Yes, It Really Was Nintendo That Slammed GilvaSunner YouTube Channel With Copyright Strikes

from the obviously dept

Well, for a story that was already over, this became somewhat fascinating. We have followed the Nintendo vs. GilvaSunner war for several years now. The GilvaSunner YouTube channel has long been dedicated to uploading and appreciating a variety of video game music, largely from Nintendo games. Roughly once a year for the past few years, Nintendo would lob copyright strikes at a swath of GilvaSunner "videos": 100 videos in 2019, a bit less than that in 2020, take 2021 off, then suddenly slam the channel with 1,300 strikes in 2022. With that last copyright MOAB, the GilvaSunner channel has been shuttered voluntarily, with the operator indicating that it's all too much hassle.

Well, on the internet, and in our comments on that last post, there began to be speculation as to whether or not it was actually Nintendo behind all of these copyright strikes... or an imposter. Those sleuthing around found little tidbits, such as the name used on the strike not matching up to the names displayed in the past when Nintendo has acted against YouTube videos.

It was... strange. Why? Well, because it looked like many people going out and trying to find a reason to believe that Nintendo wasn't behaving exactly as anyone who had witnessed Nintendo's behavior would expect. If this was someone impersonating Nintendo with these actions, it was utterly indistinguishable from how Nintendo would normally behave. Guys, they do this shit all the time.

And this time too, as it turns out. You can hear it straight from YouTube's mouth.

This is where I will stipulate for the zillionth time that Nintendo is within it's rights to take these actions. But we should also stipulate that the company doesn't have to go this route and the fact that it prioritizes control of its IP in the strictest fashion over letting its fans enjoy some video game music should tell you everything you need to know.

In the meantime, to the internet sleuths: I appreciate your dedication to either Nintendo or to simply digging into these kinds of details for funsies or whatever. That being said, as the old saying goes, if you hear the sound of hooves, assume it's a horse and not a zebra.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright strikes, dmca, gilvasunner, takedowns
Companies: nintendo

Even Officials In The Intelligence Community Are Recognizing The Dangers Of Over-Classification

from the apparently-we-can't-trust-the-people-that-have-granted-the-government-this-p dept

The federal government has a problem with secrecy. Well, actually it doesn't have a problem with secrecy, per se. That's often considered a feature, not a bug. But federal law says the government shouldn't have so much secrecy, what with the FOIA being in operation. And yet, the government feels compelled to keep secrets from its biggest employer: the US taxpayers.

Over-classification remains a problem. It has been a problem ever since long before a government contractor went rogue with a massive stash of NSA documents, showing that many of the government's secrets should have been shared or, at the very least, more widely discussed as the government turned 9/11 into a constitutional bypass on the information superhighway.

Since then, efforts have been made to dial back the government's proclivity for classifying documents that pose no threat to government operations and/or government security. In fact, the argument has been made (rather convincingly) that over-classification is counterproductive. It's more likely to result in the exposure of so-called secrets rather than secure the blanket-exemption-formality that keeps secrets from the general public.

Efforts have been made to counteract this overwhelming desire to keep the public locked out of discussions about government activities. These efforts have mostly failed. And that has mainly been due to vague and frequent invocations of national security concerns, which allow legislators and federal judges to shut off their brains and hammer the [REDACT] button repeatedly.

But ignoring the problem hasn't made the problem go away, no matter how many billions the federal government refuses to throw at the problem. Over-classification still stands between the public and information it should have access to. And it stands between federal agencies and efficient use of tax dollars. The federal government generates petabytes of data every month. And far too often, the agencies generating the data decide it's no one's business but their own.

It's not just legislators noting the widening gap between the government's massive stockpiles of data and the public's ability to access them. It's also those generating the most massive stashes of bits and bytes, as the Washington Post points out, using the words of an Intelligence Community official.

The U.S. government is drowning in its own secrets. Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, recently wrote to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) that “deficiencies in the current classification system undermine our national security, as well as critical democratic objectives, by impeding our ability to share information in a timely manner.” The same conclusions have been drawn by the senators and many others for a long time.

