Texas Pulls Voting Reg System From IBM After Multimillion System Can't Recover Lost Data

from the that's-not-good dept

EFF points us to yet another massively expensive computer system that can't do some rather basic things. Apparently the state of Texas has pulled its election systems from an $863 million computer system project it had with IBM, after failures and glitches in the system took down the voter system and lost data, which was unrecoverable. State officials realized that if this had happened during an actual election, the state wouldn't have been able to verify new voters, in violation of federal law. So, it dumped IBM and set up its own system that (gasp) actually has multiple backups of the data. I guess things like redundant backups aren't included in the $863 million package.

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Austin Police Chief To Go After Anonymous Commenters

from the you-need-a-thicker-skin dept

Slashdot points us to the news that the police chief in Austin Texas is so upset about anonymous commenters, or commenters pretending to be police officers, on various internet websites that he's going to start going after them. His complaint? Those comments "erode public trust in the [police] department." Funny, I would think that wasting public resources going after a bunch of random internet commenters rather than focusing on actual crime prevention and solving would do a lot more to erode the public trust in the police department.

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Is It Illegal To Posess Unmarked CDs In Texas?

from the be-careful... dept

btr1701 points us to an odd (and slightly disturbing) story about a prisoner in Texas. Most of the story is about the fact that the guy is ridiculously obese and had been able to sneak a gun into prison in between flabs of skin, which was totally missed on a bunch of searches. But, btr1701 points out that the reason the guy was arrested in the first place was because he was apparently selling bootleg CDs. According to the article, he was "charged with possessing or selling unlabeled recordings." Now, I can sort of, maybe, kinda see why selling unlabeled recordings could be a violation of the law (though, even that seems questionable). But, possessing unlabeled recordings? How is that against the law? Does this mean that anyone who burns some music to a blank CD-R could be in trouble? Anyone in Texas have any more details on the real story here, because I'm hoping there's more to it.

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And Of Course: Twitter Sued For Patent Infringement In Texas

from the where-else? dept

This should hardly be a surprise, but with Twitter being so popular lately, it was only a matter of time until it was targeted in patent infringement lawsuits. At the very least, the company suing them appears to (a) actually be based in Texas and (b) have a product on the market. But... that doesn't make TechRadium's lawsuit against Twitter any more reasonable or sensible. Take a look at the patents in question:

• 7,130,389: Digital notification and response system
• 7,496,183: Method for providing digital notification
• 7,519,165: Method for providing digital notification and receiving responses

Read through the claims on each of these patents and try not to gag on the obviousness of all three. If you picked any competent programmer (or, should we say, one who is "skilled in the art") and discussed messaging systems, this is pretty much what any of them would develop. There's nothing particularly unique or special in what's described in these patents. And, now, unfortunately, Twitter needs to waste time and money defending itself for doing something (ahem) obvious.

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Texas Politicians Want To Make It A Felony To Create Intimidating Fake Online Profiles

from the if-you-intimidate,-please-be-real dept

The latest in a long line of questionable "cyberbullying" legislation has shown up in Texas, where the legislature has approved a bill that would make it a felony to create a fake social networking profile with intent to "harm, defraud, intimidate, or threaten" anyone. Of course, that seems rather broad. Oddly, the article doesn't mention the Lori Drew case (Update: actually, it does mention Lori Drew at the bottom... but says this law wouldn't apply, because it only applies to fake profiles of "real people"), though, it does mention the Tony La Russa/Twitter legal battle, even though it's difficult to think any court would rule a parody profile as being with intent to harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten. Of course, even if the bill is signed into law, Eric Goldman notes that it would likely have trouble surviving much of a challenge, pointing out the oddity of singling out "social networking sites" and (more importantly) the fact that any such law would likely ban all sorts of protected free speech. Still, "anti-cyberbullying" laws are all the rage these days, and politicians want to make sure they can tell constituents that they're out there "protecting the children," so expect to see plenty more of this type of legislation.

