This Week In Techdirt History: August 27th – September 2nd

Techdirt

from the do-you-remember? dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2018, a security flaw at Charter Spectrum exposed the private data of millions of subscribers, while Big Telecom was trying out new tactics in its fight against net neutrality in California. An appeals court ruled that forcing someone to unlock their phone violates the fifth amendment, while another ruled that an IP address alone is insufficient for infringement claims. Danish ISPs scored a win against copyright trolling, while the EU Copyright Directive continued to be a threat to the public domain, as well as bringing the nightmare of link taxes.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2013, we learned that the NSA had bugged the UN and various EU embassies, and then we got a look at the “black budget” that funded surveillance as well as, it turned out, a major focus on cracking encryption. Meanwhile, a bad court ruling said cyberlocker Hotfile and its owner could be liable for copyright infringement by users, and we wrote about the worrying statistic that half of all retiring Senators go on to become lobbyists, then quickly got a related example when the White House’s IP Czar jumped ship to the BSA.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2008, we wrote about how the benefits of piracy aren’t always in the expected places. A lawyer in the UK offered to represent falsely accused file sharers for free, while the subject of a RIAA lawsuit lost… thanks to evidence destruction. Mattel followed in the footsteps of Hasbro and forced Scrabulous offline in the areas where it owned the rights to Scrabble, AMC attacked (then backed off from) Mad Men fan accounts on Twitter, and more academics joined the crowd criticizing the EU’s push for copyright extension.

Filed Under: history, look back

FBI Joins Investigation Of LAPD Gang Unit Officers Who Did Their Own Selective Editing Of Body Cam Recordings

Failures

from the we-control-the-horizontal dept

If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, right? That’s what law enforcement and surveillance agencies tell us, coaxing us into letting our guard down so they can dig into our stuff without worrying about little things like probable cause.

Cops like to do their work without creating narratives they can’t challenge. Hence the resistance to recording devices, despite the fact body cameras remain far more useful to prosecutors than to members of the public demanding better police accountability.

The Los Angeles Police Department is host to myriad problems. Among those many problems are its officers. Los Angeles is home to a number of gangs. It’s also home to a number of officers who believe the best way to police the gang problem is to generate junk data (which is then fed to its crime fighting AI) and engage in bogus enforcement activity.

One of the generally accepted methods of handling gang crime is allowing officers to call pretty much anyone they run into a “gang member.” On top of that, there’s the LAPD’s “gang unit,” which is supposed to be composed of officers with specific skills that allow them to more effectively grapple with the city’s gang problem.

Instead, it appears “gang unit” is a name that generates the wrong connotation. Instead of insinuating these are gang-focused crime fighters, the name could be read to mean the “unit” is just another “gang” (like those so common in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department) that thinks fighting crime means being aggressive, violent, and unwilling to comply with PD rules.

And that’s how cops become suspects, as the Los Angeles Times reported last week.

Several members of an LAPD gang unit that is often responsible for serving warrants on suspected criminals recently found themselves on the other side of the equation — as subjects of search warrants that allowed the department’s internal affairs investigators to take the rare step of inspecting their lockers.

The precise nature of the allegations against officers remains unclear, but, according to multiple sources who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation, some of those targeted by the search warrants were found to have routinely switched off their body cameras during traffic stops.

Come for the locker searches. Stay for the last sentence. “Routinely switched off their body cameras.”

Policies say this isn’t allowed. These cops don’t care. And, up until now, their refusal to comply with body camera policy hasn’t affected their jobs.

But now it is. And for good reason. If you’re doing your job right, you won’t care that it’s being documented by the narc pinned to your chest. But if you’re doing it wrong, you’ll want to make sure the eye blinks when told to in order to deliver the narrative that supports whatever violations you’ve just engaged in.

While officers may decide they have nothing to fear from internal investigations performed by people most cops consider to be traitors (read: Internal Affairs), these gang unit officers are now up against an agency that doesn’t care what LAPD gang unit members think of it.

