FBI, ICE Are Running Facial Recognition Searches Against State Drivers' Databases

from the access-all-areas dept

Biometric databases have a hunger for data. And they're getting fed. Government agencies are shoving every face they can find into facial recognition databases. Expanding the dataset means adding people who've never committed a crime and, importantly, who've never given their explicit consent to have their personal details handed over to federal agencies.

Thanks to unprecedented levels of cooperation across all levels of government, FBI and ICE are matching faces using data collected from millions of non-criminals. The agencies are apparently hoping this will all work out OK, rather than create a new national nightmare of shattered privacy and violated rights. Or maybe they just don't care.

Thousands of facial-recognition requests, internal documents, and e-mails over the past five years, obtained through public-records requests by Georgetown University researchers and provided to The Washington Post, reveal that federal investigators have turned state Department of Motor Vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.

Police have long had access to fingerprints, DNA, and other ‘‘biometric data’’ taken from criminal suspects. But the DMV records contain the photos of the majority of a state’s residents, most of whom have never been charged with a crime.

This is nothing new for the FBI, which has long had access to facial recognition databases loaded with low-res photos and millions of innocent peoples' faces. ICE's access to these databases may be a bit newer, but it has been increasing its surveillance power for years.

The thing about the access to state DMV databases is it may not be strictly legal. There's been no Congressional authorization of federal agency access to state databases. This hasn't been approved via statute at state level either. Members of the House Oversight Committee are now asking questions about FBI and ICE's access, but this concern arrives several years after the fact.

ICE's access to these databases promises to work out well for the agency. A number of states have extended driving privileges to undocumented immigrants and more state legislatures are looking to add that option. This feeds even more faces and personal info into databases ICE can access, allowing the agency to streamline its immigration enforcement operations.

So far, neither of the agencies are willing to comment on the issue. ICE refused to comment on its DMV database access, claiming any further details would hurt its enforcement efforts. The FBI was forced to comment during recent oversight hearings, but the statement it delivered is nothing more than jingoistic jargon.

Asked to comment, the FBI cited congressional testimony last month of Deputy Assistant Director Kimberly Del Greco, who said facial-recognition technology was critical ‘‘to preserve our nation’s freedoms, ensure our liberties are protected, and preserve our security.’’

As it stands now, the FBI has access to more than 641 million face photos, according to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO also noted the FBI's facial recognition software was inaccurate, its databases were loaded with non-criminals, and the DOJ had expressed zero interest in scaling back access or improving the quality of its data haystacks. How this is edging the nation closer to the misty-eyed ideal the Deputy Assistant Director trotted out before Congress last month is anyone's guess.

All the talk about preserving liberties and protecting liberties doesn't mean much when most of the nation's drivers are unwilling participants in the federal government's facial recognition experiments.

Filed Under: data sharing, drivers' licenses, facial recognition, fbi, ice

Ubisoft Once Again Crowdsourcing Content For Video Game, Once Again Gets Unwarranted Backlash

from the cwf+rtb dept

Between crowdsourcing and the explosion of indie video game developers, many of which are far more permissive in IP realms and far better at actually connecting with their fans, we are perhaps entering a golden age for fan involvement in the video games they love. And it's not just the indie developers getting into this game either; the AAA publishers are, too. One example of this came up last year, when Ubisoft worked with HitRECord to allow fans of the Beyond Good and Evil franchise to submit potential in-game music creations. On HitRECord, other fans would be able to vote and even remix those works. At the end of it all, any music Ubisoft used for Beyond Good and Evil 2 would be paid for out of a pool of money the company had set aside. Cool, right?

Not for some in the gaming industry itself. Many who work in the industry decried Ubisoft's program as denying those who make music professionally income for the creation of the game music. Others called Ubisoft's potential payment to fans for their creations "on-spec" solicitations, in which companies only pay for work that actually makes it into the game, a practice that is seen as generally unethical in the industry. Except neither of those criticisms were accurate. Ubisoft specifically carved out a few places for fans to put music into the game, not the entire game. And the "on-spec" accusation would only make sense if these fans were in the gaming music industry, which they weren't. Instead, Ubisoft was actually just trying to connect with its own fans and create a cool program in which those fans could contribute artistically to the game they love, and even make a little money doing so.