As this letter hints at, over-classification doesn't just affect the great unwashed whose power is generally considered to be far too limited to change things. It also affects agencies and the entities that oversee the agencies -- the latter of which are asked to engage in oversight while being locked out of the information they need to perform this task.

If there's any good news here, it's that the Intelligence Community recognizes it's part of the problem. But this is just one person in the IC. It's unlikely every official feels this way.

The government is working towards a solution, but its work is being performed at the speed of government -- something further hampered by the back-and-forth of periodic regime changes and their alternating ideas about how much transparency the government owes to its patrons.

The IC letter writer almost sees a silver lining in the nearly opaque cloud enveloping agencies involved in national security efforts.

So far, Ms. Haines said, current priorities and resources for fixing the classification systems “are simply not sufficient.” The National Security Council is working on a revised presidential executive order governing classified information, and we hope the White House will come up with an ambitious blueprint for modernization.

The silver lining is "so far," and the efforts being made elsewhere to change things. The rest of the non-lining is far less silver: the resources aren't sufficient and the National Security Council is grinding bureaucratic gears by working with the administration to change things. If it doesn't happen soon, changes will be at the discretion of the next administration. And the next administration may no longer feel streamlining declassification is a priority, putting projects that have been in the on-again, off-again works since Snowden's exposes on the back burner yet again.

Our government will never likely feel Americans can be trusted with information about the programs their tax dollars pay for. But perhaps a little more momentum -- this time propelled by something within the Intelligence Community -- will prompt some incremental changes that may eventually snowball into actual transparency and accountability.

Filed Under: avril haines, classification, foia, jerry moran, over classification, ron wyden, secrecy, transparency

First Circuit Tears Into Boston PD's Bullshit Gang Database While Overturning A Deportation Decision

from the now-find-some-way-to-kill-it-dead dept

A federal court has delivered a rebuke of police gang databases in, of all things, a review of a deportation hearing.

As we've been made painfully aware, gang databases are just extensions of biased policing efforts. People are placed in gang databases for numerous, incredibly stupid reasons. People are designated gang members simply for living, working, and going to school in areas where gang activity is prevalent. Infants have been added to gang databases because cops can't be bothered to perform any due diligence. There's no way for people to know they've been designated as gang-affiliated and, worse, there's often no way to challenge this designation and get yourself removed from these lists, which tend to result in additional harassment by police officers or "gang enhancements" that lengthen sentences for anyone listed in these dubious databases.

In 2015, Homeland Security Investigations officers performed a sweep in Boston, Massachusetts, rounding up suspected MS-13 gang members for deportation. This sweep snared Cristian Diaz Ortiz, who was 16, had entered the country illegally, and was now living with his uncle.

Oritz applied for asylum, citing the fear of being subjected to MS-13 gang violence if he was sent back to his home country, El Salvador. From the First Circuit Appeals Court decision [PDF]:

On October 1, 2018, Diaz Ortiz filed an application for asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT protection, basing his request on multiple grounds, including persecution because of his evangelical Christian religion. He also reported that an aunt had been murdered in 2011 by members of MS-13, and he feared that the gang would kill him as well if he returned to El Salvador. In a subsequently filed affidavit, Diaz Ortiz stated that, while he was living in El Salvador, MS-13 had threatened his life "on multiple occasions" because he was a practicing evangelical Christian. He said he repeatedly refused the gang's demands that he join MS-13, but gang members continued to follow him and issue threats. In 2015, the gang physically attacked him and warned "that they would kill [him] and [his] family if [he] did not stop saying [he] was a Christian and living and preaching against the gang way of life."

The Immigration Judge sided with the Department of Homeland Security. It largely made this decision due to the introduction of a "Gang Assessment Database" that said Ortiz was not a practicing Christian who might fear retaliation if removed from the country, but rather an MS-13 infiltrator. The "gang package" (as the court refers to it) was compiled by the Boston PD. It stated the following:

Cristian Josue DIAZ ORTIZ has been verified as an MS-13 gang member by the Boston Police Department (BPD)/Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC).