The FBI has joined a widening investigation into a Los Angeles Police Department gang unit whose members are accused of routinely failing to document their actions during traffic stops, an alleged pattern of deception that Mayor Karen Bass called “very disturbing.”

Sure, the FBI has its own problems that it won’t fix, but its involvement here means the LAPD can’t continue to ignore selective on-the-fly-editing of body cam footage by gang unit members. Instead, it will have to face whatever’s uncovered by the FBI, which has the power to force the LAPD to hand over data and documents it would never hand over voluntarily to anyone else, including its own in-house “oversight.”

The investigation was triggered by a complaint from a driver who claimed he and his car were unconstitutionally searched. But before this could be swept under the rug and/or dismissed as the rantings of a person who didn’t enjoy their last interaction with LAPD officers, enough was discovered that locker searches were ordered and the FBI invited into the fold.

Two gang unit officers were found to have “not properly documented the detention, or their actions.” By switching off their cameras until they moved forward with an arrest, the officers obscured the events that led to this action. And that discovery led to more discoveries: the two officers involved were found to have done this on multiple occasions, allowing their body cameras to record only what the officers wanted them to record.

Two officers may not seem like much given the number of officers the LAPD employees. But if two officers felt comfortable doing this, it would be insane to believe these were the only two officers who felt OK with editing the permanent record on the fly. Hence the IA investigation. And hence the likely more effective FBI investigation.

Tip of the iceberg, as they say. There will be more to come. The rules have changed for the LAPD and its gang unit. But that doesn’t mean officer behavior has been altered.

According to an LAPD online dashboard, the Mission gang unit is among the most active in the city’s 21 police divisions, but nearly 10% of the unit’s traffic stops were considered pretextual, meaning officers used minor traffic violations as a reason to pull over vehicles and search them for evidence of more serious crimes. The data show the Mission‘s has the highest rate of such stops among all of the department’s gang units.

In March 2022, the department tightened its rules on pretextual stops, after years of pressure from police reformists and politicians who argued they disproportionately affect people of color.

You can take the bias out of the policy, but you can’t take the bias out of the officer. The policy alters the contours for pretextual stops. It also mandates officers record the justification for the stop on the body cameras when performing a pretextual stop.

Judging from what’s been revealed so far, we can make an educated guess as to what’s happening. The pretextual stops are continuing in violation of department orders. Covering up this violation of policies means not recording the information department policy mandates. It’s the cop version of asking for forgiveness, rather than asking for permission. And that version means never asking for forgiveness.

A law unto themselves. That’s the gang unit officers caught so far. There will be more. And by the end of it, people will have even less reason to trust cops, nor any reason to believe their primary interests are protecting and serving anyone but themselves.

Filed Under: body cam, fbi, gangs, lapd, police gangs

Gannett Stops Using AI To Write Articles For Now Because They Were Hilariously Terrible

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the i'm-sorry-dave,-but-i-hate-high-school-sports-reporting dept

There may come a time when journalists around the world are left to point at massive datacenters housing AI journo-bots that have perfectly replicated what human journalists can do, screaming “Dey took ‘er jerbs!” like a South Park episode, but today is not that day. And frankly, it doesn’t feel particularly close to being that day. Over the past few months, as AI platforms have exploded in number and notoriety, as have genuinely interesting ways for using those tools exploded, so too have we written a number of posts on attempts to have bots write journalistic articles only to find them to be sub-par in the extreme.

The world of sports journalism has always been considered the kid brother to the big boy and girl journalists. So perhaps you won’t think it as big a deal when a company like Gannett has to admit that its attempt at injecting AI-written articles for local sports news coverage was a failure, but it’s ultimately all the same problem. And in the case of several of these attempts, the problem went viral and everyone had a good laugh at how terrible the output was.

