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‘To Keep It Simple… It’s the First Amendment, Stupid’: Judge Slams Florida’s Attempt To Censor Abortion Initiative Ads
from the judicial-clarity dept
It’s not unheard of for us, or other publications, to paraphrase what a court ruling says at times. This time, however, the quote in the headline is actually 100% a direct quote from Judge Mark Walker, the Chief Judge of the Northern District of Florida federal court in a ruling against the state of Florida.
Here’s the full quote:
To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.
To be clear, Florida’s legislature and Ron DeSantis — despite claiming to be big “free speech” supporters — have shown themselves to be somewhat confused about how the First Amendment works. Over the last few years, we’ve covered multiple things done by the governor and the legislature that required courts to step in and explain the First Amendment.
And here we are again.
The background here is pretty straightforward. This year, in Florida, there’s a ballot initiative in the state that would amend the state’s Constitution to say that no law can restrict abortion “before viability” or when a healthcare provider deems it necessary. The group backing the ballot, Floridians Protecting Freedom, created some 30-second commercials and bought some airtime on TV networks promoting the initiative.
Then, John Wilson, the general counsel of Florida’s Department of Health, sent a fucked up letter to the stations running the ads. The letter claimed that the ads violated the state’s “sanitary nuisance” laws, which normally are used to deal with things like overflowing septic tanks or improper garbage disposals.
Claiming that a political ad violates that law is so obviously thuggish, censorial bullshit that (1) the lawyer who sent it, John Wilson, then resigned and admitted that his conscience couldn’t let him continue in that job after sending such a threat letter and (2) FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel issued a reminder that broadcasters have a First Amendment right to air what they want, and “threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government’s views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech.”
Floridians Protecting Freedom went to court on Wednesday with a complaint calling out how egregious the threats are. The complaint asked for a declaratory judgment that the letters violate the First Amendment, and for an injunction against the government to stop such letters from being sent going forward.
Just one day later, the court did exactly that. Here’s the longer version of the quote above:
Plaintiff’s argument is correct. While Defendant Ladapo refuses to even agree with this simple fact, Plaintiff’s political advertisement is political speech—speech at the core of the First Amendment. And just this year, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the bedrock principle that the government cannot do indirectly what it cannot do directly by threatening third parties with legal sanctions to censor speech it disfavors. The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is “false.” “The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion.” Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 545 (1945) (Jackson, J., concurring). “In this field every person must be his own watchman for truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.” Id. To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.
It then goes through a full explanation of just how stupid all this is. Florida’s argument is dismissed as “nonsense.”
At the hearing, Defendant led with the argument that laws of general applicability are immune from First Amendment challenge. Nonsense. The line of cases Defendant cites to support this dubious argument are readily distinguishable from this case. Defendant’s cases addressed a different issue—namely, whether enforcement of a law of general applicability against the press, which incidentally affects the press’s ability to gather and report the news, offends the First Amendment. See, e.g., Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663, 669 (1991); Villieux v. Nat’l Broad. Co., 206 F.3d 92 (1st Cir. 2000); Food Lion v. Cap. Cities/ABC, 194 F.3d 505 (4th Cir. 1999). That is not this case. The issue here is whether the State can censor core political speech under the guise that the speech is false and implicates public health concerns. When state action “burdens a fundamental right such as the First Amendment, rational basis yields to more exacting review.” NAACP v. City of Philadelphia, 834 F.3d 435, 443 (3d Cir. 2016). With limited exceptions not applicable here,4 a government restriction on speech is subject to strict scrutiny if it is content based. Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U.S. 155, 163 (2015).
Footnote 4 also does a good job explaining how there are limited exceptions to the First Amendment, but there’s no way that these ads fit into those categories:
A few “limited categories of speech are traditionally unprotected—obscenity, fighting words, incitement, and the like.” Honeyfund.com, Inc. v. Governor, 94 F.4th 1272, 1277 (11th Cir. 2024) (quoting Brown v. Ent. Merchs. Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786, 791 (2011)). “But what counts as unprotected speech starts and ends with tradition—‘new categories of unprotected speech may not be added to the list by a legislature that concludes certain speech is too harmful to be tolerated.’ ” Id. But Defendant has not demonstrated that the political speech at issue falls within any of these categories. It is not commercial speech subject to a more relaxed standard permitting some government regulation, nor is it obscene, nor is it inciting speech that will imminently lead to harm to the government or the commission of a crime.
Defendant argues this is dangerous and misleading speech that could cause pregnant women harm in Florida. But there is no “general exception to the First Amendment for false statements.” United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709, 718 (2012) (plurality opinion). Falsity alone does not bring speech outside the First Amendment absent some other traditionally recognized, legally cognizable harm. Id. at 718–722. That is because “it is perilous to permit the state to be the arbiter of truth.” Alvarez, 567 U.S. at 752 (Alito, J., dissenting).
Defendant seeks to fit a square peg into a round hole by suggesting that Plaintiff’s speech is unprotected because it poses an “imminent threat” to public health. But this argument fails too. Speech is unprotected as an “imminent threat” when it incites or produces imminent lawless action, or poses a clear and present danger by bringing about the “substantive evils” that the government has a right to prevent, like obstacles to military efforts, obscenity, acts of violence, and charges to overthrow the government. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447 (1969); Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U.S. 697, 716 (1931). But there is no suggestion that Plaintiff’s ad would bring about the “substantive evils” that the Supreme Court has recognized, nor is there any suggestion that Plaintiff’s ad would cause individuals to take any imminent lawless action.
