sometimes actively making its own search product worse. And, of course, as you would expect, these efforts are never enough for those industries. So now Google has taken to putting out a semi-regular report on how it fights piracy.

Today, Google came out with its latest such report which again shows that Google goes much, much, much further than the law requires -- and even much further than many are demanding the company already do. The headline pointer, which will get all the attention, is that YouTube's ContentID, by itself, has paid out over $2 billion. For some time now, Google has said that it's paid out over $3 billion to artists, but recent recording industry attack dogs have honed in on the fact that Google never broke out how much of the $3 billion was from ContentID. Now they're breaking it out somewhat -- noting $3 billion to the music industry and $2 billion from ContentID alone. The company also notes that over 98% of copyright management on Youtube is now via ContentID, rather than through DMCA takedown notices.

Of course, whether or not you think this is a good thing may depend heavily on your perspective. I appreciate that ContentID has created a new business model, but of course, we've seen how badly it performs in some situations leading to censorship or trollish behavior where some are using it to claim the revenue of other individuals.

The report also takes on the silly myth that Google likes to drive searchers to pirated information. They point out that the company has used the DMCA notices it receives as a signal to demote certain sites in search, and then points out that almost no one does the kinds of queries that still pop up infringing results (and it notes in a footnote that the examples it's using are ones that have been called out publicly by the RIAA and its friends):

Nevertheless, some critics paint a misleading picture by focusing on the results for rare, “long tail” queries, adding terms like “watch” or “free” or “download” to a movie title or performer’s name. While the search results for these vanishingly rare queries can include potentially problematic links, it is important to consider how rare those queries are. Look at the relative frequency of these Google searches in 2015:

“Star Wars The Force Awakens” searched 402× more often than “Watch Star Wars The Force Awakens”

“Taylor Swift” searched 4534x more often than “Taylor Swift download”

“PSY Gangnam Style” searched 104× more often than “PSY Gangnam Style download”

“Mad Max” searched 836× more often than “Mad Max stream”

“Pixels” searched 240× more often than “Watch Pixels”

And then there's this: Google is obviously far from perfect, and as I've said in the past (and above!) I think the company goes way too far in trying to appease an industry that is placing a ton of misplaced blame on Google for its own failures to innovate and change with the times. But because so many people seem to be accepting the myths of the legacy industries, now Google feels the need to go even further and release these "guys, we're doing way more than any law has ever required" reports.

And while I haven't seen it yet, I can almost guarantee that the RIAA, MPAA and its various friendly groups will be rushing out press releases attacking this as "not enough." Because it's never enough when you can blame the more successful company for your own failures.

Filed Under: blame, contentid, copyright, jealous, piracy, search
Companies: google, youtube

Facebook Sued Again For 'Material Support' Of Terrorism, Because Hamas Uses Facebook

from the not-how-it-works dept

This is becoming quite the stupid trend: people who are true victims of terrorist attacks suing internet platforms because terror-associated groups are using those platforms generally. It began back in January, when a woman sued Twitter after her husband was apparently killed in an ISIS attack. The lawsuit made no connection between the use of Twitter and the attack. It's just "husband died in ISIS attack" and "ISIS people use Twitter." The judge in that case is not at all impressed and it seems likely to dismiss the case shortly. In the meantime, another similar case was filed against Twitter, Facebook and Google.

And now... we've got a third such case filed against Facebook and asking for a billion dollars. A billion dollars. The lawsuit was filed by the families of some people who were killed in a Hamas attack. And the entire complaint is basically "Hamas killed these guys, Hamas uses Facebook, give us a billion dollars." It goes through a variety of stories, each involving Hamas or Hamas-affiliated attacks, without any actual connection to Facebook, other than "and they also used Facebook to celebrate." Here's just one example of a bunch: Yes, the situation is horrifying and awful. No doubt about that. But blaming Facebook for it is idiotic... and also likely to go absolutely nowhere. Facebook is clearly protected by Section 230 of the CDA and it would be amazing if a court didn't toss this lawsuit very quickly. And, yes, obviously it's absolutely horrible if your family member is killed in a terrorist event. I'm sure I'd be distraught and angry and many other feelings that I can't begin to imagine. But lashing out at various neutral social media platforms is just ridiculous. It stinks of being a Steve Dallas lawsuit in which lawyers decide to sue tangentially related companies because that's where the money is. Meanwhile, Hamas is already claiming that this lawsuit is proof that the US is fighting against "freedom of the press and expression." Of course, that assumes that the lawsuit will actually go anywhere, which seems ridiculously unlikely. Terrorist attacks are a real problem. Suing Facebook or other social media platforms isn't going to help one bit.

