A few years ago, we wrote about an insanely aggressive anti-piracy campaign in South Africa, in which the local version of the RIAA (RISA) suggested people "shoot the pirate." That hyperbolic and ultra-aggressive campaign resulted in some actual violence, when RISA sent a group of artists (armed with that slogan) onto the streets to "confront" counterfeit CD sellers. So, perhaps it shouldn't come as a huge surprise to find out that a man in South Africa has been criminally convicted for posting a torrent for a local movie to the Pirate Bay, and given a suspended prison sentence.

There's a reason why most copyright infringement should be handled under civil litigation, rather than criminal. But, apparently authorities down in South Africa are trying a more aggressive path. While the guy had his sentence suspended because he apologized and helped to remove the work from being accessed via the Pirate Bay, it's hard to see how this is even close to a proportionate or reasonable response to someone sharing your movie. Meanwhile, it seems worth noting that up in Nigeria, a massively successful film industry has been built over the past few decades, in part because piracy helped solve the distribution problems the industry faced. Perhaps South Africa might want to think again before throwing fans behind bars for sharing a local film they liked.

Good news, Americans! The former "top watchdog" for the Department of Homeland Security, Charles K. Edwards, was an incredibly perverse blend of crooked and spineless and yet we still managed to avoid being terrorized to death during his run as Inspector General (2011-2013). That's the resilience of the American public. Even while the agency was being bumblefucked into (even greater) uselessness, those who hate us for our way of life (which now includes drone strikes, neverending military 'interventions' and the constant watching of damn near everybody) were unable to find a way to maneuver around the "security" "provided" by the DHS.

How can you tell when an investigative report is especially damning? When you can't even make it through the table of contents without gasping out loud a few times. Get a load of this:

III. LACK OF INDEPENDENCE
A. Lack of Familiarity with OIG Work
B. Frequent Communications and Personal Relationships with Senior DHS Officials
C. Lack of Independent Legal Advice
D. Improper Alteration or Delay of Reports
1. “Secure Communities” Audit Report
2. “Advance Imaging Technology” Audit Report
3. “Acquisition Management” Audit Report
4. “Secret Service” Investigation and Inspection
5. “Ports of Entry” Audit Report
E. Tainted Audit Reports
F. Apparent Desire for a Permanent IG Position

IV. ABUSE OF AGENCY RESOURCES
A. Assistance with Pursuit of a Ph.D
B. Assistance with Employment at Capitol College
C. Assistance with Pursuit of a Permanent IG Position
D. Travel to Florida
E. Misuse of a Government Vehicle
F. Benefits for Ms. Edwards
1. Nepotism in Hiring
2. Telework from India
3. International Phone Calls
4. Staff Assistance for Ms. Edwards

V. OTHER ALLEGATIONS
A. Notice of Administrative Leave
B. Destruction of E-mails
C. Deletion or Closing of Hotline Complaints
D. Destruction of Phone Records
E. Retaliation
1. Administrative Leave
2. Poor Performance Review
F. Office Environment

Where do you even start? It's all terrible. Edwards apparently wined and dined with DHS leaders, giving them heads up on the findings of investigations. So, there's that, which undermines the oversight. From there, Edwards went to various administration higher-ups and allowed them to control the timing and wording of investigative reports, further subverting the oversight process he was tasked with.

Beyond the major subversion, there's tons of minor issues. Nepotism, misuse of department resources, Edwards using the department to pursue a doctorate and a permanent position as an IG… about the only thing not noted in here is supply closet raids.

Furthermore, it appears Edwards wasn't even qualified to do the job he absolutely failed to do over a three-year period.

Unlike most IGs, Mr. Edwards does not have experience conducting audits, investigations, or inspections, the three main types of work conducted in an Office of Inspector General.

For example, when interviewed by Subcommittee staff, Edwards was unable to articulate guidelines that govern briefing details of an ongoing investigation to DHS. Edwards stated, “I don’t know that offhand here. You will have to talk to the office – to the Assistant IG for Investigations.”