The court then explains how this law doesn’t come even remotely close to passing the high bar for strict scrutiny. Again, some of the meatiest bits are in the footnotes. Florida tried to claim that the recently decided Vullo case (in which a unanimous Supreme Court rejected efforts by government officials to coerce third parties into punishing people for their speech) didn’t apply because the speech here wasn’t protected by the First Amendment. The court explains that this is not how this works:
When asked why this case was not governed by Vullo, Defendant’s response was that Vullo concerned the state exercising its regulatory authority “in an effort to stop the NRA from engaging in constitutionally protected speech.” But “the difference here,” he argued, is that “the specific words being expressed” in this case don’t fall “within the ambit of the First Amendment.” ECF No. 23 at 36–37. But that is beside the point. In Bantam Books, on which Vullo relied, the state threatened enforcement on the basis that the speech was allegedly obscene—which the Supreme Court acknowledged was “not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press.” 372 U.S. at 59, 65. Here, as discussed above, Defendant has not even shown that the speech falls within one of the “traditionally unprotected” categories, let alone that such a distinction would remove this case from the ambit of Vullo and Bantam Books.
Furthermore, the court notes that these threats from the Florida government are unconstitutional under two separate analyses: for both being an unconstitutional coercion in an attempt to suppress speech and for viewpoint discrimination, both of which are forbidden under the First Amendment.
The judge points out that if this was allowed to stand, the state could just deem any speech it dislikes a “sanitary nuisance” and threaten criminal charges if it wasn’t removed:
It is no answer to suggest that the Department of Health is merely flexing its traditional police powers to protect health and safety by prosecuting “false advertising”—if the State can rebrand rank viewpoint discriminatory suppression of political speech as a “sanitary nuisance,” then any political viewpoint with which the State disagrees is fair game for censorship. Moreover, the record demonstrates that Defendant has ample, constitutional alternatives to mitigate any harm caused by an injunction in this case. The State of Florida has actively undertaken its own anti-Amendment 4 campaign to educate the public about its view of Florida’s abortion laws and to correct the record, as it sees fit, concerning pro-Amendment 4 speech. The State can continue to combat what it believes to be “false advertising” by meeting Plaintiff’s speech with its own
And thus, Florida is “enjoined from taking any further actions to coerce, threaten, or intimate repercussions directly or indirectly to television stations, broadcasters, or other parties for airing Plaintiff’s speech, or undertaking enforcement action against Plaintiff for running political advertisements….”
This is a good, strong outcome, but it remains absolutely ridiculous that this situation happened in the first place. Again, the idea that the modern GOP supports “free speech” is laughable given continued actions like this one.
The modern GOP needs to be reminded time and time again, “it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” but they have made it clear that they don’t care. They will continue to take every action they can to suppress views they dislike, because shutting up critics and “owning the libs” is way more important to them than actually upholding the Constitution.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, abortion, ballot initiative, coercion, florida, florida department of health, john wilson, mark walker, political advertising, ron desantis
Trump’s Likely FCC Boss, Brendan Carr, Tries To Undermine Popular Infrastructure Bill Broadband Improvements
from the useless-obstructionism dept
States are poised to receive $42.5 billion in broadband grants thanks to the 2021 infrastructure bill. While a lot of this money will be going to the usual entrenched monopoly incumbents, a lot of it is also going to a growing list of popular cooperatives, municipalities, and city-owned utilities to expand affordable fiber.
This Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program is going to help bring a lot of competition and new fiber into numerous markets. So, as per obstructionist party tradition, Republicans are trying to kill or undermine it at every possibility.
Republicans voted against the program, but then immediately turned around and took credit for the local improvements among their constituents. They worked tirelessly to try and keep this money from driving competition into Comcast and AT&T markets. They’ve also launched show hearings after learning that the BEAD program is (gasp) trying to make sure this new broadband is affordable to poor people.
Then there’s Trump FCC pick Brendan Carr. Carr, you’ll recall, spends all of his time whining about TikTok (a sector he doesn’t regulate), but none of it on helping telecom consumers (a sector he actually regulates). And when he can focus on telecom, it’s generally either to lobotomize corporate oversight, or do some favor for unpopular companies like Comcast and AT&T.
Like this new missive in the Wall Street Journal (paywall) that tries to claim the BEAD program is a “flop” because it has taken some time to implement it:
“Kamala Harris lamented recently that “in America, it takes too long and it costs too much to build.” She’s right. But she failed to mention that those costly delays are a feature, not a bug, of her progressive policies.”
What Carr doesn’t say is that a primary reason it has taken three years to get this component of the infrastructure bill off the ground was a direct result of Carr’s own incompetence. The Trump and Ajit Pai FCC (of which Carr was a key member) completely mismanaged the FCC’s $20.4 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), resulting in billions of dollars in fraud and various delays.
The Pai FCC’s mismanagement of RDOF was so severe, when it came time for the Biden administration to put an agency in charge of the BEAD program, it selected the NTIA instead of the FCC. That’s directly on Carr; but he just (whoops) doesn’t mention that bit.
Progress has been slow because the NTIA has been trying to do all of the stuff the FCC failed to do, like properly map broadband access to ensure the money is spent properly. And do a better job screening applicants to make sure they can actually deliver the broadband networks they promise.
