I can’t say for certain how Elon Musk’s thought process works, but his progression in how he talks about free speech over the last few months through this Twitter ordeal certainly provides some hints. When he first announced his intention to buy Twitter, he talked about how important free speech was, and how that was […]
We noted the other day how our shiny newly proposed federal privacy bill (as written now) includes a massive gift to US telecom monopolies. It effectively strips away huge swaths of FCC authority over telecom giants, shoveling it over to an FTC that often lacks the resources or expertise to police telecom. Because “big tech” […]
A couple of months back, we discussed a bit of a David v. Goliath trademark situation occurring in the UK. Zara is a massive fashion brand, well known throughout Europe. House of Zana is a small boutique clothier that attempted to trademark the full name of the company, “House of Zana”, only to have Zara […]
Two years ago we wrote about how a former Trump campaign staffer, Jessica Denson had sued the Trump campaign, claiming that the non-disclosure agreement she was pressured into signing by the campaign was not enforceable. As we know, Trump loves his non-disclosure agreements. He seems to use them frequently. When you’re a private citizen, or […]
We entrust plenty of our personal data to the US government at all levels. And, at all levels, they fail to protect this information on a far too regular basis. For instance, there’s the Office of Personnel Management hacking. Well, hackings. It happened twice, with the second breach being worse than the first. The two […]
There’s a very strange opinion piece over at The Hill by the chair of something called The Institute for Free Speech, Bradley Smith, basically arguing that because courts are finding that websites are protected by Section 230 while moderating in ways that some people (read: him and his friends)… Congress may take away Section 230, […]
Last June, the president of Nigeria, Muhannadu Buhari, issued a tweet that looked a lot like a call for genocide in response to often violent anti-government protests: Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us […]
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You may recall back in May we wrote about a batshit crazy proposal out of the EU Commission to “protect the children” by mandating no encryption and full surveillance of all communications. Those behind the proposal would argue it’s not technically surveilling all messages, but all messages have to be surveillable, should the government decide […]
We just got done noting how the patriotic quest to purge all Chinese hardware from U.S. networks was a a bit of an incoherent mess. The U.S. demand to purge all Huawei and ZTE equipment imposed huge costs on many mid- and small sized telecom vendors (read: their customers), and the U.S. now says it […]
Welcome to America, where not only are people subject to frisks by cops when things seem reasonably suspicious, but their vehicles are as well. A “Terry stop” is generally understood to apply to a person. When cops have enough reasonable suspicion, they can stop a person, ask questions, and pat them down to search for […]
You might recall that almost exactly a year ago, Netflix announced that it would be getting into the “gaming” business. While the announcement led many to believe that Netflix was going to jump into competing with Google’s Stadia platform and offer streaming AAA video games, in actuality, it turns out to be… not so much. […]
WTF, TikTok? Time and time again we see that TikTok does weird things regarding content moderation. More than most firms in the space, TikTok often does things that suggest that it hasn’t bothered to speak to other experts in trust and safety, and they want to reinvent the wheel… but with terrible, terrible instincts. Apparently […]
As surveillance tech has become cheaper, it has become ubiquitous. Lots of people believe they can solve education-related problems, and most frequently their “solutions” involve tech replacing people and AI replacing common sense. Even before the COVID pandemic forced most students to engage in studies remotely, human problems were being addressed with inhuman, error-prone tech. […]
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Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who heads something called the “House Republican Big Tech Task Force” has teamed up with Seth Dillon, the CEO of the deeply unfunny “conservative” Onion wannabe, The Babylon Bee, to whine in the NY Post about “how to end big tech censorship of free speech.” The answer, apparently, is to remove […]
Hungry to boost municipal budgets, a growing roster of states and cities have spent the last five years or so trying to implement a tax on Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services. Sometimes (like in Chicago) this has involved expanding an existing amusement tax (traditionally covering book stores, music stores, ball games and other brick and mortar […]
To be in law enforcement is to be almost criminally obtuse. (We haven’t criminalized that. YET! But when we do…) They can’t stay out of their own way. The public may be willing to cut them some slack but they constantly make moves that dis-endear them to the people they’re supposed to be serving. DNA […]
This post will serve as the start of what will be a familiar cycle for fans of Nintendo. I’m going to show you something cool that Nintendo fans did, you’re going to get moderately excited, and then you’ll immediately become depressed when you realize that Nintendo will absolutely shut this cool project down in the […]
There’s very little that seems to anger public servants more than mandates requiring them to serve the public. For years, the San Diego police department has expanded its surveillance programs. And for years, these expansions have gone unchallenged. But now that the city has passed an ordinance requiring more direct oversight of police activity, cops […]
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