Not only was he a lousy employee, he was a terrible boss. When not setting up his wife with travel, phones, laptops and a position within the department, he mistreated the rest of his staff -- the same staffers he tasked with working on his Ph.D dissertation and documents related to his pursuit of both a position with Capitol College and a permanent IG nomination.

During the Subcommittee’s investigation, current and former OIG employees repeatedly reported that Mr. Edwards had created a hostile work environment. One official characterized the office as a “toxic, totally dysfunctional and oppressive” work environment characterized by low morale, paranoia, and fear. Another official described the atmosphere of the OIG as one of “[c]omplete terror,” such that “there were times that [they] couldn’t even get up out of bed, [they were] so emotionally scared, drained.”

Many employees told the Subcommittee they wanted a change in leadership. According to one official, the OIG staff “want to have a legitimate Inspector General in place to get us back on track.” Another called the office “the worst agency” and said that it has been “run into the ground” under Mr. Edwards’ leadership. Reasons include Mr. Edwards’ reluctance to “seek out advice or guidance from anybody with experience” and that the “people … he surrounds himself with … do not have the background or the experience to be useful to him.”

When faced with low morale, Edwards apparently did what other wholly ineffective leaders do when faced with friction: he retaliated. Staffers claim Edwards routinely placed dissenters on administrative leave or used periodic employee reviews to "get back" at them for their failure to kowtow.

Allegations (some unsubstantiated) that Edwards broke federal law by destroying emails and documents are also included in the report. There are also allegations that Edwards spied on interoffice communications. A former senior OIG official noted that "nearly all" the communications he received about Edwards' actions originated from personal email accounts or phones.

So, what's to become of Edwards, who completely undercut any sort of independent oversight of the nation's foremost security agency, along with possibly breaking a handful of federal laws? A whole lot of nothing.

Edwards, a 20-year federal career employee with expertise in computer engineering, resigned his office in December, three days before he was scheduled to appear at a Senate hearing to answer questions. DHS granted his request to be transferred into its office of science and technology, and the hearing was canceled.

Wonderful. Way to send a message, Chief. That will let the government's Inspector Generals know they'd better be right on that oversight thing OR ELSE [they'll be transferred to another government agency, no questions asked].

The DHS is a joke with no punchline. I'd say DHS head Jeh Johnson has his hands full whipping this disgrace back into some semblance of a respectable government body, but let's face it, it has never been credible during its decade-plus existence. Johnson's not going to turn this around. The department's focus is almost entirely on maintaining a credible terrorist threat in order to justify its $39 billion budget and 225,000 employees. That leaves precious little time or resources to clean house.

People like Edwards who can fill the position while minimizing embarrassing investigative reports are welcomed at the DHS. No one wants to be the guy (or girl) who truly outs the agency as a bloated wreck that does little to nothing in the way of keeping the Homeland secure. Pursuing truly independent oversight just means working your way out of a job.

Yesterday reports started leaking about how FCC boss Tom Wheeler was getting ready to release his proposal for "new" net neutrality rules, to be voted on in a few weeks. They've now been introduced -- and Wheeler insists that all the whining and hand-wringing from yesterday was wrong. Except that's not true.

These new proposed rules are a response to a court tossing out the FCC's 2010 rules for not actually falling under the FCC's mandate. We pointed out that if the FCC were serious (and it's not), it should be focusing on increasing competition (which it's not). Congress certainly isn't going to do anything. Like previous FCC bosses, Commissioner Tom Wheeler has made it pretty clear that he's too timid to do anything serious, and instead will seek to find some sort of weak middle ground. Because there seems to be a rule that, if you're to become FCC Commissioner, you can't take a solid stand, but instead have to take a weak middle ground position and pretend it's a strong stand.

But what's currently being suggested may actually be worse. Because this opens the door to killing off net neutrality while pretending it's supporting net neutrality. As Stacey Higginbotham points out, even if Tom Wheeler believes this proposal makes sense, it's pretty ridiculous to claim it's net neutrality or about protecting an open internet. Wheeler should step up and admit what he's doing: killing off net neutrality to create a system that lets the big broadband providers double charge -- and then explain why he thinks that's necessary. Pretending this is net neutrality is a joke. Here's the basic proposals:

1. That all ISPs must transparently disclose to their subscribers and users all relevant information as to the policies that govern their network;
2. That no legal content may be blocked; and
3. That ISPs may not act in a commercially unreasonable manner to harm the Internet, including favoring the traffic from an affiliated entity.

