Appeals Court Says Couple's Lawsuit Over Bogus Vehicle Forfeiture Can Continue

from the you-brought-this-on-yourself,-so-called-'forfeiture-attorney' dept

Another attempted government theft has been thwarted by the courts. The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has ruled in favor of a couple whose vehicle was carjacked by Arizona law enforcement officers while their son used it for an extended road trip.

Here's AZ Central's summary of the events leading to the lawsuit the Ninth has revived:

Terry and Ria Platt had loaned their 2012 Volkswagen Jetta to their son in the spring of 2016 for him to use on a vacation. Their son was driving from the East Coast back to Washington on Interstate 40 when an Arizona Department of Public Safety trooper stopped him in Navajo County for having tinted windows.

Members of the Navajo County Drug Task Force had a K-9 unit search his car and found a small amount of marijuana for personal use and over $31,000 in cash, according to court documents. Law enforcement seized the vehicle and money on suspicion they were being used or planned to be used for illegal purposes. But none of them were ever charged with a crime.

This is pretty much the standard origin story for forfeitures: cops stop car, find some reason to search it, and walk off with whatever cash they can find. In this case, they decided to take the car, too.

But there are few additional wrinkles here, which show just how much the incentives of forfeiture have perverted the process. The Appeals Court decision [PDF] notes the car's owners tried to challenge the forfeiture using the processes made available by the state, but that was brushed aside by the entity directly profiting from the seizure.

After receiving [a forfeiture] notice, persons with an interest in property subject to forfeiture proceedings face a choice between two avenues for protecting their property rights. They may “file either a claim with the court . . . or a petition for remission or mitigation of forfeiture with the attorney for the state” within thirty days of the notice, “but may not file both.” If a property owner does not pursue either option, then the state’s attorney may proceed in court with “uncontested forfeiture.” In uncontested forfeiture proceedings, the state need only establish probable cause to believe that the property is subject to forfeiture; it need not prove the factual basis for forfeiture by clear and convincing evidence, as required for contested forfeiture proceedings.

The Platts chose the first option: filing a petition for remission or mitigation. This is supposed to be followed by the government conducting an investigation of the forfeiture (to obtain more proof that the seized property is tied to illegal activity) and issuing a written declaration, which then starts the clock (30 days) on the filing of a counterclaim by the property's owners.

That didn't happen here. The county's "asset forfeiture attorney," Jason Moore, read the Platt's petition and basically said it never existed.

Here, the Platts allege, no written declaration of forfeiture issued. Instead, Moore unilaterally determined that the petition was defective. Without notifying the Platts of any defect or affording an opportunity to correct it, he proceeded as though the forfeiture were uncontested, representing to the Superior Court in his application for forfeiture that “no timely claim or Petition for Remission has been filed.”

It wasn't until the Platts responded to this obvious bullshit with a claim of property in an Arizona court that the forfeiture attorney finally said what was wrong with the petition he had ignored -- a statement prompted by this new threat to his "uncontested" forfeiture.

[The] Platts proposed to construe Moore’s purported application for forfeiture as the written declaration of forfeiture that should have been issued in response to their petition, which would have afforded them thirty days within which to file a claim against the property. Moore promptly moved to strike that claim, asserting for the first time that the Platts’ petition for remission or mitigation was defective because, although it had been signed, it did not state that it had been “signed under penalty of perjury.”

Sick of all of this (and now represented by the Institute of Justice [working pro bono]), the Platts sued the state, county, and the attorney. They sought a declaration the state's uncontested forfeiture program violates due process rights. They also alleged Jason Moore himself had violated their rights with his attempted forfeiture.

Most of those claims did not survive the district court's review of the case. But the "forfeiture attorney" is still potentially on the hook for his actions, which included returning the vehicle to the Platts five months after it was impounded and, more damningly, two weeks after he was sued. So is the state, which will have to continue to defend its forfeiture program, which obviously can be very easily abused.

The court says the program in Arizona has some serious problems. Specifically, it allows this exact chain of events to occur.

This obvious vulnerability in Arizona’s forfeiture regime to a procedural due process challenge cannot be mitigated by interpretative sleight-of-hand. Even if we were to interpret Arizona’s command that those who choose to file a petition “may not file” a claim until a declaration of forfeiture has issued as limited to those who file valid petitions, see A.R.S. § 13-4309(2), it would remain the case that a state’s attorney could unilaterally deem a petition invalid without alerting the petitioner.

