Otherwise Objectionable: The Internet Before Section 230
from the the-wild-west dept
The second episode of Otherwise Objectionable, my new podcast series all about Section 230, is now out: The Dawn of the Internet. This week, I talk to a bunch of folks (including one of the first friends I ever met online) about what the internet was actually like in the early days, before Section 230, including living through the infamous “September that Never Ended.”
<a href="https://rss.com/podcasts/otherwise-objectionable/1947031">Episode 2: The Dawn of the Internet</a>
This episode also features conversations with Section 230 experts Eric Goldman, Jeff Kosseff, and Jessica Melugin, who all appeared in last week’s episode. Also, though, is a fun conversation with journalist Steven Levy, talking about how he first got interested in the internet and “hacker culture” in the lead-up to his seminal 1984 book “Hackers.” That discussion included a nugget I hadn’t realized before: that Levy hosted the event where Stewart Brand, in discussion with Steve Wozniak, “hacked” a line that Levy himself had written, to argue that “information wants to be free, information wants to be expensive.”
We also talk to Chris Cox, the Congressional Representative who, alongside Ron Wyden, wrote Section 230. We discuss some of Cox’s own early computer expertise and what caught his eye about some of the early lawsuits regarding intermediary liability, causing him to draft 230 — a conversation we’ll get into in more detail in a future episode.
Filed Under: chris cox, cubby v. compuserve, early internet, eternal september, section 230, september that never ended, usenet
Companies: compuserve
What Trump’s Possession Of The Declaration Reveals About His Vision Of America
from the self-evident-truths dept
Donald Trump has proudly shown off his new spoil of war—the Declaration of Independence. A document, which to me, has so much meaning and importance. Well, I’m quite upset about it.
Not because I believe such a document should never leave the National Archives. Historical artifacts can and sometimes should travel for legitimate purposes. But what unsettles me is the casual proprietorship implied by this transfer—the transformation of our collective heritage into one man’s trophy.
The Declaration of Independence isn’t just parchment and ink. It represents something far more profound: a moment when imperfect people reached for perfect ideals. When Jefferson, despite his own moral contradictions and hypocrisies, articulated principles that would ultimately challenge the very systems of privilege he benefited from.
What makes this document sacred isn’t its physical form but what it embodies: the audacious proposition that governance derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. That power flows upward from the people, not downward from a ruler.
When I think about the Continental Congress deliberating over each word, knowing the risk they were taking, I’m reminded that democracy has always been both fragile and resilient. Those men, flawed as they were, understood they were creating something that would outlive them—something that belonged not to them but to generations unborn.
That’s why seeing the Declaration displayed as a presidential prop feels so viscerally wrong. It’s not simply inappropriate; it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what the document means. It belongs to all of us—not as a relic to be possessed, but as a living covenant that continues to challenge and inspire us.
This is where I have a serious point of departure with some of my more left-leaning friends who have taken a disinterested and detached view of history. Jefferson owned slaves. A hypocrisy he acknowledged. And he laid the intellectual groundwork for its end. This is the problem of puritanism. It can’t see progress. It can’t see these mile-markers where real moral progress occurred. Where the human heart expanded.
To reduce the Declaration to the personal failings of its author is to miss its revolutionary significance. It’s not that Jefferson’s moral contradictions don’t matter—they absolutely do. But the document he crafted transcended him. It contained principles that would later be wielded against the very institutions of oppression he participated in. Frederick Douglass understood this when he asked, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” He wasn’t rejecting the Declaration—he was claiming it, insisting that its promises be fulfilled for all Americans.
The Declaration wasn’t the end of America’s moral journey but its beginning. It established a standard against which we could measure our failures and toward which we could direct our aspirations. It created a language of liberty that marginalized people would later use to demand their rightful place in the American project.
This document, this Declaration of Independence was the beginning of a radical idea that human civilization had never seen before: that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, not from divine right or brute force or inherited privilege. That all people are created equal—a claim that would repeatedly challenge America to expand its understanding of who counts as “all.”
