Yesterday, we wrote about a woman who was facing 15 years in jail for using her cameraphone to videotape part of her effort to get Internal Affairs of the Chicago Police Department to investigate an officer, whom she claims sexually assaulted her. Apparently, this sort of situation is not unique in Illinois. Another story this week tells about an artist who set out to do a reasonable bit of civil disobedience: to protest a Chicago ordinance concerning where and when he could sell artwork on the street. He intended to get arrested for that misdemeanor by selling his art. As part of this, he had a First Amendment lawyer with him... and a video crew. Well, he did get arrested, but not for the misdemeanor of selling artwork in the wrong spot, but for the same felony of eavesdropping and is facing the same 15 years in prison as the woman we spoke about yesterday. Apparently, a big part of the problem is Illinois' Eavesdropping Act, which seems to create this ridiculous situation. Of course, the fact that prosecutors are actually moving forward with charges on such things is equally ridiculous. It's a good reminder of a reason to stay away from Chicago.

We've had a few stories about how police have been abusing wiretap laws to arrest people who video or audiotape the police, and here's a whopper of a case. Apparently a woman named Tiawanda Moore has been arrested and faces 15 years in prison in a case that goes to trial shortly. Her "crime"? Apparently, after being sexually assaulted by a Chicago police officer, she went to the Chicago Police Department's internal affairs group to report the officer. After being pressured not to file a report, she pulled out her mobile phone and started recording what was going on. The officers in the room saw this... and arrested her for eavesdropping. Oh yeah, while her trial starts shortly, the officer she reported is still "being investigated."

A couple years ago, we pointed out what appeared to be a pure money grab by the city of Chicago, demanding that Stubhub pay an extra tax (called an "amusement fee") on sales made by sellers and buyers in that city. As we noted, the original ticket buyer already paid a tax, and resellers themselves should be responsible for paying any additional tax. The district court dismissed the complaint from the city, noting that Section 230 protected it from being liable for actions of users.

However, the appeals court does not agree. While it did not issue a complete ruling -- instead asking the Illinois state supreme court to weigh in on the subject first -- it does (very, very quickly) dismiss the Section 230 safe harbor claim (and instead focuses on other possible defenses). The key part on Section 230:

[Section 230] limits who may be called the publisher of information that appears online. That might matter to liability for defamation, obscenity, or copyright infringement. But Chicago's amusement tax does not depend on who "publishes" any information or is a "speaker". Section 230(c) is irrelevant.

Leaving aside the fact that Section 230 specifically exempts intellectual property law (making it odd to suggest it matters for copyright infringement), this seems like a pretty narrow view of Section 230. The point of Section 230 is to make sure any liability is properly placed on the parties taking action. Saying that it is limited solely to "speaking," ignores the overall point of Section 230. Instead, the court seems to suggest it's entirely reasonable to put third party liability on a company -- especially in cases like Stubhub where it has a specific purpose (such as selling tickets, rather than as a general classifieds site). This seems like an unfortunate and unnecessary limitation on Section 230.

Reader jjmsan alerts us to a story that shows that various luxury brands suing service providers rather than those actually responsible doesn't just happen online, but can happen offline as well. Apparently, luxury goods maker Coach is suing the city of Chicago, because some vendors were selling counterfeit goods at the Maxwell Street Market. I'm at a loss as to why suing the city makes any sense at all. In response to the original complaints, the city sent police officers to the market, and actually arrested those selling counterfeit goods (why this is a criminal, rather than a civil, matter is left as an exercise to the reader). Either way, rather than recognize that the city appeared to be more than willing to work with Coach, the company sent a legal threat letter demanding that the city proactively crackdown on counterfeits. When that failed, Coach sued the city. Hopefully the courts will recognize the ridiculousness of suing the city, rather than focusing on the vendors actually responsible.

Dark Helmet was the first of a few to send in a Chicago Tribune article looking at redlight camera accident rates and seeing (as many other reports have shown before) that in many cases the number of accidents went up. The report looked at fourteen intersections. Seven showed increases in accidents, two stayed the same, and five dropped. Even more interesting: at one of the intersections the number of t-bone "broadside" collisions (the ones that defenders of the cameras insist decrease) went up significantly. That was just one intersection, though. Others saw the more traditional decrease in broadsides, but significant increase in rear-end accidents as drivers slam on their brakes. The other interesting finding from the data: contrary to the claims of camera defenders, over time the rate of accidents did not appear to decrease "as drivers learned about the cameras."

Once again, we're left wondering why people still claim the cameras increase safety, when there appears to be no evidence to support that at all. There is a clear and proven way to increase safety though: (1) increase the length of the yellow and (2) increase the delay (or, for places like California which have no delay, put in a delay) when lights in all direction are red, before switching the new direction to green. Any municipality that puts in redlight cameras without doing those two things above, and then claims its about "safety" is lying. Bizarrely, though, the supporters in the Chicago area are still defending their system:

Even if not reflected in accident statistics, Belwood Police Chief Robert Collins Jr. said he sees drivers being more cautious as they approach stoplights. "Driver behavior has definitely changed," Collins said...

Changed for the worse, apparently. Are we to believe the police chief's anecdotal insistence or what the stats actually say?

Roger Pawlowski, a division chief at the Oak Lawn Police Department, said the benefits of red-light cameras can't always be extrapolated from crash statistics.

Ah, then what are we to extrapolate the benefits of redlight cameras from? Checks cashed by the city?