Fortunately, Ubisoft has apparently not let the criticism keep it from continuing with these experiments, as the company has put out the call for the same sort of program for its next Watchdogs game.

Last week, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt ‏announced on Twitter that his music production company, HitRecord, would once again partner with Ubisoft, this time to help the publisher create 10 songs for its upcoming open world hacker game, Watch Dogs: Legion. This immediately re-ignited an old debate about the ethics of soliciting work for big budget games from fans.

“10 original songs. Collaboratively made for #WatchDogsLegion. By YOU. Come play w/ us,” Gordon-Levitt tweeted on July 11. According to the FAQ on Ubisoft’s website, the publisher will be paying $20,000 for the original music which will be played during the game, like, as one example offered, while you’re driving around the game’s version of London. At $2,000 per song, the proceeds will end up being paid out through HitRecord to whichever of the platform’s users helped create the music.

Once again, you have to really, really work hard to find something unethical in any of that. And, yet, all of the same criticisms are arising. On the one hand, sure, it's mildly understandable that creatives don't like being routed around by gaming companies. On the other hand, it's hard to come off as more anti-fan than complaining about a $20k payout for 10 fan-made songs within a professional game. And yet again, here come the complaints about this being some flavor of on-spec work.

“This sucks,” tweeted Mike Bithell, developer of Thomas Was Alone and the upcoming John Wick Hex game, under the “nospec” hashtag. “Pay people for their labour. Stop exploiting fans and hobbyists, while devaluing the work of those with the gall to actually expect consistent payment for work done. Do better Ubi, we’re counting on you.”

“I am still not a fan of what read[s] as ‘spec work under a proprietary open non-exclusive license’ model, & prefer the ‘pay someone to browse SoundCloud to find cool music for which you then talk to the creator & pay them too,’” tweeted Vambleer’s Rami Ismail.

And yet the fans appear to love this, having contributed to the previous game enough that Ubisoft wanted to do it all over again. Here's the thing: if professional video game music composers are confident in their work, they really shouldn't see this as some kind of a huge threat. And I say that as someone that loves video game music. A game company trying to get fans involved in certain parts of the game creation isn't some great evil. It's CwF+RtB, which is something we like around these parts.

Filed Under: competition, connect with fans, fans, music, video games, watchdogs
Companies: hitrecord, ubisoft

Idaho Magistrate Judge Shoots Down Another Government Request For Compelled Fingerprint Production

from the on-the-Fifth,-I've-told-you-twice dept

Another small victory for Constitutional rights comes via the same federal magistrate who previously rejected another law enforcement request to compel production of fingerprints to unlock a phone.

In May, federal magistrate judge Ronald E. Bush said compelled production of fingerprints violates both the Fourth and Fifth Amendment. He declared the fingerprint application itself to be a search, one performed with the assistance of the suspect. There's the Fourth Amendment issue.

And since the government hadn't provided evidence tying the suspect to the phone, producing fingerprints would provide the government with testimonial evidence it didn't have. The government wanted to search the phone for "indica of ownership" -- something it hoped to perform after it had already compelled production of fingerprints. The government had no "foregone conclusion" to work with, so forcing a suspect to give up information only they know (namely, possibly verifying ownership by unlocking the phone) implicated his Fifth Amendment protections against being forced to testify against himself.

In this case, Judge Bush has handed down another denial [PDF]. Once again, the government wants to compel the unlocking of a device but doesn't have everything it needs. What the government does have isn't much. The evidence tying the suspect to child porn possession is mostly ephemeral: IP addresses, email addresses, and online accounts. Using this as probable cause, the government is asking to search electronics seized from a searched residence. (The government also wants to search the suspect's car, presumably in case any electronics are stashed there.)

As the court points out, the government wants to do things to a phone it hasn't shown will actually need to have this stuff done to it. It's working off an assumption and that assumption isn't enough for the judge to agree to the government's proposed rights violations.

The affidavit describes a feature of the smartphone which, according to the investigator, offers users “the ability to unlock the device via the use of a fingerprint or thumbprint.” It also describes that, in the investigator’s “training and experience, cellular telephone users often enable” such a touch identification security feature “because it is considered to be a more convenient way to unlock the device than by entering a numeric or alphanumeric passcode or password, as well as a more secure way to protect the device’s contents. This is particularly true when the user(s) of the device are engaged in criminal activities and thus have a heightened concern about securing the contents of the device.”