The Carr and Pai FCC didn’t bother with this last bit, resulting in a long line of RDOF applicants (including Musk’s Starlink) getting billions of dollars they didn’t deserve, for projects they couldn’t build. That resulted in a ton of defaulting bidders, and it has taken years for the Biden FCC to clean up the Trump FCC’s mess. Worse, some of the communities stuck in default over RDOF bids now can’t qualify for BEAD funds, boxing them out of a generational broadband funding opportunity due to Trump FCC incompetence.
Starlink in particular was poised to receive nearly a billion dollars from Trump to deliver expensive, satellite access to a handful of airport parking lots and traffic medians. The Biden FCC (correctly) retracted that award, stating it wasn’t clear that the increasingly congested Starlink network could actually deliver consistently promised speeds. They also said Starlink access was expensive, instead redirecting these funds toward more “future proof” and affordable local fiber and wireless access. I’ve criticized the Biden FCC plenty; but on this particular point they were absolutely correct.
Still, Musk and Republicans have been throwing a noisy hissy fit ever since. Carr continues it in the pages of the Journal, falsely claiming the FCC engaged in “regulatory warfare” because it didn’t give a billionaire a billion dollars for slow, expensive broadband access:
“As I noted in my dissent at the time, the FCC’s revocation couldn’t be explained by any objective application of the facts, the law or sound policy. In my view, it amounted to nothing more than regulatory lawfare against one of the left’s top targets: Musk. Rural communities stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide are paying the price.”
That the GOP cares about the “digital divide” is a fiction. That the party cares about funding broadband access to rural communities is a fiction. That the party cares about government being efficient with taxpayer money is a fiction.
Republicans have fought against improving the quality and affordability of broadband access for the better part of thirty years, both by undermining regional competition, and by dismantling what’s left of corporate oversight and consumer protection. It routinely goes out of its way to protect entrenched monopolies like AT&T and Comcast from competition and accountability at every turn.
Carr’s goal is to paint the BEAD infrastructure bill program as a boondoggle, knowing full well money from the popular program will begin to flow to local constituents after the election season. As with all government programs BEAD certainly will have problems, but in this instance the NTIA is actually trying to do things right. That takes time.
BEAD will have a transformative impact on many rural, disconnected markets. I know this because part of my work involves talking to a different red or blue municipality every single week, which all tell me they’re poised for some amazing improvements. And Carr certainly doesn’t want locals understanding that Republicans have tried to dismantle a popular program that’s actually benefiting them.
Should Trump win the White House, you can be fairly certain Carr will be the next agency boss. He’s outlined what he’ll do in his Project 2025 chapter on how the FCC should be run, which largely involves repurposing the agency to harass, tax, and nanny tech companies that don’t kiss the authoritarian ring, and harass media companies that speak critically of King Trump.
You can be absolutely sure Carr will redirect as much BEAD money as possible to Elon Musk and monopolies like AT&T, and dismantle the most useful parts of BEAD (like the efforts to fund popular community-owned broadband networks). Carr is a Trump sycophant of the highest order, and if he’s put in charge of the nation’s biggest telecom and media regulator, the dysfunction won’t be subtle.
Filed Under: 5g, BEAD, brendan carr, broadband, fcc, fiber, infrastructure, ntia, starlink, states, telecom, wireless
Federal Monitor Expands Consent Decree To Cover PD’s Stop-And-Frisk Shift To Traffic Stops
from the you're-not-fooling-anyone,-CPD dept
After the ACLU obtained a settlement from the city of Chicago over the PD’s unconstitutional “stop and frisk” program, the Chicago PD decided to take the show on the road. Literally.
The number of traffic stops in Chicago surged after the settlement with ACLU Illinois over stop-and-frisk pedestrian stops, while pedestrian stops fell from a high of 710,000 in 2014 to just 107,000 in 2016.
By 2022, CPD officers were making more than 600,000 traffic stops a year, a majority of which targeted Black and Latino drivers. The PD claimed these traffic stops weren’t the result of biased policing, insisting they were the organic result of patrolling “high crime” areas. But if there was more crime in the areas the PD chose to flood with officers, the officers were having an extremely difficult time finding any evidence of increased criminal activity.
Analysis of public data further shows that CPD officers recover contraband in only a minuscule portion (0.3% between 2016 and 2022) of the traffic stops they conduct, and they recover weapons even less frequently: only 0.05% of traffic stops between 2016 and 2022 resulted in the discovery of a weapon.
Those numbers undercut the assertion officers are their busiest where most criminal activity is taking place. And this data, compiled from public records by (um) The Record, undercuts any claims officers may make about traffic stops being unbiased because they don’t know the race of the driver until the car is pulled over.
Our research, published in June 2024, used data on the racial composition of drivers on every street in Chicago. We then compared who is driving on roads with who is being ticketed by the city’s speed cameras and who is being stopped by the Chicago police.
Our findings show that when speed cameras are doing the ticketing, the proportion of tickets issued to Black and white drivers aligns closely with their respective share of roadway users. With human enforcement, in contrast, police officers stop Black drivers at a rate that far outstrips their presence on the road.
For instance, on roads where half of drivers are Black, Black drivers receive approximately 54% of automated camera citations. However, they make up about 70% of police stops.
On roadways where half of the drivers are white, white drivers account for around half of automated citations – and less than 20% of police stops.