That it now sits in the office of a man who has no appreciation for any of this is quite frankly hard to take. A man who has explicitly called for the “termination” of constitutional rules, who has claimed “absolute immunity” from prosecution, who has said “I am your retribution”—phrases that echo precisely the kind of monarchical authority the Declaration was written to reject.
I am quite romantic about that document and I do not apologize for it. This romanticism isn’t blind nostalgia or uncritical patriotism. It’s a clear-eyed recognition that in those words, something profound happened—a doorway opened to possibilities that hadn’t existed before. The beginning of a conversation about freedom and equality that continues to this day, sometimes halting, sometimes regressing, but ultimately advancing toward a more inclusive understanding of those self-evident truths.
This is an important part of my praxis. Understanding and embracing these historical contingencies, and recognizing them for the moral mile-markers that they are. We should be proud of this history. We should be proud of our progress. And I am proud. I will always hold the stars and stripes high. Because I know what the flag stands for.
This isn’t blind patriotism; it’s an informed commitment to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” It’s recognizing that America has always existed in the productive tension between what we are and what we aspire to be. The flag, like the Declaration, represents not just our history—with all its contradictions and failings—but the ongoing project of creating “a more perfect union.”
To truly honor these symbols requires neither uncritical reverence nor cynical dismissal, but a mature engagement with their complexity. It means acknowledging darker chapters while still affirming the underlying principles that have allowed for moral growth and self-correction. It means understanding that our national symbols derive their power not from mythological perfection but from their capacity to inspire continual improvement.
This approach stands in stark contrast to how these symbols are currently being weaponized. When national treasures like the Declaration become personal trophies, when the flag becomes a brand rather than a covenant, something essential is lost. These symbols are diminished when they’re reduced to instruments of division rather than recognized as repositories of shared aspirations.
The Declaration now sitting in Trump’s office represents a fundamental misunderstanding of its meaning. It’s not a decoration or status symbol; it’s a challenge to power itself. Its presence in the Oval Office should remind every president of the limits of their authority, not serve as a backdrop for authority’s expansion.
What makes America’s founding documents revolutionary isn’t that they established a perfect nation, but that they created a framework for ongoing moral progress—a way to acknowledge our shortcomings while working toward their remedy. They represent the radical idea that a nation can be founded not just on shared history or ethnicity, but on shared principles.
This is the patriotism worth defending—not one that demands blind loyalty, but one that invites perpetual renewal. Not one that glosses over failures, but one that confronts them in service of our highest ideals.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the Declaration of Independence belongs not to any president or party, but to the American people—a document whose meaning transcends its authors’ limitations and continues to challenge us to live up to its promise.
Jefferson understood this when he wrote: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” He knew that the document he crafted wasn’t merely a historical artifact but a living covenant between generations—between those who began this experiment in self-governance and those who would carry it forward.
The Declaration now sits in the Oval Office. But its spirit—the radical notion that power flows from the people, not to them—remains where it has always been: in the collective conscience of a nation still striving to make its founding promises real for all. That, more than any physical parchment, is Jefferson’s true legacy. And it’s one worth defending with all the moral clarity we can muster.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Filed Under: declaration of independence, donald trump, patriotism, thomas jefferson
YouTube Apparently Unsure If Shakespeare Is In The Public Domain
from the to-be-or-not-to-be-in-the-public-domain dept
One of the darker threads of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) is how complex copyright enforcement systems can be abused, for example by sending Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests for material that is perfectly legal. A recent post on the Public Citizen blog offers an extreme example of this blight. Here’s the summary of what happened:
When Julien Coallier sent a series of DMCA takedown requests contending that various print publications of Shakespeare’s plays, and YouTube videos of performances of those plays, infringed his purported copyright in those works, it should have been treated as a bad joke. After all, Shakespeare’s plays were published more than 400 years ago, and it is hard to imagine the[m] as being anything but public domain. Yet not only did YouTube take the demands seriously, it blew off those takedown targets who filed counter-notifications and who asserted their right to publish plainly public domain material.
