ADT Tech Spied On Women For Four Years Before Getting Caught By Accident

from the what's-the-opposite-of-security dept

Another day, another example of why we might want to actually pass at least a basic privacy law for the internet era. The latest problem bubbled up over at home security vendor ADT, after a technician was caught using home security cameras to spy on people for years. More specifically, the tech accessed customer video cameras in 200 homes some 9,600+ times over a period of four years. His preferred targets were attractive women he spied on while they were having sex, bathing, or getting dressed. This was, as US Attorney Prerak Shah was quick to note, a grotesque abuse of trust:

"This defendant, entrusted with safeguarding customers’ homes, instead intruded on their most intimate moments,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Prerak Shah. “We are glad to hold him accountable for this disgusting betrayal of trust."

The tech simply added his email address to the authorization list for the company's ADT Pulse accounts, which lets home security customers access cameras when not at home. ADT's now facing three different lawsuits for failing to "implement adequate procedures that would prevent non-household members from adding non-household email addresses." Aka, they didn't engage in some basic due diligence to ensure that employees couldn't abuse the system. The federal charges were brought some five months after the first lawsuit was filed.

One of the interesting bits is that he appeared to have only been caught by accident, and could easily still be engaging in the same behavior today if not for one attentive subscriber:

"The lawsuit also claims the flagrant security breach was discovered not by the company, but 'by luck and happenstance.' A customer, reporting a technical issue, inadvertently revealed the unwanted third-party access," the lawsuit claims. "But for that event, ADT would be unaware of this invasive conduct."

So no basic security measures to prevent employees from abusing their authority. No system to notify users when somebody new was added to the email access list for video cameras they provide. ADT didn't even know this was going on -- and if not for a customer being attentive it probably still would be. And this is a security company! It's notably worse for the parade of "internet of thing" companies that decided we needed to hook every home device up to the internet with zero willingness to embrace or fund basic privacy and security standards.

In ADT's case, the company is busy trying to dodge responsibility by throwing complaining customers into binding arbitration, a lopsided process that pretends to be better than traditional class actions, but usually winds up with the companies in question getting little more than a wrist slap. When you know that repeated privacy and security violations can be brushed aside with a modicum of billable legal hours, you're not inclined to try very hard. It's far easier, and less expensive, to half-ass it, then have your lawyers water down already flimsy after-the-fact penalties.

It's why properly staffing and funding our privacy regulators, and having a basic privacy law where the expectations are clear and the penalties are notable (and consistently enforced) seems like a no brainer. Though it's still amazingly not clear how many national privacy scandals are necessary before we finally figure out that our existing "solution" of apathy, wrist slaps, binding arbitration, and intentional policy gridlock aren't working very well.

Filed Under: doj, iot, privacy, security, surveillance
Companies: adt

How Can Conservatives Fight Back Against Big Tech? For A Start, Just Be Sane Again.

from the not-so-hard dept

Right wingers are demanding that their political leaders do something, anything. There must be a response to Twitter's ban on Donald Trump, and to Amazon Web Services' shutdown of Parler. Republicans, once so ardent for free markets, want the government to teach private tech companies a lesson they won't soon forget. Nationalize them. Prosecute them. Whatever. Any measures that convey hate for the scary truth-phobic plutocratic Bolsheviks of Silicon Valley will do.

The first problem, of course, is that the GOP, though strong in anger, is weak in power. Even if they channel their enthusiasm into concrete bills, they control neither the White House nor the Senate nor the House of Representatives.

To be sure, Democrats, too, are mad at the major social media platforms. Their biggest gripe, however, is that those platforms failed to suppress rightwing extremism earlier. Democrats strongly want quite literally the opposite of what Republicans want. They want Trump and QAnon and “Stop the Steal” to remain off Twitter and Facebook.

Even if implemented, most rightwing populist ideas would not serve rightwing populist ends. We are told, for instance, that Section 230 must be repealed. But that would not undermine platforms' discretion in moderating content. Platforms have First Amendment rights of free speech and free association. When PragerU sued it for placing certain videos in restricted mode, YouTube prevailed not under Section 230, but under the First Amendment.

Actually, repealing Section 230 would ensure that more far-right content gets taken down. Section 230 is most useful, not when a platform removes content, but when it leaves content up. Consider Force v. Facebook, decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2019. Victims of terror attacks in Israel sued Facebook for not doing a better job of finding and removing extremist content posted by Hamas. The court held both the publishing of the content, and any algorithmic promotion of it, protected by Section 230.