Cristian Josue DIAZ ORTIZ has documented associations with MS-13 gang members by the Boston Police Department and Boston School Police Department (BSPD). (See the attached BPD & BSPD incident/field interview reports and gang intelligence bulletins.)

Cristian Josue DIAZ ORTIZ has been documented carrying common MS-13 gang related weapons by the Boston Police Department. (See the attached BPD incident/field interview reports.) [A footnote states that the only "weapon" ever documented by the BPD was a bike chain and a padlock carried in Ortiz's backpack.]

Cristian Josue DIAZ ORTIZ has been documented frequenting areas notorious for MS13 gang activity by the Boston Police Department. These areas are 104 Bennington St. and the East Boston Airport Park/Stadium in East Boston, Massachusetts which are both known for MS-13 gang activity including recent firearms arrests and a homicide.

According to the Boston PD, Oritz racked up "points" by associating with gang members and being in areas MS-13 members frequented. If enough points are accrued, a person gets placed in the gang database. But the underlying events had nothing to do with gang activity, despite what the summary provided by the DHS said.

The BPD documented nine "interactions" with Ortiz in which it assigned "gang" points to him. Three of those instances involved Ortiz smoking marijuana (a civil infraction in Massachusetts) with students and others the BPD claimed were "known MS-13 members." Four others involved Ortiz "loitering" in a place near "known gang member" or being approached and talked to by "known gang members." And one of the interactions was the time the BPD "discovered" Oritz carrying a bike lock and chain in his backpack -- something not all that uncommon for bike owners (which Ortiz was).

This "gang package" was critiqued by a law enforcement expert who testified that Ortiz should never have been included in the gang database. The former Boston police officer pointed out Ortiz had never been suspected of criminal activity and was apparently being penalized solely for spending time with people of his same ethnicity. The gang package's claim that Ortiz had a "history" of carrying weapons was clearly undercut by the BPD's documentation of a single incident where an officer recovered something that could be used as a weapon (the bike chain), but was not inherently a tool of unlawful violence.

The immigration judge ignored all of this, finding only the DHS and BPD credible. So did the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). Fortunately for Ortiz, the First Circuit isn't as easily impressed by the Boston PD's police work. It has some very harsh words for the two lower levels that blew off their obligations to the asylum seeker.

If the IJ and BIA had performed even a cursory assessment of reliability, they would have discovered a lack of evidence to substantiate the gang package's classification of Diaz Ortiz as a member of MS-13. Most significantly, the record contains no explanation of the basis for the point system employed by the BPD. The record is silent on how the Department determined what point values should attach to what conduct, or what point threshold is reasonable to reliably establish gang membership.

As the appeals court points out, these databases are inherently unreliable because literally anything can be used to imply someone is a gang member. The lower courts were wrong to completely dismiss Ortiz's challenge of the BPD's assessment.

That silence is so consequential because, during the period relevant to this case, the list of "items or activities" that could lead to "verification for entry into the Gang Assessment Database" was shockingly wide-ranging. It included "Prior Validation by a Law Enforcement Agency" (nine points), "Documented Association (BPD Incident Report)" (four points), and the open-ended "Information Not Covered by Other Selection Criteria" (one point). The 2017 form for submitting FIO [Field Interview Operations] reports to the database states that a "Documented Association" includes virtually any interaction with someone identified as a gang member: "[w]alking, eating, recreating, communicating, or otherwise associating with confirmed gang members or associates."

The points are easy to acquire, but there's no consistency in how the Boston PD assigns them, lending more credibility to the assumption that gang databases mainly exist to confirm cops' biases.