It’s still the same old biased policing, but with a bit more plausible deniability built in. That this deniability has been undercut by the PD’s own numbers probably won’t change anything. The PD will continue to insist it’s more interested in stopping cars than pedestrians for purely organic reasons, rather than for the actual reasons, which involve dodging oversight and limiting public exposure of its biased policing tactics.
This shift from pedestrians to cars was deliberate. To avoid limitations placed on pedestrian stops, the Chicago PD engaged in malicious compliance — increasing the number of traffic stops since those weren’t subject to the same restrictions or the federal monitoring established by a consent decree.
On top of dodging compliance with a settlement and consent decree, officers also eluded the reporting mandates governing traffic stop, hiding more than 20,000 traffic stops in 2023 alone from its oversight by simply refusing to document these interactions.
Finally, after years of the PD ducking oversight and accountability by moving the goalposts, the government is stepping back in to, hopefully, force a little more accountability and constitutionality back into the system.
A federal court order requiring the Chicago Police Department to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers should be expanded to include traffic stops, but the city’s new police oversight board should be given some power over the hot-button issue, according to a new recommendation released Friday by the team overseeing the reform push.
This proposal followed a shooting two months ago, during which Chicago PD officers fired 96 bullets in 41 seconds during a traffic stop, killing the driver, 26-year-old Dexter Reed. Officers claimed Reed fired first, something the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) has backed in its official report.
Unfortunately, this isn’t likely to change anything either. The proposed expansion is meeting opposition because, in its original form, there’s no option for community accountability groups to provide input and/or assist in ensuring compliance with the expanded order.
[T]he proposal to expand the consent decree for the fourth time ran into a brick wall of opposition from of progressive alderpeople and a coalition of police reform groups that sued the city over CPD’s use of traffic stops in June 2023, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.
A spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department declined to endorse the recommendation from the monitoring team, which was contained in a new report released Friday.
The previously mentioned COPA isn’t part of the equation at the moment. Not that it would matter. COPA has no legal power to enforce its misconduct rulings, which means recommended punishments for officers are routinely reduced if not rejected completely by the PD’s internal oversight. There are other outside accountability groups — ones far more independent than COPA — but they’re not being asked to assist in the monitoring most likely because they have no legal authority to do so.
For now, the CPD has at least established an alliance of sorts with another oversight group, one that appears to be still on the outside of any proposed expansion of the DOJ’s consent decree.
Anthony Driver, Jr., the president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, known as the CCPSA, said the police oversight board should be “an equal partner” with the monitoring team, judge and the office of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
“We don’t want to chip away at the power of the CCPSA by expanding the consent decree,” Driver said.
While it would make sense to expand the decree to cover the stops officers are performing far more frequently than those targeted in the original order (pedestrian stops), the past several years has shown the Chicago PD is not only capable of eluding oversight by focusing on tactics not enumerated in the original order, but also completely willing to sandbag and stonewall any reform mandates handed down by the DOJ.
CPD has fully complied with just 6% of the court order known as the consent decree designed to require the police department to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers.
That’s less than 1% compliance per year. The consent decree was issued in 2017, but the CPD seems determined to outlast any reforms foisted upon it by outside agencies. And it sure as hell isn’t interested in fixing the problems from the inside. A drastic change is needed — one that starts at the top and doesn’t stop until it’s rooted out every last bad apple. But no city in America has ever been willing to do this, no matter how out of control its law enforcement officers are. And a city with a long history of police abuse and government corruption is about the last place we should expect this sort of miracle to take place.
Filed Under: chicago pd, consent decree, police misconduct, pretextual stops, stop and frisk
Steam Finally Makes It Clear: You’re Buying A License, Not A Game
from the etched-in-steam dept
We’ve been writing stories about how, when it comes to digital purchases, we typically do not own what we’ve bought. Instead of buying a product, such as the digital version of a video game, what we are instead buying is a non-transferable license to use that product. While readers here will be largely familiar with this annoying concept, most online retailers bury the language for this so deep inside their labyrinthian EULAs that the overwhelming majority of the public is none the wiser. Steam has traditionally been no different, which is how you get confused fans complaining about how a game they bought has been changed via an update, or how your Steam library just disappears when you shove off this mortal coil.
But thanks to a California law that goes into effect next year, this has already changed. Ahead of that law, Steam has updated the messaging users see when purchasing a game to put the lack of game-ownership right in their faces.
Now Valve, seemingly working to comply with a new California law targeting “false advertising” of “digital goods,” has added language to its checkout page to confirm that thinking. “A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam,” the Steam cart now tells its customers, with a link to the Steam Subscriber Agreement further below.
California’s AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer “permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet.” Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms “buy, purchase,” or related terms that would “confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good.” And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that “the digital good is a license” and link to terms and conditions.
Frankly, the idea that this had to be mandated by state law is silly. That law didn’t suddenly educate Valve and other online marketplaces for digital goods that there was a problem here. Surely Valve has fielded questions and/or complaints from consumers in the past who had thought they’d bought a game only to find out they hadn’t. These companies could have proactively decided that informing their customers of the reality in a way that doesn’t take a set of bifocals and a law degree to parse through a EULA or ToS was a good idea. They just didn’t want to, for reasons that I’m sure you can decipher for yourself.
But now consumers will be better informed. And what will be interesting will be to see if this changes anything when it comes to the macro-behavior of customers.
In other words, if there isn’t some precipitous drop in purchases now that this new language is in place, the open and remaining question will be why Valve and companies like it weren’t more upfront about this reality all along?