Governments around the world are finding reasons to install surveillance cameras, but few are keeping account of the costs and benefits that come from those CCTV systems. Chicago, in its bid to follow in China's steps as host of the Olympics, is the most recent one to do so. By spending millions of dollars, Chicago aims to have a camera "on every corner" in preparation for the 2016 Summer Games that it hopes to host. But they are doing so without thoughtful implementation or an understanding of the realities of around-the-clock government surveillance.

Under the auspices of fighting crime and preventing terrorism, Chicago's Police Superintendent Jody Weis is hyping CCTV as having "limitless" crime-fighting potential. The reality, as is evident to anyone who has actually researched this type of thing, is that studies have shown municipal surveillance cameras to have little to no positive effect on crime. Further, London is widely known to have the most extensive CCTV network in the world, but that served as little deterrent to the terrorists of July 2005. But instead of bringing this up, the Sun-Times and Chicago officials point to a test in which "live video was used to catch a petty thief in the act of sticking his hand in a Salvation Army kettle outside Macy's State Street." Given the cost in both dollars and civil liberties, it is hard to justify catching petty criminals stealing some coins from charity.

But according to another city official, "civil libertarians have nothing to fear" from the blanket surveillance system because police operating the pan-and-tilt CCTV cameras see only what you would see if you were sitting on a park bench in front of that building." The difference, of course, is that by extending government power to all facets of public life, you extend the asymmetry of power between citizens and government (especially the corrupt ones for which Illinois is known). Indeed, we have already seen examples of "park bench" type cameras being abused by government.

What Chicago needs is an honest assessment of surveillance and a commitment to real police work, not hyped technology. If they want to follow in China's footsteps, it would be best to avoid the Big Brother ones.

eBay subsidiary StubHub seems like a pretty straightforward concept: it's a marketplace for event ticket resales. It's a huge market, and it makes sense to have a platform for people to resell tickets they've legally bought. However, StubHub seems to keep getting attacked and finding itself in court. First there was Ticketmaster, which complained that StubHub was violating Ticketmaster's "exclusive" rights to selling tickets to certain venues. Then there was the New England Patriots who demanded the names of whoever sold tickets through StubHub in order to punish the ticketholders. Now, the city of Chicago is suing eBay and StubHub, claiming that it needs to collect a special city "amusement tax" on each ticket sold. This is a pure money grab. The original ticket buyer already paid that tax -- and even if you accept the idea that resales should also be taxed (which is pretty questionable), then it seems like something that the actual seller should be responsible for, rather than StubHub/eBay itself. But, don't tell that to Chicago politicians who see this as an easy way to hit up a big company for millions of dollars. If this sounds similar to the attempts to suddenly get Amazon to pay up in other states, that's because it is. Seems like local governments are looking for any way to squeeze companies for extra tax dollars, no matter how little sense it actually makes.

Take Two Interactive, the makers of Grand Theft Auto IV, have now sued the Chicago Transit Authority for taking down a series of ads for the video game that had appeared on the transit system. The Transit Authority took down the ads in response to a local news broadcast questioning the ads since there has supposedly been a wave of violent crime lately. So... now people think that just advertising GTA IV leads to crime? Considering there's no evidence that even playing the game leads to violence, what's wrong with the ads? It's hard to see why the CTA pulled the ads based on a silly, sensationalist news piece, though suing in response does seem a bit extreme as well. Of course, either way, now that it gets GTA IV back into the news cycle, Take Two may just be leveraging the Streisand Effect for all it's worth.

Municipal WiFi's been having a rough time lately, as the ridiculous levels of hype that built up around it comes back to bite it in the backside. Things have taken a turn for the worse over the past week: EarthLink's deal with San Francisco (which garnered tons of hype) now looks like it's dead, while its deal in Houston looks like it's dying as the company pulls back from muni WiFi altogether. Meanwhile, city officials in Chicago have dropped their plans to get a vendor to build a citywide network there, after balking at demands that the city become the network's anchor tenant, and guarantee certain payments to the vendors. Elsewhere in Illinois, AT&T has decided not to move forward with plans to build a muni network in Springfield.

All in all, it's not been a good week for muni WiFi and its backers. But does all this bad news spell doom for muni WiFi as a whole? Perhaps -- but the idea of municipal wireless in general still could hold some value. Muni WiFi is bound to fail when it's being judged by unrealistic expectations -- as so many muni networks are. Vendors and politicians have whipped up a frenzy around the networks, while a willing media lapped up the stories and fed them to an easily excitable public. The fact remains that there are plenty of useful applications of municipal wireless; delivering widespread public internet access, and making money from it, may simply not be one of them. Also, as we've stated before, WiFi -- a local networking technology -- may not be the best technology to use for covering large areas. WiMAX could hold some promise in this regard, while in terms of muni broadband in general, fiber is probably even better. And, as Rick Martin points out, many smaller communities are seeing more success with their muni WiFi efforts, an indication that smaller-scale installations are much more workable than huge citywide installations in places like Chicago and San Francisco. He also passes along the quote that muni WiFi is "the monorail of the decade" -- meaning it's the boondoggle du jour for local politicians. But as Martin also notes, that while the monorail has never really lived up to its hype as the solution to cities' public transport ills, the concept and some of the technology has lived on in the form of light rail and other transport projects. In the same way, while muni WiFi might be looking pretty poorly, the idea of municipal wireless, or municipal broadband, should live on.