Moreover, the point system was applied to Diaz Ortiz in a haphazard manner. He was assigned points for most, but not all, of his documented interactions with purported MS-13 members. When he was assigned points, he was not always assigned the same number per interaction. Although he was assigned two points for "contact" with alleged gang members or associates on most occasions, he was assigned five points for the "Intelligence Report" submitted by the Boston School Police that describes an encounter that appears no different from the other "contacts." Only two items in the Rule 335 list carry five points: "Information from Reliable, Confidential Informant" and "Information Developed During Investigation and/or Surveillance." We thus cannot accept the BIA's implicit conclusion that the gang package's points-driven identification of Diaz-Ortiz as a "VERIFIED and ACTIVE" member of MS-13 was reliable.

Case in point:

The entry for November 28, 2017 -- the report from a Boston school officer -- illustrates several of these issues. The gist of the entry is that two officers made "casual conversation" with a student in a "full face mask" whom they identified as a member of MS-13, and they then saw the student walk over to a group of teenage boys that included Diaz Ortiz. The report identifies no improper conduct by any of the students; it does not say that the mask bore gang colors or symbols;23 it does not indicate that the masked student spoke directly to Diaz Ortiz. Nor does the report explain the basis for identifying the student as an MS-13 member other than to say that the BRIC labeled the student as a "verified" member. Therefore, we at most can infer from this paltry set of facts that Diaz Ortiz was standing near an individual who was identified as an MS-13 member by the BRIC, with the only basis for that identification the possible use of the same problematic point system that identified Diaz Ortiz as a member. Yet, Diaz Ortiz received five points merely because that student decided to walk over and join a group that included him.

Yes, the BPD decided Ortiz was affiliated with a notorious El Salvadoran gang internationally known for violently [checks gang package] smoking the reefer and conversing in public.

The whole opinion is worth reading. It ruthlessly picks apart the BPD's gang database, reaching conclusions that apply to every gang database run by any law enforcement agency in America. This vacates the lower courts' decisions, which means Ortiz can again plead his case before the BIA. And this time he'll get a new judge because the First Circuit feels that sending it back to the original immigration judge would just allow that judge to re-engage with their pre-existing biases.

Gang databases are garbage. Even the most cursory examination of the underlying factors common to almost every gang database makes that clear. But the immigration court couldn't be bothered to do this, which almost resulted in someone being sent back to El Salvador where interactions with actual gang members might have resulted in his death, rather than just being an unwilling participant in Boston's "Whose Gang Is It Anyway?," where everything's made up and, unfortunately, the points do matter.

Filed Under: 1st circuit, boston, boston pd, boston police, deportation, gang database

Emails Show The LAPD Cut Ties With The Citizen App After Its Started A Vigilante Manhunt Targeting An Innocent Person

from the well-thank-fuck-for-that dept

It didn't take long for Citizen -- the app that once wanted to be a cop -- to wear out its law enforcement welcome. The crime reporting app has made several missteps since its inception, beginning with its original branding as "Vigilante."

Having been booted from app stores for encouraging (unsurprisingly) vigilantism, the company rebranded as "Citizen," hooking um… citizens up with live feeds of crime reports from city residents as well as transcriptions of police scanner output. It also paid citizens to show up uninvited at crime scenes to report on developing situations.

But it never forgot its vigilante origins. When wildfires swept across Southern California last year, Citizen's principals decided it was time to put the "crime" back in "crime reporting app." The problem went all the way to the top, with Citizen CEO Andrew Frame dropping into Slack conversations and live streams, imploring employees and app users to "FIND THIS FUCK."

The problem was Citizen had identified the wrong "FUCK." The person the app claimed was responsible for the wildfire wasn't actually the culprit. Law enforcement later tracked down a better suspect, one who had actually generated some evidence implicating them.

After calling an innocent person a "FUCK" and a "devil" in need of finding, Citizen was forced to walk back its vigilantism and rehabilitate its image. Unfortunately for Citizen, this act managed to burn bridges with local law enforcement just as competently as the wildfire it had used to start a vastly ill-conceived manhunt.