If you’re not much of a sports fan, or don’t read any sports journalism, allow me to highlight the issues in that brief post. First, it sounds as though it was written by a robot. That was drunk. Or possibly high. Or perhaps had played football itself and taken one too many hits to its primary server. It’s devoid of any specifics, such as named players or descriptions of any plays, particularly important scoring plays. Also, scoring 6 points in the final quarter of a football game and losing is not a “spirited fourth-quarter performance.” And “close encounter of the athletic kind”? What the actual hell?

But in case you thought that these publications would have a policy for these articles being reviewed by actual human meat-sacks, or that the above example is as bad as it could get, allow me to disabuse you of both notions with a single article that was written by LedeAI for the Columbus Dispatch.

The Dispatch’s ethical guidelines state that AI content has to be verified by humans before being used in reporting, but it’s unclear whether that step was taken. Another AI-written sports story in the Dispatch initially failed to generate team names, publishing “[[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]]” and “[[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]].” The Dispatch has since updated AI-generated stories to correct errors.

So, no, clearly these papers aren’t doing any serious form of human-checking of these AI-written posts. And that’s a pretty big god damned problem in a world in which the credibility of journalists and journalism is under such constant assault. Outsourcing journalism to AI that writes like a 7 year old that is thumbing through a thesaurus isn’t going to inspire a great deal of confidence in journalism.

Look, there is likely a place for AI in journalism. But it just isn’t, as of now, in a state in which it can replace journalists. That seems to be the misunderstanding here. AI is a tool for journalists to use, not one that can do the job of journalism.

Filed Under: ai, ai reporting, journalism
Companies: gannett

Tesla, Rivian Put On Fake Show Of Support For ‘Right To Repair’

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the watch-what-we-do,-not-what-we-say dept

You may have noticed that there’s a massive, bipartisan push afoot to pass “right to repair” laws in many states making it easier and cheaper to repair the things you buy.

In a bid to undermine those laws, automakers and companies like John Deere have been using a fairly consistent playbook. One, they’ll lie about how such popular reform poses massive security and privacy threats to consumers. Two, they’ll strike hollow, voluntary agreements with key industry groups in a bid to pretend that the industry can self-regulate (they can’t) and real reform isn’t necessary (it is).

For example, John Deere has a long history of making tractor repair as inconvenient and expensive as possible in a bid to monopolize maintenance. And every so often they’ll strike a “memorandum of understanding” with a group like the American Farm Bureau Federation, pinky swearing that they’ll play nice if such groups avoid supporting right to repair legislation. It’s always bullshit.

The auto industry has taken a similar tack.

Under the banner of the “Alliance for Automotive Innovation,” the industry has recently struck deals with groups like the Automotive Service Association (ASA) and the Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS) promising to play nice on right to repair issues if these organizations refuse to support state right to repair legislation. But again, activists say the voluntary agreements aren’t worth much:

“We don’t think it means anything,” said Tommy Hickey, director of the Right to Repair Coalition, whose group led the campaign to pass the Massachusetts Data Access Law in 2020. “If you read the language, it says we’ll only give you telematic information if it’s absolutely necessary.”

EV makers Rivian and Tesla recently made of show of supporting these recent agreements as evidence of their support for right to repair issues. But they’re not actually supporting meaningful new laws, they’re just supporting the empty, voluntary agreements the industry has struck with several trade groups to pre-empt new laws. There’s nothing actually meaningfully enforceable here; it’s the equivalent of a pinky swear.

Among the auto blogs that covered the announcement, few pointed out the hollowness of such agreements. In most of the blogs, Tesla, which was just hit with two class actions for unlawfully curbing competition for maintenance and replacement parts for its electric vehicles, gets to pretend it’s already leading the way on “right to repair” reform. Without actually having to, you know, do anything:

“Tesla’s mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy includes empowering independent repairers to service electric vehicles as the global fleet grows,” Tesla Public Policy and Business Development Vice President Rohan Patel wrote. “Through a comprehensive library of publicly available manuals and guides, Tesla already provides extensive information for independent and do-it-yourself repairers.

