Colorado Legislators Kill Off Police Accountability Bill That Would Have Deterred Cop-On-Cop Violence

Failures

from the going-back-to-the-same-old-bullshit dept

This didn’t go the way anyone (other than cops and their unions) wanted it to, but first let’s acknowledge the fact that the city of Denver is actually trying to make things better for both cops and the people they serve.

Here’s how that’s going:

In its first three months, STAR handled 350 calls — only a very small percentage of 911 calls. But the immediate developments appeared positive. A supposed indecent exposure call handled by STAR turned out to be a homeless woman changing clothes in an alley. A trespassing call turned out to be another homeless person setting up a tent near some homes. Suicidal persons were helped and taken to care centers. Homeless residents were taken to shelters. No one was arrested. No one was beaten, tased, or shot.

The zero arrests streak continues. STAR has released its six-month report [PDF] and the calls it has handled have yet to result in an arrest, strongly suggesting police officers aren’t the best personnel to handle crises like these — unless the desired result is more people in holding cells.

Denver decided to try what (far too few) other cities are trying: routing mental health/social services calls to professionals in those fields, rather than hand them off to police officers. And for good reason! Police officers aren’t trained to handle these sorts of issues. That lack of training tends to result in arrests, violence, and even the killing of people police have been asked to help.

Denver’s STAR (Support Team Assistance Response) has been able to handle many calls normally routed to cops without deploying cop tactics: you know, the command-and-control aggression that often manages to make these situations worse, if not actually deadly for those requiring mental health assistance.

So, there’s that. A limited test has shown consistently good results, which should be all the argument Denver legislators need to provide funding to expand STAR assistance to a round-the-clock effort.

But that’s just Denver. Even though it’s the state’s most populous city, its success story has been overlooked by state legislators who apparently feel the best thing for cops is the same lack of accountability they’ve enjoyed for years.

Legislators had a chance to impose greater accountability, but decided to go the other way, as Marissa Ventrelli reports for the Denver Gazette.

A bill that would have required law enforcement agencies to investigate all allegations of officer misconduct died in the House last week following significant revisions.

Sponsors said the measure would increase protections for officers who report alleged misconduct by their peers. Critics, notably law enforcement agencies and organizations, argued the sponsors did not include them in discussions for such an important measure.

Under House Bill 1460 as introduced, the failure to investigate reports of misconduct would have constituted workplace discrimination, for which civil action may be initiated.

The bill’s origin story is one of cop-on-cop harassment. Former Edgewater police officer McKinzie Rees helped craft the bill after being sexually assaulted twice by a fellow officer. Reporting it to supervisors did nothing but force Rees to resign, along with being placed on the state’s Brady list, ensuring she’d never be used as a witness in court, no matter what law enforcement agency employed her.

But it had obvious benefits for regular people, too. It strengthened whistleblower protections for cops reporting on other cops, but also would have benefited citizens who’ve filed complaints by forcing law enforcement agencies to instigate investigations, rather than just ignore the complaints of the policed.

The main opposition was none other than the state’s largest police union. Police unions routinely oppose efforts that might result in more scrutiny of officers. In this case, though, the union opposed any additional scrutiny being applied to cops who attacked, harassed, or sexually assaulted other cops.

The Fraternal Order of Police requested sponsors withdraw the bill and to instead convene a working group during the interim to discuss a multitude of issues related to whistleblowing, such as officer obligation to report misconduct, due process for officers facing allegations by whistleblowers, and protections for the whistleblowers themselves.

“We hope that you will accept this offer to engage in research and dialogue over the summer and fall so that all interested parties can feel assured that any future legislation on these topics in the upcoming session is founded in fact, necessity, and effective collaboration,” the group said. 

This makes it clear police unions are there to protect the worst cops — the ones willing to cross the “thin blue line” to harm other police officers. While everyone expects cops to treat citizens like punching bags and doormats, the “thin blue line” illusion is supposed to trick everyone into believing cops stand together united against evil. But if it’s internal evil, the police union wants nothing to do with any efforts to root it out. That’s just fucking disgusting.

