San Francisco Cops Are Accessing Autonomous Vehicle Recordings To Collect Evidence

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the another-source-of-always-on-surveillance dept

This report, by Aaron Gordon for Motherboard, looks like a hypothetical dreamed up by a particularly cruel constitutional law professor:

For the last five years, driverless car companies have been testing their vehicles on public roads. These vehicles constantly roam neighborhoods while laden with a variety of sensors including video cameras capturing everything going on around them in order to operate safely and analyze instances where they don’t. 

While the companies themselves, such as Alphabet’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise, tout the potential transportation benefits their services may one day offer, they don’t publicize another use case, one that is far less hypothetical: Mobile surveillance cameras for police departments.

It’s not quite as cut-and-dried as that last sentence. As far as we know, police departments do not have unfettered, real-time access to the recordings created constantly by autonomous vehicles. But they do have access to the recordings. That much is clear from the public records obtained by Motherboard.

The San Francisco PD has been using this footage to aid in investigations, apparently frequently. The training document says two things, neither of which address the particularly thorny constitutional questions they raise:

Autonomous vehicles are recording their surroundings continuously and have the potential to help with investigative leads.

There’s nothing untrue about this assertion and yet it says nothing about the processes used to obtain these recordings. That might have been a hypothetical if not for the following bullet point:

Information will be sent in how to access this potential evidence (Investigations has already done this several times)

Yikes.

That is problematic, as an EFF rep points out:

“This is very concerning,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff attorney Adam Schwartz told Motherboard. He said cars in general are troves of personal consumer data, but autonomous vehicles will have even more of that data from capturing the details of the world around them. “So when we see any police department identify AVs as a new source of evidence, that’s very concerning.”

So many questions.

An AV will not have a human driver, which lowers the expectation of privacy. That expectation reverts to the company deploying it, which makes it somewhat comparable to a third-party record: data obtained by an automatic process that belongs to the company deploying the data-gathering device (in this case, a car).

Since there’s no driver to challenge searches, the responsibility lies with the company deploying the vehicle. And, since the recordings presumably cover public areas where the privacy expectation is further lowered, it might be possible to obtain recordings with nothing more than a subpoena (or a friendly sounding email!)

That’s where things get even thornier, in terms of the Fourth Amendment. The document does not describe the process the SFPD investigations team uses to obtain recordings.

First of all, how does the SFPD even know if AV recordings might be useful in ongoing investigations? Presumably, AV operators are required to inform local government agencies of their plans so that they can be overseen and undertaken safely. If cops know the routes traveled, it makes sense they would pursue footage recorded at or around areas where suspected crimes were committed.

But who governs this access? Has the city enacted any limits? Or is it just assumed that anything traffic regulators have access to should be accessible to law enforcement?

Moving on from there, how does the PD approach these companies? Private searches (which may be how these recordings are viewed by courts) are legal provided law enforcement does nothing to encourage searches companies (or their employees) may not otherwise engage in. Can cops request AV companies run routes through “high crime” areas in hopes of collecting footage of crimes in progress? All judicial signs point to “no,” but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

AV testing is AV testing. It really doesn’t matter much where it’s happening, so some companies may engage in test runs in neighborhoods investigators think might provide more evidence or intel. If this is happening, that’s a real problem.

Unfortunately, we only know what the SFPD has released so far: a training document that says AV cars capture footage and that investigators have utilized that footage in the past. Future public records requests may shed more light on the matter, but for now, this is all we have. At some point, evidence gathered by autonomous vehicles may be challenged in court. If and when that happens, we may get even more answers. But it seems like this isn’t a problem capable of being quantified with this minimum amount of information. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored. It just means more data is needed to draw any solid conclusions.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, autonomous vehicles, monitoring, recordings, san francisco, sfpd, surveillance

Yet Another Game Studio Chooses To Mess With Pirates As A Strategy

Culture

from the lulz dept

There are lots of ways content makers can respond to copyright infringement. From going fully legal and suing, to attempting to threaten to sue to scare the hell out of the “pirates”, to seeking government intervention that would negatively impact all kinds of innocent folks, to trying (and failing) to curb piracy using DRM, none of these are particularly good strategies.

