I originally wrote a version of this post last week before Cloudflare decided to block Kiwi Farms, intending to post it after the long weekend, but I needed to rewrite a significant portion of it after Cloudflare’s decision. None of the salient points have changed (nor has my mind on how to think about all […]
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A new book written by journalist Richard Kerbaj, detailing the history of the so-called “Five Eyes” surveillance collaboration between the NSA and surveillance agencies in the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, is revealing a few more postscripts to the Ed Snowden story. Snowden’s first leak appeared nearly a decade ago. Since then, spy agencies […]
It took fifteen years filled with constant scandal, but the FCC finally recently announced that it would be “cracking down on” wireless carrier abuse of consumer location data, thanks to pressure from our new post-Roe reality. This “crackdown” involves politely asking the nation’s top wireless carriers to disclose what kind of location data they were […]
This week, both our winning comments on the insightful side come from our post about the Texas activist who weaponized a law requiring religious posters in schools by submitting one written in Arabic. In first place, it’s Thad responding to the suggestion that Hebrew would have been a better choice for annoying the right: Nah. […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, experts were weighing in on how SESTA would harm trafficking victims, while the California case against Backpage moved forward over money laundering claims. A look at the original comments sent to the FCC showed that 98.5% of them were opposed to killing net neutrality rules, and even many […]
Putting cops in schools is still a bad idea. It turns regular disciplinary problems — ones handled for decades by administrators, teachers, and parents — into police matters, subjecting students to the whims of armed officers who have been trained to react with violence to nearly any misbehavior. That’s what happened in this case [PDF] […]
You may recall that a few weeks back we discussed Ubisoft’s decision to shutdown game servers for several titles, including major AAA titles like Assassin’s Creed 3 and Far Cry 3. While server shutdowns are the norm after some period of time, as is the loss of certain online gaming features, notable in Ubisoft’s announcement […]
We’ve noted more times than I can count how you no longer really own the things you buy. Whether it’s smart home hardware, or routers that become useless paperweights when the manufacturer implodes, or post-purchase firmware updates that actively make your device less useful, you simply never know if the product you bought yesterday will […]
Over the past few years, international law enforcement has been cracking down on encrypted device purveyors. We’re not just talking about regular device encryption, which has been mainstream for several years now. These would be specialized manufacturers that appear to cater to those seeking more protection than the major providers offer — services that ensure […]
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In July of 1995, Time Magazine published one of its most regrettable stories ever. The cover just read “CYBERPORN” with the subhead reading: “EXCLUSIVE A new study shows how pervasive and wild it really is. Can we protect our kids—and free speech?” The author of that piece, Philip Elmer-Dewitt later admitted that it was his […]
We’re just going to keep getting kids killed in America. We’ll never stop throwing money in the direction of the problem, but not directly at the problem. Nothing gets safer. It just gets more budget line items. The problem with school shootings is uniquely American. The proposed solutions — and the industry that has sprung […]
Well, that was quick. We had recently discussed an athiest activist who had planned to have some fun pointing out the veiled nature of a Texas law that requires a school to display any donated poster featuring the phrase “In God We Trust” along with the American and Texas flags. How was the fun to […]
The COVID pandemic changed the way America does business. And that includes the educational business. Many schools are publicly funded but those public funds are used to purchase intrusive surveillance tools for the sole purpose of preventing distance learners from somehow “cheating” on their own education. Never mind the fact that cheating doesn’t guarantee success. […]
As we highlighted recently, despite press coverage saying otherwise, former Twitter security boss Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s whistleblowing report about the company actually supported Twitter’s underlying legal argument regarding how it counts spam in the mDAU. Remember, Musk doesn’t really have an escape clause here and the spam stuff is made up nonsense. The underlying issue […]
The moral high ground is almost impossible to hold. The United States has portrayed itself as the world ideal for personal freedom and government accountability, despite those holding power working tirelessly to undermine both of those ideals. It’s not that other world governments aren’t as bad or worse. It’s that “whataboutism” isn’t an excuse for […]
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Get access to our special online anniversary event » Techdirt began in 1997 as a simple newsletter about the latest technology news. Now, over 75,000 posts and nearly 2-million comments later, we’re celebrating our 25th anniversary! To mark the occasion, we’re holding a special online event on September 9th, 2022 at 11am PT / 2pm ET, where […]
Donald Trump has spent much of this week raging over on Truth Social and passing on nonsense QAnon conspiracy theory bullshit. And now it comes out that Google has so far refused to approve the Android app of Truth Social for the Google Play store, in large part over Truth Social’s failure to moderate violent […]
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