The claim against the law is revived. So is the "biased adjudicator" claim against the government's attorney, since he was directly involved in attempting to short-circuit an already deficient process to gain ownership of the seized vehicle -- something his office would directly benefit from.

The district court’s assessment that Moore’s conduct did not delay the return of the Platts’ car likewise does not affect our standing analysis. The district court concluded that the Platts “filed their claim more than a month before the September 20, 2016 deadline that would have applied for Moore to mail a declaration of forfeiture, and before the deadline that would have applied for them to file a claim in response to a declaration of forfeiture.”

First, the district court’s analysis ignores the potential that an unbiased adjudicator would have assessed the merits of the Platts’ petition and issued a declaration of remission, not a declaration of forfeiture, by September 20 (as Moore’s ultimate decision to return the car and abandon the forfeiture suggests is likely). Second, this analysis assumes that the Platts secured procedural due process upon the filing of their claim, not upon the return of their car. The filing of the claim could only provide due process if Moore’s motion to strike would have failed. As we have explained, that is at best unlikely, and cannot preclude the Platts’ standing to challenge the statute.

We accordingly reverse the dismissal of the Platts’ (state law) biased adjudicator claims.

The lawsuit moves forward. Hopefully, it will result in a decision that forces the state to rewrite its forfeiture rules to, at the very least, respect due process rights. And there's always a chance a rewrite might address the perverse incentives that encourage the behavior seen here.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, arizona, asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, ria platt, terry platt

Hollywood Is Betting On Filtering Mandates, But Working Copyright Algorithms Simply Don't Exist

from the hello-1st-amendment dept

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen may not have mentioned copyright in her Congressional testimony or television interviews, but her focus on artificial intelligence (“AI”) and content moderation have a lot of implications for online copyright issues. 

For the last decade, Hollywood, the music industry and others have been pushing for more technical solutions for online copyright infringement. One of the biggest asks is for Internet companies to “nerd harder” and figure out algorithms that can identify and remove infringing content. They claim content filters are the solution, and they want the law to force that onto companies.

And they have been successful in parts of the world so far. For example, the recent European Union Copyright Directive placed a filtering mandate on internet platforms. Hollywood and the record labels are pushing the U.S. to follow suit and make platforms liable for copyright infringement by users. They want NIST to develop standards for filtering software, and they are using the power of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office to push for legislation and/or voluntary agreements to create more filters. 

There is one huge problem with all of this: the technology does not exist to do this accurately. What the Facebook whistleblower made clear is that even the most sophisticated AI-based algorithms cannot accurately moderate content. They make tons of mistakes. Haugen even suggested that a huge part of the challenge is the belief that “nerding harder” will work. She blamed Facebook’s mantra to solve problems through technology as the main reason they are struggling with content moderation. 

Copyright presents a unique context challenge to algorithms. It’s not easy to automatically determine what is copyright infringement and what is not. Even under today’s existing systems, about a third of takedown requests are potentially problematic, requiring further analysis. Most of these erroneous takedowns are done by algorithms. This analysis can be extremely complicated even for the American judicial system – so much so that the Supreme Court recently had to clarify how to apply the four-part fair use test. In court, each fair use case gets a very individual, fact-based analysis. Current AI-based algorithms are not close to being able to do the needed analysis to determine copyright infringement in fair use cases. 

So why is there a big push from Hollywood, the movie industry and others on this? They are smart enough to know that algorithmic solutions are not close and may never be able to handle filtering for infringement accurately. 

The reason is they do not want filtering technologies to be accurate. They want filtering technologies to over-correct and take anything that might be infringing off the internet. Congress cannot directly legislate such an overcorrection, because it is a clear violation of the First Amendment. But they might be able to introduce legislation that creates a de facto mandatory filtering requirement. Mandatory filtering legislation imposed via changing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512’s platform liability regime would lead companies to “voluntarily” implement over-correcting filtering solutions — or otherwise face a constant barrage of losing lawsuits and legal bills for any and all alleged infringement by users. And this could create an end run around the first amendment if a court decided that the company was “voluntarily” implementing. 