Both companies claim there’s nothing that needs fixing. But in the real world, Tesla’s efforts to monopolize repair and maintenance (as well as its terrible customer service) are well established. This is, after all, a company that just got caught not only intentionally and dramatically overstating EV ranges, but creating a team specifically designed to undermine customer efforts to get help.

In one instance, Tesla wanted $22,500 or more to replace a dying EV battery on a used car worth $23,000, when independent repair shops were able to do the same repair for less than $5,000. While Tesla does provide token diagnostic support for independent repair shops via its $3,000 a year (or $100 an hour) Toolbox platform, it still greatly restricts the far less expensive replacement of actual parts. Rivian repairs for even minor fender benders can also be comically expensive; not simply because the vehicles are complex, but because of elaborate, often-convoluted restrictions on repair and replacement parts.

Both Rivian and Tesla claim to be innovatively a step beyond the traditional auto industry, but when it comes to making automotive repair as expensive, nontransparent, and annoying as possible, so far they’re not too far out of step with the rest of the pack.

Filed Under: automotive, car repair, class action, maintanance, massachusetts, right to repair
Companies: rivian, tesla

L. Ron Hubbard’s Estate Is Against Right To Repair For Scientology’s E-Meters

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the clear-bullshit dept

For years we’ve covered the silly triennial review process associated with Section 1201 of the DMCA. If you don’t know, Section 1201 is the part that makes circumvention of any “technological measures” a form of infringement, even if bypassing those technological measures is not for copyright infringing reasons. It’s actually even worse than that, because it’s not just the actual circumvention that could violate the rules, but any attempt to “manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in…” anything that can be used for circumventing.

It does not take long to realize how this would turn all sorts of perfectly reasonable activities into violations of the law, and rather than admit that this showed how flawed the underlying law was, Congress dealt with it through the “triennial review” process, whereby every three years, anyone could apply to the Librarian of Congress to exempt certain situations from 1201. It’s a convoluted and silly process, but after the first five or six such reviews, it has gotten less ridiculous and less controversial (though still problematic).

One issue that went haywire a decade ago was the decision not to renew an exemption on mobile phone jailbreaking (yes, each exemption has to be reapplied for every three years). These days, it seems that the Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyright are well aware of that shitfest, and exemption renewals are pretty much a rubber stamp. In the last triennial review, the Copyright Office made it clear that their new “streamlined process” means past exemptions will be renewed unless something has drastically changed.

For as screwed up as the overall process is, this is a good thing. Having people rely on an exemption only to have it go away would be a disaster.

Anyway, the next triennial review is slated for next year, but the process has already begun. In July, we got petitions to renew the existing exemptions, and in August we got petitions for new exemptions.

Again, ever since the jailbreaking fiasco, the renewal petitions have generally been uncontroversial. One exception may be in the medical device arena, where a bunch of medical device makers sued the Library of Congress last year over the expanded exemption on getting data out of your medical devices. Not surprisingly, a bunch of medical device industry folks are opposing that renewal.

There was also the always expected whining from the DVC Copy Control folks who always oppose any attempt to be able to get content off of DVDs.

However, there was one other opposition to a renewal this year, which came out of nowhere. It’s from “Author Services Inc.” which describes itself as “Representing the literary, theatrical and musical works of L. Ron Hubbard.” (Today I learned that L. Ron Hubbard released musical albums, but I digress).

L. Ron Hubbard, of course, is the sci-fi writer who duped thousands of people into believing in a very silly “religion” that he made up to get rich. Part of that “religion” is the “e-meter” that they use for “auditing,” which is a bunch of junk science where they try to get people to tell the organization a bunch of things they can use against you later.

