We've written many, many times about the importance of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides protections against secondary liability (except for intellectual property) claims for internet service providers. In the simplest form, Section 230 says that if a user does something on a site that's illegal, you need to blame the person who did it, rather than the site. As we've said repeatedly, this makes so much sense it's almost troubling that you need a law to make the point. You blame the person who broke the law, not the tools they used. Duh. You don't blame Ford because that was the getaway car in a bank robbery and you don't blame AT&T because the extortion call was made via an AT&T phone line.

But, on the internet, blame often gets thrown around wildly, and websites themselves are too frequently targets of misguided legal claims. Section 230 protects against that and lets companies quickly extricate themselves from bogus legal claims. Unfortunately, Section 230 has been under attack lately by a number of parties. There are a bunch of state Attorneys General who are looking to change the law to exempt it from applying to cases they might bring against sites. You have short-sighted law professors who think that a way to fix "bad" sites online is to gut Section 230. And, unfortunately, you have one really bad district court ruling (which disagrees with every other ruling on the law) which hopefully will get reversed on appeal.

Much of the academic discussions concerning the importance of Section 230 have, quite reasonably, focused on the impact on innovation. As some have pointed out, Section 230 can, in many ways, be credited with "giving us the modern internet." So many of the sites you know, love and use today probably wouldn't exist, or would exist in greatly limited forms, without Section 230. It's truly enabled a revolution in innovation online, allowing sites to build powerful tools for the public, without having to be liable for how the public then uses those tools.

And that brings us to a second important point about Section 230 that perhaps gets less attention, though it probably should get much more. Section 230 has really helped to enable a tremendous amount of free speech online. On a recent edition of his Surprisingly Free podcast, Jerry Brito interviewed Anupam Chander who recently co-authored a paper (with Uyen Le), which highlights "the free speech foundations of cyberlaw" and how Section 230 has been truly key in guaranteeing a lot of free speech online -- basically highlighting how the First Amendment and Section 230 work well together. However, it also points out that it was the First Amendment that underpins all of this, and that we should be wary of challenges to the law that might undermine the First Amendment.

If you know the history of the Communications Decency Act, you know that it was a very, very different bill than Section 230. The original CDA was basically the opposite. It was a bill to censor websites that had "indecent" communications. Most of that got thrown out (after quite the legal fight) as unconstitutional under the First Amendment. What remained, and should continue to remain, is Section 230 -- which was the one part of the bill that was consistent with the First Amendment.

The paper also goes into how copyright law, separately, has been trying to chip away at the First Amendment online, and how dangerous that is as well. Remember, Section 230 doesn't apply to copyright law, though there is Section 512 of the DMCA, which is similar, but not nearly as strong. The paper notes that things like SOPA really were a direct attempt to attack the First Amendment, which is why it's a good thing that it failed.

All in all, it's a good reminder of both how important protecting free speech online is today and how fragile it is, since the laws that have made it possible are so constantly under attack.

A recent post of mine took on grand juries, specifically the astounding fact that a North Carolina grand jury managed to crank out 276 indictments in four hours -- or roughly, one indictment every 52 seconds. Some commenters pointed out (correctly) that grand juries don't actually declare anyone "guilty." They just determine whether the prosecution has enough evidence to bring the case to trial.

But the system is still broken. Grand juries may not hand out guilty verdicts, but they do have the power to imprison people for an indefinite amount of time simply by indicting them. This is exactly what happened to Justin Carter, the teen charged with making terroristic threats after someone reported statements he made while trash-talking with some fellow League of Legends players. The Dallas Observer has been tracking this case (via Reason), and the phrases below are what have been termed "terroristic threats."

One of the comments appears to be a response to an earlier comment in which someone called Carter crazy. Carter's retort was: "I'm fucked in the head alright, I think I'ma SHOOT UP A KINDERGARTEN [sic]."

Carter followed with "AND WATCH THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT RAIN DOWN."

Carter was indicted by a grand jury based solely on these statements. (Police failed to uncover anything else damning after searching Carter's residence.) According to Carter's lawyer, the prosecutor presented the "threats" using a couple of screenshots wholly removed from context to the grand jury, which found these met the requirements of the "terroristic threat" charge.

But Flanary says that Bates presented a truncated version of the comments to grand jurors. They did not see "I'm fucked in the head alright, I think I'ma" before "shoot up a kindergarten." If this sounds like the nitpicking of a defense attorney, that's precisely the point.

"When you're dealing with speech," Flanary says, "... it is absolutely, 100 percent important that the words that you are charging people with are actually the words that they said and not some misrepresentation. And that's what ... this prosecutor did, is misrepresent to the grand jury what he said."

So, the grand jury indicted Carter and the prosecutor asked for $500,000 bail. Carter was jailed in February of 2013 (the first month of which he spent unindicted while officials sorted out jurisdictional issues), where he was beaten, raped, put in solitary for his own protection and placed on suicide watch. He wasn't released until July when an anonymous donor paid the bail.

How is that indistinguishable from being found guilty in court? A prosecutor presents only the evidence that will persuade the grand jury to indict and follows it up by asking a judge to set an exorbitant bail. For Carter, he may as well have been found guilty by a jury, for all the difference "it's only an indictment" made. Since his family couldn't afford the bail, Carter remained imprisoned, despite not having been found guilty of any crime.

Running 276 cases through in four hours is grossly irresponsible, and it put an unknown number of people into a position like Carter's -- jailed but still supposedly "innocent until proven guilty." For a large majority of Americans, a bail amount even 1/10th of Carter's $500,000 is unaffordable. Once indicted and with bail set above what they can afford, they are jailed until they can go to trial and finally start exercising their due process rights, which can often be months after the indictment.

I understand the bail process is in place to help prevent the accused from simply fleeing the country, state or whatever and avoid "justice," but this combination of grand juries and aggressive prosecution seeking excessive bail amounts turns the system into "guilty until proven innocent."

That's not how the system is supposed to work. You're not supposed to be indicted, jailed indefinitely and then finally allowed to face your accusers and a jury of your peers, if and when that date arrives. Grand juries subvert the criminal justice system, turning the merely accused into de facto criminals, indistinguishable from the other prisoners except for the fact that many of their new "peers" have likely had a chance to avail themselves of their constitutional rights.

As we've noted before, trade agreements are usually sold on the basis that they will bring economic benefits for large numbers of the citizens involved. But that doesn't always work out in practice, as earlier figures regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and South Korea-US free trade agreement (KORUS) indicated. New corrected 2013 year-end trade data from the US International Trade Commission shows that things aren't getting any better. Here's what's happening with NAFTA, as encapsulated (rather breathlessly) by Public Citizen (pdf):

A staggering U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico after 20 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

The 2013 U.S. goods trade deficit with Mexico and Canada was $177 billion -- a nearly seven-fold increase above the pre-NAFTA level, when the United States enjoyed a small trade surplus with Mexico and a modest deficit with Canada

Even worse for U.S. workers, the non-oil NAFTA deficit has multiplied more than 13-fold, costing hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs. Indeed, the share of the combined U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada that is comprised of oil has declined since NAFTA.