And that’s how a bill dies, with the approval of people who think cops shouldn’t be scrutinized — much less punished — for any misconduct they commit, even if the targets of their wrongdoing are their fellow officers. These are the words of a legislator who seems more willing to provide gratis car washes for officers’ personal cars than serve any member of his constituency that can’t be bothered to get a badge-wearing job.

Rep. Ryan Armagost, R-Berthoud, a former law enforcement officer and member of the committee that heard the bill, said he was “offended” that law enforcement agencies had not been involved in discussions about the bill to the extent they wanted to be. 

Here’s an idea, Rep. Armagost: fuck ’em. If these agencies want to be involved, they’re sure to be involved. All this statement means is this rep is offended someone didn’t ask the kind of cops he likes (which would be the kind that sexually assault fellow officers) what kind of legislation they wanted and instead tried to right some wrongs by offering the state’s sexual assault victims (well… at least those in uniform) some form of protection, redress, and deterrence.

And it was state reps like Armagost who got what they wanted by stripping the bill of anything meaningful and parking it on blocks out in the front yard. For those of you who still think there’s nothing partisan about full-throated support of the worst cops this nation employs, please re-read the second quoted paragraph until the truth sinks in.

By the time the bill reached the floor for its third and final reading, all of its major provisions had been amended out, save for the creation of a working group. 

Ultimately, the bill died, 31-33. All of the Republicans, except Soper, voted in opposition, though it’s possible he would’ve asked for a recount and switched his vote if the bill had passed.

To add insult to the injuries suffered by former officer McKinzie Rees, the union added this statement after the bill was carved up by bootlickers and left to die on the House floor:

“We appreciate that the majority of House members shared our concerns about the need for a robust stakeholder process before passing legislation of this importance. Ensuring law enforcement employees have due process protection and a safe and healthy work environment are serious, complex issues that warrant responsible and thoughtful solutions.”

It pretty much makes you want to vomit. The union cheered on “due process” and “a safe and healthy work environment.” But it really doesn’t care much about the first (the bill only required an investigation to be opened, which means plenty of due process was still available to officers) and obviously gives zero shits about the latter, since it means officers attacked/assaulted by other officers will continue to be frozen out by the worst in their ranks and expected to leave the force, rather than see their grievances adequately addressed by the government agencies that hired them.

Filed Under: 911, colorado, police violence, social services, star

‘Manor Lords’ Developer Reacts To VR Mod: ‘I’m Impressed’

Culture

from the mod-squad dept

We’ve been talking a lot about video game mods recently, typically not for happy reasons. There is a spectrum out there when it comes to how developers and publishers react to organic modding communities that spring up around their games. On one end of the spectrum, typically inhabited by larger companies, are those that somehow see mods as a threat to the game to be combatted and tamped down by any means possible. On the other end are the more reasonable folks, those who realize that modding communities represent some of the most passionate fans of their games, and that mods often times make games more attractive for purchase, or extend their gameplay lifecycle.

We’ve recently seen companies like Bandai Namco, The Pokémon Company, and Rockstar go to war with their own modding communities. It’s that larger climate that makes it so refreshing to see the developer behind the latest hit PC game, Manor Lords, go so far as to praise at least one mod for their game.

Manor Lords is a city building game with a third-person camera view. One modding community, Flat2VR, dedicates itself to making non-VR games playable in a VR format. And they did so with Manor Lords.

The community’s Twitter account announced the achievement, saying: “Seven years in development, Manor Lords was the most wish-listed Steam game & released in EA this past week. It has the highest concurrent user counts ever on a city builder. Thankfully, it works perfectly in 6DOF VR with Praydog’s UEVR!” They also confirm that the mod uses M&K, but with Demeo or Little Cities-like motion controls to help players navigate their budding villages and towns. 

The short video attached alongside the announcement also shows how this VR mod allows you to do pretty much everything you’d normally do in Manor Lords, including building roads, managing resources, and walking around the streets as the Lord you’ve chosen to embody. 

Imagine how the companies I mentioned before might react to something like this. Bandai Namco might just issue takedowns for the mods without explanation. The Pokémon Company would probably just scream “INFRINGEMENT!!!” while doing likewise. Rockstar could issue takedowns over some potential paid expansion pack including VR or some such nonsense.