Filed Under: blame, hamas, material support, platforms, section 230, terrorism
Companies: facebook

James Comey Still Trying To Blame Increase In Violent Crime On 'Viral Videos'

from the pitching-woe dept

FBI Director James Comey says we're "going dark" as more platforms move towards encryption. Nobody's buying it. Not Congress. Not NSA officials. Definitely not those who have actually researched the subject.

He also says people with cameras are causing spikes in crime rates by making police officers so self-conscious they can't do their job. Comey blamed citizens with cameras for escalating crime rates last October. He was immediately contradicted by Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Having learned nothing from the experience, Comey has dusted off his 2015 talking points for redeployment in 2016.

FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday he believes a "viral video effect" causes weak police work and could be "at the heart" of a spike in violent crime in some American cities.

“There’s a perception that police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime—the getting out of your car at 2 in the morning and saying to a group of guys, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’” he told reporters at FBI headquarters.

This is a guy with access to some of the best intelligence and advice your tax dollars can buy. And yet he'd rather tuck his thumbs into his suspenders, lean towards reporters and aw-shucks at them with his "I may just be a simple director of the most powerful law enforcement agency in the United States, but…" pitches.

He sounds like a small town local running for sheriff, rather than a top government official with his finger on the pulse of criminal activity and law enforcement technology.

Comey spoke to reporters after being briefed on crime statistics from 40 major cities, most of which saw an increase in murders, he said.

"I was very worried about it last fall and I am in many ways more worried," Comey told reporters at FBI headquarters. "The numbers are not only going up, they're continuing to go up faster than they were going up last year. And I worry very much it's a problem that most of America can drive around. ... I don't know what the answer is, but, holy cow, do we have a problem."

That's classic Comey: You've got problems? I don't have answers.

Encryption got you down? I'm sure the "smart people" in tech can deliver unicorns on command. No, I'm sorry. I don't have any technical details but, you know, those guys at Apple and Google are so damn smart. They'll think of something.

Crime rates spiking in major cities? "Holy cow, do we have a problem?" Any ideas, Mr. Top of the Law Enforcement Food Chain? "I don't know what the answer is."

OK. Well… um… keep on earning that paycheck... I guess.

Not for nothing has James Comey earned a petition calling for his removal. Comey claims criminals are somehow exploiting a "tech gap" the FBI can't seem to close, despite its hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't know how many criminals are staying one step ahead of the FBI in a tech arms race anyone can participate in. (The fact that the FBI can buy/obtain/hoard exploits and malware, along with other high-tech tools the general public can't purchase, somehow always gets lost in law enforcement's portrayal of this so-called "race.") But it can certainly be said criminals are one step ahead of the FBI's top man, who often seems genuinely baffled by the issues confronting his agency.

It may be that Comey is playing dumb because he believes it's the best way to advance his agency's agenda. But he's been doing this for more than a year and there's been no forward movement. If anything, the FBI is less likely to receive Congressional assistance than it was before Comey began running his mouth on these two subjects.

Not only has he lost the support of Congress, but he's not winning any powerful friends within the law enforcement community.

“He ought to stick to what he knows,” James O. Pasco Jr., executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, told the New York Times. “He’s basically saying that police officers are afraid to do their jobs with absolutely no proof.”

Unfortunately, this -- and "going dark" -- appears to be all Comey knows.

Filed Under: blame, crime, fbi, james comey, law enforcement, transparency

The Broadband Industry Is Now Officially Blaming Google (Alphabet) For...Everything

from the glass-houses dept

From net neutrality to municipal broadband, to new broadband privacy rules and a quest to open up the cable set top box to competition, we've noted repeatedly that the FCC under Tom Wheeler isn't the same FCC we've learned to grumble about over the years. For a twenty-year stretch, regardless of party control, the agency was utterly, dismally apathetic to the lack of competition in the broadband space. But under Wheeler, the FCC has not only made broadband competition a priority, but has engaged in other bizarre, uncharacteristic behaviors -- like using actual real-world data to influence policy decisions.

Obviously, this doesn't please incumbent telecom operators like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, who grew pretty comfortable with an FCC that asked "how high" when commanded to jump. The reality is that this is just what it looks like when a regulator does its job and tries to fix a very broken market. But incapable of admitting the broadband market's horribly broken, the telecom industry instead seems intent on pointing fingers elsewhere. In a strange story over at Politico, broadband providers blame Google for absolutely everything the FCC has been up to.