There are several issues here. One concerns the cavalier manner in which YouTube dealt with this situation – sadly, by no means an isolated incident. As the Public Citizen post explains, one of the video takedown victims was John Underwood, who had posted on YouTube videos of Shakespeare performances by a local non-profit group called Shakespeare by the Sea. When he received notice that two of his videos had been removed because a takedown notice sent by Coallier, Underwood followed the DMCA rules, and sent a counter-notice. He not unnaturally assumed that would resolve such a clear-cut case, not least because Shakespeare by the Seas assured him that it had not relied on Coallier’s claimed version of the Shakespeare plays for their performances. But YouTube ignored the official DMCA procedures and refused to acknowledge Underwood’s counter-notice, or even forward it to Coallier. This was not a one-off: other targets of Coallier’s take-down had also had their counter-notices ignored by YouTube. So Underwood contacted Coallier directly:
In multiple emails, Coallier declined to explain why he thought Underwood’s videos copied Coallier’s “translations” of Shakespeare’s plays, despite being asked repeatedly. Instead, Coallier told them that Shakespeare is not in the public domain because he had been able to register a copyright in so-called English-language “translations” of every one of Shakespeare’s plays. Coallier also claimed that he can charge a five percent royalty on every performance.
This brings us to the second issue: how could the US Copyright Office grant Coallier’s copyright registration? The author of the Public Citizen post, Paul Levy, went to the trouble of obtaining copies of the copyright registration, and found that only two of Coallier’s “translations” of Shakespeare’s plays had been submitted:
Apparently, it was on on the strength of these two “translations” that the Copyright Office granted a registration of Coallier’s copyright in three dozen “translated” plays – tragedies, comedies and histories – without receiving copies of any of the other works in which the Copyright Office was potentially granting a monopoly.
As to what Coallier’s translation amounted to, Levy sent a copy of the Coallier’s work to a Shakespeare expert, Jan Powell:
It was Powell’s opinion that the translation was such a mess that no reputable Shakespeare company would perform a script based on Coallier’s work. In addition to the fact that Coallier’s scripts did away with the iambic pentameter that is the glory of Shakespeare’s plays, she found his “translation” to be a garbled mess.
Following the intervention of Public Citizen, YouTube suddenly started to respond. It accepted Underwood’s counternotice and forwarded it to Coallier, who did not sue Underwood for alleged infringement, as he could have done. Not content with seeing off this abuse of the DMCA takedown system, Public Citizen is going further:
This week, in concert with the Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic at Stanford Law School, we have sued Coallier seeking a declaratory judgment of non-infringement, and seeking relief for a DMCA wrongful takedown. Corey Donaldson of the Los Angeles area firm of Ferguson Case Orr Paterson is co-counsel in the case. In addition to securing relief for Underwood, we hope to spur the district court to invoke 17 U.S.C. § 411(b) to suggest to the Copyright Office that it reconsider its registration of Coallier’s copyright.
That’s good news, but it is utterly absurd that so much effort was required to deal with a situation that should never have arisen. The copyright in these “translations” of Shakespeare should never have been granted, not least because only two of the plays were submitted, and yet registration was granted for all the rest of them sight unseen. And YouTube should have followed the rules of the DMCA, which is in any case already strongly biased in favor of those alleging copyright infringement. As Levy concludes:
We also hope that YouTube will consider whether DMCA takedown notices should have to pass the laugh test before they are effected, and consider also how it responds to DMCA counter-notifications. Although I am grateful to the YouTube lawyers who responded so promptly to my inquiries, the system is not working as it should. Many YouTube content creators are hobbyists and amateurs, and do not have the same ability to reach a YouTube lawyer. Abuse of the DMCA for cheap censorship by bad actors who would never file a copyright lawsuit over their claims has long been noted (for example, this post from EFF, which sent Underwood to me for help). It should not take a request from a lawyer to get YouTube to follow the DMCA and counternotices seriously.
This extraordinary saga of takedown notices for performances of Shakespeare show that 27 years after it was passed, the DMCA is still not fit for purpose. The companies like Google that are tasked with implementing it often do so in the most desultory way. There is an underlying assumption that claimed infringements are valid, an injustice compound by an arrogant indifference to the rights of ordinary citizens who find themselves caught up in a complex copyright system that is stacked against them.
Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally posted to Walled Culture.
Filed Under: copyright, counter notice, dmca, dmca takedowns, john underwood, julien coallier, public domain, shakespeare, us copyright office
Companies: youtube
Health Firm Hits Data Breach Reporting Site With Bogus Takedown Demand To Vanish Reporting On Its Data Breach
from the if-you-come-for-the-messenger,-you-best-not-miss dept
Shooting the messenger is still the preferred tactic for short-sighted entities that have been embarrassed on main by having their own carelessness publicly exposed. Two articles on Databreaches.net (run by “Dissent Doe“) covered the discovery and eventual consequences of a ransomware attack on HCRG Care Group, a UK-based private healthcare provider.
The ransom demanded by the Medusa ransomware gang wasn’t put in place to unlock the personal data obtained by the attackers. Instead, it was more like blackmail: a threat to publish the data unless HCRG paid it $2 million to “buy back” the purloined data.
This sort of thing happens all the time, unfortunately. The only unusual aspect of this particular ransomware attack is that the attackers appeared to have abandoned locking up data in favor of collecting payment to prevent distribution of the data.
Unfortunately, equally as common is what happened here: the threatening of someone who did nothing more than report on events that have actually happened. Dissent Doe’s site was served with an alleged injunction order from a UK court that (also allegedly) mandated removal of Databreaches’ previous reporting on this incident.
The takedown Demand, sent to Dissent Doe by HCRG’s law firm, Pinsent Masons, sure sounded extremely… um… excessively wordy:
We urge you to read the enclosed Order closely. As you are now on notice of the fact and terms of the injunction, pursuant to paragraph 22 of the Order, it would be a contempt of court for you knowingly to assist or permit a breach of the Order, including by publishing on your website some or all of the Confidential Information stolen during the cyber-attack. Breach of the terms of the Order may result in imprisonment, a criminal fine or having your assets seized.
Accordingly, you should take the necessary steps to ensure that none of the Confidential Information is published or disclosed on your website, and take down the following articles which contain descriptions and screenshots of some of the Confidential Information:
Article of 24 February 2025 entitled ‘UK: More details emerge about ransomware attack on HCRG by Medusa – DataBreaches.Net; and
Article of 26 February 2025 entitled ‘Medusa Unveils Another 50TB of Stolen Data from HCRG Care Group, Giving Greater Insight Into the Scope of the Breach -Data Breaches.Net.
Having been so urged, Dissent Doe read the letter and the injunction order. Perhaps HCRG’s legal reps would have been better off “urging” them to “skim over this order to get the gist of it,” rather than directing them to “read” these documents “closely.”
Under closer examination, two things immediately stood out. First, nowhere in the legal documents is Dissent Doe or their website listed as a defendant. Second, this order was obtained without notice to Dissent Doe and the target of the order was never given a change to argue their case, much less file anything to object to the proposed injunction.
Here’s Dissent Doe, objecting to the order, albeit in blog post form:
The court did not offer any reason at all — much less a compelling one — not to notify journalists whose work it would be censoring. Nor did it provide any justification at all for censoring media coverage of HCRG’s ransomware attack even though there is nothing unusual about the incident or the reporting on it to date. If there was any civil law violated that would justify censorship, the injunction failed to state it.
[…]
If the injunction itself didn’t name DataBreaches.net and if it didn’t mention the two posts either by URL or even by description, then how could DataBreaches be sure that the court intended to order this site to remove those two posts and not just one of them, or neither of them? Shouldn’t a court order be quite specific as to whom it applies and what they are required – exactly – to do or not do? There was no such specificity in this injunction.
Lots of missing pieces, none of which add up to compliance, immediate or otherwise. However, there was a clause in the injunction order that made it explicitly clear Dissent Doe was under no obligation to comply with this strongly worded letter and vaguely worded court order:
Except as provided in paragraph (2) below, the terms of this Order do not affect or concern anyone outside the jurisdiction of this Court.
