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Elon Musk’s Legal Filings Against Twitter Show How Little He Actually Cares About Free Speech
from the you-have-to-fight-for-free-speech dept
I can’t say for certain how Elon Musk’s thought process works, but his progression in how he talks about free speech over the last few months through this Twitter ordeal certainly provides some hints. When he first announced his intention to buy Twitter, he talked about how important free speech was, and how that was a key reason for why he was looking to take over the company. Here he was talking to TED’s Chris Anderson:
Well, I think it’s really important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech. Twitter has become the de facto town square, so, it’s really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely….
Later in that same conversation, however, as Anderson pushed him a bit on the limits to free speech (including the terrible example of fire and theaters), Musk suggested that countries’ laws should define free speech — or at least the U.S.’s should:
Well, I think, obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country it operates in. So, obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the US. And of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules.
Which, fair enough, that’s an accurate statement. But it raises questions about when you’re willing to push back against the government for trying to strip free speech rights. And there, Musk got pretty wishy washy, and basically said he’d follow the law anywhere
Consumer Advocates Angry That New Privacy Law Erodes Oversight Of Telecom Monopolies
from the first-do-no-harm dept
We noted the other day how our shiny newly proposed federal privacy bill (as written now) includes a massive gift to US telecom monopolies. It effectively strips away huge swaths of FCC authority over telecom giants, shoveling it over to an FTC that often lacks the resources or expertise to police telecom.
Because “big tech” is all that matters and “big telecom” policy is so very unsexy right now, the press literally couldn’t be bothered to cover this small wrinkle, at all. Well, except for Tonya Riley at Cyberscoop, who spoke to numerous consumer groups who have been raising alarm bells for weeks, noting that the privacy law could actually weaken consumer privacy protection as it pertains to telecom
WhatsApp Again Affirms It Will Not Break Encryption To Appease Government Entities
from the governments-invited-to-go-fuck-themselves dept
The debate over end-to-end encryption continues in the UK. It’s really not much of a debate, though. government officials continue to claim the only way to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is by breaking or removing encryption. Companies providing encrypted communications have repeatedly pointed out the obvious: encryption protects all users, even if it makes it more difficult to detect illicit activity by certain users. It’s impossible to break encryption to detect criminal activity without breaking it for every innocent user as well.
Study Shows Anti-Piracy Ads Often Made People Pirate More
from the the-sky-is-not-falling dept
As it turns out, people would download a car.
For decades, Techdirt has highlighted the wide array of incredibly stupid anti-piracy ads the entertainment industry has used to try and steer people away from piracy. Usually these ads were being run at the same time the industry was busy fighting against evolution (providing less expensive, more convenient alternatives piracy) or demonizing new technologies (Home Taping Is Killing Music!).
Would you be shocked to learn that these ads not only didn’t work, they, in some instances, resulted in people pirating content more? That’s the finding of a new paper (hat tip, TorrentFreak and Motherboard) that studied several decades of anti-piracy advertising by the entertainment industry.
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Activision Wins Rule 11 Sanctions Over Frivolous ‘COD: Infinite Warfare’ Trial
from the clapback dept
It’s always frustrating when you come across an intellectual property lawsuit that is so laughably frivolous. On the other hand, it’s then quite fun when a court gets things so right that the frivolous filer gets a good wrist-slapping for their trouble. In late 2021, Activision Blizzard was sued by a company called Brooks Entertainment, which argued that the video game Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare contained several instances of trademark and copyright infringement.
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Cop Official Complains Cops Are Unfairly Hated, Refuses To Recognize Law Enforcement’s Lack Of Accountability
from the can't-see-the-forest-for-the-line-of-blue-trees dept
This op-ed for Police1, written by longtime law enforcement officer/official Booker Hodges (currently the chief of the Bloomington, MN police department), may have its heart partially in the right place but it’s wrong in all the wrong places.
Entitled “Why we need to talk about the blueprint for hate,” the op-ed belatedly calls for more community-oriented policing. That’s a good thing but it’s buried under a self-serving sermon to the converted that says the real problem here is the public’s unwillingness to treat cops as minor deities among mere men.
There’s a flaw in this argument. And it’s one legislators and police officials have used to agitate for “blue lives matter” laws. The logical flaw is this: people are not subject to any form of legally recognizable “hate” simply because of where they work.