At this point it is important to recognize the types of activity that we are talking about here: transformative works of creativity, pop-art, criticism and parody. This includes teens sharing lip sync TikToks and videos of your little kids dancing to a song. But fair use doesn’t apply to just the creative arts. It also includes collaborative efforts on an internet platform to develop cybersecurity solutions that require reverse engineering and allows teachers to share materials with students on online education platforms. Documentarians depend heavily on fair use, and efforts to distribute documentaries online would face stiff challenges. 

All of these important capabilities would be severely at risk if we forced filtering requirements onto internet platforms via threat of liability. If we let Hollywood and music industry elites and the Members of Congress who do their bidding get their way, the rest of America will lose out.

Josh Lamel is the Executive Director of the Re:Create Coalition. This article was originally posted to the Re:Create Coalition blog.

Filed Under: ai, copyright, dmca, dmca 512, filters, hollywood, mandates

Introducing The Techdirt Insider Discord

from the join-us dept

Join the Insider Discord with a Watercooler or Behind The Curtain membership!

Techdirt has been around for nearly 25 years at this point, and we have an unfortunate habit of being just slightly too far ahead of the technology curve. The site was launched before the word blog even existed, and certainly before there were readily available and easy to use tools for creating a blog (more on that soon!), so we cobbled together our own solution. We've done that with unfortunate frequency. In the early 2000s, we even built our own internal RSS reader in order to find stories (I always thought it was better than Google Reader). And, a while back, we launched the Techdirt "Insider Chat" long before Discord or Slack or other such tools were popular.

The Techdirt Insider Chat was a widget on our site that, if you supported us at certain levels in our own Insider Shop (or on Patreon), you got access to a chat that only those supporters could use -- but which was still displayed on the sidebar for anyone to see. Because there weren't widespread tools to make this possible, we built our own. But it was a bit clunky and limited, and honestly wasn't receiving that much use beyond a handful of dedicated users.

Over the last few months, we've moved the Insider Chat over to Discord, which has become the standard these days for community chats. However, we did want to still include the feature of displaying the chat publicly -- but only allowing actual supporters to participate. So while we are now using Discord as the basis of the chat (which is much easier for many people to use, has many more features, and allows for things like accessing the chat on mobile devices), we built our own embeddable widget that reflects the chat in the sidebar (which you can see if you look over to the right).

If you're interested in (1) supporting Techdirt and (2) joining in on the conversations now happening in the chat and (3) connecting with others in the Techdirt community, please consider supporting us at a level that includes the Insider Chat.

As you'll recall, earlier this year we removed all the ads (and Google tracking code) from Techdirt. We are relying more and more on our community supporting us going forward, and we're working hard to provide those supporters with more useful and fun features, including this new Discord community.

Filed Under: chat, insider chat, techdirt
Companies: discord, techdirt

Daily Deal: The Dynamic 2021 DevOps Training Bundle

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

Most software companies today employ extensive DevOps staff and engineers are in constant demand. In the Dynamic 2021 DevOps Training Bundle, Certs-School provides you with 5 courses to introduce you to the DevOps field, improve your skills, and then later excel as an actual practitioner. You will be introduced to DevOps tools and methodologies, GIT, CompTIA Cloud, Docker, and Ansible. Each course is self-paced so you can learn in your own time. It's on sale for $60.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Criminalizing Teens' Google Searches Is Just How The UK's Anti-Cybercrime Programs Roll

from the kids-and-their-dang-vidya-games dept

Governments sure seem to hate online advertisers and the platforms that profit from targeted advertising and tailored content algorithms. But they don't -- at least in this case -- have anything against engaging in exactly this sort of behavior if it helps them achieve their ends.

In 2015, UK's National Crime Agency started a program called Cyber Choices, which was meant to steer young people away from being malicious hackers. Starting with the assumption that any form of hacking would ultimately result in malicious hacking, the NCA hoped to engage in interventions that would redirect this apparently unguided energy into something more productive and less harmful.

The NCA's insistent belief that children are our (grimdark) future if left unattended, it started making stupid assertions, like claiming modding videogames was the gateway drug for black hat hackers. To steer curious youngsters away from malicious hacking, the NCA got into the targeted advertising business.