As Joseph Cox reports for Motherboard, this act ignited the last straw that acted as a bridge between Citizen and one of the nation's largest law enforcement agencies, the Los Angeles Police Department. Internal communications obtained by Vice show the LAPD decided to cut ties with the app after the company decided its internal Slack channel was capable of taking the law into its own hands.

On May 21, several days after the misguided manhunt, Sergeant II Hector Guzman, a member of the LAPD Public Communications Group, emailed colleagues with a link to some of the coverage around the incident.

“I know the meeting with West LA regarding Citizen was rescheduled (TBD), but here’s a recent article you might want to look at in advance of the meeting, which again highlights some of the serious concerns with Citizen, and the user actions they promote and condone,” Guzman wrote. Motherboard obtained the LAPD emails through a public records request.

Lieutenant Raul Jovel from the LAPD’s Media Relations Division replied “given what is going on with this App, we will not be working with them from our shop.”

Guzman then replied “Copy. I concur.”

Whatever lucrative possibilities Citizen might have envisioned after making early inroads towards law enforcement acceptance were apparently burnt to a crisp by this misapprehension that nearly led to a calamitous misapprehension. Rather than entertain Citizen's mastubatorial fantasies about being the thin app line between good and evil, the LAPD (wisely) chose to kick the upstart to the curb.

The stiff arm continues to this day. The LAPD cut ties and has continued to swipe left on Citizen's extremely online advances. The same Sgt. Guzman referenced in earlier emails has ensured the LAPD operates independently of Citizen. When Citizen asked the LAPD if it would be ok to eavesdrop on radio chatter to send out push notifications to users about possible criminal activity, Guzman made it clear this would probably be a bad idea.

“It’s come up before. Always turned down for several reasons,” Guzman wrote in another email.

And now Citizen goes it alone in Los Angeles. In response to Motherboard's reporting, Citizen offered up word salad about good intentions and adjusting to "real world operational experiences." I guess that's good, in a certain sense. From the statement, it appears Citizen is willing to learn from its mistakes. The problem is its mistakes have been horrific rather than simply inconvenient, and it appears to be somewhat slow on the uptake, which only aggravates problems that may be caused by over-excited execs thinking a few minutes of police scanner copy should result in citizen arrests.

Filed Under: citizen, lapd, vigilantes
Companies: citizen

Over 60 Human Rights/Public Interest Groups Urge Congress To Drop EARN IT Act

from the it's-a-bad-bill,-senators dept

We've already talked about the many problems with the EARN IT Act, how the defenders of the bill are confused about many basic concepts, how the bill will making children less safe and how the bill is significantly worse than FOSTA. I'm working on most posts about other problems with the bill, but it really appears that many in the Senate simply don't care.

Tomorrow they'll be doing a markup of the bill where it will almost certainly pass out of the Judiciary Committee, at which point it could be put up for a floor vote at any time. Why the Judiciary Committee is going straight to a markup, rather than holding hearings with actual experts, I cannot explain, but that's the process.

But for now at least over 60 human rights and public interest groups have signed onto a detailed letter from CDT outlining many of the problems in the bill, and asking the Senate to take a step back before rushing through such a dangerous bill.

Looking to the past as prelude to the future, the only time that Congress has limited Section 230 protections was in the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 (SESTA/FOSTA). That law purported to protect victims of sex trafficking by eliminating providers’ Section 230 liability shield for “facilitating” sex trafficking by users. According to a 2021 study by the US Government Accountability Office, however, the law has been rarely used to combat sex trafficking.

Instead, it has forced sex workers, whether voluntarily engaging in sex work or forced into sex trafficking against their will, offline and into harm’s way. It has also chilled their online expression generally, including the sharing of health and safety information, and speech wholly unrelated to sex work. Moreover, these burdens fell most heavily on smaller platforms that either served as allies and created spaces for the LGBTQ and sex worker communities or simply could not withstand the legal risks and compliance costs of SESTA/FOSTA. Congress risks repeating this mistake by rushing to pass this misguided legislation, which also limits Section 230 protections.