But if you’re the developer of Manor Lords, your reaction is pretty much, “No shit? That works? Cool!”

To quote some of us from ten years ago: that’s it, that’s the tweet. Or X. Or whatever.

In any case, you will notice that the developer didn’t then follow up with a threat of a takedown, discussions of intellectual property laws, or really any hand-wringing whatsoever. Nope, just an acknowledgement of an awesome mod on the game’s official ExTwitter account.

It sure would be nice if more developers, and the larger companies, realized why this is the perfect reaction to someone making your game better and more attractive to a wider audience. That such enlightenment remains so elusive is a puzzle I have been unable to solve.

Filed Under: flat2vr, manor lords, mods, video games

Link Taxes Backfire: Canadian News Outlets Lose Out, Meta Unscathed

Journalism

from the what-a-surprise dept

As California (and possibly Congress) are, again, revisiting instituting link taxes in the US, it’s worth highlighting that our prediction about the Canadian link tax has now been shown to be correct. It didn’t harm Meta one bit to remove news.

The entire premise behind these link taxes/bargaining codes is that social media gets “so much free value” from news orgs, that they must pay up. Indeed, a ridiculously bad study that came out last fall, and was widely passed around, that argued that Google and Meta had stripped $14 billion worth of value from news orgs and should offer to pay up that amount.

$14 billion. With a “b.”

No one, who understands anything, believes that’s true. Again, social media is not taking value away from news orgs. It’s giving them free distribution and free circulation, things that, historically, cost media organizations a ton of money.

But, now a study, in Canada is proving that social media companies get basically zero value from news links. Meta, somewhat famously, blocked links to news in Canada in response to that country’s link tax. This sent many observers into a tizzy, claiming that it was somehow both unfair for Meta to link to news orgs AND to not link to news orgs.

Yes, media organizations are struggling. Yes, the problems facing the news industry are incredibly important to solve to help protect democracy. Yes, we should be thinking and talking about creative solutions for funding.

But, taxing links to force internet companies to pay media companies is simply a terrible solution.

Thanks to Meta , not giving in to Canada and blocking links to news, we now have some data on what happens when a link tax approach is put in place. Some new research from McGill University and the University of Toronto has found that Meta didn’t lose very much engagement from a lack of news links. But media orgs lost out big time.

Laura Hazard Owen has a good summary at Nieman Lab.

“We expected the disappearance of news on Meta platforms to have caused a major shock to the Canadian information ecosystem,” the paper’s authors — Sara Parker, Saewon Park, Zeynep Pehlivan, Alexei Abrahams, Mika Desblancs, Taylor Owen, Jennie Phillips, and Aengus Bridgman — write. But the shock appears to have been one-sided. While “the ban has significantly impacted Canadian news outlets,” the authors write, “Meta has deprived users of the affordance of news sharing without suffering any loss in engagement of their user base.”

What the researchers found is that users are still using Meta platforms just as much, and still getting news from those platforms. They’re just no longer following links back to the sources. This has done particular harm to smaller local news organizations:

This remarkable stability in Meta platform users’ continued use of the platforms for politics and current affairs anticipates the findings from the detailed investigation into engagement and posting behaviour of Canadians. We find that the ban has significantly impacted Canadian news outlets but had little impact on Canadian user behaviour. Consistent with the ban’s goal, we find a precipitous decline in engagement with Canadian news and consequently the posting of news content by Canadian news outlets. The effect is particularly acute for local news outlets, while some news outlets with national or international scope have been able to make a partial recovery after a few months. Additionally, posting by and engagement with alternative sources of information about Canadian current affairs appears unmoved by the ban. We further find that Groups focused on Canadian politics enjoy the same frequency of posting and diversity of engagement after the ban as before. While link sharing declines, we document a complementary uptick in the sharing of screenshots of Canadian news in a sample of these political Groups, and confirm by reviewing a number of such posts where users deliberately circumvented the link-sharing ban by posting screenshots. Although the screenshots do not compensate for the total loss of link sharing, the screenshots themselves garner the same total amount of engagement as news links previously had.