Plaintiffs' lawyers will not hesitate to treat posts by rightwing extremists as akin to posts by Hamas. Nor will platforms, if exposed to liability for such posts, hesitate to take down marginal material—any post that plaintiffs' lawyers might try to tie to an attack. It'd almost be worth it, the GOP destroying Section 230, for the spectacle of Republicans empowering plaintiffs' lawyers to drive the party's burgeoning conspiracist faction from the commercial Internet.

Another rightwing proposal is to declare each major platform a “public forum” subject to First Amendment restrictions. But this plan is almost certainly unconstitutional. “Merely hosting speech by others,” the Supreme Court recently declared, in an opinion by Justice Kavanaugh, does not “transform private entities into state actors subject to First Amendment constraints.”

Some on the right want to expand this “state action” doctrine to embrace platforms. Others want to apply Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, a 1980 Supreme Court decision forcing a mall to let students protest on its private property, in bold new ways. These efforts are riddled with difficulties. For one thing, a pack of conservatives has recently taken the bench. Most of those judges presumably have little interest in bending the law simply to reach socialistic outcomes.

Populist Republicans will likely conclude that antitrust is their best cudgel for chastising Big Tech. Joining with Democrats, they can seek to redistribute revenue, unwind deals, and punish refusals to deal. When it comes to online speech, however, even antitrust will probably do the right no good.

Freezing a competitor out of a market for economic reasons can, indeed, be an antitrust violation. That is not at all the same as refusing to deal with a company because of the abhorrent opinions it holds, spreads, or condones. After the storming of the Capitol on January 6, a prominent QAnon account proclaimed that a death cult secretly runs the planet, that this cult stole the election, and that President Trump had ensnared the cult in a sting operation. The post received more than 2.2 million views on Parler:

You have a First Amendment right not to associate with a business that amplifies wingnuts. So does Amazon Web Services.

Some Republicans want to use antitrust to break up companies. But would that really change anything? Amazon Web Services has many competitors in the cloud-computing industry. So far none—not even Trump-friendly Oracle—has been willing to accept Parler as a client. Parler hosted a lot of violent, racist, toxic speech. Even if there were twice as many Facebooks and Twitters, they might all refuse to carry such material. And even if there were twice as many cloud-computing providers, Parler might still find itself universally shunned. Again, Parler can’t make other companies work with a partner they find immoral. This is, as they say, a free country.

Which brings us to the rub: a political party that lacks cultural power—that cedes it ostentatiously, in fact, as if doing so were a strategy—is doomed to struggle. It’s not a question of electoral success. Political power counts for little when you have no sway in universities, large cities, the mainstream media, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, or the wider corporate world.

Inter-elite battles matter. If conservative ideas don’t get a hearing at Princeton, at Google, or at NBC, conservative fortunes will suffer. Conservatives should pay more attention, therefore, to ensuring they are present where cultural power is wielded. They can do this by denouncing the GOP’s fringe elements; by supporting principled moderates and by offering a positive vision, one that appeals to the next generation of top talent who will occupy our cultural heights.

Conservative professors, computer engineers, and screenwriters deserve support. Cranks and bigots “censored” by social media platforms do not.

Corbin Barthold is Internet Policy Counsel for TechFreedom

Filed Under: big tech, conservatives, content moderation, section 230

Dozens Of Human Rights Group Tell Congress: Do Not Gut Section 230 On Our Behalf; It'll Do More Harm Than Good

from the say-it-loud dept

As Congress (on both sides of the aisle) continues to explore new and dumber ways to wreck Section 230, often claiming that they need to do it to "protect" or "help" certain people or groups, over 70 civil rights, human rights, and social justice groups have sent a letter to Congress and the new administration, telling them that they are targeting the wrong thing, and that destroying the open internet will do a lot more harm than good.

Gutting Section 230 would make it more difficult for web platforms to combat the type of dangerous rhetoric that led to the attack on the Capitol. And certain carve outs to the law could threaten human rights and silence movements for social and racial justice that are needed now more than ever.

Section 230 is a foundational law for free expression and human rights when it comes to digital speech. It makes it possible for websites and online forums to host the opinions, photos, videos, memes, and creativity of ordinary people, rather than just content that is backed by corporations.

The danger posed by uncareful changes to Section 230 is not theoretical. The last major change to the law, the passage of SESTA/FOSTA in 2018, put lives in danger. The impacts of this law were immediate and destructive, limiting the accounts of sex workers and making it more difficult to find and help those who were being trafficked online. This was widely seen as a disaster that made vulnerable communities less safe and led to widespread removal of speech online. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ro Khanna have sponsored legislation to investigate the harm done by SESTA/FOSTA. Lawmakers should pass this bill and examine past mistakes before modifying Section 230, and should hold hearings on the human rights and civil liberties implications of altering the law before legislating further. Overly broad changes to Section 230 could disproportionately harm and silence marginalized people, whose voices have been historically ignored by mainstream press outlets. For example, social media platforms would be unlikely to host viral videos of police violence that have spurred nationwide uprisings for racial justice if they faced constant litigation from law enforcement for doing so.