And I don’t know if simply choosing to have some fun by messing with the pirates is all that better from a results standpoint, but I do know that’s it’s my favorite thing that game companies do against piracy. Whether it’s changing game functions to get people to accidentally out themselves as pirates or making never ending vuvuzela sounds in the game, it’s quite often just downright funny.

Well, now Big Ant Studios is joining the club, having already gotten pirates to call themselves out by messing with them and stating that it has future plans to continue the hijinks. It starts with Cricket 22 and some minor annoyances in illegal copies of the game, namely a white flashing screen that occurs in between matches.

This is happening over and over again. Pirates pirate the game, see the weird issue, go to the forums to try to figure out how to fix it, only to find out that it was done on purpose to annoy pirates. Not a whole lot of harm in this, but it’s worth noting as well that Symons, CEO of Big Ant Studios, is coupling this with some fairly human messages to those that chose to buy the game after getting messed with.

That last bit is in reference to plans Big Ant claims to have for even further messing with those that pirate its games in the future. In other tweets and comments, it’s very clear that Symons is having a great deal of fun with this. While I might suggest that putting this much time and energy into combatting piracy at all might not be the efficient use of the studio’s time, I’ll also say that the human approach Symons is taking here, including allowing previous pirates to keep their games progress if they switch over to a legit version, makes it hard not to root for him and the studio on this one.

Is it worth all this effort? I’m not sure, but I’m here for the fun compared with heavy-handed legal routes.

Filed Under: annoyances, copyright, cricket 22, piracy, video games
Companies: big ant studios

10th Circuit Appeals Court Asked To Recognize A First Amendment Right To Record Cops

Legal Issues

from the better-late-than-ignored-indefinitely dept

It’s 2022 and yet we still haven’t received a nationwide blessing from the country’s top court that recognizes a First Amendment right to record public officials carrying out their public duties. In most cases, this involves cops, whose public activities are far more public than those of most other public servants.

For whatever reason, the Supreme Court has avoided establishing precedent, despite the omnipresence of cameras carried in the pockets of every cell phone owner in America. Cell phone video has proven instrumental in several police misconduct cases, perhaps most importantly in the George Floyd case, where a witness’ video helped secure a murder conviction for white police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on the unarmed Floyd’s neck for nearly 10 minutes, ending the arrestee’s life.

Maybe the nation’s top court is just waiting for a case that it likes. It’s had plenty of opportunities to affirm this right but has ignored them. The court that seems poised to overturn nearly 50 years of reproductive rights may just be waiting for a complicated case that allows it to tip its hat to the First Amendment while erecting all sorts of exceptions that make a right-to-record meaningless. The Supreme Court’s history as a protector of police, rather than the people they serve, makes it the worst option for the establishment of citizens’ rights. But it’s also the only option for people seeking precedent that would force every cop anywhere in the nation to play by the rules.

Until the Supreme Court decides to address this issue, it’s up to appellate courts to define precedent in the jurisdictions they preside over. This may create a legal patchwork, but at least the patches encompass several states, rather than small jurisdictions within certain states.

Right now, another appellate court is being asked to affirmatively recognize a right to record police officers. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which presides over Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Utah, and New Mexico is handling a case involving a plaintiff who sued after Colorado police officers prevented him from recording a traffic stop. Here are the details, as reported by Colleen Slevin for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In the Colorado lawsuit, Abade Irizarry said he was filming a police traffic stop in the city of Lakewood when he claimed Officer Ahmed Yehia stood in front of the camera to block Irizarry from recording. The officer was on foot shined a flashlight into Irizarry’s camera and the camera of another blogger. Then Yehia left the two, got into his cruiser and sped the cruiser toward the two bloggers, the lawsuit said. The cruiser swerved before reaching the bloggers and they were not hit, according to the lawsuit.