I feel like I need to keep pointing this out, but: when you tax something, you get less of it. Canada has decided to tax news links, so they get fewer news links. But users still want to talk about news, so they’re replacing the links with screenshots and discussions. And it’s pretty impressive how quickly users switched over:

Meaning the only one losing out here are the news publishers themselves who claimed to have wanted this law so badly.

The impact on Canadian news orgs appears to be quite dramatic:

But the activity on Meta platform groups dedicated to news doesn’t seem to have changed that much:

If “news links” were so valuable to Meta, then, um, wouldn’t that have declined once Meta blocked links?

One somewhat incredible finding in the paper is that “misinformation” links also declined after Meta banned news links:

Surprisingly, the number of misinformation links in political and local community Groups decreased after the ban.

Political Groups:

• Prior to the ban: 2.8% of links (5612 out of 198,587 links) were misinformation links
• After the ban: 1.4% of links (5306 out of 379,202 links) were misinformation links

Though the paper admits that this could just be a function of users recognizing they can’t share links.

This is still quite early research, but it is notable, especially given that the US continues to push for this kind of law as well. Maybe, just maybe, we should take a step back and recognize that taxing links is not helpful for news orgs and misunderstands the overall issue.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the approach taken by Canada and other countries to force platforms like Meta to pay for news links is misguided and counterproductive. These laws are reducing the reach and engagement of news organizations while doing little to address the underlying challenges facing the industry. Instead of helping news organizations, these laws are having the opposite effect. Policymakers need to take a more nuanced and evidence-based approach that recognizes the complex dynamics of the online news ecosystem.

Filed Under: c-18, canada, link tax, link taxes, news links
Companies: meta

NSO Group Continues To Use The Lawsuit Filed Against It By WhatsApp To Harass Canadian Security Researchers

Legal Issues

from the if-you-can't-beat-'em,-fuck-with-'em dept

Israeli malware manufacturer NSO Group spent years making good money selling to bad people. Its only concern for the longest time was how long it would take nearby autocrats and totalitarians to start targeting Israeli citizens.

To be fair, the Israeli government shares at least some of the blame. Surrounded by entities that would love to see it erased from the earth, the government helped broker deals with unfriendly countries — a perverse form of diplomacy that allowed some of its worst enemies to gain access to extremely powerful spyware.

NSO is no longer the local darling in Israel. In fact, none of its competitors are either. The country achieved terminal embarrassment velocity following the leak of documents that appeared to show many of NSO’s customers were abusing access to its Pegasus spyware to target journalists, dissidents, human rights lawyers, political opponents, and even the occasional ex-wife and her lawyer.

NSO has also been sued multiple times. The first tech firm to sue NSO was WhatsApp. Backed by Meta, WhatsApp took NSO to court for using WhatsApp’s US-based servers to deliver malware packages to users targeted by NSO’s absolute shitlist of customers.

Some of what WhatsApp observed might have been due to the FBI taking a bespoke version of NSO’s Pegasus for a spin before deciding it would be pretty much impossible to use it without doing a ton of damage to the Fourth Amendment.

This lawsuit has not gone well for NSO. It invoked a variety of defenses, including sovereign immunity, reasoning that it was a stand-in for the governments it sold to. And, as such, it was entitled to the same immunity often granted foreign governments by US courts.

This tactic didn’t work. Not only did multiple courts (district, appellate, the Top Court in the Land) reject NSO immunity overtures, but the original court handling this lawsuit ordered the company to turn over its code to WhatsApp. And that order meant all the code, not just the stuff involving NSO’s flagship spyware, Pegasus.

Far from the nation’s courts, Canadians have been giving NSO (and its competitors) fits for years. Citizen Lab — a group of Canadian malware researchers linked to the University of Toronto — has been examining NSO’s malware for years. More importantly, it’s been detecting infections and allowing those targeted by NSO spyware to rid themselves of these infections. In every case, Citizen Lab has exposed the targeting of the usual people: dissidents, opposition leaders, journalists, lawyers, diplomats, etc. The company continues to pretend this malware is sold to target the most dangerous criminals despite all evidence to the contrary.