There it is. US entities are not subject to UK court jurisdiction. Paragraph (2) explains how a US entity might become subject to this court, but it would involve a whole lot of things that aren’t happening here, like Doe having an appointed legal representative residing in the UK and having been given notice of this legal action at a residence or place of business that is within the jurisdiction of UK law.
Doe sent a letter back to HCRG’s legal reps pointing out all these things that justified the site’s non-compliance with the completely ineffective injunction order they had obtained. Rather than take the loss in dignified silence, HCRG sent a letter to Dissent Doe’s domain registrar demanding the same removal of content. The registrar forwarded this request to Dissent Doe, who again pointed out why it didn’t apply to their site and, additionally, did not apply to the registrar either. After a brief conversation, the registrar dumped the service ticket generated by this bogus legal threat and informed Doe no action would be taken against their site.
At this point, the posts remain live. And, for the moment, HCRG’s lawyers are still silent. It’s been 10 days since the last effort by Pinsent Masons, so one assumes this self-own is over and its lawyers are gently explaining the legal concept underpinning their failure. Hopefully, this will be the end of it.
But even if it is, this sort of thing just never goes away, even if, in almost every case, these threats rarely manage to dislodge content breach/ransomware victims want to keep out of the public eye. It’s never about preventing people from accessing data that’s been obtained via illegal means. It’s always about minimizing public exposure. The faster they can bury reporting, the longer they can wait before having to inform their users and customers that their personal information is now in the hands of criminals. And the longer they can keep this out of the news, the longer they can enjoy the profit margins/share prices they’re used to, even if the long-term damage wouldn’t last nearly as long if they’d just rip the band-aid off and get on with treating the wound.
Filed Under: data breach, dissent doe, free speech, legal threats, shooting the messenger
Companies: hcrg, pinsent masons
Daily Deal: Stone River eLearning
from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept
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Filed Under: daily deal
Trump Illegally Purges FTC’s Democratic Commissioners, Gutting What’s Left Of Agency Independence
from the the-purges-will-continue-until-loyalty-improves dept
In an unprecedented move that flatly violates federal law, Donald Trump on Tuesday fired both Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission — Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. The illegal purge represents a direct assault on the independence of the consumer protection agency.
While presidents have always wielded influence over independent agencies through their power to appoint chairs and maintain three to two partisan majorities, the law explicitly protects commissioners from being fired without cause. Trump’s attempt to remove Slaughter and Bedoya — apparently for nothing more than being Democrats who might question his agenda — shows a complete disregard for these vital safeguards.
It is customary for the chair to step down when a new administration of a different party comes in, and former FTC chair Lina Khan obliged and left as Donald Trump was inaugurated. Apparently having that typical 3 to 2 majority was not enough for Trump. In the Trump/Musk world of unlimited, unrestrained executive power, apparently any Democratic voice must be purged.
Both put out statements calling out the illegality of such a move. Here’s Slaughter’s statement:
I woke up this morning, as I have every day for nearly the last seven years, eager to get to work on behalf of the American people to make the economy more honest and fair. But today the President illegally fired me from my position as a Federal Trade Commissioner, violating the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent. Why? Because I have a voice. And he is afraid of what I’ll tell the American people.
The law protects the independence of the Commission because the law serves the American people, not corporate power. The reason that the FTC can be so effective for the American people is because of its independence and because its commissioners serve across political parties and ideologies. Removing opposition voices may not change what the Trump majority can do, but it does change whether they will have accountability when they do it. The administration clearly fears the accountability that opposition voices would provide if the President orders Chairman Ferguson to treat the most powerful corporations and their executives—like those that flanked the President at his inauguration—with kid gloves.
I have served across administrations, including during the last Trump administration, and throughout my entire time as a commissioner I applied the same criteria in my work: that the law must be enforced without fear or favor. I have dedicated myself to executing the Commission’s statutory mandate to protect consumers and promote competition, fighting against illegal business practices that make groceries more expensive, healthcare inaccessible, and compromise people’s privacy and security; it has been my greatest honor to serve.
