Bogus Automated Copyright Claims By CBS Blocked Super Tuesday Speeches By Bernie Sanders, Mike Bloomberg, And Joe Biden

from the copyright-as-censorship dept

Another day, another example of copyright out of control. The latest, as highlighted by Matthew Keys, is that bogus (almost certainly automated) copyright claims by CBS ended up blocking a live stream of a Bernie Sanders speech, but similar notices also interrupted speeches by Mike Bloomberg and Joe Biden.

It's not difficult to guess at what's going on here: most of these streams were using "pool" cameras that anyone can tap into and use. CBS was using the same stream as everyone else, but because copyright must rule everything, CBS assumes that anything it streams, it holds the copyright on -- and sends automated notices to places like Twitter and Facebook to stop people from streaming live off of CBS News. But, here, it was CBS using someone else's feed -- but thanks to the nature of copyright, we get a situation where Presidential candidates can't even live stream their own speeches.

This was the kind of thing we've warned about, specifically in the context of the EU's Copyright Directive, which will effectively require a filter like this to be functioning at all times on basically all platforms. The fact that it will inevitably catch the wrong things -- like here -- is something that never seems to concern the Hollywood types who push for these laws and technologies to be used. Yet here we have Presidential candidates not able to broadcast themselves.

This is especially ironic for Joe Biden, considering that he's long been one of Hollywood's biggest supporters when it comes to pushing ever more draconian copyright law. So, perhaps, he got what he deserved.

Filed Under: automated takedowns, bernie sanders, censorship, copyright, eu copyright directive, filters, free speech, joe biden, mike bloomberg, political speech
Companies: cbs, facebook, twitter

Appeals Court Refuses To Overturn Ruling That Ends Stop And Frisk In NYC [Updated]

from the court-stops-motion,-misses-opportunity-to-thoroughly-Fisk-it dept

[Update: New York defense attorney Scott Greenfield sends over some input on this latest twist in the stop and frisk saga. The situation isn't quite as simple as my post made it appear. While time is running out for the city of New York to battle this ruling before de Blasio steps in, it still has options available that could make this a much tougher battle for opponents of the program.

The motion panel denied summary reversal, but that has zero to do with the appeal. It was just an interim ploy. Whether de Blasio will continue the appeal, drop it or settle the case has yet to be seen. It's awkward for de Blasio, as even if he agrees that the Bloomberg policy is dead wrong, he won't want to give up control to an outside monitor.

But by no means is this a done deal on any end. The only thing denied was summary reversal; everything else remains on the table, so to suggest it's all over is not at all correct. There remains a whole lot left in issue and bad things can still happen. Very bad things.

One of those bad things is this:

There is still plenty of time for the city to get its brief in under Cardozo/Bloomberg arguing for reversal. This will really put the screws to de Blasio, who would not only have to withdraw the appeal, but do so after the city has submitted and the brief is out there for the world to see.

So, this has only deflected one of the many legal arrows Bloomberg's counsel can fire off before he exits office. Bloomberg has defended stop-and-frisk bitterly and obstinately over the years, so there's no reason to believe more last-ditch efforts aren't being made.]

It looks as though time may run out on Mayor Bloomberg and his fight against Judge Scheindlin's stop and frisk decision. Even though the Second Circuit Court (questionably) removed Scheindlin from the case for "appearances of bias and impropriety," it has not allowed New York City to use that as leverage to have her ruling tossed.

A federal appeals panel on Friday denied a request by lawyers for New York that it overturn a judge’s sweeping ruling on the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices, all but ending the Bloomberg administration’s ability to legally challenge the ruling.

For the time being, Scheindlin's court-ordered remedies (body cameras, installation of independent oversight) are still on hold while the court waits to hear the city's appeal. The city still has the option to re-file this motion once the appeals process has run its course, but by that time, Bill de Blasio will be the new mayor and he has previously stated his opposition to the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program.