With NSO now being asked to turn over its source code, it has decided to drag a non-party into the mix by going after Citizen Lab repeatedly during this lawsuit. (This is something its financial backers did years before NSO was a defendant in multiple lawsuits and an international pariah.)

As Shawn Musgrave reports for The Intercept, NSO appears to be engaged in a campaign of harassment against Citizen Lab… presumably because it has run out of believable defenses and/or solid litigation strategies.

FOR YEARS, CYBERSECURITY researchers at Citizen Lab have monitored Israeli spyware firm NSO Group and its banner product, Pegasus. In 2019, Citizen Lab reported finding dozens of cases in which Pegasus was used to target the phones of journalists and human rights defenders via a WhatsApp security vulnerability.

Now NSO, which is blacklisted by the U.S. government for selling spyware to repressive regimes, is trying to use a lawsuit over the WhatsApp exploit to learn “how Citizen Lab conducted its analysis.”

[…]

With the lawsuit now moving forward, NSO is trying a different tactic: demanding repeatedly that Citizen Lab, which is based in Canada, hand over every single document about its Pegasus investigation. A judge denied NSO’s latest attempt to get access to Citizen Lab’s materials last week.

While it’s good to see a court shut down this obvious attempt to turn Citizen Lab into a co-litigant, the fact remains that Citizen Lab has never been a party to this lawsuit. This is nothing more than NSO attempting to obtain information it has no legal reason to request, possibly because it’s still aching from being ordered to turn over its own information: i.e, its source code.

It also may be even more petty than the previous hypothetical: it may be trying to get Citizen Lab to burn up some of its limited resources fighting stupid requests for stuff Citizen Lab should even be asking for, much less expecting a judge to sign off on.

Whatever it is, it certainly isn’t good litigation. This reeks of desperation. These are the acts of litigant that has run out of options. NSO is just flailing, hoping to drag down a non-party with it as it heads towards a seemingly-inevitable loss.

And this certainly isn’t a winning strategy. It’s not even capable of maintaining the miserable status quo NSO Group is currently mired in. Citizen Lab (obviously) refused these demands for information (justifiably!) and the judge handling the case has made it clear there’s almost zero chance of NSO being able to drag anything out of this particular thorn in its side.

Citizen Lab opposed NSO’s demands on numerous grounds, particularly given “NSO’s animosity” toward its research.

In the latest order, Hamilton concluded that NSO’s demand was “plainly overbroad.” She left open the possibility for NSO to try again, but only if it can point to evidence that specific individuals that Citizen Lab categorized as “civil society” targets were actually involved in “criminal/terrorist activity.”

lol at that last sentence. Does anyone think anyone, much less an aggrieved NSO Group, has any evidence Citizen Lab is involved in “criminal/terrorist activity?” All it has done is expose abuse of malware sold by NSO Group to governments with long histories of corruption and/or human rights abuses.

NSO is just going to keep on losing. Reap/sow. Lie down with dogs. The foreseeable consequences of actions. Etc. Etc. Etc. Citizen Lab will keep performing its important work. And, with any luck, NSO will soon collapse under the weight of its hubris. Hope the (temporary) shekels were worth it.

Filed Under: canada, discovery, harassment, source code, spyware, surveillance
Companies: citizen lab, meta, nso group, whatsapp

Daily Deal: The Complete PMP Training Bundle

Deals

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

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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

Politicians Scapegoat Social Media While Ignoring Real Solutions

Overhype

from the stop-blaming-tech-for-your-own-failings dept

Holding social media companies solely responsible for the mental health challenges faced by today’s youth is not only misguided—it’s dangerous. Misdiagnosing the problem means your solutions are going to be actively harmful.

I know that, these days especially, it seems that the thing everyone across the political aisle seems to agree on is that the internet is uniquely harmful for children, and, somehow this is all, “big tech’s fault.” And, yes, we can all point to examples of where internet companies could do better.

But, as we keep pointing out, reality is a lot more complex than the simplistic narrative that “tech is a unique evil and out to get kids.” First off, many of the underlying problems are societal problems, which the internet is merely shining a light on. Those problems are most tempting for politicians to freak out about because their existence often highlights governmental failures where all the internet is doing is shining a light on those problems.