The Hubbard estate (dba “Author Services Inc.”) suddenly seems very concerned about the exception for “computer programs that are contained in and control the function of a lawfully acquired device that is primarily designed for use by consumers, when circumvention is a necessary step to allow the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of such a device….” This is the “right to repair” exemption for 1201, which lets you ignore 1201 for repairing devices (but not much more).

Apparently the Hubbard estate didn’t know or care about this until recently, as I can find no evidence of it weighing in when that exemption was being considered originally.

However, now Hubbard’s estate is worried that people might take apart their e-meters, it seems. Perhaps because the Play with Junk YouTube channel got an old e-meter off of eBay and took it apart. The general conclusion was that the “$5,000” device is what appears to be a hand-built device with approximately $200 worth of components.

So, Hubbard’s estate doesn’t mention the e-meter specifically, but does say it’s concerned about this exemption for a very specific reason:

Many consumer devices are sold in the open market to ordinary consumers and are accompanied by unilateral ·’shrink-wrap” licenses governing the terms of use of the software contained within the device. We have no objection to the exemption as applied to these consumer devices to allow consumers to repair products on their own initiative.

Other devices, however can only be purchased and used by someone who possess particular qualifications or has been specifically trained in the use of the device. In such cases, the license agreement regarding the use of the software that controls the device is not a unilateral “shrink-wrap” license but rather is negotiated and agreed to in advance of the purchase of the device. Such agreements may impose restrictions on transfer and use of the device itself, as well as restrictions on the use of the controlling software. In many case, such restrictions are essential to ensuring the safe and proper use of the device, which is essential for the device manufacture to maintain its reputation and goodwill.

Basically, because we say the e-meter needs special training, people shouldn’t be able to take it apart.

Remember, the Church of Scientology is somewhat famously litigious and threatening (they recently sent us an angry letter for merely reporting on a John Oliver bit that mentions Scientology in passing). Being able to threaten and/or sue people for taking apart their e-meters is probably something that is appealing to them. Scientology certainly has a history of using copyright law to bully critics.

Hopefully the Copyright Office knows better than to think this is a legitimate concern or a reason to change the right to repair exemption. To their credit, the Hubbard Estate isn’t asking to get rid of the exemption entirely, but just to modify it to make clear it doesn’t apply to devices that “may only be purchased by someone who possess particular qualifications and/or has been specifically trained in the use of the device.”

But, first off, that makes no sense, and creates a massive loophole which device makers will use to block repair of all sorts of devices. And, really, this just seems like “Author Services Inc.” looking for yet another tool to bully people with frivolous, vexatious threats and lawsuits.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca 1201, e-meters, l. ron hubbard, right to repair, scientology, triennial review
Companies: author services inc.

Florida Prison Confiscates Newspapers After Deciding Puzzle Game Might Be A Way To Send ‘Coded Messages’

Free Speech

from the sort-of-stupidity-only-bureaucracy-can-provide dept

Censorship is a priority for prison systems. Despite publicly claiming to be instrumental in the act of “rehabilitation,” correctional facilities generally engage in the sort of non-productive paranoia that ensures the only resources prisoners have are… other prisoners. And we’re all supposed to act like it’s a surprise when people re-offend. Or worse, exit this “rehabilitation” process more criminally-minded than when they were remanded to the custody of the state.

Without even going into the massive amount of restrictions awaiting those who exit prison, there’s nothing about the process that actually allows people to better themselves while paying down their debt to society. Online access is stifled. The only books allowed are those deemed so innocuous they can’t do anything more than help prisoners pass the time. Legal research is discouraged because it might allow prisoners to realize their rights are violated regularly.

Anything of a sexual nature is prohibited. Anything discussing anything slightly related to criminal activity is forbidden. Anything that shows up in a keyword search for “prison” is considered too risky to be accessed by prisoners, which means George Orwell, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus are persona non grata when it comes to reading material.

The criminal justice system prefers to treat everyone like adults (to maximize punishment), but once handed over to the prison system, they’re treated like children. And that’s if they’re lucky. In most cases, their humanity is never recognized at all.