The case was heard in federal court in Denver, where a magistrate judge sided with lawyers for Yehia and dismissed it last year, agreeing with Yehia’s lawyers, who contended the right to record police was not clearly established by the time of the incident in 2019.

Fortunately for Irizarry, he has more than usual rights groups in his corner. None other than the US Department of Justice is advocating on Irizarry’s behalf, arguing in favor of citizens’ right to record. The DOJ filed its own amicus brief last fall. Somehow, despite this being forwarded to the 10th Circuit nearly a year ago, it has yet to issue a ruling. It is just now hearing oral arguments on the case and, again, the DOJ is helping Irizarry out, arguing again that citizens have a right to record police officers.

Natasha Babazadeh, an attorney for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, urged a three-judge panel from the court to rule in that filming police is a constitutional right and said there has been an increase in the number of lawsuits filed against police by people saying they could not record them in public. 

If the court sides with the plaintiff (and there seems to be little reason why it shouldn’t), this would establish a right to record in the Tenth Circuit, bringing the total to seven out of thirteen circuits that have established this right. The addition of this precedent would make it that much more difficult for the Supreme Court to continue ignoring an issue that has been steadily gaining momentum for the past two decades.

Unfortunately, the establishment of a right to record won’t do much for this plaintiff. It will probably be argued (successfully) that the lack of precedent did not make it clear officers could not directly impede the plaintiff’s efforts to record the traffic stop. This will probably still be the conclusion even though these police officers were on notice as early as 2014 that there was presumptive right to record based on precedent established in other circuits.

But courts should refuse to continue humoring this sort of law enforcement gamesmanship. On one hand, cops love to argue anything that can be seen by passersby has no inherent expectation of privacy. But on the other hand, they argue anything they do that can be witnessed by passersby is somehow more deserving of an expectation of privacy… or at least, a large number of restrictions that would allow officers to go about their business with no permanent (outside) record of their actions. This is de facto bullshit and should not be given credence by courts. Hopefully, the Tenth Circuit will establish this right going forward and, in doing so, force the Supreme Court to again take notice of an issue it has chosen to neglect.

Filed Under: 10th circuit, 1st amendment, abade irizarry, ahmed yehia, recording police

Social Media Is The Easy Scapegoat For Politicians Who Don’t Want To Deal With Actual Problems

Too Much Free Time

from the scapegoats-are-not-good-policymaking dept

The recent mass murders in Buffalo and Uvalde are sickening, horrifying, and extraordinarily frustrating. And part of that is because, as The Onion keeps having to point out, we live in a world where the underlying message is: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.

And that is the most frustrating part of this. There are ways to deal with this. But they’re politically infeasible. Democrats focus on what appear to be pretty basic gun control concepts, around background checks, and putting at least some limits on the more extreme weapons out there (i.e., the ones favored in many of these mass murders). Republicans politicians (though, bizarrely, not the actual voters, outside of a few extremes) refuse to even consider any kind of gun laws. At all.

Republican talking points have focused on mental health. And, clearly, that is an issue. But it also raises the question: why aren’t Republicans then in favor of better, more readily available, mental healthcare for everyone? Or, even more to the point, why are Republicans, who say they’re concerned about mental healthcare, unwilling to consider gun laws that might keep guns out of the hands of those who are at risk of committing a mass murder?

And, Democrats, being feckless and incompetent as always, take all of their talking points and focus by letting Republicans frame the debate entirely, always on the defensive, and rarely, if ever, making even the slightest attempt to frame things in a positive manner. It’s always just pushing back on Republican’s and their dishonest framing.

Both parties deserve each other, but neither seems to want to explore actual solutions.

And thus, they’re converging on the same nonsense: blame social media.

We saw it in New York, where it’s now clear there were multiple levels of government failings that contributed to the situation in Buffalo, but where the Governor and the Attorney General have decided it was easier to blame social media than to tackle the real issues related to a racist teenager deciding to commit mass murder.