Enter Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California governor Gavin Newsom, going on a rant complaining about internet companies “failing to address social media addiction and mental health problems among young people.”

Of course, the narrative about “social media addiction” is not actually supported by the facts or data. What the data has shown, repeatedly, is that for a very small percentage of users — mainly those who are dealing with existing mental health issues, and who don’t have the support or resources they need — may turn to social media instead, and that can be problematic.

And when the tech companies try to study these things in order to fix them, their studies get falsely portrayed as “not doing anything” to fix the problems, making it that much more difficult to get the companies to do any more research to help.

So, the very framing of Siebel Newsom’s complaint is misguided, and she should (maybe) be asking her husband why California isn’t doing enough to support the cohort of students who need mental health resources and aren’t getting them.

The rest of her speech is equally misguided:

She also noted industry efforts to stymie the state’s landmark Age Appropriate Design Code — a law designed to protect children’s online privacy and safety — that has been held up in courts since the governor signed it in 2022.

“We’re sadly being held back by capitalist interests,” the first partner said. “For me, legislation is necessary if the tech companies aren’t going to be more transparent.”

It’s not “capitalist interests” that held up the AADC. It was the First Amendment of the Constitution. You know, part of the document your husband took an oath to “support and defend.”

The AADC wasn’t just blocked because of whining, but because the law itself would lead to the suppression of constitutionally protected speech, as the judge clearly explained. And that suppression of constitutionally protected speech could, in many cases, cause real harm, such as by suppressing useful information on mental health and suicide prevention for kids.

But Siebel Newsom doesn’t seem interested in actually understanding what works. She seems to just want political wins for her husband.

I recognize it’s convenient to claim that it’s just “big tech” that pointed out the constitutional flaws of the AADC, but they were just the only ones that could afford the lawsuit. There were plenty of others, myself included, who pointed out just how dangerous a law this was.

In an interview with POLITICO following the panel, Siebel Newsom called tech companies the “Wild West” and spoke to the need to protect children.

This is also nonsense. The “wild west” trope hasn’t been true in more than a decade, but it makes for a convenient scapegoat for people like Siebel Newsom trying to divert attention from the failings of her husband as California’s governor.

For what it’s worth, most of the big tech companies actually supported the AADC. They know that they’re already doing most of what it requires, and also that the law creates a moat that smaller competitors will struggle with. The idea that big tech doesn’t like the AADC may be a convenient narrative for Siebel Newsom to spread, but it’s a myth.

Siebel Newsom, during the panel, also spoke about her experience as a mother to four children between the ages of 8 and 14, who have had their own struggles with social media. At one point, she choked up recounting how the couple had to pull one of their kids out of school because of online bullying.

“Granted, we’re public figures, but what we’re seeing, sadly, are adults coming after our own children online — parents of children, and then the children mimicking it. I actually pulled my daughter from school,” she said. “It’s bad.”

That does sound bad, and I have sympathy for any family dealing with bullying. But bullying predated the internet, and it is something that lots of families and schools have dealt with for years. A CDC study from a few years back found that offline bullying at schools was noticeably more prevalent than online bullying.

Is Siebel Newsom advocating for new laws to punish schools that allowed bullying to happen on campus?

In fact, multiple studies have shown that online bullying has actually been on a massive decline over the last few years. Some attribute that to school lockdowns during COVID-19, but that seems strange, given that interactions between kids increased online due to those lockdowns.

Indeed, I’ve heard from a few researchers suggesting that the biggest success in stopping online bullying among students was simply better education. Schools are starting anti-bullying education programs much earlier, and it’s a bigger focus in curricula, which, at least, appears to be having an impact.

But sure, let’s blame tech for not magically stopping this larger societal issue.

Look, everyone wants to make sure kids are safe and not being bullied. But these politicians with simplistic answers, who immediately blame tech companies, continue to present answers that make them feel good, but do little to deal with the realities and actual complexities of the issues at play.

Filed Under: aadc, california, gavin newsom, jennifer siebold newsom, mental health, social media, teen mental health