Through the Cyber Choices program, the NCA identifies “at-risk” young people, based on online activity which indicates a potential interest in cybercrime forums or the purchase of cybercrime tools. Using a set of risk characteristics, the NCA then targets these young people before they engage in serious illegal activity.

Once identified, NCA officers visit these young people to discuss their behavior with them and with their parents.

Data gleaned from this program is also utilized in a complementary “influencer operations” project, in which young people, some as young as 14, who have googled cybercrime services receive targeted Google advertisements informing them that these services are illegal and that they face NCA action if they purchase them.

This raises multiple concerns, not the least of which is "pre-criming" minors because they've researched things they're curious about. On top of that is the advertising targeting minors, something normally considered to be out-of-bounds behavior if performed by a private company. Apparently, the UK government feels it's ok if it does it.

And a recently released report [PDF] on "targeted advertising by the UK state" by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR) says this combination of targeted advertising and pre-crime snooping on minors is at least achieving its aims.

These adverts, targeted at UK adolescents between the age of 14 and 20 with an interest in gaming, are calibrated to appear when users search for particular cybercrime services on Google, informing them that these services are illegal and that they face NCA action if they purchase them. Beginning as simple text-based adverts, the NCA developed them across a six month campaign in consultation with behavioural psychologists and using the data they were collecting from their operational work.

[...]

There is evidence that the adverts themselves have been extremely effective in dissuading particular kinds of online crime, with a six-month NCA campaign appearing to be linked to a total cessation in growth in the purchase of Denial of Service attacks in the UK, at a time during which these attacks were rising sharply across in comparable nations (Collier et al., 2021).

It doesn't go so far as to say the ends justify the means, but it does make the assumption the ends are being accomplished with the assistance of the means, no matter how questionable those means are. This is the sort of thing that tends to get tech companies hauled in front of government inquiries. Here's SCCJR's of the UK government's ad campaign.

It is striking how closely this process of gathering information and tailoring intervention resonates with (refracted through the logics of law enforcement practices) the practices of data gathering and iterative messaging development of the private sector consultancies who provide marketing services commercially. The iterative cycle of identifying and surveilling ‘at-risk’ children, targeting for in-person intervention, collecting information directly, moving on to focus groups, and then feeding these data back into an overall framework which guides the targeting and design of operations is reflective of similar practices of identifying customer groups, quantifying likelihood of purchase, conducting primary consumer research, and then feeding this information back into an overall campaign.

As it drills down into the details of this program, it also notes how the program drills down on minors suspected of Googling the wrong stuff, using Orwellian phrases like "tightening the network of surveillance and messaging developing around young people."

I assume SCCJR won't be asked to write any press releases for the NCA, which uses far cheerier phrasing as it pitches offshoots of this program to educators of kindergarten and elementary school students.

It’s well known that many children under the age of 12 are becoming tech savvy and have access to various technologies. A great source of information to teach them legal ways to use tech, is the Barefoot Programme. It enables primary school teachers (KS1 & 2) [explanation of these terms here] to deliver the computer curriculum effectively and in an entertaining way. Barefoot offer free face-to-face workshops, helpful online guides and engaging lessons.

And while we're talking about things supposedly-free governments shouldn't be thinking out loud, the phrasing moves from Orwellian to slightly friendlier fascism when discussing how the ads "nudge" minors towards more productive uses of their tech skills.

[Cyber Choices, et al] present not only a diversion from a negative behaviour or rationale but also a positive assertion drawing on the aesthetics of the target culture but often repurposing them in the context of a productive capitalist subject, concerned with consumption, accumulation of wealth, community ties, mainstream success, and job opportunities in the legitimate economy.

Work sets you free, say the targeted ads. And carried with it is an unsubtle reminder that the only acceptable path through life involves making lots of money to buy lots of stuff. Which I guess adds "They Live" into the mix. Alarming stuff, especially since we're still talking about the targeting of minors.

Like law enforcement everywhere in the world, UK agencies are increasingly reliant on data and analytics to make decisions about enforcement efforts. Some of those enforcement efforts start before any crime has been committed. And the efforts are skewing younger and younger. Here's The Crime Report noting that UK police are getting kids started on state surveillance as soon as possible.