Lis Smith, a spokeswoman for Mr. de Blasio, said the mayor-elect had “been clear: We must move forward on making fundamental reforms to stop-and-frisk. By ending the overuse of this practice, we will make New York safer and begin to repair the relationships between community and police.”

Mayor Bloomberg's intense defense of the questionable program may turn out to be wasted energy. De Blasio could very well decide Scheindlin's ruling is correct and drop the city's appeals.

The vast amount of evidence, much of it collected by the NYPD itself, shows the program resulted in hundreds of thousands of stops of minorities over the last decade, but not much in the way of crime fighting. Despite the constant arguments that it's responsible for the city's declining crime rates, the stop-and-frisk program resulted in very few convictions or confiscated weapons. (This visualization shows just how inefficient the program is at finding guns.)

Considering these two factors, the program looks very much like a form of intimidation -- something that may lead to reduced crime, but that's hardly a solid indicator (or a justification) of its supposed usefulness towards that stated end. All sorts of efforts may lead to reduced crime (warrantless searches, a camera in every house) but the ends don't justify the unconstitutional means, something Bloomberg and police chief Ray Kelly could never seem to wrap their heads around.

Filed Under: bill de blasio, mike bloomberg, nyc, shira scheindlin, stop and frisk

Mayor Bloomberg Uses Private Email To Avoid FOI Requests; Has No Plans To Retain Archive Of Office, NYPD Emails

from the he-must-be-bored-of-the-job----only-reason-why-he-isn't-mayor-for-life dept

It appears New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has left no process unexploited during his term as the city's boss, creating a hybrid police/nanny-state firmly founded on the principle that "Bloomberg knows best." If anyone dared to express their doubts, they were swiftly assuaged in a condescending tone that let the questioner know that asking such questions was not only foolish, but also potentially dangerous.

As much of New York impatiently holds open the EXIT door, further details of Bloomberg's casual abuse of power have emerged.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a private way of discussing city business — using an email account from his company, Bloomberg L.P.

DNAinfo New York has learned of correspondences between Bloomberg and a deputy mayor in which each uses an @bloomberg.net email address to discuss city-related matters.

DNAinfo claims to have emails discussing city matters in its possession. Obviously, Bloomberg's use of a private email address means that these emails won't be subject to FOIL requests. In order to see these emails, one would have to subpoena them, which isn't exactly the way public information discussing matters that affect the public is supposed to work.

The half-hearted defense offered by the mayor's spokesman fails to sufficiently apply lipstick to this pig.

LaVorgna acknowledged that Bloomberg and top aides have private accounts.

“Yes, people have personal email accounts. It’s no different than everyone with a Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo account,” he said.

Sure, it's no different than anyone with a private email address, except for the fact that official city business should be routed through official city email accounts. Sidestepping FOI laws isn't something city officials should be doing, much less the head guy, who should be leading by example. (Maybe he is leading by example. After all, the NYPD is less responsive to FOI requests than national intelligence agencies and Bloomberg himself has spent a bit of the city's money fighting information requests in the city's courts.)

But this isn't the nadir of Bloomberg's attempts to preserve his legacy by obscuring his activities. DNAinfo points out that while many New York City agencies have a variety of potential plans in place to retain and archive agency email…

[T]he city plans to retain the emails of the Administration for Children’s Services, the Department of Buildings, the Law Department, the Office of Collective Bargaining, the Department of Aging, the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, the Business Integrity Commission, the Parks Department, the Department of Youth and Community Development, the Department of Probation, the Department of Small Business Services, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the Department of Consumer Affairs and smaller agencies.

four agencies conspicuously do NOT:

[T]he city still hasn’t decided whether to preserve the emails of major agencies like the mayor's office, NYPD, the Department of Education and FDNY, sources said.

No surprises there. The easiest way to avoid potentially embarrassing/damaging info from making its way into the public eye is to a) take official business off official channels and b) let any remaining emails vanish into the memory hole.