Things are equally grim on the KORUS front:

A stunning decline in U.S. exports to Korea, a rise in imports from Korea, and a widening of the U.S. trade deficit under the Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

20 out of 21 months since the Korea FTA took effect, U.S. goods exports to Korea have fallen below the average monthly level in the year before the deal.

U.S. average monthly exports to Korea since the FTA are 12 percent lower than the pre-FTA monthly average, while monthly imports from Korea are up 3 percent.

The monthly trade deficit with Korea has ballooned 49 percent compared to the pre-FTA level. These losses amount to tens of thousands of lost U.S. jobs

Part of the problem with future free trade agreements like TPP and TAFTA/TTIP is that (obviously) we have no historical figures; instead, we must rely on economic models to predict what the benefits might be. Embedded within models are many assumptions, and people will naturally disagree over how reasonable those are. For example, in New Zealand, the Sustainability Council has published details of its review of the model that the New Zealand government has depended upon in order to justify its enthusiasm for the TPP negotations. Here's what the Council claims to have found:

The government has repeatedly used estimates from a team of US economists to justify the Trans Pacific Partnership. This team put the economic gains for New Zealand at US$4.5 billion for 2025 (around NZ$5.5 billion) in their latest study for the Peterson Institute.

A detailed review of that study led by Dr Geoff Bertram concludes that a third of the stated benefits should not be counted at all as they are outside established economic theory. The Sustainability Council review also concludes that only a minor part of the remaining gains are justified. The total benefits likely to be available are less than a quarter of the US$4.1 billion of gains Trade Minister Tim Groser told Parliament would result for New Zealand from the TPP.

In exchange for a small gain in relative terms, New Zealand is being asked to sign away large slabs of its sovereignty. The TPP bundles the small gains from trade with a wide range of non-trade matters that will set privileges for foreign investors. These would impose serious costs in the form of limitations on a government's ability to protect the public interest.

Now, given the organization's name, it's quite likely that the Sustainability Council has an axe to grind here, but then so does the New Zealand government, which has invested a huge amount of time, money and political capital in the TPP negotiations. What that means is everyone's claims about benefits or lack of them need to be treated with caution. And that, in its turn, means that the TPP negotiators should think very hard before making real sacrifices for what may prove highly elusive gains.

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

If you look closely enough at anything, you're bound to find more complexity and unanswered questions than you'd imagine. Especially when it comes to health recommendations, it seems like the consensus for what's "bad" for you flips every few decades. That's not exactly true, but as we learn more of the details about how substances we eat are metabolized, we have to change the simple recommendations that are broadcast to everyone. Here are just a few links on what you might want to drink (or not drink) to stay healthy.

• Hydropathy started in the early 1800s promoting all kinds of health benefits from water. The lasting legacy of the hydropathy movement is the recommendation to drink 8 glasses of water per day -- even though there's no scientific evidence to support that specific amount of water for everyone to consume daily. [url]
• Orange juice used to be considered the standard healthy beverage for breakfast, able to cure ailments from scurvy to acidosis. Nowadays, though, OJ isn't viewed as favorably due to its high sugar content and its sometimes heavily-processed varieties. [url]
• The health benefits of skim milk versus whole milk aren't as clear cut as you might have thought. Some recent studies find that consuming whole-fat dairy correlates with lower rates of obesity, but adults with high cholesterol may still want to limit full-fat dairy in their diets. [url]

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

Another red light camera company is in trouble, this time in St. Louis, MO, where a judge has just invalidated the city's red light camera ordinance. American Traffic Solutions (whose legal issues we've detailed here previously) has just had its camera system kicked to the curb as a result of some questionable moves it made during a recent lawsuit.

A St. Louis judge issued an order Tuesday that invalidates the city's red-light camera ordinance.

Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer wrote in the order that the city is prohibited from attempting to enforce the ordinance, sending violation notices, processing payments or sending collection letters relating to the tickets.

So what prompted Ohmer to shut down the system? Well, the tickets that were central to the case, which were over a year old at the point of the suit's filing, were dismissed almost immediately after the lawsuit was filed. Why the sudden show of largesse?

Those named in the suit — including the city, Mayor Francis Slay, Police Chief Sam Dotson and American Traffic Solutions Inc., which operates the cameras — had argued to dismiss it. Some of the defendants said the claims were moot because the tickets had been dismissed and that the petitioners lacked standing because they were not hurt by the ordinance.

Ohmer didn't let this transparent attempt to dodge a legal battle go unnoticed.

"Here, it is clear that the City dismissed the Petitioners' tickets for the sole reason of avoiding an injunction in this matter, which the Court was poised to enter following the November hearing," he wrote.

Nearly every other claim made by the defendants was rebuffed by Judge Ohmer. The defendant's argued the plaintiffs had other venues to pursue their claims, like the municipal court, but a recent decision found that this court didn't provide adequate remedy for their claims. The defendants also argued the two filers didn't meet the requirements for a class action lawsuit. Judge Ohmer pointed out that the pair satisfied the "class action" stipulations because the ordinance affected other citizens.

The key element found to be in violation of state law is the fact that ATS' cameras (like all traffic enforcement cameras) presume the registered owner of the vehicle is the driver. This common aspect becomes even more problematic when the ticketed person has very limited avenues for recourse, which also unfortunately tends to be the case with automated enforcement. (This is also one of several problems with the recently introduced legislation that would allow Oklahoma police officers to issue traffic citations without leaving their vehicles.)

This combination of factors has led some traffic camera companies to basically convert their enforcement systems into purely voluntary operations. As the article notes, another Missouri city's council members recently voted unanimously to not enforce red light camera tickets. The camera system will be allowed to keep running and issuing citations but the city and the red light camera company won't pursue those who ignore tickets and will erase fines for anyone who contests their citation. Feeling safer yet, drivers?

The War on Drugs is increasingly being fought in the courtrooms, but not in the way drug warriors prefer. A multimillion dollar lawsuit has been filed for civil rights violations, use of excessive force and wrongful death by the wife (Tonya Pate) of Eugene Mallory, who was 80 years old at the time sheriff's deputies ended his life back in 2011.

The lawsuit details the actions taken by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Dept., along with its alleged coverup of its misconduct proceeding and following the incident that saw Mallory shot six times as he was lying in bed. According to sheriff's deputies, the decision to enter Mallory's trailer was justified by Detective Toucan Sam Patrick Hobbs, who claimed he smelled "chemicals" while "downwind." This was further justified by an anonymous tip that Mallory was supposedly manufacturing meth on the premises. No spoiler alert is really necessary as I'm sure we can see where this is going. No meth or meth manufacturing equipment/chemicals were found. However, deputies did claim to find "marijuana and marijuana-growing equipment" on another part of the property.

But, as Reason points out, there were discrepancies between the deputies' first statement and the one released after they listened to the audio recording of the incident.