And, now we’re seeing people trying to do the same regarding the equally horrifying mass murder (of children!) in Texas. US Senate candidate from Georgia, Herschel Walker, (who is not exactly known for coherently talking about anything) went on TV to argue that the answer can’t be taking away 2nd Amendment rights, but should be taking away 1st Amendment rights.

In that video he says:

What we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You talk about doing the disinformation. What about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that? And we can stop things that way. Yet they want to just continue to talk about taking away your Constitutional rights…

News flash, Herschel: a department that is looking into the speech of people also is taking away constitutional rights. It’s the first one. The one before the one you’re talking about.

But, even if you want to dismiss that as Herschel Walker being Herschel Walker, there are more serious conversations that seem to want to keep pointing the finger at social media as well. The Washington Post, for example, has a story covering both mass murders with the title: As young gunmen turn toward new social networks, old safeguards fail. And again, it seems to want to suggest there’s some sort of blame here:

Both the Uvalde, Texas, shooter and the one in Buffalo, used a combination of disappearing video-app Snapchat, Instagram direct messages, chat-app Discord and social-app Yubo to meet people and share their violent plans with acquaintances. In the case of the Buffalo shooting, the gunman also used video streaming platform Twitch to publicize his deadly attack.

These apps are communications apps. People communicate with them. It’s weird to blame the tools for the actual communications, but that always seems to be the focus.

And, to some extent, I understand the psychological reasons for this. The framing of the debate means actual solutions are off the table. I mean, anyone who even mentions guns is accused of “politicizing” tragedy. So, it’s easy as a kind of venting to focus anger and blame on the tech industry at a moment when the media narrative has been already beating up on that industry from every direction. So why not just blame mass murder on it as well?

To be clear, I actually think the meat of the Washington Post article is fairly balanced, and it includes comments from smart people highlighting that these services have been mostly incredibly powerful in useful ways for people. But, it just feels like the frustration about not being able to do anything about the bigger issues — guns and mental health — means everyone is converging on the current favorite punching bag: social media.

Filed Under: blame, gun control, mass murder, mental health, school shootings, social media

ICE Facial Recognition Contractor Leaks A Whole Bunch Of Personal Data

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the hey-it's-just-other-people's-data-so-what's-the-big-deal dept

It’s not just the private sector leaking data at alarming rates! Well, it is still the private sector, but it’s leaking data on behalf of the government! So… somewhat different. But still alarming.

According to this report from Caroline Haskins for Business Insider, an ICE contractor harvesting facial recognition and GPS data on behalf of one of the most despised federal agencies has been caught with its database pants down. (via invaluable resource Databreaches.net)

Trust Stamp, a government contractor that develops facial recognition and surveillance tools for agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, left the personal information of several dozen people unsecured on a breached database, Insider has learned. This information included names, birthdays, home addresses, and driver’s license data.

An anonymous tipster who said they were a security researcher contacted Insider and disclosed the breach. Insider confirmed the authenticity of the data with the people named in the data leak. Trust Stamp then confirmed the security vulnerability and breach to Insider. 

LOL. “Trust Stamp.” Nice job there with both the name and the security practices. Trust Stamp says this isn’t really a problem because most of the exposed data was clearly fake and just used for training. But alongside fake people like “Heidi Sample,” real people’s data was exposed, as was verified by both Business Insider and the security researcher who forwarded the tip.

That sort of service is apparently worth $7.2 million in federal tax dollars. It’s one thing to have a poorly secured testing environment. It’s quite another to have a poorly secured testing environment that apparently includes real-world data for reasons that have gone completely unexplained by Trust Stamp.

Another question that has gone unanswered by Trust Stamp is where this real-world data came from. The company was hired to assist ICE in monitoring immigrants processed at border crossings. But the real-world data exposed (and verified by BI and researchers) did not come from the expected source of Trust Stamp data.