It also discusses the attacks on encryption hidden deep within the bill.

End-to-end encryption ensures the privacy and security of sensitive communications such that only the sender and receiver can view them. This security is relied upon by journalists, Congress, the military, domestic violence survivors, union organizers, and anyone who seeks to keep their communications secure from malicious hackers. Everyone who communicates with others on the internet should be able to do so privately. But by opening the door to sweeping liability under state laws, the EARN IT Act would strongly disincentivize providers from providing strong encryption. Section 5(7)(A) of EARN IT states that provision of encrypted services shall not “serve as an independent basis for liability of a provider” under the expanded set of state criminal and civil laws for which providers would face liability under EARN IT. Further, Section 5(7)(B) specifies that courts will remain able to consider information about whether and how a provider employs end-to-end encryption as evidence in cases brought under EARN IT. This language, originally proposed in last session’s House companion bill, takes the form of a protection for encryption, but in practice it will do the opposite: courts could consider the offering of end-to-end encrypted services as evidence to prove that a provider is complicit in child exploitation crimes. While prosecutors and plaintiffs could not claim that providing encryption, alone, was enough to constitute a violation of state CSAM laws, they would be able to point to the use of encryption as evidence in support of claims that providers were acting recklessly or negligently. Even the mere threat that use of encryption could be used as evidence against a provider in a criminal prosecution will serve as a strong disincentive to deploying encrypted services in the first place.

Additionally, EARN IT sets up a law enforcement-heavy and Attorney General-led Commission charged with producing a list of voluntary “best practices” that providers should adopt to address CSAM on their services. The Commission is free to, and likely will, recommend against the offering of end-to-end encryption, and recommend providers adopt techniques that ultimately weaken the cybersecurity of their products. While these “best practices” would be voluntary, they could result in reputational harm to providers if they choose not to comply. There is also a risk that refusal to comply could be considered as evidence in support of a provider’s liability, and inform how judges evaluate these cases. States may even amend their laws to mandate the adoption of these supposed best practices. For many companies, the lack of clarity and fear of liability, in addition to potential public shaming, will likely disincentivize them from offering strong encryption, at a time when we should be encouraging the opposite.

There's a lot more in the letter, and the Copia Institute is proud to be one of the dozens of signatories, along with the ACLU, EFF, Wikimedia, Mozilla, Human Rights Campaign, PEN America and many, many more organizations.

Filed Under: earn it, encryption, free speech, section 230, senate

Daily Deal: Certified Refurbished Vivitar VTI Phoenix Foldable Drone

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

If capturing a bird's eye view of your favorite places is a fun way for you to unwind when you have some time, then the Vivitar VTI Phoenix Foldable Camera Drone (certified refurbished) is a great choice for updating your hobby's capabilities. All the pieces come secured in the sided carrying case, which helps protect them from damage as well as keeps them neatly organized. The two included batteries allow for a combined flight time of over 32 minutes, so you can get the most out of your drone's 1152p video camera video imaging. With a range of 2000 feet, Follow Me technology, GPS location locking, and Wi-Fi transmission capability, this drone has all the bells and whistles you need. It's on sale for $159.

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

WarnerMedia Sued For Giving People Want They Wanted (The Matrix, Streaming) During An Historic Health Crisis

from the oh-no,-not-what-people-want dept

AT&T got a lot wrong (and still really can't admit it) with the company's $86 billion acquisition of Time Warner. There were endless layoffs, a steady dismantling of beloved brands (DC's Vertigo imprint, Mad Magazine), all for the company to lose pay TV subscribers in the end.

But the one thing the company did get right, with a little help from COVID, was its attacks on the dated, pointless, and often punitive Hollywood release window. Typically, this has involved a 90 day gap between the time a move appears in theaters and its streaming or DVD release (in France this window is even more ridiculous at three years). Generally, this is done to protect the "sanctity of the movie going experience," as if for thirty years the "sanctity of the movie going experience" hasn't involved sticky floors, over priced popcorn, big crowds and mass shootings.