Deputies approached the house, and what happened next is where things get murky. The deputies said they announced their presence upon entering and were met in the hallway by the 80-year-old man, wielding a gun and stumbling towards them. [Note: I can't find any confirmation that the deputies ever made this particular statement.] The deputies later changed the story when the massive bloodstains on Mallory's mattress indicated to investigators that he'd most likely been in bed at the time of the shooting. Investigators also found that an audio recording of the incident revealed a discrepancy in the deputies' original narrative:

Before listening to the audio recording, [Sgt. John] Bones believed that he told Mallory to "Drop the gun" prior to the shooting. The recording revealed, however, that his commands to "Drop the gun" occurred immediately after the shooting.

The rest of the case, including the warrant and the anonymous tip, seem to be at least as suspect as the changing narrative, according to the allegations put forth in the filing. It doesn't take long for Pate's lawyer to start nailing the defendants (of which there are more than 50) to the wall. The second paragraph of the first cause of action runs as follows.

On or about June 25, 2013, in the County of Los Angeles, State of California, HOBBS filed with the Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles, his sworn affidavit and statement attesting to certain facts in support of a search warrant for the residence and real property of DECEDENT located at 36644 117th Street East, Littlerock, County of Los Angeles, State of California. At all times stated herein, HOBBS either lied under oath making these representations, knowing that the material facts he stated to the court were false or were likely untrue, or were made by him with a reckless disregard for the truth, with the further intent to deceive the court and to intentionally deprive DECEDENT and Plaintiff of their constitutional rights under the law.

What did Hobbs allegedly lie about? Well, Mallory's supposed "clandestine" meth lab (which was allegedly used to "continuously manufacture" the drug) for one thing. Hobbs used an anonymous tip and his expert nostrils to make this call, both of which were proven wrong after Mallory had six bullets in him. Hobbs apparently felt Mallory had the ability to whip up a meth lab on the fly, as the filing notes that the property itself had been inspected several times by the LA Sheriff's Dept. itself, along with code enforcement officers, all without ever turning up evidence of drug manufacturing or storage.

The suit also alleges that the "secret informant" was unreliable, if he or she even existed at all. (The lawsuit then goes on to confusingly claim this possibly nonexistent informant "had reason to lie and fabricate false information about [Mallory].")

Further on, Pate's lawyer calls out the LA Sheriff's Dept. (of which a total of 50 'John Doe' officers are listed as defendants, which apparently was the total number of responding officers post-shooting) for failing to properly train its officers or even curtail their misconduct.

Failure to provide adequate discipline, training, control, and supervision to peace officers who themselves have either a propensity for lying and fabrication of evidence, for violence or a history of violence, and for engagement in other unconstitutional actions.

This isn't far from the truth. Reason points out the department has been "plagued by prison abuse scandals, questionable hiring practices, and allegations of racial profiling and harassment in recent years."

The lawsuit also alleges that Mallory was "deliberately" denied prompt medical care by sheriff's deputies. Also of concern is the fact that Pate was unable to obtain an independent autopsy (although the county coroner's declaration that Mallory died from "multiple gunshot wounds" would seem to be accurate), as the county chose to contact out-of-state relatives rather than Pate, Mallory's wife, and cremated his body at their request.

This is America's drug war: a man killed in the pursuit of a drug manufacturing operation that didn't exist. After the news first hit, the sheriff's department used the discovery of marijuana as justification for its actions -- even though the failure to find the drug it was actually searching for turned both the anonymous tipster and Detective Hobbs' nose into liars.

Here are the statements made directly after the shooting.

During the June raid, Mallory raised a semi-automatic handgun in response to deputies, who fired on him, the sheriff’s department said at the time. Two guns were recovered at the scene, according to sheriff’s department spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Using the word "semi-automatic" makes the handgun sound more threatening, despite the fact that the majority of pistols sold are semi-automatic.

“Age does not preclude somebody from being aggressive toward deputies,” Whitmore said. “The lesson here is… don’t pull a gun on a deputy.”

That narrative is still being disputed.

Marijuana was found on another part of the property where Tonya’s lived, she said.

“There was a drug operation that was certainly going on in this house,” Whitmore said.

But not the drug operation anyone was looking for and not the drug operation cited by Hobb's nostrils and the department didn't release any specifics on what was recovered or how much, which means it could have been nothing more than a couple of potted plants and a grow lamp ("marijuana and marijuana-growing equipment"). It couldn't have been much of a "drug operation" because not a single person who was detained and questioned following the incident was arrested or charged.

There were no other occupants in the residence at the time of the shooting, but several residents at the multi-unit property were detained for questioning in relation to the deputy-involved shooting, Gomez said. All residents were later released.

Pin it on the dead guy, whatever they actually found. So, the Drug War rolls on, costing citizens billions of dollars, some of it in the form of lawsuit settlements. A dangerous 80-year-old alleged meth manufacturer was taken out, making the world a safer place, because eventual, alleged marijuana growers are apparently equally as dangerous and undeserving of due process.

Earlier this week we mentioned that Edward Snowden has agreed in principle to contribute to the European Parliament's inquiry into the mass surveillance of EU citizens. The body leading that is the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) committee, which has been interviewing many other witnesses in order to formulate what the EU's response should be. Yesterday the LIBE committee met and agreed its final recommendations, which include some pretty dramatic demands -- like this one:

Parliament's consent to the final Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal with the US "could be endangered as long as blanket mass surveillance activities and the interception of communications in EU institutions and diplomatic representations are not fully stopped and an adequate solution for data privacy rights of EU citizens, including administrative and judicial redress is not found", MEPs say.

Parliament should therefore withhold its consent to the TTIP agreement unless it fully respects fundamental rights enshrined in the EU Charter, the text adds, stressing that data protection should be ruled out of the trade talks.

If the European Parliament agrees, that could be a big problem, because on the US side, there is an equally strong insistence that data protection must be included in any TAFTA/TTIP text. But the LIBE MEPs don't stop there; here are more potential bombshells:

MEPs call for the "immediate suspension" of the Safe Harbour privacy principles (voluntary data protection standards for non-EU companies transferring EU citizens' personal data to the US). These principles "do not provide adequate protection for EU citizens" say MEPs, who urge the US to propose new personal data transfer rules that meet EU data protection requirements.

The Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) deal should also be suspended until allegations that US authorities have access to EU citizens' bank data outside the agreement are clarified, say MEPs. The EU-US data protection framework agreement to be struck in spring 2014 must ensure proper judicial redress for EU citizens whose personal data are transferred to the US, they add.

Without the Safe Harbor program, it will be illegal under European law for companies like Google and Facebook to take EU citizens' personal data outside the EU, which would make it hard to run those services there. Presumably this threat is designed to encourage the US authorities to come up with something better than the current Safe Harbor system, which essentially offers no protection for the personal data of EU citizens when it is transferred to the US.

One interesting proposal concerns whistleblowers:

The resolution urges the European Commission to examine whether a future EU law establishing a "European whistleblower protection programme" should also include other fields of EU competence "with particular attention to the complexity of whistleblowing in the field of intelligence". EU member states are also asked to consider granting whistleblowers international protection from prosecution.

But a big omission is the lack of any formal call to offer political asylum to Edward Snowden, something many people had hoped for. However, Euronews reports that the Rapporteur (subject expert) for this report, Claude Moraes, believes that offering asylum is not possible because of the way that political powers are apportioned between the European Union and its member states:

"The European Union does not have the power to grant asylum as the European Union, so this is something for individual member states," he told euronews. "And the issue of asylum within this report therefore does not become a relevant issue for the European Union."