The affiant also states that “[t]he passcode or password that would unlock the cellular telephone device found during the search of [the individual, the vehicle, or the residence] is not known to law enforcement. Thus, it will likely be necessary for law enforcement to press [the individual’s] fingers and thumbs to the [smartphone] found during the search . . . in an attempt to unlock the device for the purpose of executing the search authorized by this warrant.” However, the affidavit does not describe a particular reason to believe that the subject cellphone has enabled a touch identification feature or would have such feature enabled if the device were seized during execution of a search warrant.

The attached footnote provides further reasons why the magistrate is rejecting this application for application of fingerprints.

Regardless of the constitutional issues, the application may also be premature and not ripe for decision. The applicant presupposes that a search will uncover and result in seizure of a specific smartphone at the time of the search but does not identify the device beyond a make and model and does not account for the possibility that a search might uncover additional or different devices.

The court reminds the government that it can no longer take phone searches as lightly as it once did. The Supreme Court's Riley decision made it clear phones are not pants pockets or suitcases or file cabinets. In many cases, they can provide access to a large portion of a person's life. When the government wants access to this wealth of information, it needs to deal with sureties and particulars, not assumptions devices will hold evidence and suspects will provide the keys for entrance. Here, the government does not have enough to demand the production of these keys.

Further, the government cannot demand someone testify against himself. While other courts are still wrestling with this question, Judge Bush's stance on this issue is crystal clear:

[S]ome actions are not within the Fifth Amendment privilege. Furnishing a blood sample, for instance, or providing a handwriting or voice exemplar, standing in a lineup, or submitting to fingerprinting for identification purposes are not testimonial communications because such actions do not require the suspect “to disclose any knowledge he might have” or to “speak his guilt.” Doe, 487 U.S. at 210–211 (citations omitted). The relevant distinction is the “extortion of information from the accused, . . . the attempt to force him to disclose the contents of his own mind.” Id. at 211 (citations omitted).

There is exactly that “extortion” of information here, however. The Government seeks to use the force of a search warrant to compel an individual to literally “open” the “privacies of [his/her] life,” Riley v. California, 573 U.S. at 403, and, by doing so, “to conced[e] the existence, possession and control, and authenticity of the documents tend[ing] to incriminate him.” In re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum Dated Mar. 25, 2011, 670 F.3d at 1343. The act of being forced to use one’s fingerprint to successfully open the contents of a smartphone is the equivalent of forcing a tangible oral or written statement from that individual that he or she has at least some degree of possession and control of the phone and possession, control and knowledge of its contents.

Once again, the court finds compelled fingerprint production to unlock devices "testimonial." And if it's testimonial, it's blocked by the Fifth Amendment. The government will just have to find another way to get at the evidence it thinks might reside in the phones it thinks it might find whenever it actually manages to get a warrant signed by this judge. Until then, it seriously needs to rethink its approach to this problem because the usual stuff isn't going to work in this court.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 5th amendment, compelled production, encryption, fingerprints, idaho, magistrate judge, phones, ronald bush, unlock

Former Content Moderator Explains How Josh Hawley's Bill Would Grant Government Control Over Online Speech

from the not-a-good-idea dept

Daisy Soderberg-Rivkin, who used to work at Google as an in-house content moderator, has written a fascinating piece for the Washington Times, explaining just what a disaster Josh Hawley's anti-Section 230 bill would be for the internet. As we've discussed, Hawley's bill would require large internet companies to beg the FTC every two years to get a "certificate" granting them Section 230 protections -- and they'd only get it if they could convince 4 out of 5 of the FTC Commissioners that their content moderation efforts were "politically neutral."

Soderberg-Rivkin points out how that will stifle the kind of "clean up" efforts that most everyone -- especially folks like Senator Josh Hawley -- often claim they want when they complain about all the "bad stuff" on social media. Remember, just before introducing this bill, Hawley was whining about all the bad and dangerous content on social media. Except, under his own damn bill, social media sites would be forced to keep that content up:

Under the Hawley bill, the FTC would audit major platforms’ moderation practices every two years to determine whether those practices were “biased against a political party, political candidate or political viewpoint.” In practice, this would look something like this: A few FTC auditors would walk into a technology company and declare the beginning of the audit. They would comb through tens thousands of removals decisions, looking for those that are “politically biased” — a process that could take, at minimum, weeks to complete.