The effort was put together by the always wonderful Fight for the Future, and has some amazing signatories, including Wikimedia, Access Now, Common Cause, Data for Black Lives, Global Voices, Hollaback!, Lucy Parsons Labs, Media Justice, National Black Justice Coalition, National Lawyers Guild, PEN America, Public Knowledge, and many others that work on civil rights for various marginalized groups. Since the changes to 230 that are often proposed are put forth with misleading claims about how they're meant to "protect" these groups, it's great to see them speaking out and effectively saying "not in my name."

Filed Under: civil rights, human rights, section 230, social justice

Daily Deal: The Complete Google Master Class Bundle

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

The Complete Google Master Class Bundle has 10 courses to help you amp up your productivity and grow your business using a host of Google apps. Courses cover G Suite, Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Marketing Studio, and more. It's on sale for $40.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Facebook's Post-Insurrection Purge Catches A Bunch Of Left Wing Accounts In Its AI Net

from the fine-deleted-accounts-on-both-sides dept

Facebook has often been accused of having an anti-conservative bias. But its efforts to clean up its platform following the January 6th attack on the Capitol building indicate it just has an ongoing (and probably unsolvable) moderation problem.

Shortly after the DC riot, it announced it would be removing content containing certain slogans (like "stop the steal") as an "emergency measure" to stop the spread of misinformation or encourage similar election-based attacks on other government buildings.

It's not clear what other switches were flipped during this post-riot moderation effort, but it appears groups diametrically opposed to Trump and his views were swept up in the purge.

Facebook said it had mistakenly removed a number of far-left political accounts, citing an “automation error”, triggering uproar from socialists who accused the social media platform of censorship.

Last week, the social media company took down a cluster of groups, pages and individuals involved in socialist politics without explanation. These included the Socialist Workers party and its student wing, the Socialist Worker Student Society in the UK, as well as the International Youth and Students for Social Equality chapter at the University of Michigan and the page of Genevieve Leigh, national secretary of the IYSSE in the US.

Moderation is tough even when it's only hundreds of posts. Facebook is struggling to stay on top of billions of daily posts while also answering to dozens of governments and thousands of competing concerns about content. Moderation without automation isn't optional. And that's how things like this happen.

Granted, it's a less than satisfying explanation for what went wrong. It doesn't give anyone any assurance it won't happen again. And it's pretty much guaranteed to happen again because it's already happened before. Activists associated with the Socialist Workers Party saw their accounts suspended and content deleted following another Facebook moderation effort that took place in early December 2020.

Facebook has disabled the accounts of over 45 left wing activists and 15 Facebook pages in Britain. The individuals and pages are all socialist and left wing political activists and organisations who campaign against racism and climate change, and in solidarity with Palestine.

Facebook has given no reason for disabling the accounts, and has not given any genuine way of appealing what has happened.

The SWP was left to guess why these accounts and pages were targeted. One theory is that Facebook moderation was purging the site of pro-Palestinian content, which sometimes is linked to bigotry or terrorist activity. Or it could be the new AI was wary of any political postings dealing with sensitive subjects and began nuking content somewhat indiscriminately.

Or it could be part of a purge that began last August, when Facebook expanded its internal list of "Dangerous Individuals and Organizations." Anything viewed by AI as "promoting violence" was fair game, even if context might have shown some targeted posts and groups were actually decrying violence and outing "dangerous" individuals/organizations. During that enforcement effort, Facebook took down left-wing pages, including some attempting to out white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

This probably was an automation error. And the automation will continue to improve. But if the automation isn't backstopped by human moderators and usable options to challenge content removal, things like this will continue to happen, and on an increasingly larger scale.

Filed Under: anti-conservative bias, content moderation, masnick's impossibility theorem
Companies: facebook

Telecoms Paused PAC Spending To Insurrectionists, But Their Umbrella Lobbying Orgs Didn't

from the bad-faith-bullshit dept

Like many companies, AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon recently made a big stink about how they were pausing all PAC spending in supposed disgust at the insurrectionists in Congress whose bullshit resulted in a fatal riot at the Capitol. As noted already, that doesn't mean all that much. PAC spending is usually paused after an election to help get the lay of the land. Also, pausing PAC spending for a bit doesn't really justify the four years they spent enabling and normalizing fascism and bigotry just to nab merger approvals, deregulatory favors, and massive, pointless tax breaks.