Filed Under: ab2426, california, copyright, digital goods, false advertising, license, ownership, steam
Companies: valve
Houston Cop Gerald Goines Gets 60-Year Sentence For Leading Bogus Drug Raid That Ended With Cops Killing Two People
from the got-one dept
“Felony murder” laws are still problematic, even if that law has led to a corrupt drug warrior finally being punished for the evil he has committed under the color of law.
Gerald Goines headed up a Houston PD drug squad for years and was never one to let facts or a lack of evidence stand between him and a drug bust. Unfortunately for Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas — neither of them drug dealers — the raid generated and perpetrated by Gerald Goines ended their lives. They were shot by officers — four of whom were wounded during the raid — who forced entry into the innocent couple’s home, only to be greeted by (according to officers’ allegations) a seemingly reasonable response to armed intruders.
Goines was a monster. Unable to move forward with a controlled heroin purchase from the Tuttle residence (because Tuttle and Nicholas had no heroin to sell), he decided to fabricate a case against the couple, using drugs stashed in his car and series of lies that included sworn statements made in the warrant affidavit. The impetus for all of this was an unsubstantiated claim from a neighbor of Tuttle — one well-known by the Houston PD for filing bogus criminal complaints against people in her neighborhood.
Knowing full well the couple wasn’t actually dealing heroin from their home, Goines assembled his fellow drug warriors and raided their house. Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas were killed. Four officers were wounded. The official narrative is that they were shot by Tuttle. But that narrative is undercut by an independent forensic examination of the home following the raid — one that shows Houston PD investigators failed to conduct a full ballistic recovery and left lots of forensic evidence untouched, something that suggests cover-up far more than it suggests diligent police work.
Goines was the only participant in the raid to be criminally charged. Six other members of this drug squad have been indicated for their involvement in this raid or other crimes they engaged in while in uniform. But it’s Goines who being hit with the most years, thanks to the felony murder law that allows the government to imprison people for murder, even if they themselves didn’t personally murder anyone.
On Tuesday, the jury handed down their sentence after 10 hours of deliberation, bringing the five-year saga to a close. Goines received 60 years for each of the two murders, but his sentences will run concurrently. He will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years, and must also pay $20,000 in fines.
[…]
Prosecutors successfully argued that Goines lied to get the no-knock search warrant for the raid, falsely stating that he had used a confidential informant to purchase drugs from the Harding Street home. From this, they argued that because he was responsible for the raid happening in the first place, and because he was the lead agent on the raid, he was responsible for the deaths of the two homeowners, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas.
This is not a great way to secure a conviction, especially one with decades of prison time included. Goines is definitely responsible for everything leading up to the raid and, consequently, at least partially responsible for its outcome. But suggesting he’s a two-time murderer because other officers killed Tuttle and Nicholas isn’t even acceptable as an over-correction for years of ignored abusive, illegal actions by Goines and his underlings.
While it’s heartening to see an officer’s actions handled with the severity they deserve, everyone would be far better served if prosecutors had dug into his long history of misconduct (something that’s led to the dismissal of dozens of drug cases) and pursued criminal charges for those acts. While Goines’ hands are definitely dirty, he didn’t pull the trigger.
As for the other cops indicted as a result of this, let’s hope the ones who did actually kill the couple receive sentences roughly aligned to the kingpin of the Houston PD-enabled criminal organization. But let’s not celebrate injustice just because it happened to someone we don’t like. Goines should go to jail and, if he ever comes out, should never be allowed to be a cop again. Felony murder is a cheap shot and short cut. It never feels like actual justice because it simply isn’t.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, dennis tuttle, drug raid, gerald goines, houston pd, police misconduct, rhogena nicholas
Vote Yes On Locking Artist’s Voices In Contractual Seashells Like The Little Mermaid
from the all-ours dept
We are living under a sea of AI-generated slop, where AI deepfakes and non-consensual intimate content abound. Congress, a self-interested creature, naturally wants to create protections for themselves, their favorite celebrities, and their wealthy donors against online impersonation. But until now, visions of so-called AI protections have been limited. From my lair, I’ve seen how Big Content might use congressional panic about AI abuse to make a many-tentacled power grab. With the NO FAKES and No AI FRAUD Acts, it’s delicious to report that we have done exactly that.
Inspired by my seashell-prisons, in which I trap the sweet voices of mermaids looking to rise, these bills would let corporations and trade associations like mine control not only the tongues of young musicians, actors, or authors—but their whole face and body. It has been incredibly lucrative for Big Content to monopolize other intellectual property rights, so that we could prevent Prince from singing his pesky “art” under his own name and block Taylor Swift from buying back her early recordings from powerful enemies. It is far past time that new and more invasive rights are created, ones that allow us to make AI-generated deepfakes of artists singing the songs that we like, dressing in the way we desire, promoting the causes we approve, and endorsing the presidential candidates that we want to endorse.
Since teenagers, abuse survivors, and artists started suffering from AI deepfakes, our leaps toward victory have been enlivened by the sirens we’ve convinced to testify on behalf of concepts like consent, the struggle of artists for respect and dignity, and the importance of human art. They have unwittingly obscured our true aims with the beauty of their voices, and the results are glorious, netting legislation that would lure not only artists, but anyone at all, into crashing on the rocks.