None of the several dozen people whose names were included in the data leak were migrants who had been processed at the US southern border. Of the people Insider was able to reach by phone, none were familiar with Trust Stamp or any of its services.

So, where did this data come from? Did Trust Stamp just upload information it had gathered via other customers (an SEC filing lists a potential “39 commercial opportunities”) into its dummy testing database, neglecting to inform ICE that the test environment contained plenty of real-world data? And if it was using actual US persons’ info to pad its test database, why didn’t it do more to ensure the test environment was sufficiently safeguarded against leaks/breaches?

We still have no answers. Trust Stamp only says it is aware of the problem and has rectified it. It has yet to explain where this data originated and why it was included in the demo environment it crafted for ICE. Maybe Congress might want to start asking a few questions about this breach and pass along the same set of questions to other private contractors who may be playing fast and loose with personal data they’ve collected.

Filed Under: data breach, facial recognition, ice, security
Companies: trust stamp

Daily Deal: The GameCreators Mega Maker Pack Bundle

Deals

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

The GameCreators Mega Maker Pack Bundle will help you develop your own dream video game, and publish it on multiple platforms with thousands of royalty-free, 2D and 3D assets. You get AppGameKit Studio, a fully featured game development toolset with two asset packs. The bundle also has GameGuru, a non-technical and fun game maker that offers an easy, enjoyable and comprehensive game creation process that is designed specifically for those who are not programmers or designers/artists plus 9 of their asset packs. It’s on sale for $80.

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

Senator Klobuchar Fixed None Of The Problems With Her Antitrust Bill; But Made Sure To Carve Out ACTUAL Monopolists Like Telcos And Finance Companies

Policy

from the what-are-we-doing-here? dept

Look: there are very real issues with the state of the internet today, including the amount of power a few companies have. But that doesn’t mean any solution is a good solution. Unfortunately, Senator Amy Klobuchar, whenever given the option, seems to put forth the worst possible plan. It’s mind boggling.

For a while now, Klobuchar, along with Senator Chuck Grassley, have been pushing their American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA). It’s got a fair bit of support, including from companies and organizations I often agree with on the issues. But, this bill has serious problems. Many of us raised concerns about those problems, and even made suggestions on how to fix the problems. There are ways to create a bill that would target the actual bad practices of internet companies. But this isn’t it.

For a few months, Klobuchar has apparently been working on a new and improved version of the bill, which was revealed last night. Somewhat incredibly, it fixes none of the problems people raised. The major change: making sure it doesn’t apply to telcos and financial companies.

I only wish I were joking. Of course, this is the same Klobuchar who, on a different antitrust bill, made sure to carve out her state’s largest employer, Target. So, we get it. Klobuchar cares more about making the lobbyists and specific industries happy than tackling the real problems of her bill. It’s pathetic.

The main “focus” of the bill is that it’s supposed to bar certain large companies from preferencing their own products. So, for example, Yelp has spent over a decade whining that Google showed people the results of its own Local search, crowding Yelp results out of search. The bill is designed to say that companies can’t do that any more. Of course, there are legitimate concerns that this will mean certain companies sending people to very useful products that people actually like will violate this bill. The quintessential example of this: when doing a search on a location, Google can point you to Google Maps. But, under this bill, that would be problematic.

To us, the biggest concern has been how this bill actually is a content moderation ban in disguise. It says that covered companies cannot:

discriminate in the application or enforcement of the terms of service of the covered platform among similarly situated business users in a manner that would materially harm competition;

So, Amazon telling Parler that it violates AWS’ terms of service and booting it off the service? That would not be allowed under this bill. Remember, Parler sued Amazon, and a key part of their initial claims was that because Amazon treated Twitter differently than Parler (which wasn’t true at the time, as Twitter had only just signed a deal to use AWS but wasn’t on it yet), that it was anticompetitive for Amazon to remove Parler. The judge in that case was not impressed, but if AICOA becomes law, suddenly we’re going to see a ton of claims like this in response to moderation choices.