The key issue is that last one, in which the FCC claims it will still have the ability to stop "commercially unreasonable" activities by broadband providers, while refusing any attempt to explain what commercially unreasonable means. At the same time, it makes it pretty clear that "commercially reasonable" (again, undefined) rules will be allowed -- and it's likely this means allowing ISPs to create "fast lanes" by which they can charge more, so long as anyone with a lot of cash can also pay more.

This is not net neutrality. Yes, the 2nd rule means that no ISP will get away with the outright banning of access to websites, but no ISP was seriously considering that anyway. This bans a practice no one was going to do, meaning it doesn't ban anything. But by opening up "commercially reasonable" discrimination, it's allowing ISPs to create privileged "fast lanes" by which large internet players can "pay" to have preferred access to users. If you have a fast lane, by definition you also need a slow lane. So the (reasonable) fear here is that smaller entities, who can't pay for the fast lane, basically start out with degraded service compared to the big guys who can (and will) pay.

That means that services that don't pay up are throttled. By definition.

It's exactly what the big ISPs have wanted all along, which is a system to double charge big companies, who will now have to pay for both their own bandwidth and a portion of your bandwidth. If you think "hey, I already pay for my bandwidth," you're right. And now you'll likely have to pay much more, because the big companies who pay are going to pass the costs on to you. And, you'll have fewer interesting new services because the barriers to entry will be higher. So, the end result is the immensely profitable duopoly of internet service providers get more profitable and you pay more. Big internet companies pay off the broadband providers to stay fast, while startups and innovation are basically more difficult to create, because they're going to have to set aside a huge chunk of money to pay for some of the bandwidth that you're already paying for (and probably not getting anyway).

The Comcasts and AT&T's and Verizons of the world are going to parade up and down about how this will let them invest in better networks and provide better services, but there is absolutely no incentive here for them to actually do so. In fact, they have every incentive in the world to degrade service in the "slow lane" to make it less useful, driving more companies to need to pay for the fast lane.

These aren't rules for an open internet or for net neutrality. These are rules to kill that off.

"Commercially reasonable" are the weasel words here that effectively sell out the internet. The old rules were dreadful, and these rules are still just in proposal stages, but Wheeler's first foray into net neutrality is a joke. He's doing the same thing as his predecessor in refusing to stand up and say what he actually means, because he knows that what he's proposing is bad news.

As we've reported, Russia has been steadily trying to bring the Internet under control with ever-more stringent measures. After tackling general Web sites through powers that allow them to be blocked more easily, it now seems to be the turn of the bloggers, as this report from the ITAR-TASS News Agency on a recently-approved law explains:

The law introduces a new term: "Internet user called blogger." Bloggers will be obliged to declare their family name and initials and e-mail address. Those authors whose personal website or page in social networks has 3,000 visitors or more a day must have themselves registered on a special list and abide by restrictions applicable to the mass media. In other words, registration requires the blogger should check the authenticity of published information and also mention age restrictions for users. Also, bloggers will have to follow mass media laws concerning electioneering, resistance to extremism and the publication of information about people’s private lives. An abuse of these requirements will be punishable with a fine of 10,000 to 30,000 rubles (roughly $300 to $1,000) for individuals and 300,000 rubles ($10,000) for legal entities. A second violation will be punishable with the website's suspension for one month.

Clearly those onerous conditions are designed to make any blogger think twice or three times before publishing anything at all controversial or embarrassing for the authorities. The article notes that the new law may be challenged before Russia's Constitutional Court, and that there's a huge loophole in the form of blogs located overseas, which are not covered by the legislation. The fear has to be that the Russian government will now move on to blocking them too. Moreover, not content with intimidating independent blogs, the Russian authorities also seem to be tightening their grip on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook. As Ars Technica reports:

Pavel Durov, the founder of Vkontakte (VK) -- the largest social network in Russia -- said on Tuesday that he fled the country one day after being forced out of the company, claiming that he felt threatened by Kremlin officials.