Because prison systems are run by government employees and overseen by massive bureaucracies (and that includes those that have been “privatized”), Orwell, Kafka, and Camus still play a part in the outcome of this combination, even if their literature is verboten.

That’s how insanity like this happens, as reported by Elizabeth Weill-Greenburg for The Appeal:

In July, officials at Avon Park Correctional Institution impounded two issues of the Key West Citizen over concerns with the “Celebrity Cipher,” a syndicated word puzzle that appears next to the crossword. Staff asserted that the game violates a Florida Department of Corrections rule prohibiting “publication[s] … written in code,” according to a copy of the impoundment notices shared with The Appeal. The issues were impounded pending a review by the FDC Literature Review Committee, which is scheduled to meet on August 31.

The Celebrity Cipher is a syndicated game that asks readers to decipher a celebrity quote by solving a puzzle in which each letter is replaced by a different letter. The Citizen publishes the Celebrity Cipher on the same page as the Sudoku, daily horoscopes, and “Dear Abby” advice column.

This act of censorial stupidity (which the Florida Department of Corrections has refused to comment on) is receiving attention from rights groups — not just because it’s inexplicable, but because it’s an obviously bullshit use of the Correction Department’s powers.

This is from a letter sent to the prison by the ACLU:

The Celebrity Cipher is a puzzle created from quotations from well-known people, living or dead, that the reader has to decipher. It is a puzzle game syndicated by Andrews McNeel Syndication and is carried in newspapers across the country, usually printed near comic strips or crossword puzzles. The Key West Times normally publishes the cipher on the same pages as a Sudoku puzzle, crossword, Dear Abby column, and the horoscopes. This game is for entertainment, and it does not contain hidden messages for incarcerated people. The game is not “written in code;” nor is it apparent how the game could “be used to create coded messages indecipherable by staff.”

Included in the letter are two examples of the national syndicated “Celebrity Cipher.”

The prison is correct: it is “written in code.” But the coded message goes to everyone who purchases the newspaper, not just inmates. And it’s insane to believe a nationally syndicated puzzle is being used to pass messages for or to inmates.

Newspapers have always been given the utmost in First Amendment protections. These protections extend not only to their sources, but their readers. Even if the puzzle is not necessarily “newsworthy,” it is part of a paper that gives prisoners access to issues of public interest. They may be incarcerated, but they’re still members of the public.

Using the illogical argument anything not written in plain English is off-limits to prisoners is going to generate lawsuits and courtroom losses — something this prison (and the state agency that oversees it) has chosen to ignore in favor of limiting access to issues of public interest.

This same point is made in the Florida Press Association’s letter to the Florida Department of Corrections:

We do not believe the puzzle can be used by inmates to create “coded message” or communications “written in code,” as is asserted. The puzzles are created for the reading public to solve for their own entertainment. They do not contain any hidden messages for inmates nor is there any evidence that they teach ways to code messages for secret communications by inmates. Further, broadly interpreting the puzzle this way apparently makes the entire newspaper off-limits, which seems overly punitive. 

We believe the impoundment action infringes upon the First Amendment rights of both the newspaper’s publisher and its incarcerated subscribers.  The justification offered for the ban is unsupported by the contents of the impounded issue. There is no explanation as to how the puzzle presents a threat to security, order, or rehabilitative objectives of the correctional system or the safety of others, and nothing in the content can reasonably be interpreted to present such a threat. 

This is immediately followed by the Press Association calling bullshit on Avon Correctional’s stupidity:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s test that there be a rational connection to safety and security has not been met. Rather, the decision appears to be arbitrary and irrational. 

This was a stupid move by the prison. If it doesn’t roll this back, it’s going to get sued by people who actually know the law. And there’s really nothing that looks worse than not knowing the law while being in the business of law enforcement. What happened here can only very charitably be considered an error. What it most likely is what it always is: just another way to let prisoners know they don’t matter.