The city (read: mayor) only has to hold out for ninety days or so and any potential problems solve themselves. Sure, this may open the city up to litigation somewhere down the line, but that's a problem for Bloomberg's successors and underlings to deal with.

Not that Bloomberg's dickishness isn't without precedent. Prominent New York politicians have a habit of keeping email archives out of the public's reach. Rather than add them to the Municipal Archives, local pols have done things like this instead:

Rudy Giuliani… transferred his mayoral papers to a nonprofit he controlled rather than follow the usual protocol of handing them directly to the city’s Municipal Archives.

At the time, Giuliani said he was personally paying for a private archival firm to catalog the documents quickly.

And as for routing around FOIL, Governor Andrew Cuomo reportedly used a personal BlackBerry to punch holes in his paper trail.

Dismaying, but hardly surprising, especially considering Bloomberg's enthusiasm for protecting those things he holds dear, like himself and his beloved PD. Bloomberg appears to be more than happy to let anything he didn't run through his personal email address blink out of existence as he steps out the door.

Filed Under: email, freedom of information, mike bloomberg, public information
Companies: bloomberg

Up Against The Wall, America! Sen. Schumer Touts NYPD Chief Kelly For Next Head Of Homeland Security

from the if-anyone-has-any-reason-why-these-two-should-not-be-joined... dept

Janet Napolitano is leaving her post as the head of the DHS and leaving a vacancy that some (particularly Sen. Chuck Schumer) think would be best filled by Ray "Stop and Frisk" Kelly. (Or, if you prefer, Ray "Privacy Is Off the Table" Kelly.)

This isn't a particularly surprising selection. Schumer's home state is New York and picking Kelly is sort of a no-brainer. As Mike Riggs at Reason points out, the case for Kelly as head of the DHS goes all the way back to 2008, when national security insiders floated the suggestion.

Unfortunately for fans of civil liberties, adding Ray Kelly to the DHS takes a bad thing and makes it worse.

First off, there's the NYPD's infamous stop and frisk program, which has targeted minority youths almost exclusively. Putting Kelly in charge of Homeland Security is just asking for a national rollout of stop and frisk, bringing the fun of being a minority in New York City to citizens around the country. There's no dissuading Kelly (or Commander in Chief of the "seventh largest military in the world," Mayor Bloomberg) of its effectiveness, even if the numbers don't back up their claims.

Kelly also famously announced that "privacy is off the table" as a result of the Boston bombing. Kelly has no qualms about expanding law enforcement surveillance networks, no matter how unpopular it is with the public. He has expressed his admiration for London's network of cameras, which he hopes to emulate in New York City. The NYPD has taken steps towards all-encompassing surveillance aided by (oddly enough) Microsoft. Take that set of ideals and expand it nationwide.

Despite his willingness to invade everyone else's privacy, Kelly's own police force is positively opaque when it comes to transparency. FOIA requests are routinely stonewalled when not being actively battled in courtrooms, much to the dismay of taxpayers' wallets.

The one thing Kelly does feel government/law enforcement/intelligence agencies should be open about is how much spying they're planning on doing. His only reaction to the NSA leaks was dismay at the fact that the NSA didn't just tell Americans they're going to be spied on.

“I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly said yesterday, breaking ranks with other US law-enforcement officials. “I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone, it’s going to be recorded and it goes to the government. I think the public can understand that. I see no reason why that program was placed in the secret category.

There's Kelly's version of transparency: telling the public how its privacy is going to be violated. If nothing else, Kelly's theoretical term as the head of the DHS would result in a brave, new world of confrontational transparency -- top-down blasts of invasive programs, delivered in a like-it-or-leave-it tone that leaves no room for debate or discussion.

Beyond this, we also have the NYPD's pitiable record of constitutional violations when it comes to its joint anti-terrorist efforts with the FBI. Plenty of spying, surveillance and privacy violations. Very little in the way of actual terrorists rounded up.