In a post on his profile page on Monday, Durov explained that he was fired from his position as CEO of VK and that the so-called "Russian Facebook" is now "under the complete control" of two oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin.

His removal is probably connected with his longstanding refusal to censor content on VKontakte:

Durov explained that after seven years of relative social media freedom in Russia, his refusal to share user data with Russian law enforcement has set him at odds with the Kremlin, which has recently been trying to tighten its grip on the Internet, according to The Moscow Times.

VK's former CEO says that despite his multiple refusals of Kremlin requests to censor his site in a similar fashion to how it filters print and TV news, the site -- which boasts 143 million registered users globally, 88 million of whom are based in Russia -- is now effectively under state control.

What's sad here is that, as we've noted ruefully before, in the wake of revelations about NSA and GCHQ spying, the West is no longer in a position to criticize this kind of censorship and surveillance. As the latest moves indicate, the Russian authorities seem intent on taking full advantage of that fact.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

As we recently covered, Jim Ardis, the absurdly thin-skinned mayor of Peoria, IL, got the boys in blue to raid a house over a parody Twitter account that portrayed him as a.) a possible drug user, b.) a possible patron of the world's oldest profession and c.) "trill as fuck." Peoria's Finest have never been finer, deploying seven plainclothes officers to nail a dangerous tweeter whose Ardis-mocking account had been shut down by Twitter weeks before. Bonus: drugs were discovered during the raid, which meant the cops could at least declare victory over marijuana use, if not the internet itself.

Now, the fact that the account was already suspended suggests Ardis had previously contacted Twitter about the unflattering parody. So, this next move was overkill. Why would a mayor do such a thing? Because Mayor Jim Ardis believes the First Amendment is zero sum.

"I still maintain my right to protect my identity is my right," Ardis said in an interview with the Journal Star before the council meeting.

"Are there no boundaries on what you can say, when you can say it, who you can say it to?" Ardis said. "You can’t say (those tweets) on behalf of me. That’s my problem. This guy took away my freedom of speech."

Presumably prior to this awesome show of force, the mayor had been forced to sit quietly with his hands folded on his desk. But now that he's stomped on someone else's First Amendment rights, he can finally freely speak.

But those official bootprints across the back of five Peoria residents aren't going to leave lasting marks. The Peoria Journal Star reports that no charges will be brought against the Twitter account holder.

A review of state law indicates the account holders of now-shutdown Twitter account, @peoriamayor, didn’t break the law because the actual crime alleged, “false personation of a public official,” has to be done in person, not over the Internet or other electronic media, said State’s Attorney Jerry Brady.

"At this time, no, because subsection (b) doesn’t include the use of electronic media," he said.

There are also questions as to whether the unrelated drug charge will stick because, well, it's completely unrelated. The warrant used to raid the house appears to be on legally shaky ground already, and its supposed purpose was to effect arrests and seize evidence related to a Twitter account, not root around until something better presented itself. But it could be weeks before that part is sorted out. The States Attorney says it's not uncommon for search warrants and affidavits to take "several days to weeks" to arrive at his office. (Must send these via trans-Atlantic steamer, I guess...) One imagines documents related to this case will take longer than usual.

Meanwhile, the population of Peoria, along with the city council, is extremely angry that Ardis abused his position. A long, heated discussion of this incident included members decrying Ardis receiving preferential treatment from the Peoria PD, as well as generally lamenting how his actions have turned Peoria into a national laughingstock.

Ardis, however, seems unfazed. He still firmly believes he did nothing wrong. The problem here is everyone else, starting with the media.

"You’re the ones responsible for getting full information, but not to spin it in the way you want to spin it," Ardis said to a Journal Star reporter. "To make us look stupid."

"It’s your responsibility to put actual information out there and cover both sides. Not to opine. And that didn’t happen. Clearly, that didn’t happen."