Granted while Comcast and friends paused direct PAC spending to the alt-reality, anti-democratic bullshit artists in Congress, it's worth noting that their umbrella lobbying and policy organizations didn't. Sure, Comcast temporarily suspended PAC spending, but the NCTA, which largely represents cable giants like Comcast, didn't:

"NCTA – The Internet & Television Association counts as a member Comcast, which said it would cut off objectors indefinitely. The trade group’s PAC donated the maximum $10,000 to the joint fundraising committee of McCarthy, as well as other objecting Republican House members: $6,000 to Jim Jordan of Ohio, $4,000 to Elise Stefanik of New York, and $2,000 to Rep. Greg Pence of Indiana. NCTA’s president and CEO Michael Powell tweeted during the riots, “This is a sad and deeply disturbing moment for our nation…”, but did not respond to a tweet from a Virginia constituent of objector Rep. Morgan Griffith about the group’s future donations to objectors."

It's a lovely example of how much of this opposition is performative nonsense that obscures these companies' and groups' culpability in normalizing, enabling, and profiting off of a historically corrupt authoritarian and obvious bigot. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, the only remaining major wireless players after Trump's FCC greenlit job and competition killing industry mergers, also put on a show about how they had paused PAC spending, only to have umbrella trade organizations like the CTIA continue funding politicians its membership pretends to be outraged by:

"CTIA – The Wireless Association includes Verizon, which is pausing donations to objectors through 2021, and AT&T, pausing indefinitely to the objectors, and the group has not yet published a statement about the Electoral College challenge on its website or Twitter account. The group’s PAC contributed $2,000 to McCarthy’s campaign and $4,000 to Rep. Steve Scalise of Oklahoma, as well as $1,500 to Rep. Jordan and $1,000 to Sen. Rick Scott."

Of course this isn't just happening in telecom. Countless companies engaged in the same PAC spending theater only to have their primary trade and lobbying organizations continue on happily as if these opportunistic lawmakers aren't culpable for the death of five (technically seven if you include post-event suicides) people. Even then, most of these companies will reboot normal PAC spending the very millisecond they detect that the public outrage has minimized or shifted even slightly, which you can almost already feel occurring.

Either we're serious about punishing lawmakers who used bullshit to encourage insurrection or we aren't, and there's every indication that most of these efforts are more public relations patty cake than serious contrition.

Filed Under: campaign funds, election finance, insurrection, lobbying, political donations, telcos
Companies: at&t, comcast, ctia, ncta, verizon

Parole Violator Who Raided Senate Building Sold Out By The GPS Unit Attached To Him For Previous Parole Violations

from the GOP-might-not-be-attracting-the-best-and-brightest dept

Here's the latest stupid way pro-Trump rioters are getting arrested for their participation in the Little Insurrection That Couldn't. Surprisingly, the inauguration went off without a hitch, but no one could have seen that coming a couple of weeks ago, when Trump fans raided the Senate building in an attempt to prevent election results from being certified.

Opsec was the last thing on many invaders' minds. Providing great content for Parler followers or whatever seemed to be more important. The fierce opposition to wearing masks for health reasons carried over to a reluctance to wear masks for "committing federal crimes" reasons. Plenty of public posts to various social media services have made it exceedingly easy for investigators to track down perpetrators without having to leave their desks.

I hesitate to call this the peak of January 6th related stupidity. There's always a chance this will be topped. But this is just gobsmackingly idiotic. As we're all painfully aware, cellphones generate a ton of useful (to investigators) location data that can track movements and tie people to criminal activities.

It's one thing to forget your cellphone is an omnipresent snitch. It's quite another to forget you're wearing a device specifically designed to deliver your current location data to law enforcement. May I introduce to this fucking guy:

Bryan Betancur is one of dozens of people that have been arrested in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol. He was arrested on Sunday, and is expected to make his first court appearance in D.C. on Monday afternoon.

A screenshot of Betancur's Instagram account allegedly shows him outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 flashing a sign linked to white supremacist groups.

Screenshots are good. Precise location data is better. And Betancur delivered that to investigators in a way few others involved in the half-assed insurrection have. Behold this galaxy brain at work.

Investigators say their case relies in part on location data produced by the GPS unit that the man was wearing for a prior offense.

Someone who committed some crimes and committed another crime by violating his parole decided to commit more crimes -- all while wearing something that was supposed to encourage him to commit fewer crimes by informing law enforcement of his whereabouts at all times.

And, while Betancur originally admitted he had been in the Capitol and was on the receiving end of tear gas dispensed by Capitol police, he walked some of those statements back when questioned further. Unfortunately, he couldn't walk back his previous footsteps inside the Capitol building, which means he too will likely be facing charges beyond (yet another) parole violation.

Filed Under: bryan betancur, capitol, gps, insurrection, parole violator