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Texas Schools May No Longer Be Forced To Buy Physical Textbooks Just To Use Digital Ones

from the good-for-them dept

A few months back, a reader named JT sent in the news that school districts in Texas were being forced to buy physical textbooks, even if they only wanted to use digital ones. Apparently, some publishers were claiming that they had to "bundle" the digital textbook with a physical one, and that meant that schools were receiving shipments of physical textbooks, which were then locked up in a warehouse never to be used. That may be changing, as the state is moving forward on a law that would put electronic textbooks on the "approved list" of books that schools could buy. That said, I'm still wondering why the schools that wanted the e-texts (such as the one listed that issues every student a laptop) didn't just team up with other schools to give them the physical books for "free." After all, if they were forced to "buy" them, couldn't they give them away to others as well?

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Chinese Gov't Computer Problems May Force Chinese Citizens To Change Names

from the funny-how-that-works dept

I have to admit that I was among those who thought it was in incredibly poor taste and somewhat offensive when a Texas lawmaker recently suggested that Asian Americans with complex names should be required to change their names to reduce confusions and problems with matching up names to voting rolls. However, now it appears that the same thing is happening in China itself. According to the NY Times, the Chinese government is forcing people to change their names in an effort to modernize its own ID database. Apparently, the computer system being used can't handle some of the rarer Chinese characters, even though such characters are popular among some families as a way to give their children a distinct identity. It still seems in poor taste and somewhat offensive, but still somewhat fascinating to compare the two stories.

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Texas City Councilman Arrested After Opposing Red Light Cameras

from the hush-up-or-you-might-get-a-ticket dept

There's been plenty of debate about traffic cameras lately, with many cities and states rushing to implement them as revenue generators rather than out of any sense of safety. Reader Brad points us to a story out of Duncanville, Texas, where a city councilman spoke up at a city council meeting opposing current red light camera laws, and the mayor had him arrested and removed during the meeting. The story presented at the link may be a bit one-sided (so there may certainly be more to this story), but the council member felt that the redlight cameras were unfair -- and that there were other, better ways for the city to meet its budget. Apparently, the mayor told him if he continued to debate the issue, he would be arrested... and then lived up to that threat. Who knew redlight cameras could be so controversial that speaking out against them could get you arrested?

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Texas Judge Forces Topix To Unveil Info About Anonymous Commenters

from the so-much-for-protecting-anonymity dept

While plenty of other countries don't provide very much protection to anonymous commenters online, US courts have time and time and time and time again found that it's important to protect the rights of anonymous speech online. That doesn't mean that you can say anything you want -- but it does mean that a court should be quite clearly convinced that the speech violates the law before allowing any progress in an attempt to unmask an anonymous participant.

Unfortunately, it looks like a judge in Texas has ignored all of that. Topix, the online news aggregation and local community site, has apparently been told by a judge to cough up identifying information on 178 formerly anonymous commenters on the site. The details are still a little unclear from the article linked here -- but it looks like the commenters were discussing a sexual harassment case that was happening in Texas. In that case, the defendants were found not guilty, but apparently the online comments on Topix got somewhat nasty. So the couple, fresh off being acquitted of sexual assault charges, sued 178 different anonymous commenters -- and the judge seemed to have no problem ordering Topix to turn over any identifying information it had on those commenters.

This is troubling for a variety of reasons, as it does not appear that the court spent much time in determining whether or not actual libelous statements were made -- it just ordered Topix to hand over the info. Previous courts have found that even if the commenters were being jerks and totally obnoxious, that doesn't take away their right to anonymity. So why is this judge so willing to wipe away anonymity? If there are truly libelous comments, then it could make sense to go through a careful process of trying to identify who they came from. But to give a blanket order to hand over the names seems to go against what so many other US courts have done in similar situations, and raises serious questions about the right to anonymity online.

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Banning Driver Distractions One By One; Next Up? Eating, Faxing Or Petting Fluffy

from the common-sense-is-dead dept

Last year, in writing about all of the various new laws being proposed to ban all sorts of different driving distractions, we asked for suggestions on what other specific driving distractions should be banned. It looks like one politician in Texas is now trying to ban a bunch of those in a single bill (technically, he's just looking to increase the fine, if you're caught doing any of these things). Aman Batheja points us to the details, including the fact that eating, shaving and faxing while driving are on the list. But even more interesting to me are the issues with "interacting with passengers" or "interacting with a pet." Why not just disallow driving with any other living being?