A PowerPoint presentation delivered by West Midlands Police at the 2017 Excellence in Policing Conference indicates that the National Data Analytics Solution uses data from young people “up to 11” and “11 to 16” age groups, noting that “The younger you are when you commit a co-offending offence the more likely for you to go ahead to commit other crimes.”

A briefing note prepared by West Midlands Police Ethics Committee argues for the “social benefit of being able to identify the circumstances and reasons (particularly for young people) that lead individuals to commit their first violent offence …

Fortunately, the SCCJR report doesn't conclude without noting the considerable downsides of programs like NCA's Cyber Choice.

A central critique of these measures, and one which is no stranger to ‘nudge’ and behavioural science (Ewert, 2020) is their contested relationship with democracy; that as practiced they are essentially top-down, providing public bodies with a unidirectional capacity to shape the online environment, behaviours, and cultures of their citizens (and those groups who fall under their control but are denied citizenship). The notionally holistic approach to policy which this constitutes does indeed draw on a very wide set of levers – culture, economics, individual psychology, structural considerations such as poverty or racism – but instantiates them in a single site, the risky individual and their decisions. This is far from a liberatory (or even liberal) conception of state power, resting on the contention that individual behaviours and community cultures are the root of policy problems. Although some feedback from citizens does form a part of these processes, it often grants them little in the way of agency to shape policy themselves, contributing instead data to market researchers about their thoughts, opinions, and cultural sensibilities which can be drawn on by policymakers in making decisions, often in ways to which target communities might reasonably object.

It also notes the kids are savvier than the cops think. And that's going to make targeted ad programs counterproductive.

The phenomenon of ‘blowback’, the violently negative reactions which occur when groups realise that they are being subject to these measures, reflect the fact that people’s relationship with media is multifaceted – they know that the targeted influence infrastructure exists, they can often tell when it is being used and speculate as to how they are being targeted, and can react not only to messages to which they are exposed, but to the broader political dimensions of the messaging practices themselves. There is also the potential for these influence approaches to in fact serve to expose vulnerable groups to the very messages and narratives which policymakers are trying to counter, spreading them far wider.

If the UK government really wants to cultivate a generation of activists that forcibly subject governments to greater transparency and accountability by liberating their internal documents, this is a great way to do it. If it would prefer to control the narrative, it's going to have to dial back on the targeted ads and targeted surveillance. The SCCJR suggests one better way to accomplish the government's aims is to take more community-based approach, which eliminates individual targeting in favor of something more participatory and broad that encourages the government and the people it serves to seek solutions for these problems.

But those solutions require treating the public as an equitable partner, something most governments are unwilling or unable to do. And with tons of tech companies offering analytics, data harvesting, and other aftermarket add-ons for the surveillance state, governments are more likely to pretend what they're doing is smart, rather than just evil.

Filed Under: cybercrime, nca, pre-crime, sccjr, search advertising, targeted advertising, teens, uk, uk nca
Companies: google

Canon Sued For Disabling Printer Scanners When Devices Run Out Of Ink

from the sorry-I-can't-do-that,-Dave dept

For more than a decade now, computer printer manufacturers have been engaged in an endless quest called: "let's be as annoying as humanly possible." That quest, driven by a desire to monopolize and boost the sale of their own printer cartridges, has resulted in all manner of obnoxious DRM and other restrictions designed to make using cheaper, third-party printing cartridges a monumental headache. Often, software or firmware updates have been designed to intentionally grind printing to a halt if you try to use these alternative options.

Beyond that, there are other things printer manufacturers do that make even less sense if a happy customer is the end goal. Take for example Canon's history of disabling the scanning and faxing functionality on some printer models if the printer itself runs out of ink. It's a policy designed to speed up the rate at which users buy expensive cartridges (god forbid you go a few months just scanning things without adequate levels of magenta), but it's exemplary of the outright hostility that plagues the sector.

And now Canon is facing a $5 million lawsuit (pdf) for its behavior. The lawsuit, filed in the District Court for the Eastern District of New York (first spotted by Bleeping Computer) claims Canon fails to adequately disclose the restrictions to consumers:

"Canon does not represent or warn consumers that ink is a necessary component in order to scan or fax documents. As a result, consumers are forced to incur unexpected and unnecessary burden and expense in the form of ink purchases or in the alternative be unable to scan or fax documents using the so-called all-in-one device. Canon knew, or should have known, that its representations and advertisements regarding the All-in-One Printers were false and misleading, and that they failed to disclose material information."