The quest to open the set top box, the quest for more unlicensed spectrum, and the quest for better consumer privacy controls? All the fault of Alphabet and Google:

The cable industry-led Future of TV Coalition earlier this year suggested Google had "a sneak preview" of the FCC’s February plan to open up the set-top box market to new competitors. The move would require pay-TV companies to make their content streams available to third parties that want to build and sell their own boxes — a move that cable firms say is designed to benefit Google, which has already demonstrated a prototype cable box to regulators.

AT&T, meanwhile, has charged that the agency is placing its "thumb on the scale" in favor of Google via Wheeler's March proposal to impose strict privacy rules on broadband companies. The plan, according to AT&T and others, would put telecom firms at a disadvantage compared with Internet companies like Google, which wouldn't fall under the FCC rules. Internet firms' privacy practices are policed by the Federal Trade Commission, which is seen as less prescriptive.

On another front, the National Association of Broadcasters argued that Google led a behind-the-scenes push at the FCC to set aside more unlicensed airwaves — something that could boost Wi-Fi networks that support the company's products and services. NAB says this FCC set-aside allows Google to avoid having to pay for spectrum during the FCC's current incentive auction.

The telecom industry taking pot shots at Google is certainly nothing new; in fact the net neutrality debate basically began in 2005 when then AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre proudly proclaimed that Google wouldn't be able to "ride his pipes for free." Traditionally though, the telecom industry has used third-party consultants, think tanks, and other policy tendrils to hurl strange attacks at Google. These new, more direct attacks are a sign of increased desperation.

This desperation originates with two things, one of them being Google Fiber. Though admittedly still limited in reach, Google Fiber has managed to light a fire under the apathetic posteriors of telecom giants that previously had little to no impetus to upgrade networks. It has managed to generate a national conversation about the sorry state of broadband competition, and even managed to illuminate the telecom sector's love of state protectionist laws that prevent community broadband and even public/private partnerships. In short, the broadband industry's mostly just pissed that they're now facing some competition (which is why they've resorted to lawsuits to slow Google Fiber's expansion).

The other thing on telecom executives' minds is the fact that with the broadband market saturated, they're turning to advertising and content to try and attain quarterly growth. That's why Verizon's been gobbling up companies like AOL and blowing kisses at Millennials in a quest to magically become the new Facebook or Google. But these ISPs face new neutrality and privacy regulations that Google doesn't have to worry about, solely because there's no competition in the broadband space (read: you have a choice in search engines, but often not in ISPs). This lack of competition isn't Google's fault. It's the fault of the carriers themselves and generations of lobbying.

The telecom industry has invited the wrath of regulators for years with a laundry list of bad behavior. The FCC's privacy rules weren't driven by Google, they were driven by Verizon's decision to use stealth cookies users couldn't opt out of to covertly track customers around the Internet. Net neutrality wasn't created by Google, it was created thanks to AT&T threatening to charge Google a "just because we can" toll. And while Google has lobbied to open up the cable set top box to competition, this idea is actually more than a decade old, driven primarily by the fact that the industry enjoys $20 billion in captive revenue thanks to absolutely no serious cable set top hardware competition whatsoever.

Yes, Google and Alphabet have become lobbying behemoths since Google first started ramping up its lobbying apparatus around 2007. And yes, like any large company, Google spends a good amount of its time lobbying to saddle the other guy with additional regulations -- something that will only increase as the company inevitably shifts from innovation to turf protection. And we've already started to witness this turn; most notably in the way Google turned its back on net neutrality in the States and abroad the last few years.

A saint Google isn't, but to suggest that the FCC is suddenly doing its job entirely because of Google lobbying borders on the comical, especially coming from an industry that has had its lobbying talons deep in the federal government for more than a generation. It's much the same way that ISPs and their loyal politicians have taken to attacking Netflix for daring to criticize usage caps and standing up for net neutrality. It's snide hubris from a sector that can't come to terms with the fact that a generation of telecom regulatory capture is finally starting to crumble. Instead of adapting to shifting markets, the telecom sector would rather blame "big tech" for a firestorm of regulatory activity it brought down upon itself.

Filed Under: blame, broadband, fcc, net neutrality, open internet, set top boxes, spectrum
Companies: alphabet, at&t, google, nab, verizon

Once Again, The Brussels Attacks Were An Intelligence Community Failure, Not An 'Encryption' Problem

from the yet-again dept

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After the Paris attacks late last year, we noted that it was clear that they were evidence of an intelligence community failure, rather than an "encryption" problem -- which kind of explained why the intelligence community quickly tried to blame encryption. But, as we noted, most of the attackers were already known to the intelligence community and law enforcement -- and there's still little evidence that they used any encryption.