During COVID, big streamers like AT&T and Comcast shifted a lot of their tentpole films (like Dune) directly to streaming, which technically saved human lives, but resulted in no limit of raised eyebrows and scorn among the "Loews at the mall is a sacred space you can't criticize" segment of Hollywood. You might recall that AMC Theaters was positively apoplectic when Comcast showed that release windows were a dated relic, declaring it would never again show a Comcast NBC Universal picture anywhere in the world if Comcast kept threatening the sacred release window (the threat lasted about a week).

WarnerMedia (in the process of being spun off by AT&T) has faced similar whining from the industry. This week the company was hit with a lawsuit (pdf) by Village Roadshow Films, which claims the company "rushed" the release of The Matrix Resurrections from 2022 to 2021 as part of an (gasp) effort to boost streaming's popularity. All through 2021, AT&T/Time Warner released films simultaneously in theaters and on streaming to boost HBO Max subscriptions. And people liked it.

Unsurprisingly, Village Roadshow Films did not, claiming the effort (dubbed "Project Popcorn") was a "clandestine plan to materially reduce box office and correlated ancillary revenue generated from tent pole films that Village Roadshow and others would be entitled to receive in exchange for driving subscription revenue for the new HBO Max service." HBO Max and AT&T telegraphed this intention, so it seems hard to argue this was somehow clandestine. The suit also accuses WarnerMedia of ignoring the fact that piracy would have hurt the overall profits to be made from the film, though, again, metrics proving clear financial harm appear lacking.

But just as unsurprisingly, Warner Brothers thinks Village Roadshow Films is just annoyed by reality and shifting markets:

"In a statement shared with The Verge, Warner Bros. called the lawsuit “a frivolous attempt by Village Roadshow to avoid their contractual commitment to participate in the arbitration that we commenced against them last week. We have no doubt that this case will be resolved in our favor."

Again, while it's true that AT&T attacked the sacred old release window to goose streaming subscriptions, this was something that happened during an historic plague in which indoor transmission of a deadly virus could kill or disable you. It's also almost an afterthought that in the advanced home theater and mall shooting era, this is something consumers desperately wanted. For all its downsides, COVID had a strong tendency to painfully highlight shortcomings (see: broadband, the U.S. healthcare system) and dated antiquities (like release windows or a disdain for telecommuting) that no longer served us.

While there's a shrinking sect of Hollywood folks like Spielberg who still think in-person theaters and release windows are sacred and above reproach, COVID laid bare the fact that not that many people agree with them. And while that certainly disadvantaged folks financially dependent on older models (like theater owners and studios heavily vested in release windows), the reality is what it is, and a popular change was accelerated all the same.

Filed Under: covid-19, movies, pandemic, release windows, streaming
Companies: at&t, village roadshow, warnermedia

Whistleblower Alleges NSO Offered To 'Drop Off Bags Of Cash' In Exchange To Access To US Cellular Networks

from the pay-to-play dept

The endless parade of bad news for Israeli malware merchant NSO Group continues. While it appears someone might be willing to bail out the beleaguered company, it still has to do business as the poster boy for the furtherance of human rights violations around the world. That the Israeli government may have played a significant part in NSO's sales to known human rights violators may ultimately be mitigating, but for now, NSO is stuck playing defense with each passing news cycle.

Late last month, the New York Times revealed some very interesting things about NSO Group. First, it revealed the company was able to undo its built-in ban on searching US phone numbers… provided it was asked to by a US government agency. The FBI took NSO's powerful Pegasus malware for a spin in 2019, but under an assumed name: Phantom. With the permission of NSO and the Israeli government, the malware was able to target US numbers, albeit ones linked to dummy phones purchased by the FBI.