There's no technical reason for such restrictions as they pertain to scanning and faxing. But like most restrictions of this type, when consumers complain, they're (falsely) informed it's a product safety issue of some nebulous kind. See, for example, this Canon customer service response to one user who complained he could no longer scan when he ran out of ink (notice how he doesn't answer the actual question and keeps the focus on printing):

"These precautions are in place to prevent damage to the printer from occurring if printing with no ink is attempted. The printer uses the ink to cool the printhead during the printing process. If no ink is present, the printhead could be damaged or the unit would require service."

Again, being a misleading jackass to goose printer cartridge sales is not a cogent business strategy. And the fact this kind of stuff just keeps happening decade after decade showcases not only the ineffectiveness of class actions as a meaningful behavior shifting tool (of course binding arbitration has become arguably worse), but the overall fecklessness of U.S. regulators who generally lack the resources to properly police dodgy behavior at the scale it happens in the U.S.

Filed Under: business models, ink, printer, scanner, scanning
Companies: canon

Copyright Law Discriminating Against The Blind Finally Struck Down By Court In South Africa

from the about-time dept

Most people would agree that those who are blind or visually impaired deserve all the help they can get. For example, the conversion of printed materials to accessible formats like Braille, large print, or Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) formats, ought to be easy. Who could possibly object? For years, many publishers did; and the reason – of course – is copyright. For example, publishers refused to allow Braille and other accessible editions to be shared between different countries:

while the ONCE library in Spain has more than 100,000 titles in accessible formats and Argentina has over 50,000, these titles cannot be shared with the 19 Spanish-speaking countries across Latin America. Similarly, some years ago, charities working in five English-speaking countries, including the Royal National Institute for the Blind in the UK and Vision Australia, were obliged to produce five identical Braille master files for the same Harry Potter book, costing them valuable time and money.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) described the situation back in 2012:

Copyright protections create barriers for people with disabilities, yet big publishers continue to block efforts to create exceptions to remedy the problem even as hundreds of millions of people would stand to benefit worldwide. In the US alone, those with print disabilities represent 30 million people. According to an estimate by the World Health Organization, there are about 285 million visually impaired people in the world, and 90% of those are in the developing world.

Later that same year (2012), negotiations finally began on a treaty laying down copyright exceptions and limitations that would allow those with visual impairments to convert works, and share them internationally. The World Blind Union had some modest aims for the new treaty:

Make it legal for print disabled individuals and specialist organizations to make accessible copies of published works in all countries which sign the treaty;

Make it legal for accessible books to be sent internationally without permission from publishers;

Prevent contracts with publishers from undermining copyright exceptions for print disabled people (currently they sometimes do).

Pretty reasonable, most people would say. But the EFF reported at the time that negotiators were “unable to reach a consensus on many of its most contentious issues, such as allowing exports of adapted works across borders and circumventing technological protection measures to enable accessibility”. In addition, people with hearing disabilities were “written out of the draft“, and US negotiators blocked exceptions and limitations for audiovisual works at the behest of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

It took another four years before what came to be known as the Marrakesh Treaty was agreed on and entered into force. Since then, countries around the world have been ratifying the treaty, with greater or lesser degrees of haste. One nation that has still not yet ratified the Marrakesh Treaty is South Africa. The reason given was that the country’s main Copyright Act, from 1978, prevented the government from doing so. Happily, that obstacle has finally been removed, reported here by the Oxford Human Rights Hub:

After hearing arguments from the amici on important issues of the rights of all people to freely impart and receive information and the interpretation of South Africa’s existing obligations under international human rights law and copyright law, the Pretoria High Court held that the Copyright Act is unconstitutional to the extent that it unfairly discriminates against people living with visual and print disabilities as it effectively prevents them from accessing materials under copyright.

It’s simply scandalous that in 2021 the visually impaired still need to fight in this way for their basic rights to “freely impart and receive information”. Once again, it is outdated copyright law that is to blame – together with the selfishness of publishers who view their rights to exclude people from knowledge as more important than those of the blind to access it.