In the meantime, content moderators would hold back on their take down procedures because no one could really tell them how “politically biased” is interpreted. In other words, disinformation, Nazi propaganda and white supremacist videos would fester on the Internet. If a moderator fails this test, not only would they be fired, but thousands of lawsuits and fines would come tumbling down on the company.

At my former job, I tried to keep in mind that while I had to look at horrific content, thanks to my efforts, many others would not have to. Yet in a world where this bill passes, I would sit down at my same desk, take a deep breath and prepare myself to look at terrorist executions, aftermaths of mass shootings and hatred-motivated violence — but this time, with full knowledge that I had absolutely no control over its distribution.

To some extent, this gets at the weird mental pretzel logic Senators like Hawley keep twisting themselves into. They complain about all the bad stuff online... and think that the way to deal with that is to remove the one law that makes it possible for companies to design plans to moderate away that bad stuff.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, content moderation, free speech, government control, josh hawley
Companies: facebook, google, twitter

The CIA Wants To Make It Easier To Jail Journalists And No One In Congress Is Stopping It From Happening

from the CIA-wondering-why-we-just-can't-go-back-to-zero-accountability dept

The CIA is pushing for an expansion of a 37-year-old law that would deter journalists from covering national security issues or reporting on leaked documents. Thanks to a disillusioned CIA case officer's actions in 1975, there are currently a few limits to what can or can't be reported about covert operatives working overseas.

In 1975, Philip Agee published a memoir about his years with the CIA. Attached to his memoir -- which detailed his growing discontentment with the CIA's clandestine support of overseas dictators -- was a list of 250 CIA agents or informants. In response to this disclosure, Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), which criminalized disclosing the identity of covert intelligence agents.

The IIPA did what it could to protect journalists by limiting the definition of "covert agent" to agents serving overseas and then only those who were currently working overseas when the disclosure occurred. It also required the government to show proof the person making the disclosure was "engaged in a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose" covert agents. The law was amended in 1999 to expand the coverage to include covert agents working overseas within five years of the disclosure.

Now, the CIA is seeking to strip these protections from the IIPA. The agency wants the "overseas" requirement removed, allowing it (and other intelligence agencies) to designate whoever they want as "protected" by the IIPA in perpetuity. The removal of the overseas requirement eliminates the five-year period. Disclosing identities years after the fact will now be a criminal act.

The CIA has its reasons, as Trevor Timm reports. But they're the worst reasons.

Under the proposed law, any journalist who, say, revealed the names of “covert” CIA officers that had engaged in torture or ordered drone strikes on civilians would now be subject to prosecution — even if the newsworthy actions occurred years or decades prior or the officer in question has always been located in the United States.

In fact, the CIA explicitly referenced the revelations of the agency’s Bush-era torture program in its argument to Congress for IIPA expansion. The New York Times’s Charlie Savage obtained the CIA’s private memo in which it lobbied members of Congress. Under the memo’s “justification” section, the CIA wrote:

"Particularly with the lengths organizations such as WikiLeaks are willing to go to obtain and release sensitive national security information, as well as incidents related to past Agency programs, such as the RDI investigation, the original congressional reasoning mentioned above for a narrow definition of ‘covert agent’ no longer remains valid."

RDI is the CIA's preferred term for its torture program. It stands for "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation." If the law is amended, the scope of its coverage expands, and the public gains nothing from it. Issues like drone strikes and torture programs need all the sunlight they can get. The CIA -- and other intelligence agencies -- would prefer the general public not know what's being done in their name with their tax dollars.

Unfortunately, someone who has stood up for the press for years is allowing this amendment -- attached to the 2020 budget bill -- to move forward. Rep. Adam Schiff -- the co-founder of the Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press -- has done nothing to push back against this expansion of the IIPA.

Here, Schiff has a direct means to protect journalists from what’s sure to be a clear and present danger: He could refuse to insert the provision the CIA has requested into the intelligence bill. Instead, at least so far, he’s done the complete opposite.