Filed Under: celebrity cipher, florida, florida department of corrections, free seech, newspapers, puzzles
Companies: aclu, avon park correctional, key west citizen

Daily Deal: The 2023 Technology Professional Bundle

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The 2023 Technology Professional Bundle has 9 courses to teach you about becoming an information systems security professional. This bundle is designed for those interested in learning the basics of information systems security, including but not limited to security and risk management, asset management, security architecture and engineering, communication and network security, and more. It’s on sale for $60.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

MTA Website Doles Out Rider History Data With Just A Credit Card Number

Privacy

from the watching-you,-watching-me dept

We’ve noted for years how there’s no limit of companies and organizations that over-collect data on your daily movement patterns, then fail to adequately secure that data. Whether it’s your mobile phone carrier, your smartphone maker, your favorite app, or a rotating crop of dodgy data brokers, our corrupt failure to pass even a baseline privacy law for the Internet era is the gift that keeps on giving.

A lack of regulatory oversight of data collection has normalized lazy data practices everywhere you look. Case in point: Joseph Cox at 404 Media discovered that in NYC, the MTA’s OMNY contactless payment system easily spews out a rider’s detailed subway ridership history if you plug in a user’s credit card number, which can often be obtained via the dark web:

“Obviously this is a great fit for abusers who live with their victims or have physical access, however brief, to their wallets,” Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at activist organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and who has extensively researched how abusive partners use technology, told 404 Media. “​​Credit card info is not a goddamn unique identifier.”

This could have easily been avoided with a simple PIN or password. While OMNY users can sign up for a password protected account, the system defaults to the no password, no authentication option. 404 Media points to a 2019 study by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) that expressed concerns that the payment system could be easily abused:

“Given how often government agencies, including the New York Police Department (‘NYPD’), have abused surveillance data to target ethnic and religious minorities and how for- profit corporations face overwhelming pressure to monetize user data, OMNY has the potential to expose millions of transit users to troubling repercussions”

New York City is also taking heat for its longstanding Wi-Fi kiosk program LinkNYC, which still non transparently over-collects the data of users and passersby alike despite years of complaints by privacy activists.

There are two major reasons we don’t have even a basic privacy law for the internet era that holds governments, organizations, and corporations accountable for lazy security practices. One, the data collection is immensely profitable to just an ocean of companies and industries which lobby against reform in unison. Two, it routinely allows the government to avoid having to get pesky warrants.

It’s not clear how many privacy scandals we need to bear witness to before real reform actually occurs, but it’s abundantly clear we’re going to be waiting a long while.

Filed Under: location data, mta, nyc, privacy, security, subway
Companies: mta

Kansas State Police Tell Court It’s Too Much To Ask For Troopers To Respect The Constitution

Legal Issues

from the hey-you-can't-demand-we-comply-with-the-law dept

Given enough time and attention, informal parlance just becomes… parlance. And so it is for the Kansas State Police. For years, troopers have evaded the Constitution and applicable Supreme Court decisions to make the Fourth Amendment irrelevant.

There’s a term for this: “Kansas two step.” Enough drivers have encountered it that it is no longer deniable. Enough courts have dealt with the resulting lawsuits to make this informal term part of the national parlance. And, most recently, a federal court judge blew past all the “reasonable” explanations for the unlawful extension of pretextual traffic stops (ones that inordinately targeted drivers with out of state plates) to call bullshit on the KSP’s reliance on ignorance of law (by those they stopped) to perform unlawful searches.

Here’s how the “Kansas two step” works: following a traffic stop (often for pretextual reasons), the trooper will hand a citation/warning to the driver and say something noncommittal like “We’re good here.” A noncommittal phrase is essential. It does not affirmatively state the driver is free to go.