So, here's a guy with a track record that features a combination of wholesale civil liberties violations and an aversion to any form of accountability. Kelly has proven he's willing to alienate constituents in pursuit of an all-encompassing police/surveillance presence. He's also made it clear that he unreservedly buys into the "because terrorism" rhetoric.

Unfortunately for America, every listed argument against Kelly as head of the DHS is a point for him under the current administration. The boundless expansion of Bush's domestic surveillance under Obama has laid the perfect foundation for a man who believes citizens should be seen and heard -- at all times. If the Constitution is holding back a preferred program, there's always the secret court ready to provide secret interpretations of existing laws, thus assuring that everything is properly overseen and above board.

Kelly isn't necessarily a "yes man," but he's a perfect fit for an agency that has steadily trampled on the Constitution since its formation. The "welcomed debate" on privacy vs. security would become little more than a faint memory. Kelly's arrival would signal an end to the discussion no one in Washington really wants to have. There are precious few people who believe the DHS and its accompanying agencies weren't invasive enough, but adding Kelly to the mix should take that number down to zero.

It's Kelly's world. You're all just living in it "persons of interest."

Filed Under: chuck schumer, dhs, homeland security, janet napolitano, mike bloomberg, nypd, ray kelly, stop and frisk

Mayor Bloomberg Opens Own Wallet To Erect Protective Wall Of Money Around His Beloved Stop And Frisk Program

from the this-stack-of-cash-says-your-rights-are-invalid dept

We wrote recently about New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's apoplectic response to the passage of two bills aimed at his beloved stop and frisk program. In addition to claiming the city would fall immediately and be beset on all sides by the tyranny of evil men swept up in an unprecedented crime wave (which would seem to imply stop and frisk isn't catching that many criminals), he also promised to veto both bills despite both having landed on his desk with veto-proof votes.

The odds are stacked against him and the city council doesn't currently seem to be stocked with a large number of Bloomberg supporters, but the Mayor's apparently not going to let others not take "No" for an answer.

Aides and advisors said the billionaire lame-duck mayor intends to use some of his fortune to influence the outcome of a vote to override his coming veto of measures to install an NYPD inspector general and to modify the controversial stop-and-frisk program.

Now, if we didn't participate in a democratic system that is rarely, if ever, abused [brief pause to reinsert still-rolling eyes back in sockets], one could easily mistake Bloomberg's statement to mean he's going to reach into his deep pockets and start handing out bribes. That, of course, would be illegal. Instead, he's going to go the morally acceptable route [pause to tighten eyeroll-resistant goggles] and throw his money into various campaign war chests.

"The bottom line is I make no bones about it, I'm telling you I'm going to support those candidates," said Bloomberg. "Some of these things are life and death issues, like these two horrendous bills in the City Council and they're going to put our police officers at risk and they're going to put the public at risk and I've got an obligation to tell people that."

Once again, the criminal apocalypse is nigh and only Bloomberg's constitutionally-unsound stop and frisk program can prevent it. Part of Bloomberg's billions will now be flowing directly to those who share his views -- specifically, that the NYPD is the mayor's personal army, and that any attempt to provide it with oversight or steer it away from violating civil liberties en masse will weaken the force and damage the city.

Even if Bloomberg fails to secure the vetoes before he leaves office, he appears willing to spare no expense stacking the legislative deck in order to see these new laws repealed or gutted. He'll no longer have the title and everything that comes with it, but if he spends his money wisely (or just spends enough of it), he'll still be able to keep at least one hand on the reins.

Filed Under: mike bloomberg, money and politics, nyc, stop and frisk

Can You Understand How Technology Works Without Understanding Code?

from the yes-and-no dept

There's an interesting debate that's broken out in the tech world, kicked off by tech/coding superstar Jeff Atwood arguing that people shouldn't learn to code. He was mostly responding to an announcement by NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg that he wanted to learn how to code: Jeff found this to be a misuse of Bloomberg's skills:

A noble gesture to garner the NYC tech community vote, for sure, but if the mayor of New York City actually needs to sling JavaScript code to do his job, something is deeply, horribly, terribly wrong with politics in the state of New York.