Finally, the LIBE committee rapped a few national knuckles for complicity in the NSA's global surveillance activities:

The UK, France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Poland should clarify the allegations of mass surveillance -- including potential agreements between intelligence services and telecoms firms on access to and exchange of personal data and access to transatlantic cables -- and their compatibility with EU laws, it says.

Other EU countries, in particular those participating in the "9-eyes" (UK, Denmark, France and the Netherlands) and "14-eyes" arrangements (those countries plus Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden) are also urged to review their national laws and practices governing the activities of intelligence services, so as to ensure that they are subject to parliamentary and judicial oversight and public scrutiny and that they comply with fundamental rights obligations.

MEPs deem bilateral "anti-spying" arrangements concluded or under negotiation between some EU countries (the UK, France and Germany) and the US as "counterproductive and irrelevant, due to the need for a European approach to this problem".

It's worth emphasizing that all these demands are only recommendations at this stage: the final vote in the European Parliament will take place on 12 March, and could see amendments to any of them, as well as deletions and additions (for example, the EU Greens have said that they will try to get the European Parliament to offer asylum to Snowden then.) Nonetheless, the report sends a very strong signal that MEPs on the LIBE committee are extremely unhappy about the revelations of mass surveillance being conducted across Europe. What exactly that translates into as far as real-world actions are concerned, remains to be seen.

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We've made the argument before that it's about time we all took a hard look at copyright law and the DMCA, since both are regularly used as censorship tools. There are those that believe that this happens infrequently, but that just simply isn't true. It's used to censor criticism, to censor other people's original creation, and to censor negative reviews. It's a problem and no amount of pretending otherwise is going to wash.

But the problem really gets my blood boiling when the censorship in question is censoring scientific knowledge and criticism. All the more so when the criticism is aimed at a group of people that are quite likely actively putting anyone listening to them seriously in danger. Take, for instance, the story that jameshogg writes in about, in which well-known scientific debunker Myles Power is having a series of videos he produced debunking a documentary called House of Numbers DMCA'd by the producers of the documentary.

In case you can't watch the video, here's the skinny on the situation. House of Numbers is a documentary that essentially makes the claim that HIV and AIDS isn't really, you know, a thing. It's part of a conspiracy theory that's been traveling around for some time that AIDS isn't what doctors say it is, that anti-viral medication doesn't effect whatever the disease actually is, and so on. In other words, it's a big bucket of crazy that, unfortunately, some unsuspecting people take seriously, quite possibly putting themselves in harm's way if they take the message of the film to heart. Myles Power is a scientist who creates videos debunking this kind of thing. He, if I may say so, should be appointment YouTubing if you have any interest in science versus popular myths. He created a series of videos showing both why the claims in House of Numbers are bullshit, as well as the tactics the filmmakers employed in order to pretend people said what they actually hadn't. All of this, of course, falls squarely in the realm of fair use. That didn't stop several people who either produced or were featured in the documentary from filing DMCA claims against him and getting the videos removed.

The first DMCA filed against me was from Liam Scheff who starred in part 5 of my video series. Liam believes that my videos are not protected under fair use because they are not made for educational purposes, but instead for propaganda. Over the last week, Liam has been constantly posting on my Facebook and has called me a retard, a cunt, a little bitch and, of course, a paid shill. Yet at the same time believes that I have been slandering him. What is also bizarre is that even though Liam has made it clear of his intentions to drag me through the courts, at the same time he does not think I am a real person but part of Myles Power inc. Liam later went on to remove his DMCA, but by filing it in the first place he has left himself open to legal action.

As soon as part 5 was restored, it was taken immediately down by Martin Penny and the people at Knowledge Matters, who then decided to file 2 more DMCA takedowns against part 1 and 2. I want to take this time to remind people that there are multiple copies of House of Numbers uploaded to YouTube. If Martin Penny and the people at Knowledge Matters truly thought I was infringing copyright, then why are they not going after people who uploaded the entire movie? It is very clear that these people are trying to silence my criticism. For those who don’t know, Martin Penny is the Executive Producer of House of Numbers and a multimillionaire from Leeds who used to be the CEO of GHD. What’s interesting is that Martin is now a chairman at OHS Ltd – one of the leading health, safety and environmental consultancies who have worked for the NHS.

This is censorship in its purist form, and it's using the law to get away with it. There may be legal repercussions to be had for some of this, but how often do we actually see those attempting to ignore fair use and censor speech get punished? It's all the more egregious given that what they're attempting to censor is the debunking of a conspiracy myth that has the very real potential to hurt people. Anyone with a modicum of interest in science and the dialectic method would welcome such a conversation, not attempt to stifle it under the guise of copyright law.

Meanwhile, as Power notes, the person doing the censoring is the chairman of a consulting group that is advising the National Health Service in England. A censoring AIDS denier is advising the NHS. Let that sink in for a moment. Then, ask yourself it it's about time we took a hard look at whether the DMCA is doing more harm than good.

Another day, another blogger being sued for defamation. There are a couple of differences here, however. To begin with, this blogger (Billy Jones) is welcoming the lawsuit (albeit in the way a raccoon frozen in the headlights "welcomes" an oncoming vehicle). His statement in response to the lawsuit threat, via Jim Romenesko, reads as follows:

I look forward to going to court against Rocco Scarfone. After all, I have no assets, nothing to lose, nothing of value. What are they going to take from me — 7 chickens?

The other difference in this case is that the law firm (Rossabi, Black and Slaughter) threatening to sue the blogger has actually pointed out specific statements its client has objections to, rather than relying simply on vague claims, bluster and intimidation. The letter Jones received lists each objectionable statement, along with the blog posts they came from. (Pictures of the letter here and here.)

Here's the letter in full.

Dear Mr. Jones,

Our firm represents Rocco Scarfone. This letter serves as my client's notice that your blog, greensboroperformingarts.blogspot.com recently published false and defamatory statements regarding my client as follows:

1. False and Defamatory Statements contained in the September 28, 2012 post, "Rocky Scarfone, More Failed Greensboro Leadership":

(a) "Several of my biker friends there who grew up with Scarfone in New Jersey told me of his underworld connections."

(b) "There's been a mafia presence in Greensboro for over 50 years but until Rocky came to town they let the biker[s] be."

(c ) "I mentioned Scarfone's underworld connections in a blog thread at Yes! Weekly."

(d) "A simple search for [R]ocky [S]carfone Greensboro will tell you all kinds of things you may or may not know about the man a simple background check could have warned 'Greensboro leaders' about long before he tried to cover up shootings in his night clubs, drug dealings and other crimes against the citizens of Greensboro."

(e) "Nor do I eat at Hams or any other establishment I know to be owned by Rocky Scarfone. I don't knowingly spend my money with mobsters."

2. False and Defamatory Statements contained in the December 30, 2013 post, "Rocco Scarfone Partners With Councilman Zack Matheny: Greensboro House of Blues":

(a) "Scarfone… is said to be a former prize fighter who is said to have been banned from professional boxing for fixing fights and taking the fall as a young man in New Jersey with known connections to human trafficking and the importation of illegal aliens, has a history of covering up shootings in his clubs, and was involved in tax evasion in multiple states…"

(b) "Rocco is and will always be a gangster."