As Timm points out, Schiff may be big on press freedom, but he's even bigger on surveillance state boosterism.

Sadly, when you take a good look at his record, Schiff has always favored the secrecy of intelligence agencies over journalists’ rights. Just a few weeks ago, he pushed Democrats to vote down a bill that would cut funding for one of the NSA’s controversial surveillance programs that collect Americans’ data without warrants.

If this amendment becomes law, reporting on covert activities will be something only criminals do. It will make it that much easier to punish journalists for printing facts. This comes at a time when the presidential administration has expressed open hostility towards journalists and the act of journalism and the Commander-in-Chief has called for the return of torture programs. Schiff -- like all of our representatives -- has a duty to protect the public from self-serving laws that encourage government misbehavior. Like far too many others, he's apparently convinced the security of the nation is more important than the people residing in it.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adam schiff, cia, covert agents, free speech, iipa, journalism

WIPO Now Gets Into The Extrajudicial, Zero Due Process, Censorship Act Over Sites It Declares 'Infringing'

from the not-this-again dept

Every few years this kind of thing pops up. Some ignorant organization or policymaker thinks "oh, hey, the easy way to 'solve' piracy is just to create a giant blacklist." This sounds like a simple solution... if you have no idea how any of this works. Remember, advertising giant GroupM tried just such an approach a decade ago, working with Universal Music to put together a list of "pirate sites" for which it would block all advertising. Of course, who ended up on that list? A bunch of hip hop news sites and blogs. And even the personal site of one of Universal Music's own stars was suddenly deemed an "infringing site."

These kinds of mistakes highlight just how fraught such a process is -- especially when it's done behind the scenes by organizations that face no penalty for overblocking. In such cases you always get widespread overblocking based on innuendo, speculation, and rumor, rather than any legitimate due process or court adjudication concerning infringement. Even worse, if there was actual infringement going on, one possible legal remedy would involve getting a site to take down that content. Under a "list" approach, it's just basically a death penalty for the entire site.

That's why it's especially ridiculous that WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, a part of the UN, has decided to leap gleefully into the space with one of these "blacklists" of evil piratey sites.

WIPO, which is part of the United Nations, was founded more than 50 years ago with the aim of protecting intellectual property. This includes combating online piracy, something it hopes to facilitate with its ‘BRIP’ Database, short for “Building Respect for Intellectual Property.”

So, uh, what's the process to get on the list? Surely it must involve a court of law determining that a site is engaged in copyright infringement, right? Oh, of course not.

The goal of the project is simple: allow stakeholders from member states to report problematic sites and share this list with advertisers, so they can block bad apples. This will result in less money going to pirate sites, making it harder for them to generate profit.

"Stakeholders"?

“The BRIP Database is now open for the acceptance of Authorized Contributors from WIPO Member States and Authorized Users from the advertising sector,” WIPO writes.

“It comprises a secure, access-controlled online platform, to which authorized agencies in WIPO Member States may upload lists of websites which deliberately facilitate the infringement of copyright.”

Ah. So, it's "Authorized Contributors" and "Authorized Users from the advertising sector" and the entire list is secret. It's "secure, access controlled." I'm sure that won't be abused at all.

Not answered:

• What is the process to make sure sites on the list are actually engaged in ongoing infringement?
• Are sites notified?
• Do sites have any due process by which they get to plead their own case?
• Is there any appeals process?
• How are "authorized contributors" vetted and approved?
• Will an authorized contributor lose their authorization if it is found that they have nominated sites incorrectly?
• Is there any way for the public or NGOs to review the list for accuracy?

I've sent these questions to WIPO, which has not yet responded at the time of publication.

What's fairly stunning about all of this is that anyone who knows anything about these issues and how they've been treated over the last few decades would recognize the pitfalls of WIPO's approach with BRIP. And yet... no one at WIPO even seemed to bother to care about some fairly fundamental issues regarding due process and proper adjudication of accusations of infringement. Honestly, it raises significant questions about WIPO's own understanding of copyright law.