Hey, Ardis. Only one person can make you look stupid, and he's that person up there claiming the First Amendment can't be evenly divided among several people. The actual information is out there. And it all adds up to Ardis not being able to take a joke, ordering cops to arrest people he doesn't find funny, and complaining about "suddenly" being universally reviled.

A new study from Strategy Analytics highlights what you almost certainly already know, that no one actually uses the crappy bloatware apps that Samsung puts on its phones. This shouldn't be a surprise at all. But I actually wanted to highlight a different issue I'd noticed recently: which is that not only do people not use the bloatware apps, by making them both default and unintstallable, Samsung pretty guarantees that everyone hates those apps.

Now, I can imagine the execs at various app developers who got all excited when they had a chance to become a default app on a Samsung flagship phone like the S3, S4 or S5. After all, Samsung sells a ton of these phones. So if Samsung approaches you and offers to make you a default, it's got to be hard to say no. Because what they're offering is to put your app in front of many millions of potential users. And given the big hurdle of getting people to even download free apps, that must seem like a huge victory.

Until you realize that everyone hates unnecessary and unwanted bloatware. Beyond the study above showing that no one uses those apps, I recently looked at the Google Play Store reviews of many of the Samsung choices for bloatware. And pretty consistently, the large majority or reviews are about how they don't know why the app is on their phone and they're pissed that they can't delete it. Take, for example, Blurb Checkout, part of Samsung's near-totally-useless "book-making app." People absolutely loathe it almost entirely because it's a bloatware default app. Out of over 22,000 reviews, it has over 16,000 one star reviews. And nearly all of the reviews look like the "highlighted" ones on the page: Or how about the Lumen Toolbar? Frankly, I have no idea what it does, but it's there. The aggregate reviews on this aren't quite as bad as Blurb above, and there do appear to be some people who really do like this toolbar. But the reviews are still filled with angry rants: I'm sure HP thought it was a great way to jumpstart its mobile printing efforts by having its HP Print Service Plugin installed as default bloatware on Samsung (and, apparently, on Nexus) devices. Until everyone started yelling about how they want that crap off their phone. And, of course, none of this even touches on Samsung's own apps, in which it has weak copies of much better apps out there, such as S Health, S Memo and S Voice -- all of which are stuck on your phone, even though there are much better and much more functional alternatives available in the Play Store and elsewhere. The thing is, all of these apps could be the greatest possible apps in the world, but by making them part of preinstalled bloatware and making it so you can't uninstall them, it's pretty much guaranteeing that people will hate on these apps, making it even worse than just not using them -- they're actively harming the reputations of those apps for folks who might actually like them.

We've talked plenty about the big revolving door between government and big business lately, but there are still some moments that are purely insane that show just how broken the system is. On Wednesday, news broke that former FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker has been named the new CEO of CTIA, the main lobbying organization for mobile phone operators. Baker is no stranger to questionable revolving door moves, seeing as just months after she voted to approve Comcast's merger with NBC Universal, she took a top lobbying job with Comcast. Funny how that works.

But, in this case, it's even more ridiculous because, as Jon Brodkin points out, the current head of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, previously was CEO of CTIA as well. And prior to that he was CEO of NCTA (the cable industry's main lobbying group). And, to top it off, the current head of CTIA is none other than former FCC chair Michael Powell.

If you're keeping score at home, it looks like this:

• Michael Powell: FCC Chair -> NCTA boss
• Meredith Atwell Baker: FCC Commissioner -> Comcast -> CTIA boss
• Tom Wheeler: NCTA boss -> CTIA boss -> FCC Chair

They're playing a game of musical chairs where no chair is ever removed... and they all get fabulously wealthy scratching each others' backs. Even if everyone is being completely sincere in their positions (a big if, but let's assume it for now), the real problem here, again, is that the perception of rampant corruption is encouraged by this sort of thing, leading the public to seriously distrust the government. When the top two lobbying organizations on these issues are manned by former top officials and the current top FCC official used to run both those organizations, there's a pretty clear implication that it's the public interest that's going to get shafted.