Tons of companies already love to claim that moderation decisions are about harm to competition. Hell, for many years, the main company going after Google for antitrust was a really, really spammy tool called Foundem, that was upset that Google had realized that users hated getting sent to Foundem, and downranked the site. Foundem (apparently funded by Microsoft) spent years insisting this was “anticompetitive” rather than “making search work better by not sending users to spammy sites they don’t want.” But, again, under AICOA, arguments like that are going to have to be considered by judges.

Downranking spammy sites and services, or removing sites that ignores terms of service like Parler, now become competition law minefields.

It’s difficult to see how that’s good for anyone, other than the operators of sketchy sites.

As we’ve noted, everyone in the Senate actually knows this. Because the main reason that Klobuchar keeps this nonsense in the bill and doesn’t fix the language, is because she knows that this is the only way to keep Republicans on the bill. Republicans see this content moderation trojan horse in the bill, and are thrilled with it. Because they think it’s going to allow lawsuits to protect Parler, Truth Social, and their other also ran websites.

Remember, Ted Cruz was so excited about this bill because it would, in his words, “unleash the trial lawyers” to sue Google, Facebook and others for content moderation decisions.

Republicans are supporting this bill because they know it will be used to hit internet companies with all sorts of lawsuits over their moderation decisions.

Of course, it appears that some Republicans worried (or, rather, some telco lobbyists told Republicans) that the law might ALSO result in broadband providers facing the same sorts of nonsense lawsuits. Indeed, part of the original bill could have been read as a kind of net neutrality bill in disguise, because larger ISPs would be barred from similarly “favoring” services over others in a way deemed anticompetitive. And you can bet that some telcos that rely on things like zero rating were worried.

So, that brings us to the major change in this new version of Klobuchar’s bill: she carved out the telcos to make sure the bill doesn’t apply to them. Even though telcos are way more of a competition problem than any online service. Here’s some new language in the bill excluding telcos. It explicitly says that the definition of an “online platform”:

does not include a service by wire or radio that provides the capability to transmit data to and receive data from all or substantially all internet endpoints, including any capabilities that are incidental to and enable the operation of the communications service.

Got it? So, no preferencing. Unless you’re the only broadband player in town. Then, go hog-wild, according to Senator Klobuchar.

Nice work there. That won’t make people cynical at all about the political process.

Of course, once again, this is almost certainly appeasement to Republicans, who, for clear political reasons, want to continue to pretend that telcos are no big deal, and that it’s only the big internet providers who are evil.

It makes no sense at all that Democrats like Amy Klobuchar are playing right into their hands, and giving them everything that they want. But, of course, Klobuchuar has decided for political reasons that she wants to be seen as the senator who took on big tech for her next presidential campaign. And, if that means handing Republicans all the tools they need to file a ton of vexatious lawsuits to try to force companies to enable more hate speech and propaganda, so be it.

It’s pure cynical opportunism.

Oh, and also, it looks like financial firms got a little carve out as well. The original bill said the term online platforms would apply to websites that “facilitates the offering, advertising, sale, purchase, payment, or shipping of products or services…” The new version of the bill covers those that “enables the offering, advertising, sale, purchase, or shipping of products or services…”

So, the same list minus payments.

That’s two giant industries — telcos and banks — that were able to secure their carveouts. But, no effort to fix any of the actual problems of the bill.

With the original bill, NERA Economic Consulting had written up an analysis of companies that would be considered covered platforms in the bill, noting that it directly would hit just six: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and likely TikTok. However, it also noted that there were 13 other companies that were below the size thresholds in the bill, but close enough that they would likely “take measure to avoid significant risk incumbent upon exceeding the thresholds.” Notably, many of those included broadband companies and financial companies. By my count, the new carve outs in the bill likely cut that list of 13 by at least 7.