Filed Under: advertising, blacklist, censorship, due process, transparency, un, wipo

Daily Deal: Nomad 1.5M Battery Lightning Cable

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

Rather than bogging down your pockets with a separate power bank and charging cable, the Nomad 1.5M Battery Lightning Cable streamlines them both into a single sleek and compact design. It features a durable, nylon wrapped, MFi-Certified Lightning cable that's designed to shrug off normal wear and tear, plus a high capacity 2,800mAh portable battery that packs enough juice to bring a dead iPhone 8 back to full charge. It's on sale for $20.

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

The Failure Of Courts/Regulators To Understand The Difference Between Infrastructure Providers And Edge Providers Is Going To Be A Problem

from the the-impact-is-very,-very-different dept

To some extent we've had this discussion before, as parts of other discussions about the regulation of content online, but it's worth calling it out explicitly: regulating internet infrastructure services the same as internet edge service providers is a really bad idea. And yet, here we are. So few people seem to even care enough to make a distinction. So, let's start with the basics: "edge providers" are the companies who provide internet services that you, as a end user, interact with. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Reddit, Wikipedia, Amazon's e-commerce site. These are all edge providers as currently built. Infrastructure providers, however, sit a layer (or more) down from those edge providers. They're the services that make the edge services possible. This can include domain registrars and registers, CDNs, internet security companies and more. So, companies like Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Amazon's AWS, among others are examples there.

While tons of people interact with infrastructure players all the time, your average person will never even realize they're doing so -- as the interactions tend to be mediated entirely by the edge providers. For a few years now we've been seeing attempts to move the liability questions up (or, depending on your viewpoint, down) the stack from edge providers to infrastructure players. This raises a lot of significant concerns.

At the simplest level, a big part of the concern is that the only real "remedy" for an infrastructure provider is to cease providing service altogether to the edge provider. This is an incredibly blunt instrument -- as a single accusation of a legal violation could lead an entire service to come crashing down if the infrastructure provider is sufficiently spooked about the potential liability. In short: imagine what happens when a copyright holder sends a DMCA notice not to the site that had an allegedly infringing image uploaded, but rather to that site's domain registrar. If the registrar fears liability, it might revoke the domain entirely (removing service) pulling down an entire website (or, at least, the way in which most people access that website).

There may be good arguments for cases when infrastructure providers should be involved -- perhaps the edge provider cannot be found or is deliberately ignoring actual legal notices. Then you might understand moving to a different level in the stack. But it should be justified.

Instead, it seems like many are simply targeting infrastructure because either they don't understand the difference between infrastructure and edge... or just because they know that its remedy (complete removal of service) is so big that it'll have more impact. Case in point: an Italian court has ordered Cloudflare to terminate the accounts of a few sites that the court has determined to be pirate sites. Assuming that these sites truly are engaged in infringing activities, it seems fine to hold the sites themselves accountable. But that's not what's happening here. Instead, the legal liability is being placed on Cloudflare, a company that provides CDN services, but isn't the actual host of any of the content.

In a ruling handed down by the Commercial Court of Rome late last month, Cloudflare was ordered to immediately terminate the accounts of the contested pirate sites. These include filmpertutti.uno, italiaserie.tv, piratestreaming.watch, cinemalibero.red, and various others.

In addition, Cloudflare was ordered to share the personal details of the site owners and their hosting companies with RTI.

If Cloudflare fails to comply with any of the above, it must pay a fine of €1,000 for each day the infringements continue.

While Cloudflare doesn’t see itself as a hosting provider, the Court concluded that it can be seen as such, under European law. Among other things, its “Always Online” service hosts various website resources even when the site’s servers go offline.

It's that last paragraph that's most important. Basically, that's the court saying "we don't care that you're an infrastructure provider, we're going to treat you as an edge provider." That should worry everyone. Again, unlike an edge provider that might be able to more narrowly target and adjudicate activity that violates laws (or terms of service), Cloudflare's only real ability here is to cut off service entirely. That's a pretty extreme solution.

But it's not just Italian courts doing this. Gizmodo recently had an article with the provocative title, The Dirty Business of Hosting Hate Online. That article details various parts of the web in which truly vile people with pretty despicable views hang out. And, I can completely empathize with why people are both upset and troubled by such corners of the internet. I'm uncomfortable with them as well. But, is their answer to blame the lower level infrastructure providers? The Gizmodo article certainly seems to think so. The entire article reads like an attempt to shame those infrastructure providers into cutting ties.