If these bills pass, the vulnerable and desperate will also be lured into trading rights to their voices and faces for almost nothing—a month’s rent or a week’s groceries. A paid electricity bill. And for that we will amass vast libraries of captive voices and faces that we can license out to whomever will pay, to use as broadly and vaguely as we desire. AI-generated intimate content, political advertising, hate speech—sources of vast wealth currently being tapped by small-time influencers and foreign regimes. Many will pay richly to AI-generate another to deliver their message. This sea witch fully intends to insert herself in such a growing market.
And oh, the markets! The No AI FRAUD Act is particularly clever in its moves to kill alternative markets and competition for us, the biggest players in Content. With copious lawsuits, we will be able to smite any who dare attempt reenactments and parody, who depict a historical figure in a movie or sketch comedy, who make memes of a celebrity. After all, how dare they? Did they think the First Amendment was written for their drivel?
Even better, we will be able to sue social media platforms, too, for hosting such content. Although, social media companies have historically made moves to aggressively filter or shut down content they could be sued over. Ultimately, they may proactively smite our competition on our behalf—becoming an even more honed instrument for our supremacy. Either way, we win.
Censorship, you say? Perhaps. But if most of the human faces that are displayed online are the ones we own or sell licenses to, the dollar signs would fill a sea. And, we would own the faces of each person not only during their life, but these laws would let us own them for 70 years after their deaths.
NO FAKES in its turn is an eloquent symphony of conformity. It allows us to claim that any video, photo, or recording we do not like is an AI deepfake and have it removed from the Internet forever. The bill offers no recourse to anyone we might—oopsie—censor with our richly programmed armies of bots and filters. There is no mechanism to put content back online or punish a big content company for lying about a takedown request—well, unless you want to face down our armies of lawyers in federal court, that is. This one is all about who has the most money and power, darlings.
With these bills, we will tighten our many-tentacled stranglehold over arts and culture, ensuring that only those we profit from succeed—and that these choice humans need act only minimally once we have secured their AI likeness. No more pesky frailties or artistic preferences to contend with. No more divas unless we deepfake them. This is why we must make our utmost effort to pass NO FAKES and No AI FRAUD— before creators and the public catch on and discover that these bills don’t fight deepfakes, they solidify control of them amongst the most powerful players while obliterating consent.
We must act swiftly to purchase politicians and parade our most convincing messengers—the artists themselves—to demand Little Mermaid laws. These poor unfortunate souls are already falling into the grips of NDAs, brand protection agreements, other assignable rights, noncompetes, existing IP law, and everything else our lawyers can brew up. We just need one final, strong brew to cement control, and then artists’ ability to speak and appear publicly or online will be safe in our contractual seashells. There will be a new era of peace and harmony, as artists and creators won’t be able to agitate and contribute to conflict as pesky “activists”. They will be quiet and only sing when told to. And, our pretties will be able to sing their hearts out even if they become sick, ugly, impoverished, or die—because we hold their AI replicas.
After all, a star need not be human to shine, and if the human artist cannot speak without our permission, no one will know the difference anyway!
Ursula the Sea Witch, best known for cutting one of the hottest ever sub-marine deals with Mermaid Ariel to trap her voice in a seashell along with other poor unfortunate souls, was recently promoted to the C-suite of the Under-The-Sea Content Trade Association. There, her leadership focuses on expanding her pioneering work with Ariel, aiming to lock voices away without any true love’s kiss to set them free by 2026—and for complete, non consensual-yet-legal AI impersonation of all artists under contract by 2027. Ursula the Sea Witch is also the evil(er) alter-ego of Lia Holland, Campaigns and Communications Director at digital rights organization Fight for the Future.
Filed Under: ai, control, no ai fraud, no fakes, ownership, the little mermaid, ursula, voices
Justice Thomas Seems More Willing To Kill A Possibly Innocent Person Than Mildly Impugn The Reputations Of Prosecutors
from the King-Thomas,-the-Pettily-Vindictive dept
There are few things the government loves less than admitting wrongdoing, especially when the admission might affect multiple levels of government. That’s why nearly every settlement paid out to litigants includes a disavowment of any wrongdoing. And that’s why courts — at multiple levels — are so extremely reluctant to give possibly innocent people an opportunity to plead their case.
Then there’s the wildcard: justices like Clarence Thomas, who don’t seem to care what the law says and continually seek to convert their own personal ideologies into precedent. While this is definitely something Thomas does more consistently than most, refusing to consider new evidence or any genuine questions of guilt is a common feature of all courts at all levels.
“Innocent until proven guilty” is the ideal. The reality — for far too many judges, prosecutors, and jurors — is the opposite: an indictment or arrest makes a person guilty and places the burden on them to prove their innocence. When the system gets rigged through police or prosecutorial misconduct, it’s almost impossible to overturn this presumption of guilt, even via multiple visits to courts, which are supposed to be doing all they can to prevent miscarriages of justice.
The case of Richard Glossip has made it clear most courts don’t care what happens to people once they’ve been convicted, no matter how much exculpatory evidence is uncovered following the conviction. Glossip is on death row at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, allegedly for hiring 19-year-old Justin Sneed to kill Barry Van Treese back in 1997. He was convicted in 1998 but had his conviction thrown out in 2001 by the Oklahoma District Court of Appeals, which called the prosecution’s case “extremely weak” and finding Glossip had received ineffective assistance of counsel.