He goes on to explain why he thinks this is a bad idea, even as he's a fan of programming himself. I won't go through his full list of points. You can read them on his site yourself, but it does feel like a lot of his complaint isn't so much about people learning to code, but the idea that people learning to code will mean more people coding for a living. For example, there are these two points:

• It assumes that adding naive, novice, not-even-sure-they-like-this-whole-programming-thing coders to the workforce is a net positive for the world. I guess that's true if you consider that one bad programmer can easily create two new jobs a year. And for that matter, most people who already call themselves programmers can't even code, so please pardon my skepticism of the sentiment that "everyone can learn to code".
  
  
• It implies that there's a thin, easily permeable membrane between learning to program and getting paid to program professionally. Just look at these new programmers who got offered jobs at an average salary of $79k/year after attending a mere two and a half month bootcamp! Maybe you too can teach yourself Perl in 24 hours! While I love that programming is an egalitarian field where degrees and certifications are irrelevant in the face of experience, you still gotta put in your ten thousand hours like the rest of us.

While I understand the points he's raising in both of these cases, it feels like he's taking the "everyone should learn to code" argument way beyond what is generally meant in that discussion. I don't think anyone is saying that people should learn to code for a living. Lots of people learn math, but don't become mathemeticians or even use math in their daily jobs -- but it doesn't mean it hurts to understand math.

In fact, I think that Jeff recognizes this. He notes that a better focus would be:

The general populace (and its political leadership) could probably benefit most of all from a basic understanding of how computers, and the Internet, work. Being able to get around on the Internet is becoming a basic life skill, and we should be worried about fixing that first and most of all, before we start jumping all the way into code.

And that's something I think everyone agrees on. It's just that some folks are suggesting that the way to better understand computers and the internet is if they have some familiarity with code. And thus, I actually think that Jeff and those arguing against him, may actually be in agreement. It's just that some people think that understanding code is a good way to understand computers and the internet.

One of the better responses to Jeff points out that learning to code is different than preparing for a job as a coder. As that post notes:

Learning to program is not the same thing as training for a programming career. Learning new skills opens up new perceptual avenues and cognitive spaces. I'm learning to sew right now, not because the world needs another tailor but because I want to be able to recognize quality in clothing and create pieces that I can't find. Novice coders feel the same way about their digital goods and should be encouraged to continue. Learn to program.

Perhaps where the major difference comes in is that Jeff believes that learning to code is not a stage in understanding computers and the internet, and he compares it to plumbing:

I can also recognize plumbing problems when I see them without any particular training in the area.

However, as esmoov writes in his response, Jeff may have just internalized what he has learned about plumbing:

He may not have had formal training (the professional/personal equivocation again) but he has been trained by an unruly digestive movement, a low water tank and the horrible things 18-22 year-olds do to and around toilets. My dad showed me how to fix a broken chain in the tank. Before I learned that, toilets had three states: working, clogged and broken. After learning to fix the chain, I added a new state to which my toilet-perception could resolve: loose or broken chain. Again, the ability to take in, cut up and categorize the world is a product of the things learned.

Indeed. I don't think that learning the basics of programming solves all internet/technology illiteracy, but it certainly helps people to understand the lay of the land better. It's not necessary, but it can help them better understand the problems and potential solutions when they come up -- even if they don't intend on programming themselves. It can lead them to recognize, for example, how bizarre it might seem to copyright an API or patent software itself. That's a concept that's a little harder to comprehend if you don't understand programming at all. That isn't to say that understanding programming is completely necessary, but it certainly can help in getting people to a point of digital literacy.

Filed Under: code, jeff atwood, mike bloomberg, nyc