About six months before Ed Snowden leaked his documents, we had written a post about why Google should encrypt our email, based on a bit of back-and-forth between Julian Sanchez, arguing why Google should encrypt all email, and Ed Felten, who noted it's not as easy as it sounds (though Julian highlighted how none of the problems Felten raises are insurmountable). There are, of course, already ways that you can add PGP encryption to Gmail, with tools like Mailvelope, but it can be a little kludgy, and not exactly foolproof. Still, many have insisted that Google would never go this route, since it would limit the company's ability to target ads based on the contents of email.

However, VentureBeat is reporting that, partly inspired by all of the Snowden revelations, researchers at Google are looking at ways to make encryption much easier within Gmail. While the report suggests that Gmail won't go site-wide end-to-end encryption, anything it does to bring real encryption more into the mainstream would be a good thing -- though it might make the NSA and DOJ freak out. But, as we've seen, well-done crypto does work. The problem is that so much crypto is not particularly well implemented, leading to all sorts of leaks. Still, it's encouraging to hear that Google is working on something, and hopefully it releases something that is both user-friendly and open to some sort of audit to ensure that it's safe.

In the continuing global legal fight over Megaupload, the company apparently is asking the Hong Kong high court to set aside the restraining order on the company's assets that was put in place over two years ago, following a request from the US Justice Department. Megaupload was always legally based in Hong Kong, even if the company itself was based in New Zealand. Megaupload appears to be claiming that the Hong Kong Justice Department did not properly follow the law in going along with the US DOJ's request. The main issue, which has been debated back in the US, is that, technically, the DOJ cannot serve Megaupload (the company) since it has no US employees or presence. The DOJ can go after foreign individuals, but when it comes to foreign companies, the law is pretty explicit that they can't. While the DOJ is actively seeking to change that law, it doesn't change the basic problem with the original request.

Megaupload is pointing out that the US DOJ's request to the HK DOJ depended on Megaupload being served the criminal summons. But since that hasn't been satisfied, it argues the HK DOJ has no basis for restraining Megaupload's assets:

The order was granted on the basis of an ex parte application by the HK DOJ made at the request of the US DOJ. The grounds for discharge of the order is the failure by the HK DOJ—acting on the basis of information provided by the US DOJ—to fully and frankly disclose in that ex parte application serious legal issues relating to the US DOJ’s inability to serve Megaupload with a criminal summons in accordance with United States federal law. Among other things, the US DOJ failed to explain how it intended to comply with the service of process requirements imposed by the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which, as argued in Megaupload’s application, are an essential prerequisite to initiating any criminal proceedings against Megaupload and cannot be satisfied for a corporation that has no physical presence or subsidiaries in the United States. Megaupload has submitted those filings with its application to the High Court.

Megaupload claims it's seeking to free the assets in order to attempt to regain control over the leased servers from Carpathia, which the DOJ has been hoping would be destroyed (leading to the destruction of evidence in a criminal case, at the DOJ's urging). While the issue of serving Megaupload is something of a technical snafu, it's one in a rather long line of sloppy lawyering by the DOJ throughout this case.

So far, grabbing fossil fuels out of the ground has been an unbeatable way to get cheap energy. Since fossil fuels (presumably) come from decaying dinosaurs (and their contemporaries), it makes some sense that growing biofuels might be a way to generate a more renewable source of energy. Unfortunately, biofuel projects haven't quite demonstrated an obviously better way to replace fossil fuels. Here are just a few links to some biofuel info that could lead to more environmentally friendly fuels.

• Biofuel derived from corn waste might be no better (or worse) than gasoline for carbon dioxide emissions. A recent study estimates that burning corn waste biofuels releases CO2 faster than if the corn waste was left to rot in the fields. There are some questions about how accurate these estimates are, but it raises the question of how green some biofuels really are. [url]
• Breeding algae for biofuels isn't easy -- especially if you want to extract the a significant amount of algae oil from a large photobioreactor. However, if someone does figure out a cost effective way to grow biodiesel (or any important organic compounds) from algae, it'll be a real game changer. [url]
• Ideally, biofuels would take more CO2 out of the air than they emit. At least one startup, Cool Planet, thinks it can do this at a decent-sized scale -- making 10 million gallons of fuel in a year by the end of 2015. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.