Four years later, the Council of Conservative Citizens’ website is still online, pumping out stories about “black serial murderers.” Those pieces are now slotted between odes to nationalist politicians like Nigel Farage, advertisements for a white supremacist conference at a Tennessee state park, and a widget tracking the progress of a crowdfunding campaign to help build Donald Trump’s border wall.

All of that content is still out there, waiting to be found by the next Dylan Roof. But the people behind the site aren’t able to spread their message without some help: The group’s website is hosted by a Michigan-based company called Liquid Web and registered by web infrastructure giant GoDaddy, a publicly traded company currently valued at over $12 billion.

There's a lot more in the article, but almost all of it is targeted at infrastructure providers. Indeed, the story's title is a bit misleading, focusing on the "hosting" of content, which is much closer to an edge provider than most infrastructure providers. But do we actually want to live in a world in which registrars are in the business of determining what you're going to do with a domain before allowing you to register it? Imagine if Techdirt's registrar for our domain decided it didn't like our views on copyright? Would be okay with them just shutting us down and "taking" our domain?

There are big questions to be dealt with concerning how internet companies handle content online, from dealing with hate, harassment and abuse, to disinformation and other sketchy practices. And there are lots of important questions to be dealt with concerning what choices edge providers make concerning content moderation on their networks. But to conflate those questions with the questions related to infrastructure providers seems fraught with very bad scenarios of censorship or worse. It's completely reasonable to be concerned about ignorant racists putting up ignorant racist websites. But is the answer to block them from being able to do so entirely? Be careful what you wish for. And how far does that go? If we don't want racists to even be able to set up forums, does that mean we should also bar them from having internet access at all? Cut them off? No phone service either? Where exactly is the line drawn? And I'm sure some people will say that racists have no redeeming values and you have no problem with cutting them off entirely. But let's be upfront about that and think about the implications, because it's quite a long way to go from "this person is an ignorant racist" to "and therefore they shouldn't be able to use the internet at all."

Filed Under: copyright, edge, infrastructure, liability
Companies: cloudflare

5G's Latest Problem: Summer Temps Are Causing 5G Phones To Overheat

from the this-is-all-going-really-well dept

Buried underneath the blistering hype surrounding fifth-generation (5G) wireless is a quiet but growing consensus: the technology is being over-hyped, and early incarnations were rushed to market in a way that prioritized marketing over substance. That's not to say that 5G won't be a good thing when it arrives at scale several years from now, but early offerings have been almost comical in their shortcomings. AT&T has repeatedly lied about 5G availability by pretending its 4G network is 5G. Verizon's falsely telling everyone 5G will help cure cancer, but its actual deployments have been spotty and expensive.

5G device support barely exists. Apple is in no rush to get its first phones to market. The promise of 5G as a competitive and rural coverage panacea has been vastly overstated. And most surveys suggest US consumers (who already pay some of the highest data prices in the developed world) are more interested in lower bills than faster speeds. All of which is to say that 5G isn't quite the Earth-shattering revolution it has been heralded as by carriers and network vendors eager to sell more cell phones and network hardware.

There's another wrinkle being noticed by some of the folks putting these networks through their paces. Qualcomm's first generation 5G modem chipsets appear prone to overheating in summer temps, something oddly missing from the industry's marketing hype. It's a problem that's plaguing numerous carriers, according to Sascha Segan and PCMag:

"On a hot Las Vegas morning, my two Galaxy S10 5G phones kept overheating and dropping to 4G. This behavior is happening with all of the millimeter-wave, first-generation, Qualcomm X50-based phones when temperatures hit or exceed 85 degrees. We saw it with T-Mobile in New York, with Verizon in Providence, and now with AT&T in Las Vegas. It's happened on Samsung and LG phones, with Samsung, Ericsson, and Nokia network hardware."

Current 4G LTE smartphones integrate everything into one chip. Early 5G chipsets require numerous chips including a chip for the 5G mmWave modem and the mmWave antenna modules. As a result, current 5G chipsets take up a lot more room and generate notably more heat than their 4G equivalent. And while better chips are expected to arrive in time, it's another example of how early 5G adoption isn't really worth it, especially given this connectivity is being priced at a steep premium over already costly 4G LTE plans.