It’s possible that some of the others might be excluded as well, though I’m not as sure. Still, it seems pretty clear that these new carveouts were directly because of lobbying by these firms that didn’t want to be included, despite the fact that all are arguably much more problematic, and have much less readily available competition than the companies targeted by the bill.

It’s enough to make one think that senators like Klobuchar don’t really care about doing the right thing at all. They just want to be seen as doing something.

Filed Under: aicoa, amy klobuchar, antitrust, content moderation, discrimination, preferencing
Companies: apple, facebook, google

Twitter Hit With $150 Million Fine For Using Two-Factor Authentication Data For Marketing

Failures

from the not-helping dept

While a lot of the scandals surrounding “big tech” have been overblown, one that hasn’t been discussed enough is Silicon Valley companies’ abuse of user two-factor authentication data. If you’ve been napping, two-factor authentication (preferably of the email variety) helps protect your accounts from being compromised by hackers.

But when both Facebook and Twitter implemented it, company executives apparently thought it would be a great idea to use the email and phone data collected for marketing purposes. That’s a massive problem, as it completely undermines trust in the two-factor authentication process (and these companies’ security standards in general), making it less likely that users would protect themselves.

For much of the last decade, Twitter told its users that it was collecting their phone and email addresses for account-security purposes. But they didn’t inform users that they would also use this information to send targeted ads to customers. When it was revealed, Twitter claimed it didn’t know this was happening, which if true is still… sloppy and bad in terms of both privacy and security standards.

In 2020, reports emerged that the company would likely be fined up to $250 million for the behavior by the FTC. This week the long-looming action finally dropped, with the FTC announcing that Twitter had struck a $150 million settlement with the DOJ and FTC:

from May 2013 to September 2019, Twitter told its users that it was collecting their telephone numbers and email addresses for account-security purposes, but failed to disclose that it also would use that information to help companies send targeted advertisements to consumers. The complaint further alleges that Twitter falsely claimed to comply with the European Union-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks, which prohibit companies from processing user information in ways that are not compatible with the purposes authorized by the users. 

It was underplayed in the scope of other concerns, but big portion of the $5 billion fine levied against Facebook by the FTC also involved this same exploitation of information provided specifically for 2FA.

There are obviously numerous other companies that have chosen to undermine user security by monetizing 2FA information, but given the FTC is too underfunded and understaffed to handle them all, these fines have to be large enough to act as a warning shot over the bow in the absence of federal legislation.

Filed Under: 2fa, ftc, security, two factor authentication
Companies: twitter

Enormous Fashion Company Zara Opposes Trademark For Tiny ‘House Of Zana’ Fashion House

Trademark

from the getting-some-Zs dept

The last time we discussed Zara, the clothing retailer based out of Spain, it was to witness the company tripping all over itself to apologize to mainland China for denoting Taiwan and Hong Kong as countries on its website. Well, now the company is back, this time for engaging in a somewhat silly trademark opposition to another, far smaller fashion house named House of Zana. After Zara opposed the smaller company’s trademark application, claiming that the names were too similar and would cause confusion, hearings were held in the UK.

During the hour-long hearing, Zara’s attorney, Julia King, submitted that the House of Zana trademark application should be refused because it was too similar in name, which could result in customers confusing one trademark for another.

Ms King said the word Zana was “one small brush mark” away from Zara and added “House of” was a common term used by “many parties” as a way of referring to fashion businesses.

There are a couple of problems here. First, yes, “Zara” and “Zana” are one letter away from each other. But, as House of Zana owner Amber Kotrri noted in that same hearing, the application is for “House of Zana”, instead of just “Zana.” It’s the entire trademark that Zara must oppose, not one small part of it.

From there, we can get into Zara’s claim that “House of” is so common a term that it shouldn’t even enter into the equation. First, that’s not really how this works in trademark law. And even if it was, “House of” is obviously not that commonly used in this marketplace, given that Zara itself is not known anywhere as “House of Zara”. It’s just Zara. And for the purposes of customer confusion between these two specific brands, that makes a difference.