The report noted the FBI liked what it saw, but found the zero-click exploit provided by NSO's bespoke "Phantom" (Pegasus, but able to target US numbers) might pose constitutional problems the agency couldn't surmount. So, it walked away from NSO. But not before running some attack attempts through US servers -- something that was inadvertently exposed by Facebook and WhatsApp in their lawsuit against NSO over the targeting of WhatsApp users. An exhibit declared NSO was using US servers to deliver malware, something that suggested NSO didn't care about its self-imposed restrictions on US targeting. In reality, it was the FBI and NSO running some tests on local applications of zero-click malware that happened to be caught by Facebook techies.

But there's more. Recent reports building on the NYT article contain statements that claim NSO approached service providers with (well, let's just say it) bribes to allow access to targets at a higher level that might mitigate some of the defensive efforts deployed by Facebook, Google, and Apple.

Here's what's been alleged in newer reports, like this one by Craig Timberg of the Washington Post:

The surveillance company NSO Group offered to give representatives of an American mobile-security firm “bags of cash” in exchange for access to global cellular networks, according to a whistleblower who has described the encounter in confidential disclosures to the Justice Department that have been reviewed by The Washington Post.

The mobile-phone security expert Gary Miller alleges that the offer came during a conference call in August 2017 between NSO Group officials and representatives of his employer at the time, Mobileum, a California-based company that provides security services to cellular companies worldwide. The NSO officials specifically were seeking access to what is called the SS7 network, which helps cellular companies route calls and services as their users roam the world, according to Miller.

Mobileum execs were (understandably) unsure how any of this was supposed to work in the unlikely event they were amenable to a foreign entity's requests for elevated access to US cellular networks. Fortunately, the NSO rep made it extremely clear how this was going to work, according to the whistleblower:

In Miller’s account to the Justice Department, when one of Mobileum’s representatives pointed out that security companies do not ordinarily offer services to surveillance companies and asked how such an arrangement would work, NSO co-founder Omri Lavie allegedly said, “We drop bags of cash at your office."

Simple enough. Except -- to quote C. Montgomery Burns -- at the end of the proposed transaction "the money and the very stupid man were still there." Mobileum execs say no such bribery took place -- not because NSO didn't offer it but because the company refused to accept the generous offer of extremely shady "bags of cash" from the Israeli malware maker.

NSO has its own explanation for these events, which is, basically: "It was a joke, probably."

In a statement through a spokesperson, Lavie said he did not believe he had made the remark. “No business was undertaken with Mobileum,” the statement said. “Mr Lavie has no recollection of using the phrase ‘bags of cash’, and believes he did not do so. However if those words were used they will have been entirely in jest.”

Hahahahahaaaa… here at the home of the zero-click exploit marketed to human rights violators we often joke about bribing tech companies to allow us more access to networks. Oh, our sides ache from the fun we have jesting about subverting networks to compromise targets of evil empires. Ell oh fucking ell.

Mobileum, on the other hand, says it has never done business with NSO and reported this proposed cash drop to the FBI in 2017 but never heard anything back from the agency. Two years later, the FBI was experimenting with NSO malware and trying to gauge the political and constitutional fallout of deploying unregulated malware against US citizens.

Even if NSO is to be believed, there's nothing good awaiting it on the US side of things. The Commerce Department has already blacklisted the company, destroying its ability to purchase US tech for the purpose of compromising it. And the Department of Justice has opened its own investigation into NSO, adding to its list of US-related woes.

NSO could have avoided all of this international attention by being more selective about who it sold to, and stripping customers of their licenses at the first hint of malfeasance. It didn't. And the fact that it may have been pressed into service as a malware-laden extension of the Israeli government's Middle East charm offensive isn't going to save it. NSO has to save itself but it lacks the tools to do so. Whatever it claims in defense of every reported allegation is presumed to be suspect, if not completely false. The reputation it has now is mostly earned. It made millions helping sketchy governments inflict further misery on citizens, dissidents, journalists, and political opponents. The company's honor is no longer presumed if, indeed, it ever was.

Filed Under: bribes, malware, pegasus, phantom, phone networks, spyware, surveillance, whistleblower
Companies: nso group