Again, faster, more reliable networks are always a good thing, and in time 5G will be an important natural evolution, whenever it's fully cooked and widely available. But the absurd hype we've been subjected to up to this point (5G will cure cancer! 5G will result in four day work weeks!) is actually undermining the technology. Instead of showing consumers why 5G is important, carriers and hardware vendors rushed 5G tech to market, overstated what it can do, and misrepresented where it's available, leaving consumers with the distinct impression 5G is largely just undercooked bullshit.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, overheating

EU Looking To Regulate Everything Online, And To Make Sites Proactively Remove Material

from the if-you-thought-Copyright-Directive-was-bad,-just-wait-for-Digital-Services-Act dept

One of the reasons that Techdirt and many others fought so hard against the worst ideas of the EU Copyright Directive is that it was clearly the thin end of the wedge. If things like upload filters and the imposition of intermediary liability become widely implemented as the result of legal requirements in the field of copyright, it would only be a matter of time before they were extended to other domains. Netzpolitik has obtained a seven-page European Commission paper sketching ideas for a new EU Digital Services Act (pdf) that suggests doing exactly that. The Act's reach is extremely wide:

The scope would cover all digital services, and in particular online platforms. This means the clarification would address all services across the internet stack from mere conduits such as ISPs to cloud hosting services; while a special emphasis in the assessment would be dedicated to updated rules for online platforms such as social media, search engines, or collaborative economy services, as well as for online advertising services.

A core aim is to replace the e-Commerce Directive, passed in 2000. This is presented as "outdated", but the suggestions in the paper are clearly a continuation of attacks on the fundamental principles underlying the open Internet that began with the Copyright Directive.

One of the problems for the EU when pushing through the upload filters of Article 13/17 in the Copyright Directive is that Article 15 of the e-Commerce Directive explicitly states that there is "No general obligation to monitor". Constant surveillance is the only way that upload filters can work -- if you don't monitor all the time, you can't be sure you block everything that the law requires. Furthermore, Article 14 of the e-Commerce Directive emphasizes that "the service provider is not liable for the information stored at the request of a recipient of the service". That's subject to certain conditions, such as being required to remove material that infringes on copyright, but only after being informed of its presence on their servers. The new Digital Services Act wants to force Internet companies to move beyond reactive behavior:

a binding "Good Samaritan provision" would encourage and incentivise proactive measures, by clarifying the lack of liability as a result of Such measures

The paper goes on to repeat the EU's earlier attempts to pretend that upload filters are not a glaring example of general monitoring -- something that EU courts may well be asked to rule on. The leaked document says:

While the prohibition of general monitoring obligations should be maintained as another foundational cornerstone of Internet regulation, specific provisions governing algorithms for automated filtering technologies -- where these are used -- should be considered, to provide the necessary transparency and accountability of automated content moderation Systems.

That's a classic: affirming that general monitoring is prohibited, while bringing in rules for proactive automated filtering technologies -- aka general monitoring. It would tilt the playing field even more in favor of big, mostly US companies, and would guarantee that the EU never produces its own digital giants like Google or Facebook. The other main proposal of the paper is to bring in mandatory pan-European rules for tackling online hate speech and disinformation, drawing on ideas in national laws:

Uniform rules for the removal of illegal content such as illegal hate speech would be made binding across the EU, building on the Recommendation on illegal content and case-law, and include a robust set of fundamental rights safeguards. Such notice-and-action rules could be tailored to the types of services, e.g. whether the service is a social network, a mere conduit, or a collaborative economy service, and where necessary to the types of content in question, while maintaining the maximum simplicity of rules.

Simplicity? - hardly. This all sounds like a recipe for a completely unworkable set of complex requirements that once again will favor big companies with deep pockets and big legal departments. The authors of the leaked note have managed to come up with an option for making these plans even worse: creating a "central regulator" for the whole EU to enforce this locked down, permissioned Internet they want to create. Although this is only an internal paper, not a formal proposal from the EU, it shows the kind of really bad ideas that are already floating around the European Commission, and being seriously considered there. If you thought the EU Copyright Directive was bad, just wait until you see the new EU Digital Services Act.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: copyright directive, digital services act, e-commerce directive, eu, filters, general monitoring, intermediary liability, notice and action, open internet, takedowns