Over the past few years, we have had to deal with protecting peaceful protesters from rioters and criminals who sought to take down our democracy, even when some of those peaceful protesters wanted to abolish our profession. We have been placed in the middle of so many conflicts that it has almost become commonplace to use our profession as the whipping board, meaning even when we do the right thing, we do the wrong thing! At the center of the majority of these conflicts is hate.
Throughout human history, many conflicts have been centered around hate and we as a species have perfected what I call the “blueprint for hate.” The blueprint for hate looks like this: You categorize a group of people by their occupation, race, gender, religion, political beliefs, or you fill in the blank as being “them and they.” Once these people are categorized as “them and they,” you lump them all together and they are no longer respected or viewed as individual humans but as a monotheistic group.
Next, you highlight the most extreme, completely unrepresentative negative behavior or act made by individuals of the “them and they” as normal and representative of all members of the group. Then you continually highlight the unrepresentative behavior so those who are not in the “them and they” group develop an unfavorable opinion of those who are in the group.
After this is done you start to dehumanize those in the “them and they” group so it becomes acceptable to those who are outside the group to harm and disparage those who are “them and they.”
The first paragraph is a long-term cop whining about having to respect the rights of people who don’t respect cops. Too bad. That’s the deal here in the United States. And you’ve had decades to get used to it. If this isn’t working for you, nothing is forcing you to continue taking the public’s money to half-ass a job you no longer enjoy.
The rest of it is the co-opting of history in hopes of making cops appear to be a group worthy of federal protection. I don’t believe Chief Hodges is actually advocating for hate speech law expansions but his rhetoric (especially the part where he places “occupation” ahead of legally recognized elements like race, gender, and religion) tracks closely with that deployed by people who believe cops are a historically marginalized group deserving of additional legal protection from their critics.
Piled on top of all this is an undeniable lack of self-awareness. The law enforcement “community” has, for years, encouraged an “us vs. them” mentality — something enforced by its insistence that only cops are allowed to have opinions on cops and the persistence of the unofficial “thin blue line” that not only separates them from the worst of us (order vs. chaos) but from everyone who relies on them to do the job they’re paid to do while expecting a bare minimum of respect for their rights from law enforcement officers.
See also, this incredible meme (h/t @Krubuntu):
But this op-ed is at its most tone deaf when it appeals to the nonexistent authority of the “bad apple” theory of policing: the effort to distance law enforcement (the occupation) from the worst of its ranks by suggesting problematic officers are over-represented by critics (the few “bad apples”) rather than being the most visible symptoms of an underlying disease.
Over the past few years, out of literally hundreds of millions of interactions with our neighbors, the most extreme, unrepresentative behaviors by a few of those in our profession have been continually highlighted and portrayed as the norm.
What’s ignored here is what causes these “extreme, unrepresentative behaviors” to rise to the surface where they’re immediately noticeable. Cops who end up splashed all over the front pages aren’t dealing with “unfair” discussions of their first screw-up. Many have been sued multiple times and/or have been the subject of multiple complaints. Some have even been fired but been given their jobs back (or hired by other law enforcement agencies).
Cops don’t begin their careers with egregious rights violations. They start small and see what they can get away with. Once it becomes obvious the repercussions of their actions will be minimal, if not completely nonexistent, their violations become bigger and bolder. Sooner or later, they do something too big to ignore. And that’s when law enforcement officials, like the one writing here, say things like what’s said above in an effort to downplay the problematic environment that produced this supposed outlier as well as to draw attention away from the accountability they’ve refused to impose on the officers they lead.
Even when accountability is imposed — often via civil rights lawsuits, officers are shielded by multiple forms of immunity. If a lawsuit manages to bypass immunity arguments, officers are almost always indemnified by the localities that employ them. The public gets nothing from this process. It pays to defend officers against allegations and pays again when juries find in favor of the person suing or cities decide to settle.
Just because most cops don’t end up making headlines does not mean the law enforcement community is healthy. Cops who behave badly are protected by officers who choose not to violate rights. That doesn’t make their defenders good cops. It just makes them slightly less awful than those who consider misconduct to be an essential part of police work.
And Chief Hodges is wrong about this, too: it isn’t hate cops are feeling. It’s anger. The fact that police officials can’t tell the two apart is no less problematic than the broken cop culture they still somehow feel obliged to defend.
Filed Under: accountability, booker hodges, police, us v. them
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