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

Story originally posted to the excellent new Walled Culture website.

Filed Under: accessibility, blind, braille, copyright, large print, marrakesh treaty, south africa, wipo

LAPD Sees Your Reform Efforts, Raises You $20 Million In Bullets, Snacks, And Surveillance

from the reading-cards-like-they're-reading-a-room dept

The Los Angeles Police Department is reform-resistant. This isn't the same as reform-proof, but more separates "resistant" from "proof" in this case than the misleading labels promising varying degrees of water resistance placed on watches and cellphones.

The LAPD has endured decades of bad press with barely an uptick in performance or community orientation. The LAPD is best known for beating minorities until riots happen. With a wave of police reform efforts sweeping the nation -- many of them looking to spend less on police violence and more on things that actually help the community -- the LAPD has issued a tone-deaf demand for more money to spend on things residents are complaining about.

The LAPD has filed a massive proposal requesting more than $18 million in budget increases in order to pay for surveillance programs, bullets, and … snacks.

The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition released a letter on Monday blasting the 183-page report. The proposal requests nearly $18.44 million to support many of the things that the community has spent recent years protesting. The letter, which was co-signed by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles, describes the LAPD’s list of demands as a “disgusting insult to hundreds of thousands of people who took the streets last summer."

What else in the LAPD's "more please" proposal? $2 million to spend on social media monitoring, something it's asking for right after it was reported LAPD officers are demanding social media information from people they've accosted or otherwise harassed into a "consensual" conversation. That's in addition to $450,000 in licenses for social media monitoring software to better make use of this new data officers are collecting while out in the proverbial field.

The letter [PDF] from the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition doesn't pull any punches. It compiles a long list of the stupid, counterproductive demands the department is making -- ones not connected in any way to improving relations with the communities they serve.

In true Newspeak, here's the fucking news: the LAPD wants more money to be thrown at its desire to throw bullets at people.

Over $12 million for new trainings in addition to $461,850 in bullets at $17 per round to shoot away at trainings and $492,850 in “overtime funds to address field jail training” for mass arrests

This won't make the LAPD more efficient killers. And it won't make them better guardians of people's rights, starting with the right to protest. What it will do is encourage pulling the trigger until clips run dry and mass processing of people arrested for (the most part) expressing their displeasure with their current police force.

And who wouldn't applaud the blending of police officers and the military like so much corn and gasoline?

$348,130 for a new staff officer whose full-time role will be to permanently coordinate with “military” forces and facilitate their local deployment

And perhaps the most "police" thing of all, the guys are getting kind of hungry:

$100,000 for snacks that “personnel can grab quickly and take with them,” apparently enabled through new “emergency use credit cards”

Love to see "snacks" and "emergency" linked together in a sentence asking for $100,000. It sounds like an insulin request but it's actually about propping up the Frito-Lay Economy.

Once you get past all the "screw your rights and please catch bullets" parts of the LAPD's proposal, you get to the part where the LAPD claims to be saving money by spending money… or something.

Chief Moore’s cover memo raises many questions about the cost of these proposals. As he notes, LAPD previously claimed these same reforms required over $66 million. He writes that this larger figure “counted all costs – even if the resources were currently available” (p. 5) which presumably means LAPD double-counted the cost of resources that it already possessed. But one sentence later, Chief Moore claims the $18.44 million estimate amounts to a $48 million “reduction in cost projection.” It is unclear whether the $18.44 million is in fact a “reduction” or simply accurate accounting. But LAPD’s comfort switching numbers so large without real explanation speaks to how little financial scrutiny they expect from you. Additionally, it is unclear how much of the $18.44 million are yearly versus one-time costs.

Good luck sussing that out, whether you're an activist group or city oversight. The LAPD is used to asking questions, not answering them. A sea change in public receptiveness to cops being assholes doesn't appear to have had any effect on LAPD (and I use this term super-loosely) leadership. Cop business will proceed as usual, recent public antipathy notwithstanding.

So, what else is new? Nothing. But it needs more money. The LAPD says its cool with alleged transparency efforts like body cams, but only if it gets to keep harvesting data from tons of automatic plate readers and its take on stop-and-frisk, which now apparently involves requests for social media info.