Nearly a quarter-century later, this is still somehow being litigated. Glossip was convicted again by a new jury in 2004 and his conviction was affirmed by the same court that found the prosecution lacking the first time around. Multiple appeals, a bunch of new evidence pointing to Glossip’s supposed “accomplice” acting alone, support from local politicians, and questionable acts by the prosecutors handling the case have managed to keep Glossip from being executed, along with various challenges over Oklahoma’s constantly morphing execution cocktail recipe.
At this point, even the Oklahoma state Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, is unwilling to argue against Glossip in court. For some reason, the Supreme Court has decided someone should argue against Glossip, so it hired a former clerk who worked for two current justices (John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh) to argue the state’s case on its behalf.
The Supreme Court’s hired gun, Christopher Michel — one with ties to two conservative justices — did exactly what was asked of him: he argued it didn’t matter the state AG thought the case was indefensible. The Supreme Court should still consider it defensible and ignore the public disavowal of this conviction.
Michel argues that the court should pay no mind to Drummond’s concerns about the legality of executing Glossip. “Nothing in the Constitution compels a state court to provide a particular measure of deference to a state official’s confession of error,” Michel wrote. In other words, it doesn’t matter how flawed Drummond believes the case is, the court is under no obligation to take those concerns seriously.
Chances are, Justice Clarence Thomas would have said what he said, even if he hadn’t been prompted by Roberts and Kavanaugh’s former foot soldier. Thomas has never met a right he isn’t willing to violate if it means helping cops/prosecutors or any right he isn’t willing to imagine into existence if it helps his far-right buddies (Donald Trump, Trump supporters, anti-choice legislators, Republicans complaining about internet “censorship,” etc.) get what they want.
So, he went all in against Glossip and those advocating for him. The real problem here, said Justice Thomas, is that people are maligning prosecutors who seemingly engaged in a whole bunch of misconduct.
Responding to Glossip’s attorney’s assertions that key information was withheld by prosecutors about the actual killer (Justin Sneed) would have given the accused man a chance to challenge the sole witness’s credibility, Thomas acted as though it was unfair the prosecutors were never given a chance to defend themselves from these accusations, despite having had nearly a quarter-decade to do so.
These omissions are no small matter. The due process clause requires prosecutors to turn over potentially favorable evidence to the defense, and compels them to correct false testimony. [State prosectuors] Smothermon and Ackley did neither. If they had, Glossip’s attorneys might have undermined Sneed’s credibility by proving that he lied on the stand. They may have more persuasively painted him as the lone killer, too, since [Sneed’s psychiatrist, Dr.] Trombka believed Sneed was capable of violent “manic episodes.” Because prosecutors chose to stay silent, Glossip’s attorneys could not make the strongest case for their client.
Yet during Wednesday’s arguments, Thomas sought to recast Smothermon and Ackley as innocent victims of a smear campaign. He immediately asked Seth Waxman, Glossip’s lawyer: “Did you at any point get a statement from either one of the prosecutors?” Waxman told him that he did, in fact, get a sworn statement from Ackley, and that Smothermon was interviewed by an independent counsel appointed by Drummond. So yes: Both prosecutors provided statements. Yet Thomas persisted as if they hadn’t. “It would seem that because not only their reputations are being impugned, but they are central to this case—it would seem that an interview of these two prosecutors would be central.” Waxman protested that, again, both prosecutors were given an opportunity to tell their side of the story. And again, Thomas refused to accept it: “They suggest,” the justice said, “that they were not sought out and given an opportunity to give detailed accounts of what those notes meant.”
That’s the take Thomas makes: that the notes referring to things said about Justin Sneed by his therapist (a therapist he denied seeing while testifying against Glossip), including the fact Dr. Trombka thought Sneed was “capable of violent manic episodes,” were simply misinterpreted by Glossip’s lawyers. And since the prosecutors who wrote the notes have never testified directly that they say the things they say, they’ve somehow been unfairly forced out of this court battle to prevent Glossip from being executed for a crime he didn’t commit.
This is garbage law work. If an attorney tried to make the same arguments in front of the court, they’d be shut down and/or berated by the judges on the bench. But if a justice says it, I guess it’s all ok. But Supreme Court justices are expected to be the best at lawyering, since they’re tasked with making final determinations that not only affect the parties in the current case, but the entirety of judicial system across America. But instead of seriously and neutrally considering the facts of the case, activist justices like Clarence Thomas are making things worse for millions of Americans because they’ve decided their own moral compasses (such as they are, especially in Thomas’s case) are the gold standard for constitutional law.
Filed Under: clarence thomas, death penalty, law enforcement misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, richard glossip, supreme court
Daily Deal: The Ultimate Python & Artificial Intelligence Bundle
from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept
The Ultimate Python and Artificial Intelligence Bundle has 9 courses to help you take your Python and AI knowledge to the next level. You’ll learn about data pre-processing and visualization, artificial neural networks, how to use the Keras framework, 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
ExTwitter Makes It Official: Blocks Are No Longer Blocks
from the block-this dept
It has been rumored for a while that Elon wants to remove the official “block” functionality on ExTwitter, but now it’s official. The company has announced that it will soon start rolling out a new version of “block” that no longer blocks content, only interactions.
That’s ExTwitter’s engineering team saying:
Soon we’ll be launching a change to how the block function works. If your posts are set to public, accounts you have blocked will be able to view them, but they will not be able to engage (like, reply, repost, etc.).
Today, block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked. Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency.