It's looking like the Brussels attacks are showing the same pattern. First, there were reports that Belgian law enforcement was well aware of the attackers and their connections.

In Brussels, one of two brothers who took part in Tuesday’s attacks on Zaventem airport and a subway train, which killed 31 people and injured hundreds more, had already been suspected of helping the Paris attackers, the federal prosecutors’ office said.

And another report noted that one of the brothers had been deported from Turkey a few months ago, and that Turkish officials had warned Belgium about his ties to terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, a more recent report says that US intelligence agencies were even more aware of the attackers:

U.S. security agencies had the names of the two suicide bombers who attacked Brussels airport in their databases as potential terror threats.

NBC News quoted U.S. officials who said that Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui were known to U.S. counterterrorism authorities before Tuesday morning, when the pair and a third man detonated theor bombs at the airport and a train station.

So, once again, we see a situation where these guys were known (or should have been known) to law enforcement and intelligence, but they were still able to carry out their attack. And, yet, rather than blaming intelligence failures, politicians are blaming encryption again.

And, of course, the intelligence community will do what it always does: rather than admit it failed here, it will blame encryption or blame limits on surveillance and demand more powers. As we've noted in the past, no matter what the result, the intelligence community will always insist that more surveillance is the answer. If the surveillance works, to them it's evidence that they need more of it to do an even better job. If the surveillance fails (as in this case), then it's evidence that they need more surveillance to avoid such misses in the future. Anything to deflect from the fact that they had a ton of intelligence here, and still failed at stopping the attack.

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Filed Under: blame, brussels, encryption, going dark, intelligence community, law enforcement

Before We Even Know The Details, Politicians Rush To Blame Encryption For Brussels Attacks

from the it's-almost-like-you-have-an-agenda... dept

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You may remember that, right after the Paris attacks late last year, politicians rushed in to demonize encryption as the culprit, and to demand backdooring encryption before the blood was even dry. Of course, it later turned out that there was no evidence that they used encryption at all, but rather it appears that they communicated by unencrypted means. Just yesterday, we noted that the press was still insisting encryption was used, and using the lack of any evidence as evidence for the fact they must have used encryption (hint: that's not how encryption works...).

So, it should hardly be a surprise that following this morning's tragic attacks in Brussels that have left dozens dead and many more injured, that encryption haters, based on absolutely nothing, have rushed in to attack encryption again. The first up was Rep. Adam Schiff, who quickly insisted that he had no actual facts on the matter, but we should be concerned about encryption:

“We do not know yet what role, if any, encrypted communications played in these attacks,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

“But we can be sure that terrorists will continue to use what they perceive to be the most secure means to plot their attacks,” he added.

Schiff, of course, is the same guy who just a few months ago was loudly promoting CISA, saying we needed it to protect our privacy from hackers. Of course CISA doesn't do that. You know what does? Encryption. The very encryption Schiff now wants to blame.

Not one to be left out, Senator Dianne Feinstein jumped in with a thinly veiled statement in support of her supposedly soon to be released bill, mandating backdoors in encryption:

“We must use all the tools at our disposal to fight back,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and vice chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday. “The way to prevent attacks like this is to develop good intelligence and always be vigilant.”

"All the tools" likely means including her plans to break encryption.

And, of course, the many in the press are no help at all. There have been reports that a talking head on NPR blamed encryption this morning, while a NY Times reporter, Rukmini Callimachi -- who was the lead reporter on that ridiculous article yesterday insisting that the lack of encryption was evidence of encryption -- is tweeting up a storm claiming that ISIS is now encouraging the use of encryption, even though the questionably-sourced document she links to (which is written in English?!?) isn't actually recommending encryption, but things like Tor and VPNs, which are designed to merely mask your IP address.

26. ISIS is now advising its "brothers" in Belgium to only go online with encryption. (Thanks @MichaelSSmithII) pic.twitter.com/eWb4SD3INi

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) March 22, 2016

It's like she sees encryption in absolutely anything. Meanwhile, as a number of other commenters have pointed out, if "ISIS brothers" actually follow the advice in that document, it will only likely help them get caught, as a sudden and abrupt change in behavior is a pretty good way for law enforcement to make you a suspect. And, really, encouraging people to jump onto tools like Tor that they don't understand, but which they think will keep them safe, almost certainly will lead to ridiculously bad implementations that make it easier to spot what they're doing.

Either way, in the wake of yet another attack we're left with people who don't understand and dislike encryption, rushing to demonize it for no good reason at all.

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Filed Under: adam schiff, attacks, blame, brussels, dianne feinstein, encryption, isis, rukmini callimachi