The driver, hearing this statement, may assume they’re free to go. That’s when the second step kicks in. Troopers will then say something like, “Oh, hey, one more thing…” and move on towards more questioning of the driver. The driver at this point isn’t sure what their legal rights are. They have never been advised of them by the troopers. And despite being told something that somewhat equates to “you’re free to go,” they’ve never been told in plain English they’re free to go.

So, they re-engage (despite having no desire to) with the trooper. The questions become more direct. The push towards obtaining consent for a search escalates from conversational to the law enforcement equivalent of a hard sell.

As they say, that’s where they get you.

But this is no longer acceptable. A lawsuit brought against the state police resulted in a judge calling out every bit of this unconstitutional two step.

[T]he KHP has not satisfied its burden of proving that its policies and practices satisfy the Fourth Amendment; troopers unlawfully detain motorists based on factors which do not satisfy the low bar of reasonable suspicion, and the KHP has not shown that such motorists give constitutionally valid consent to the prolonged periods of detention which they confront. Such policies and practices must be condemned as unlawful. 

Not only does this tactic thumb its nose at the restrictions placed on law enforcement by the Supreme Court’s 2015 Rodriguez decision, it thumbs its nose at long-held Fourth Amendment standards. As a result, the court ordered the Kansas State Police to engage in thorough documentation of traffic stops in hopes of deterring troopers from abusing citizens and their rights when traveling in or through a state (conveniently) surrounded by states that have legalized marijuana possession.

The changes ordered did not prevent KSP from performing stops or even engaging in prolonged questioning of drivers. All it did was ask the State Police to document the interactions and provide a narrative that articulated the reasonable suspicion or probable cause used to extend stops and engage in searches.

The KSP has not implemented any of this yet. Instead, it has ushered its resources (read: tax dollars) to argue it should not have to justify anything about these stops, much less generate a paper trail that might be used against it in court when it decides to go back to doing the unconstitutional thing.

[I]n the court filing, Assistant Attorney General Stanley Parker argued that Vratil’s proposed requirements were much too onerous.

Requiring troopers seek supervisory approval for a consensual stop, he argued, was “impractical” as it would “unduly lengthen the amount of time a driver is detained while waiting for supervisory approval.”

Other requirements, such as informing motorists that they can revoke consent for a search at any time, “impairs troopers ability to do their job.”

And Parker wrote that a special master would be a step too far. The court’s finding that four vehicle stops were unconstitutional, as well as data on a disproportionate number of out-of-state vehicle stops, were not sufficient to establish that the agency systematically violated the constitutional rights of drivers.

What’s the phrase the kids are using on the internet these days? Oh, yeah. Rights don’t care about your feelings. That the KSP feels complying with the Constitution might be a burden sucks for the KSP only. Compliance is the minimum the law requires. Crying about the costs or “burdens” rings pretty hollow when it’s coming from an agency that placed the burden on drivers to show their rights had been violated repeatedly by opportunistic two-steppers.

What’s the other phrase used so often these days? Oh. Right. Go fuck yourselves.

As the report from the Topeka Capital-Journal notes, this is far from unsettled law. KSP troopers have already been found to be on the wrong side of the law twice.

Earlier this year, two separate federal juries found that individual troopers violated constitutional rights during traffic stops.

The court system has already (twice!) found troopers’ actions to be unconstitutional. That it’s going to be a pain in the ass for the KSP to police itself is a direct result of its own actions. That it might be difficult to achieve this doesn’t matter. If the KSP doesn’t like the situation it’s in now, it maybe should have tried to deter unlawful behavior by troopers using all the time and resources it had in apparent excess years before it started getting sued on the regular.

The court has yet to respond to the KSP’s desire to separate itself from any form of accountability. But if you’d like to read its whining in its unabridged form, here’s the filing [PDF]. Suffice it to say, this is something the Kansas State Police could have prevented. That it never cared to do so doesn’t mean it should be able to dodge the (minimal) obligations placed on it by a federal court.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, detention, kansas, kansas state police, khp, ksp, search, traffic stop