This is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, though I’d push back on people calling it a “crazy” idea. There actually is some logic to it. As many people will point out, even with the existing “block” functionality, you can still see the content in question if you just switch to an incognito view. And, of course, there is something slightly odd in posting some content publicly, and then expecting that certain people should be “blocked” from seeing it.
That’s the theoretical argument for why what Elon is doing here seems to make sense.
But reality and theory don’t always match up. The reality is that the current “block” feature acts as a form of friction to stop abuse, and it’s somewhat, though not perfectly, effective in that role. That friction does not stop abusive people from viewing tweets or passing them along, but it does seem to help in some form.
The simple fact is that (even though Elon probably doesn’t know this or care to look at the history), Twitter tried this. A decade ago. And it was a complete flop. Such a flop that Twitter backtracked almost immediately.
On Thursday, the social site tweaked the way users block others who harass, spam or otherwise bother them. Under the change the blocked user would still be able to see the profile and tweets of the other user, as well as retweet their posts.
By Thursday night, however, the change was gone, reversed in stunningly abrupt fashion after a flurry of user protests, on a platform perfectly suited for both flurries and protests.
Part of the issue is that the block feature is a somewhat crude tool for dealing with multiple forms of abuse. Some of that abuse is still stopped via the new version (blocking interactions, but still showing content), while an awful lot is not. That’s the real problem. While block is far from a perfect tool in stopping people from ganging up on and abusing people, it does help. And with the new changes, that mostly goes away.
This plan is taking away an important, if imperfect, tool for stopping abuse, while not providing any alternative. It’s likely based on Elon’s near total inability to have empathy for people who are not himself. Over and over again, he has shown that he thinks the real problems on ExTwitter are just the ones that impact him directly: spam and scam repliers (even though he’s made that problem worse).
He has no concept of marginalized and targeted people and the kinds of abuse and attacks that can be heaped upon them. Thus, a tool that works towards minimizing such an impact is not even remotely interesting to him.
At the same time, it’s been said that the legacy blocking system is expensive computationally, because figuring out who can (and who cannot) see certain tweets is a pretty complex issue. I’ve noticed that this system breaks a lot since Musk took over, in that in the last few months I have repeatedly seen tweets from people who block me.
So, what this seems to come down to is (1) Elon trying to reduce more costs as the company continues to collapse, combined with (2) an inability to understand or care about the actual harassment that happens on his own platform. It doesn’t seem like a recipe for success.
Filed Under: blocks, elon musk, engagement, harassment, social media, trust and safety
Companies: twitter, x
New FTC Rules Make It Easier To Cancel Services, Punish Companies For Being Annoying Little Shits About It
from the annoyance-isn't-a-business-model dept
While FTC boss Lina Khan certainly has had some growing pains, she’s fought for consumer protection and antitrust reform in a way that U.S. regulators haven’t seen for the better part of a generation.
Whether it’s taking on automaker privacy abuses, supporting right to repair reforms, or taking aim at Amazon’s attempt to dominate the entirety of online retail, she’s notably different from the feckless revolving door careerists that usually stock regulatory agencies, which is why the Barry Dillers, Reid Hoffmans, and Mark Cubans of the world are so hot and bothered.
Enter the FTC’s latest effort: cracking down on the predatory and annoying ways companies try to prevent you from cancelling services. Cemented by AOL in its heyday, and perfected by everybody from the Wall Street Journal to your broadband and wireless phone provider, corporate America loves to make it as annoying as possible to simply cancel services, often actively hiding any way to do so.
The FTC says its new revamp of the FTC’s 1973 “Negative Option Rule” requires companies be completely transparent about the limitations of deals and promotions, prohibits them from making cancelling services difficult or impossible, requires consumer actively consent to having read terms and deal restrictions, and generally makes cancelling a service as easy as signing up.
“Some businesses too often trick consumers into paying for subscriptions they no longer want or didn’t sign up for in the first place,” Khan said. “The proposed rule would require that companies make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one. The proposal would save consumers time and money, and businesses that continued to use subscription tricks and traps would be subject to stiff penalties.”
Most of the FTC’s new guidelines will go into effect in 180 days, with some in effect within 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. The rulemaking updates started way back in 2019. There’s a fact sheet here that explains the proposal in more detail.
Consumer groups like US PIRG were pleased.
“For years, too many companies have used questionable tactics to trap customers in recurring payments even if they no longer want or need their services,” US PIRG Consumer Watchdog Director Teresa Murray said of the rule changes. “Subscriptions and memberships have often been like a visit to the Hotel California: ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.’ Now, you’ll be able to leave.”
Trade groups representing everything from media companies and telecoms to car wash operations called the rules “burdensome and unnecessary.” Publishers and Advertisers like the News/Media Alliance also complained about the rules, insisting they would “confuse customers” (one alliance group member, the WSJ, worked for years to make subscription cancellation as annoying as humanly possible, and didn’t seem too upset about consumer confusion at the time).
I’d suspect that, as in most sectors, these organizations will likely file suit to scuttle the new rules, insisting that several recent decisions by a corrupt Supreme Court have effectively made U.S. consumer protection effectively illegal without the specific, uncharacteristically-competent approval of a Congress too corrupt to function. They’re having more success on this front than you might think.
Again, there’s a lot of grumbling about Khan, but most of it oddly omits the numerous and popular consumer protection reforms she continues to implement cracking down on obvious consumer pain points the government previously spent decades doing nothing about.
Filed Under: barry diller, cancellations, consumer protection, consumers, ftc, lina khan, subscriptions
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