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Repair A Computer In Texas Without A License And Face A Year In Jail

from the ridiculous-laws dept

Here's a bizarre one sent in by Syborg1404. It turns out that it's against the law in Texas to repair a computer without a private investigator's license. Specifically, the law requires anyone who is repairing a customer's computer by analyzing data on the computer to have a private eye's license -- which only takes three years as an apprentice or to earn a criminal justice degree. This isn't just an out-of-date law still on the books either. It was passed last year, though it's now being contested as unconstitutional. While it does not appear that anyone's been charged under the law, computer repair technicians used to cleaning spyware and viruses off of computers in Texas are reasonably worried.

To be honest, this whole thing sounds like garden variety protectionism, similar to state laws that required people selling goods on eBay to spend a year or more to get an auctioneer's license. These laws aren't about protecting consumers, but about limiting the number of competitors in the market itself. Hopefully Texas gets rid of it before someone is fined and tossed in jail for cleaning spyware out of someone's computer.

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Now Texas Is Wondering Why Amazon Doesn't Pay State Taxes

from the chain-reaction dept

Following New York's decision to change its laws to force Amazon.com to collect sales tax for New York-related transactions, other states are apparently going back and reevaluating Amazon and taxes. Texas, for example, has been alerted to the fact that Amazon probably should be paying sales tax in the state. This is different than the situation in New York. The rule has always been that, if the company has a "physical presence" in the state, it is required to collect and pay sales tax. The question in New York was what counted as a physical presence. Amazon doesn't have offices or a distribution center in New York, but New York was trying to claim that all its Amazon affiliates in New York represent a physical presence. In Texas, however, Amazon actually does have a physical presence in the form of a distribution center. It's just that the state of Texas didn't recognize that until someone from a Dallas newspaper pointed it out. So even if Amazon is successful in fighting the law in New York, it looks like the renewed interest in forcing online retailers to collect and pay sales tax is catching up to Amazon in other ways.

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Troll Tracker Sued For Defamatation By Patent Attorneys In East Texas

from the you-knew-that-was-coming... dept

Just this morning we were lamenting the fact that the formerly anonymous Patent Troll Tracker had shut down his blog, but now we know why. It appears that two patent attorneys in East Texas have sued him and Cisco for defamation. One of the attorneys happens to also be the son of the judge who helped make Marshall, Texas famous as a favorite for patent holders. The details on the case suggest that this lawsuit may have been the reason that Rick Frenkel outed himself, as it was actually filed back in November and used as a way to unmask the Troll Tracker.

The defamation claim is based on a post that Frenkel put up back in October, which we wrote about. It involved the fact that the Texas lawyers in question had filed a patent lawsuit against Cisco in Texas, the day before the actual patent was issued (which you're not supposed to do). In response, Cisco (perhaps Frenkel himself) had quickly filed for a declaratory judgment in Connecticut. Later on, the date on the original filing in Texas was changed, a fact that Frenkel found quite questionable. No matter what, that case was eventually dismissed entirely -- but the lawyers in question are still suing both him and Cisco for defamation. Cisco, I'd imagine, isn't thrilled about the whole situation, but one would hope execs there are reasonable enough not to punish Frenkel for this. It would be great if lawyers could weigh in on the defamation claim. The links above have most of the text being used in the defamation claim, and I'm struggling to figure out what's actually defamatory about it. There doesn't seem to be anything that would count as defamation at all. Even if there is some defamation in there somewhere, it's also difficult to see how Cisco could be found responsible for the speech. Even though Frenkel worked at Cisco, he clearly did not post the story as a representative of Cisco, and was quite careful to point to other sources that had reported the news first (i.e., not using internal Cisco info). Anyone know if Texas has a SLAPP law in place?

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