(c ) "George Hartzman asks Councilman Zack Matheny if Matheny has a business relationship with the gangster, Rocco Scarfone."

3. False and Defamatory Statements contained in the January 17, 2014 post, "Rocco Scarfone Steals Woman's Wedding Ring And What Really Happened To Joey Medaloni":

(a) "I was told a story recently about how local mobster Rocco Scarfone collected debts on a business deal that went bad by forcefully taking the wedding band from the finger of the wife of the man with whom he'd made the deal."

(b) "Rocco's primary business is and has long been money laundering."

As a result of your publication of false and defamatory statements about Mr. Scarfone, I demand that you publish, in the main section of your blog, a retraction of all the statements referred herein, along with any apology to Mr. Scarfone. If you fail to publish a retraction and an apology as requested within ten (10) days, I will sue for, among other things defamation.

Very truly yours,

Amiel J. Rossabi

Rocco "Rocky" Scarfone (born Joe Baffa) is a prominent business owner in the Greensboro, NC area and has also spent a considerable amount of time helming a Christian ministry called Lighthouse Outreach. What Scarfone seems most interested in excising is anything that implies he still has Mafia connections or otherwise portrays him as a "gangster." Scarfone did, at one time, have Mob connections. His own biographical book details his youth as a member of the Mob as he attempted to follow in his father's footsteps. The following is taken from the book description for Scarfone's "House of Cards."

A biography that reads like fiction, winner of the "O Georgia Award", endorsed by numerous prominent public figures, House Of Cards delivers the Mafia in a unique manner. After five generations of blood shed, Rocky is born handicapped, struggles to walk and be like his .45 carrying father, and, just when he realizes his goal, loses his father to a bloody Mafia Hit. The course of events will soon produce the circumstances for Rocky to become the first to seek an end to his family's long standing Mafia ties.

This would seem to indicate that Jones' statements about Scarfone's "underworld connections" are based on fact. The argument would then shift to Jones' implications that Scarfone is still connected to the Mafia.

Many of the other troublesome quotes are, again, based on factual occurrences. Jones notes in his nine multi-part response post that his comments are linked to news stories elsewhere on the web.

His accusations about Scarfone being in the money laundering business are only tenuously linked. The nightclubs Scarfone owns once belonged to Joey Medaloni, who was indicted on federal charges of falsely obtaining loans.

As for the accusation of human trafficking, Jones points to a story in Yes! Weekly that details the criminal activities of Scarfone's partners in the nightclub business, one of which (George Harrison) is tied to a staffing company that was raided by ICE for deploying undocumented immigrants. Again, this is a very loose "tie" that has been polished into more accusatory tones by Jones.

The shooting coverup statement also has a factual basis. Scarfone's strip club, LAX, had its liquor license suspended after a shooting in the parking lot. A press release from the city of Raleigh described his club personnel's actions this way.

A Nov. 13 press release issued from Raleigh characterizes club management’s response to the shooting as a “cover-up” and quotes Williams as saying, “The sworn affidavits received by the ABC Commission indicate that this business failed to assist victims of violence in their own parking lot and then covered up the shooting and destroyed evidence.

The coverup was denied by Scarfone and his club's management, and nothing seems to have been conclusively proven (accusations were made about security tape alterations and the club staff's refusal to come to the aid of the shooting victim, and there are some discrepancies between the narrative and the police reports). But that's the thing about coverups: if done right, it looks as though nothing untoward has occurred. Again, Jones makes a statement and links to a news story that arrives at the same conclusion. It's hard to prove defamation when the accused has sources.

The "Rocco Scarfone is and always will be a gangster" is taken somewhat out of context, removing this leading sentence:

Scarfone, also a former Chippendales dancer, was convicted by a grand jury for extortion and five counts of fraud in 1987.

Again, Jones links to an article detailing Scarfone's past as a dancer, as well as his indictments.

So, despite his legal team actually taking the time to detail each allegedly defamatory statement, there still seems to a be a lot of gray area for Jones to play in. But wishing for a head-on courtroom collision is never a good idea, even if you've got nothing but "seven chickens" to your name. There's more to a court battle than losing assets. There's a whole lot of intermediate bleeding that can be done, especially if the plaintiff is in a better financial position.

Scarfone is also more used to courtroom battles. Even his efforts in the youth ministry field have a litigious paper trail. He sued another minister, Tom Papania (along with Focus on the Family), for allegedly stealing his Mafia thug-to-man of God story and using it as his own. The court battle ran 31 months before Scarfone/Baffa dismissed it with prejudice. (Scarfone's entire battle with Papania spans 13 years in total according to emails he sent a colleague.) This battle even included a dispute over a domain name (tompapnia.com) which Scarfone had registered to "spread the truth" about Papania's alleged hijacking of Scarfone's life story. (ICANN found in favor of Scarfone.)

Scarfone has also been cited in court documents as a confidential informant, which would seem to suggest his underworld connections are more recent than his boyhood memoir indicates.

This is hardly an open-and-shut case for either party. Jones' posts are sometimes backed up by fact, while other times he's reporting hearsay. Jones seems to be relishing the chance to perform some discovery and expose Scarfone's "underworld connections" and (allegedly) criminal behavior. Scarfone's wish for Jones' blogging to vanish are understandable, especially if he abandoned a life of crime years ago. But there seems to be enough bad news floating around to suggest this maybe isn't the case.

Somewhat bafflingly, Scarfone's lawyer (he has apparently decided to cut loose the "fool" who represented him in his battle against Tom Papania) closes the letter with threats to sue for defamation "among other things." I'm not sure if that was included to make the threat seem "bigger" or if the law firm has something else in mind for Jones that it's not sharing with the rest of us. The ten-day window "granted" by the law firm for Jones to delete the offending posts and post an apology expires on Feb. 13th and, judging from Jones' call for more Scarfone dirt, it appears this will pass without compliance. I suppose shortly after that we'll find out what "other things" the law firm has in mind.

This is one of those odd ones where it appears someone just wants to shut down criticism but may actually have a case at the same time. If Scarfone is truly still dabbling in criminal behavior, I doubt he would want to face discovery. Then again, maybe he's truly clean, and like his blogging nemesis, truly has nothing to lose by going to court. Jones' posts definitely carry a malicious tone, something that doesn't help when fighting defamation charges and much of what he links to only tenuously matches his actual claims. Boiling it all down, I don't truly see a clear good guy or bad guy. Both parties seem to carry a certain amount of moral turpitude, and any further reports I have on this will mostly be based on my (admittedly unhealthy) desire to witness a good fight.

The question has often been asked, but without a satisfactory answer: how did Snowden end up with so many sensitive documents? Further, how did he manage to do this undetected? There has been a lot of speculation, but the recent Official Leak (as compared to Snowden's "unofficial" work) confirmed what nearly everyone already suspected: Snowden used readily available tools to harvest a ton of documents while escaping detection by the NSA.