Mrs Kotrri added that Zara had failed to provide evidence to prove consumers would find House of Zana misleading, and that it was clear to customers there was “no opposition”.

Likely because there is no consumer confusion to be pointed at, in this case. And, we absolutely must add to all this that Zara appears to have recently adopted a far more aggressive posture when it comes to policing trademarks. House of Zana is not the only company Zara has targeted with claims that other company’s names are too similar to its own. For instance, Zara has also challenged the trademark for Tara Sartoria, ostensibly because “Tara” and “Zara” are too similar. Tara Sartoria, by the way, is owned by Tara Nguyen, who employs “disadvantaged women in Indonesia and Vietnam” as a way to help them.

I could also note that Zara has been the subject of accusations that it infringed on the designs of other designers and sold them as its own in the past, but I won’t… Oh look, I guess I just did. The point here is that this is yet another instance of a big company trademark bullying smaller companies, mostly because it can. Certainly House of Zana is of no threat to Zara, yet here we are.

Filed Under: consumer confusion, fashion, trademark
Companies: house of zana, zara

Starlink Users Miffed They Have To Pay Extra To Skip The Long Wait

Broadband

from the pay-more-to-get-less dept

While Space X’s Starlink is a promising broadband option if you’re out of range of traditional options (and can afford it), many users who’ve pre-ordered aren’t having a great time. Some say they’ve been waiting for service more than a year, during which time Starlink has often refused to answer basic emails or issue refunds, while imposing price hikes on waiting customers.

Waiting customers are also annoyed because Starlink keeps introducing new plans that allow users to skip the wait… if they pay more than those who’ve spent the last year patiently waiting.

For example, back in February Starlink offered a new “premium” tier. While basic Starlink customers already pay $600 for hardware and $110 a month for variable-speed service, premium users can pay $2500 up front for hardware. That not only netted those users faster speed, but the hardware shipped sooner than those who had already been waiting patiently for months.

This week, Starlink unveiled another option specifically aimed at RV enthusiasts. The new service allows you to affix a satellite to your mobile home if you’re willing to pay $25 more each month ($135 a month). While your speeds will be deprioritized on the network while traveling (read: slower), users who sign up for this option are also being allowed to skip long waits if they’re willing to pay more for service.

Unsurprisingly, some Reddit users who’ve been waiting in some cases more than a year aren’t particularly happy:

Just another way to ask for more $$ and being able to order immediately, when instead people like me are waiting since Feb/8/2021 , paid $99 deposit , and getting nothing even with the already increased price for the hardware and monthly service .

The fact that Starlink has introduced what are basically business-class tiers and a mobile RV tier aren’t really the issue. The issue is that Starlink has been unable to respond to basic customer inquiries about long wait times, much less provide refunds to those waiting for more than a year if they want them, so adding the option to skip the queue if you pay even more is a bit of a slap in the face.

Granted many of those users have no broadband access at all, and may be motivated to sign up for the deprioritized, more expensive RV service, which will… result in long wait times for the RV product as well.

Starlink’s issue is that the service capacity is capped out at somewhere around 800,000 total users for the first few years. So the company’s in a race to keep Starlink financially viable (which Musk himself has claimed may not be possible), while simultaneously keeping pre-orders from defecting en masse after long waits and taking their down payment with them.

Somewhere between 20 and 40 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever. 83 million more currently live under a broadband monopoly, usually their cable provider. That’s an awful lot of demand Starlink won’t be able to meet for a very long time even if everything goes perfectly (which it isn’t). The entry price of $600 down and $110 a month is also far too steep for many of those disconnected users.

This is all a fairly delicate balancing act that could easily go wrong if Starlink can’t keep pace with demand and balance irritable users that have been waiting for an extremely long time for service. Musk fans have a lot of patience, but even that patience will eventually find its limit.

Filed Under: broadband, digital divide, high speed internet, low-orbit satellite, satellite broadband, starlink, telecom
Companies: spacex, starlink