And it appears the city did what it could to ensure the LAPD could have its millions without too much interference from the hoi polloi.

The proposals were made public in an 183-page document sent late in the afternoon on Friday, September 24, and the proposals will be voted on the morning of Tuesday, September 28. This is just over one business day to digest and respond to the 183-page proposals, and even that time period is only for people who happen to have received the proposal immediately because they subscribe to this board’s agenda by email. The public’s only opportunity to comment would be if they received that online agenda and then responded either by emails sent before 5 p.m. on Monday, September 27, or by becoming one of the dozen or so individuals who happen to secure a brief public comment slot during this board’s 45-minute public comment period, before the agenda item is even introduced.

Only in the government can you give the finger to your employers (taxpayers) and end up better off during FYWhatever. The LAPD likely knows what the public is asking of it. But it also knows that not caring what they think will at least give it the same budget it had in 2020 and do little to curb its surveillance excesses. At some point, the LAPD's city oversight will have to actually do its job. Until then, it's just signing off on the same law enforcement bullshit that has kept the city in constant turmoil since the Watts riots nearly five decades ago.

Filed Under: budget, lapd, police reform, reform, surveillance

Study Shows How Android Phones Still Track Users, Even When 'Opted Out'

from the words-mean-nothing dept

We've frequently noted that what's often presented as "improved privacy" is usually privacy theater. For example researchers just got done showing how Apple's heavily hyped "do not track" button doesn't actually do what it claims to do, and numerous apps can still collect an parade of different data points on users who believe they've opted out of such collection. And Apple's considered among the better companies when it comes to privacy promises.

Android is notably worse. One of my favorite privacy and adtech reporters is Shoshana Wodinsky, because she'll genuinely focus on the actual reality, not the promises. This week she wrote about how researchers at Trinity College in Dublin took a closer look at Android privacy, only to find that the term "opting out" often means absolutely nothing:

"According to the researchers, “with little configuration” right out of the box and when left sitting idle, these devices would incessantly ping back device data to the OS’s developers and a slew of selected third parties. And what’s worse is that there’s often no way to opt out of this data-pinging, even if users want to."

So called "system" apps in many Android variants by the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi, and Huawei often come pre-installed, and can't be removed without rooting your device (which the majority of users can't or won't do). These apps are pretty constantly hoovering up handset data and sending it back not only to the parent company, but to third party data brokers. So even when you think you're "opting out" of data collection and sales, you're not really:

"On their own, none of these data points can identify your phone as uniquely yours, but taken together, they form a unique “fingerprint” that can be used to track your device, even if you try to opt out. The researchers point out that while Android’s advertising ID is technically resettable, the fact that apps are usually getting it bundled with more permanent identifiers means that these apps—and whatever third parties they’re working with—will know who you are anyway. The researchers found this was the case with some of the other resettable IDs offered by Samsung, Xiaomi, Realme, and Huawei."

Some of Google's developer rules prohibit the worst sorts of behavior, but they often only restrict how the data can be sold, not what can be collected. And it's also hard to think they're being effectively policed at any scale. Meanwhile, Google tried to brush aside the researchers' concerns over at Bleeping Computer by claiming this is just how phones work now:

"While we appreciate the work of the researchers, we disagree that this behavior is unexpected – this is how modern smartphones work. As explained in our Google Play Services Help Center article, this data is essential for core device services such as push notifications and software updates across a diverse ecosystem of devices and software builds."

Except it's not how cell phones have to work. Case in point: phones using /e/OS, a privacy-focused open-source operating system that promises users a "de-Googled" device, don't mindlessly and endlessly chirp back to the monitor mothership. You can make devices that actually don't phone home constantly, and genuinely opt users out of all tracking when asked. Companies just don't want to do it. Most usually because apathy and tap dancing is more profitable.

Again, much of this occurs because the U.S. still lacks a real privacy law for the internet era. While people often talk about how passing a good privacy law is just too damn hard to get right, a good first step is requiring absolute transparency into what's being collected and sold, and providing working opt out tools. And also we could probably actually fund and staff U.S. privacy regulators while we're at it, so there's somebody competent actually watching the henhouse. Meanwhile, the full study can be found here (pdf) for those interested.

Filed Under: android, do not track, opt-out, privacy
Companies: google