The supposedly shocking "leak" about Snowden's "web crawler" only served to make the agency look worse. How did it fail to detect this sort of activity? Once again, the question has not received a direct answer. Instead, the agency has offered up three people who may have been indirectly involved in Snowden's document scraping: a civilian NSA employee (who conveniently resigned), an active duty military member and a contractor. (The agency actually uses the word "may" in its official letter to the House judiciary and intelligence committees, suggesting it's still uncomfortable with confirming or denying anything.)

This seemingly confirms an answer given by Keith Alexander at a hearing late last year.

“Has anybody been disciplined at NSA for dropping the ball so badly?” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., demanded of NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander at a Dec. 11 hearing. Alexander at the time replied that the agency had three “cases” that “we’re currently reviewing.”

(NBC sought further comment on this, but again met with a refusal from an NSA spokesperson to confirm or deny whether these cases were the same cases Alexander was referring to.)

Here's the details on the civilian employee's assistance of Snowden's scraping efforts.

On 18 June 2013, the NSA civilian admitted to FBI Special Agents that he allowed Mr. Snowden to use his (the NSA civilian's) Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificate to access classified information on access that he knew had been denied to Mr. Snowden. Further, at Mr. Snowden's request, the civilian entered his PKI password at Mr. Snowden's computer terminal. Unbeknownst to the civilian, Mr. Snowden was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information. The civilian was not aware that Mr. Snowden intended to unlawfully disclose classified information. However, by sharing his PKI certificate, he failed to comply with security obligations.

The other two will face whatever the military and the unnamed corporation choose to dispense as discipline. All well and good, if a little too late. And yet, what's being detailed here feels a lot like sacrificial lambs with a small side of Snowden smearing.

Snowden has denied tricking other analysts into giving him their credentials. Whether or not you find his claim believable, there's no denying the agency's overriding concern. It has stated repeatedly that it has no idea how much Snowden took and it has no real idea how he managed to get so much in the first place.

The overseers are demanding answers and they're not getting anything concrete in response. Instead, they get a lot of murmuring about the "damage" the leaks have done and a token effort to root out additional culprits. Using this one to portray Snowden as a malevolent social engineer helps the NSA's PR efforts but still doesn't address the core issue.

The NSA still hasn't figured out how to prevent the "next Snowden," something that should be at least as horrifying (to the agency) as the current Snowden. This is perhaps the world's largest and most well-funded national security agency, but a single systems administrator managed to outwit its internal protections and walk away with 10-50,000 documents, and the most substantial "answers" the agency has provided to the "how" question is three supposed leak enablers (only one of which was a direct NSA employee) and the troubling admission that its system can easily be subverted by common software tools.

Maybe more evidence will come forth in the next few months to prove this impression wrong, but right now it looks like more an attempt to stave off a little criticism rather than an indication that the NSA has its own systems under control.

The UK government's futile and ham-fisted attempts to purge the Internet of all of its rough edges and naughty bits are about to see international escalation. The country is only really just kicking off their campaign to impose porn filters that not only often don't work, but also have so far managed to accidentally block numerous entirely legal and useful websites including technology news sites like Slashdot, digital rights groups like the EFF, rape counseling websites, and more. David Cameron's government has long-stated they want this filtering to eventually extend to websites deemed "extremist" by the government, and it appears that new proposals being drafted hope to make that a reality sooner rather than later.

Just as child porn is used to justify broader porn filters, beheading videos appear to be the magic bullet into scaring people into accepting filters that move well beyond porn. According to the BBC, government-funded operations within the counter-terrorism referral unit will soon order UK broadband ISPs like TalkTalk, Virgin Media and BSkyB to expand filters to include websites declared to be promoting terrorism. As most filter opponents have warned, the slope in the UK is moving beyond slippery and is getting downright muddy thanks in part to new UK Immigration Minister James Brokenshire:

"Terrorist propaganda online has a direct impact on the radicalisation of individuals and we work closely with internet service providers (ISPs) to remove terrorist material hosted in the UK or overseas," said Brokenshire. "Through proposals from the Extremism Taskforce announced by the Prime Minister in November, we will look to further restrict access to material that is hosted overseas - but illegal under UK law - and help identify other harmful content to be included in family-friendly filters," he added.

In other words, because of pesky things like the Constitution in the United States and instead of just using existing, vast international resources to prosecute criminals and terrorists, we're going to be expanding broken ISP filters against the advice of pretty much everybody. Granted what is deemed "extremist" will likely be entirely arbitrary, and as we've seen with the porn filters, there's probably no limit to the number of entirely legal and legitimate websites UK citizens will find suddenly inaccessible.

Our government lies.

This is an obvious statement but it needs to be put out there in black and white. We, the people, are represented and "protected" by a government that actively lies to its constituents to cover up its mistakes. The recent case of Rahinah Ibrahim, who was accidentally placed on the government's "no fly" list and only removed after a long legal battle, illustrates this truth about our government to a sickening degree.

FBI Special Agent Kevin Kelley marked the wrong box on a single form and locked Ibrahim out of air travel for nearly a decade. The government's refusal to even examine Ibrahim's case dates back to 2005, during the the Bush Administration. By the time the case was reinstated by a federal appeals court, the screw up wasn't even a screw up. Thanks to intersecting agency databases, Ibrahim's name, even though removed from one "no fly" list was now permanently tainted by 'terrorism" associations. Bureaucracy succeeded in accomplishing one thing: retconning a paperwork flub into canon. According to the government, Ibrahim deserved to be on this list. When pressed, it would cite "terrorism," the argument-ending word deployed most frequently by government officials over the last dozen years. When pressed further, officials would simply refuse to discuss it, invoking the holiest of non-denial denials, "state secrets."

David Kravets at Wired has collected several of the deflections deployed by government officials in order to bury Ibrahim's case -- an error so easily fixed, yet ultimately so damaging to the person Agent Kelley consigned to the ranks of terrorism suspects by checking the wrong box.

Note that these are the more pernicious (and more frequently used -- especially when it comes to national security issues) form of governmental lying: the refusal to confirm or deny accusations.

“My assertion of the state secret and statutory privileges in this case precludes defendant or any other agency from making any response, including through document production or deposition testimony, that would serve to disclose classified information regarding plaintiff or any other individual; the sources, methods, and means by which classified information is collected; and information which would confirm or deny whether information regarding plaintiff or any other individual is in NCTC’s TIDE database.” — James Clapper, director of national intelligence, April 23, 2013.

“Public disclosure of the identity of individuals on the No Fly List or Selectee List would compromise the safety and security of passengers by providing terrorists with information that may reveal which of their members have been compromised, and which of their members may board an aircraft without any form of enhanced security. For these reasons, TSA’s regulations expressly prohibit the disclosure of the contents of Security Directives and Emergency Amendment…” – Joseph C. Salvator, Transportation Security Administration then-deputy assistant administrator for intelligence, May 22, 2006.

There are more, but these are the most indicative of the national security mindset. Eric Holder's deferral to "state secrets" in 2013 was based on the belief that a single disclosure, especially if it prompted more, would lead to terrorists gaming the no-fly list. John Tyler, then-attorney for the DOJ, claimed in 2006 that Ibrahim's complaint was so inextricably intertwined with the utility of the "no fly" list that her case should be dismissed.

