Sure, “Department of Justice” has always been a misnomer, what with its blessing of things like civil asset forfeiture, bogus CFAA prosecutions, cop junk science, the 1033 program, and the complete inability to successfully sue federal officers for blatant Constitutional violations. But it also used to have things like a civil rights division that investigated […]
Earlier this month we noted how California was attempting to pass a new law ensuring that broadband would be affordable to poor people. The original law proposed that the biggest ISPs would need to make sure they offered speeds of at least 100 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up for $15 a month to California residents […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about our call for the government to accept accountability for the power it wields: Bold of you to assume that Republicans will ever place responsibility for their actions on their own shoulders instead of on the backs of […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the DHS was going full gestapo in response to protests in Portland, then quickly expanding the tactics to other cities, starting with Chicago, and was also engaging in domestic surveillance to protect statues and monuments. We asked why the US was trying to punish hackers for accessing vaccine […]
It seems to be part of human nature to try to game systems. That’s also true for technological systems, including the most recent iteration of AI, as the numerous examples of prompt injection exploits demonstrate. In the latest twist, an investigation by Nikkei Asia has found hidden prompts in academic preprints hosted on the arXiv […]
This series of posts explores how we can rethink the intersection of AI, creativity, and policy. From examining outdated regulatory metaphors to questioning copyright norms and highlighting the risks of stifling innovation, each post addresses a different piece of the AI puzzle. Together, they advocate for a more balanced, forward-thinking approach that acknowledges the potential of technological […]
We’ve spent years documenting the challenges of crafting sensible AI policy, from Biden’s misguided plan, to various state-level attempts at regulation. Now Trump’s AI Action Plan has landed, offering a striking example of how even potentially useful policy ideas can be corrupted by political theater and special interests. The plan reflects the deep influence of […]
So many pro-police lawmakers and city officials have always insisted the only way to bring down crime rates is to add more cops to the mix. This may work if you’re mainly interested in racking up meaningless arrests or handing out “broken windows” citations, but it doesn’t address why certain areas have higher crime rates. […]
The 2025 Data Center Infrastructure and Design Fundamentals bundle has 5 courses to teach about how modern data centers are built, powered, and maintained. Explore critical components, design considerations, and the step-by-step process behind building efficient and reliable data centers that support global digital operations. Courses cover HVAC design, electrical and power essentials, operation and […]
Here’s how you know the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case represents something fundamentally broken in government accountability: within hours of two federal judges ordering his release and explicitly warning the government not to play games with him, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin went on X to repeat laughably false claims about Abrego while declaring that he “will […]
With the cowards at CBS/Paramount having paid their $16 million bribe to the King, Trump’s FCC has quickly ended its phony “investigation” into the media giant, and given its rubber stamp approval to the company’s $8 billion merger with Skydance (owned by Trump’s friends in the Ellison family). In a press release, Trump FCC boss […]
It should be uncontroversial at this point to say that the Russian government has waged a long but incremental war on both free speech and a free and open internet. Always couched in terms of preventing “extremist content” to infiltrate the minds of its own people, the truth is that Russia denotes any content it […]
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. Our second annual live at TrustCon recording of Ctrl-Alt-Speech! Ben […]
The Trump administration is continuing its dangerous push to surveil and suppress foreign students’ social media activity. The State Department recently announced an unprecedented new requirement that applicants for student and exchange visas must set all social media accounts to “public” for government review. The State Department also indicated that if applicants refuse to unlock their accounts or otherwise don’t maintain a social […]
Here we go. Again. Nonstop. The Racist Fucks Regime is at it again, leveraging every piece of data involuntarily collected by the government as a weapon to deploy against brown people. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and […]
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The Supreme Court’s shadow docket has become a lawless mess. The justices are issuing extremely consequential rulings with either no explanation at all, or with barely a paragraph of reasoning. No full briefing. No oral arguments. Just vibes-based constitutional law that lower courts are somehow supposed to follow. Now the Court has made this chaos […]
Last year you might recall that Vice Media suffered its final collapse after years of mismanagement by incompetent, fail-upward brunchlords. The new owners, Savage Ventures, quickly made it clear they were going to be even worse than past Vice management, firing a ton of talented writers and editors, and shifting Vice’s focus even harder toward […]
This saga of dumb began nearly a decade ago, in 2016, when a grocer named “Iceland Foods,” that was somehow granted an EU trademark for “Iceland,” began bullying other EU businesses using that word over supposed trademark infringement. Iceland, the country, caught wind of all of this when the company had the stones to oppose […]
As numerous Walled Culture posts attest, site blocking is in the vanguard of the actions by copyright companies against sites engaged in the unauthorized sharing of material. Over the past few months, this approach has become even more pervasive, and even more intrusive. For example, in France, the Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare was forced to geoblock more than […]
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