According to these statements, being mistakenly placed on the "no fly" list is just something those wrongly blacklisted will have to deal with. These citizens (and other foreigners) just need to resign themselves to the fact that they won't be boarding planes, possibly for the rest of their lives. Once you're on the list, you're on it. The list is apparently so crucial to national security that even admitting it may have blacklisted someone accidentally would turn the nation's airports into terrorist playgrounds.

A mistake was made made, but rather than looking for a solution, the government grabbed its "state secret" broom and swept it under the "neither confirm nor deny" rug.

The government cannot be so beholden to its own inflated terrorism fears that it willingly punishes a person for nearly a decade because of a paperwork error. There's plenty of middle ground between keeping the country safe and screwing someone over because an agent couldn't follow a form's instructions. But that's not the way our leaders, representatives and those beyond our limited power (the ODNI, for example) see it. To them, it's binary. It's all or nothing. Discussing the status of one person the government can "neither confirm nor deny" is on the list is portrayed to be as damaging as opening the entirety of the "no fly" list to public scrutiny.

The fear has destroyed the reality. Terrorists are supposedly one small step away from another attack on the US, even if billions of pieces of collected data have yet to result in the prosecution of these supposedly omnipresent attackers. The machinery -- some public, some private -- that thrives on this false narrative has managed to subvert due process, privacy and a variety of other constitutional "niceties" in its quest to create a lucrative, endless War on Terror. All objections are greeted with 9/11 / Boston Bombing rehashes and endless pages of retractions.

The machinery lies. The government lies. And those caught between the gears of both entities are ignored, lied to and buried underneath pages and pages of black ink and official denials.

Roughly two years ago, when fighting AT&T's ham-fisted acquisition attempt of T-Mobile, Sprint lobbyists and lawyers were busy telling anybody who would listen that the United States wireless industry isn't truly competitive unless you've got four distinct companies competing. That's something that United States regulators have generally agreed upon, especially given the massive size and power of AT&T and Verizon Wireless, and their domination of both the retail and special access markets. Fast forward two years after the FCC and DOJ blocked AT&T's attempted acquisition, and those opinions appear to have been justified by T-Mobile's sudden resurgence.

The company has not only become great entertainment via snarky CEO Tweets and amusingly mocking carriers like AT&T at every opportunity, but their price disruption has been a truly welcome thorn in the side of larger carriers. From T-Mobile's free international roaming data offer to their war on long-term contracts, the company is leeching customers from AT&T in real price competition, a rarity for United States telecom markets.

Enter Sprint, who now owned by acquisition-hungry Japanese carrier Softbank, is eager to obliterate all of this progress with a T-Mobile acquisition of their own. Regulators have made it clear for years they want four competitors, and every meeting Sprint and SoftBank have had so far has resulted in regulators clearly expressing doubt at the consumer benefits of such a deal. Consumers too have made it clear they loathe the idea as well, given that Sprint has fallen to last place in customer satisfaction rankings and last place in most LTE network speed and latency tests. As such, it's rather curious to see Sprint and SoftBank executives "surprised" this week by the cold shoulder they continue to get from regulators (Wall Street Journal, reg. required):

Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son and Chief Executive Dan Hesse, who met with officials at the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission in Washington in recent weeks, always knew a deal would be a tough sell, the people said. But the men were surprised by the level of opposition and its very public nature, one of the people said.

They really shouldn't be. Trying to acquire the wireless industry's sweetheart just as they're gaining headlines for being disruptive? Two years after arguing about the sanctity of maintaining four competitors? Sprint has argued that combining with T-Mobile will make a stronger third competitor to AT&T and Verizon Wireless, though telecom consolidation often doesn't work that way, and Sprint has shown little to no ability to mirror T-Mobile's price aggression and consumer-friendly policies (like cell unlocking) in recent years. Though not without problems of its own, the FCC and DOJ will also likely prefer T-Mobile get acquired by someone like Dish in order to retain four distinct competitors. It seems like Sprint might want to save everybody involved a lot of time and money, and for the moment focus on learning to properly run the network they already own.

For countless years we've all been inundated with rumors that a television revolution would soon be delivered any day now by Apple, whose legendary former CEO at one point claimed he had "cracked the code" on delivering a truly disruptive, intuitive and innovative TV platform. Yet this miracle TV revolution never seems to materialize, and it's not (outside of perhaps Apple's marketing machine) really the fault of Apple. The road toward TV disruption is littered with the corpses of countless similar projects from the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Google. With a few small successes, every last one of them has inevitably run, face-first and at full-sprint, into a restrictive broadcast-industry content licensing wall used to prevent disruption.

The press certainly shares some of the blame as well for over-hyping products on demand, as most recently made evident by the collapse of Intel's TV ambitions. Intel's OnCue system was presented in 2012 as the next great TV revolution that was sure to arrive any day now. That was, until a slow drip of reports indicated that they too couldn't get around broadcast-industry licensing restrictions. That technology has since been sold on the cheap to Verizon, who'll utilize the useful bits and sit on the rest, afraid of offering anything that could possibly cannibalize their legacy TV FIOS user base.

Apple has been hammering their head against this same brick wall for the better part of a decade now, and even though the business and earnings potential of a well-built Apple-based hardware partnership could potentially be immense, the broadcast and cable industry is too terrified to budge. Rumors have ranged over the years from an Apple TV set to a live a la carte TV subscription service, and now have skidded to an underwhelming halt with Apple having to settle for what's just an Apple TV hardware and GUI refresh with a lovely coat of underachieved ambition. From the Wall Street Journal:

In 2012, the Journal reported that Apple was talking with cable operators like Time Warner Cable about a set-top box and was approaching media companies to gain rights for an ambitious Internet-based digital-video-recording service through the box. At the time, it was looking to offer full seasons of current shows, as well as live programming. Last year, it approached media companies with a proposal to pay extra for ad-free programming.

But it couldn't complete a deal. Programmers resisted the idea of ad-free TV, and Time Warner Cable balked at some of Apple's early proposals, which included Apple essentially taking over the cable operator's video-on-demand service.

Worse, the Journal notes, is that Apple was only able to acquire "just the most recent five episodes of current-season shows," and is having to battle for the ability to fast-forward commercials three days after they air (which they may not even get). So Apple's ambitions went from Steve Jobs dreaming about revolutionizing the sector, to yet another product intentionally hamstrung so it underwhelms (in much the same way the industry has relentlessly crippled Hulu). Can't you just feel the cutting edge excitement?

Many like to argue that Apple managed to help revolutionize music sales and can do the same here, but it's precisely the cable and broadcast executive fear of that history that has made securing flexible licenses such a Sisyphean feat. On the bright side, like any good disruption-phobic legacy industry, they can only delay inevitable evolution, not kill it. It might be Apple, it most-likely will be somebody else, and it may take the better part of the next decade -- but it's coming eventually whether the myopic and timid cable industry likes it or not.

Some semi-good news to report here. EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) has received a settlement from the NSA in its long-running lawsuit (dating back to late 2012) against the agency for its withholding of documents related Presidential Directive 54, a national security directive on cybersecurity.

It's a partial victory, but there's still more at stake, as EPIC's post points out.

EPIC received some of the documents as a result of the lawsuit, "substantially prevailing" under the FOIA, and prompting the NSA to make a settlement offer to EPIC. As a consequence, EPIC will receive attorneys fees from the NSA. EPIC is simultaneously appealing the lower court's determination that NSPD-54 is not an "agency record" subject to the FOIA. It was the first time a federal court has ruled that a Presidential Directive is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The problem with "first times" is that they almost inevitably lead to more incidents. If this decision is upheld, the government will now have one more way to dodge FOIA requests on secret directives.

On the plus side, EPIC will be receiving $3,500 in attorneys' fees from the NSA, but as it notes, the agency is still withholding documents thanks to the favorable lower court ruling. The documents EPIC has received so far are embedded below, and as the agency seems to prefer, they are unsearchable images, rather than scans. This allows the government to appear transparent while still hampering attempts to cross reference existing documents or other versions of the same document. (The government has been known to redact something on one FOIA response while leaving it unredacted on others -- hence its hesitance to release documents to "serial" requesters.)

The reimbursement of legal fees is helpful, considering EPIC's court battle is far from over (and that's just for the lawsuit involving this particular secret Presidential Directive). It's great we have a Freedom of Information law, but far too often, it takes an actual court decision to actually free the requested information.

As we've noted plenty of times in the past, works produced by the federal government are not subject to copyright. However, they are (almost inexplicably) subject to both patent and trademark protection, where those things apply. A little while back, Jim Gourley over at Foreign Policy looked into how the Pentagon has gone trademark slap happy over the last five years or so (the headline of the article falsely implies that it has also gone copyright happy, despite barely mentioning copyright, and in the one spot it does, totally confusing copyright and trademarks).

The program began in 2007 when the Defense Department issued a directive calling for the component services to establish a branding and trademark licensing office, which would answer to the DOD level through a separate office working for the undersecretary of defense for public affairs. Holding to its tradition of being first in the fight, the Marines were the most aggressive in the early going. In 2009, they began contacting large-scale print-on-demand t-shirt suppliers Zazzle and CafePress. It immediately shut down several small online retailers of military-themed hats and shirts. It even came up with rules applying to USMC-themed stuff sold on Etsy.

The other services quickly caught up. Between 2007 and 2011, sales of officially-licensed U.S. Army merchandise increased from $5 million to $50 million

It does note that the military seems to realize that going after small retailers who are selling things face-to-face isn't wise, because "they're probably engaging in healthy patriotism." But, anyone else may be facing a bill from the Defense Department -- an organization that probably has the world's largest budget already. This should raise serious questions about why the US government should be granted trademarks in the first place. Yes, you could argue that the Defense Department doesn't want "shoddy" military merchandise out there, but is that really something the government needs to be concerned about? The US government isn't supposed to be a commercial enterprise. It could easily highlight and focus on "official" military gear to distinguish it from unofficial gear, without having to show up and force everyone else selling military-themed t-shirts that they need to kick back an extra "licensing" fee on top of any taxes they already have to pay.

Clothing maker Lululemon appears to be schizophrenic. I know, weird, right? But that's the only conclusion I can come to for a company that started off by mocking Olympic trademarks, then dipped into the realm of suing other designers over patents on designs for yoga pants (side note: when will this yoga fad thing be over?). In one moment it's "Trademark? Lulz!" and the next they're bludgeoning poor Calvin Klein with a freaking yoga pants patent. But it might be time to do a wellness visit on the company, since it appears to have completely lost its damn fooled minds.

See, Lululemon hates when people resell their clothing more than ants hate sociopathic children with a new Sherlock Holmes play set. Previously this manifested itself with a sternly worded FAQ on their website and very strange stocking techniques that amount to a not-making-much-of-our-shit strategy. That appears to have changed, however, since recently reports of customers attempting to sell clothing on eBay being harassed by Lululemon employees and banned from buying more products on the website have come flooding in.

Several customers told Business Insider they had been confronted by company representatives after attempting to sell items on eBay, and even more are complaining on the brand's Facebook page. Many said they have been blocked from buying items from the company's website. The policy is frustrating to customers because of Lululemon's stringent return policy, which only allows returns of unworn merchandise within 14 days of purchase, even if the item was a gift.

Let's be clear here: Lululemon policies make it nearly impossible to return clothing, regardless of the reason for the return, even it was a gift. Anyone looking to unload these items, new or used, on the secondary market is facing confrontation with the Lululemon Gestapo and then being blocked from purchasing more stuff from their website. Should it not strike you immediately, this is insane. In many cases, the items being sold are no longer produced or in stock by Lululemon. They aren't even attempting to compete with these sellers. On top of that, many of these sellers are, of course, loyal Lululemon customers. This isn't taking your ball and going home, it's taking your ball and then lighting the other kids on fire. Which, I'm told, isn't a nice thing to do.

Both Kristin and her husband were loyal customers who have "closets bursting with Lululemon," she said. She decided to sell the item on eBay because it didn't fit and she had missed the return window. Kristin says she was unable to persuade Lululemon to unblock her IP address from the online store, and felt the company treated her "like a criminal."

"They said we are welcome to shop in their stores, and in that case, I should have donated the item," she said. "But part of the appeal of purchasing Lululemon products is that it does hold resale value."

Not anymore, Kristin. Lululemon appears to be telling you quite clearly that what you thought was appealing about their clothing doesn't actually exist. Pretty nice of them, actually. Now you're free to spend your money on apparel by companies that don't have an eight-year-old's understanding of the right of resale and how to treat customers.

Eric Lewis, founder of the blog LuluMen, said he was also chastised by the retailer for trying to sell a pair of pants he bought at a recent warehouse sale in Canada. After the college student posted the pants online, he said a Lululemon representative phoned him to say his actions were against policy and he would be banned from its website if he continued selling items on eBay.

"Why is Lululemon targeting a student who is selling some used items on their own eBay account?" Lewis asked. He estimates he's spent $10,000 on the brand's clothing in the past five years, but has sold fewer than 10 items on eBay.

Who can say, Lewis? But I'd highly recommend running an experiment designed to see if any other clothing companies are as insane as these folks. It's an easy experiment that mostly just involves buying from anyone other than Lululemon and seeing who manages to treat you like a human being.

Now, perhaps you're thinking that there must be some rational explanation for this. I mean, Lululemon wouldn't do something so obviously harmful to their own business without a competent reason, right?

A company spokeswoman told Business Insider that the policy is for the good of customers, and is meant to protect them from buying counterfeit products. "Bottom line, if it doesn’t come from us, we can’t educate, we don’t know the history of the garment, and we can’t guarantee its’ authenticity," the spokeswoman, Alecia Pulman, said in an email.

Ah, yes, scary counterfeit products that nobody is actually fooled by are the reason this is good for your customers. Unless their names are Kristen or Lewis, you mean? Or anyone else who dares to sell something they bought legitimately on the secondary market? Wait, who is this helping, exactly? Because I can promise you this won't help Lululemon's brand image.