And here’s Bedoya’s statement:
I’m a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. The president just illegally fired me.
The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists. Our staff is unafraid of the Martin Shkrelis and Jeff Bezos of the world. They take them to court and they win.
Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies.
Together with Chair Lina Khan and Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, I spent my time at the FTC fighting for small town grocers and pharmacists and for people in Indian country going hungry because food was too expensive. I fought for workers getting screwed on pay and benefits and overtime. I fought for their right to organize. I fought tech companies who think they can track you and your kids every hour of every day so they can pocket their next billion.
Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or someone who’s so disgusted with Washington you can barely watch the news, the FTC has worked for you.
Who will Trump’s FTC work for? Will it work for the billionaires? Or will it work for you?
It was an honor to serve my country at the FTC. It was an honor to work alongside its staff.
And to everyone who is watching all of this unfold, don’t be scared. Fight back.
Tomorrow I will testify before the Colorado Joint House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and will have more to say then.
The conventional wisdom is that Trump’s move is plainly illegal under Humphrey’s Executor, the 1935 Supreme Court case establishing that FTC commissioners can only be fired for cause. But there are growing signals that today’s Supreme Court would love nothing more than to demolish that precedent. And really, why wouldn’t they? The whole concept of “independent” agencies has always existed in a kind of constitutional twilight zone. This Court has shown increasing hostility toward the independence of administrative agencies, and Trump’s illegal purge provides the perfect vehicle for further consolidating executive power — though, of course, that only applies when Republicans are in charge.
The writing has been on the wall for months. Despite JD Vance’s cynical embrace of Khan’s anti-monopoly stance, the MAGA movement was never actually interested in reining in corporate power — they just wanted to ensure that power answered to Trump. Khan’s departure was inevitable, but firing the remaining Democratic commissioners shows this goes beyond normal political transitions into dangerous new territory.
But now illegally firing both Slaughter and Bedoya once again shows that in this Trump administration even the most basic safeguards are gone, and anyone who does not kiss Trump and Musk’s asses at every moment is going to be gone.
The next moves are depressingly predictable. Trump likely won’t even bother nominating new Democratic commissioners. While 15 USC 41 requires partisan balance (“Not more than three of the Commissioners shall be members of the same political party”), the FTC can legally function with a quorum of just two commissioners. Why would Trump fill those seats when he can simply let the FTC operate as a rubber stamp for his agenda? After all, this fits perfectly with new FTC chair Andrew Ferguson’s stated plan to weaponize the agency against Trump’s perceived enemies.
The ripple effects are already visible across other agencies. At the FCC, Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks has suddenly announced his decision to leave, though it’s unclear whether he also faced threats of forced removal if he didn’t remove himself. This leaves just one Democrat, Anna Gomez — and that may only be because the FCC’s three-commissioner quorum requirement means Trump needs her vote to enable Brendan Carr’s ongoing crusade against tech companies. At least until the Senate confirms another Republican.
There’s a certain terrifying, but clarifying, honesty to all this. For decades we’ve maintained the polite fiction that “independent” agencies were actually independent, that partisan balance requirements meant something, that institutional guardrails would hold.
Now Trump has simply declared that fiction dead, and it turns out there’s not much anyone can do about it. The Supreme Court could theoretically step in to defend Humphrey’s Executor. But they won’t. Congress could theoretically exercise oversight. But they won’t. The press could explain how this is a huge attack on the checks and balances of government. But they won’t.
So we’re left with a situation where “independent” agencies are independent right up until they’re not, where statutory requirements for partisan balance are meaningful right up until they’re ignored, and where commissioners serve fixed terms right up until they’re fired for insufficient loyalty. It’s not a great system. But at least now, thanks to these firings, we’re being honest about how it actually works. Without even the fig leaf of token opposition to maintain the illusion of normalcy, we can finally admit what we’re actually dealing with: a corrupt and broken system of pretend checks and balances that only worked until someone decided not to be checked or balanced.
Filed Under: alvaro bedoya, donald trump, ftc, humprhey's executor, independent agency, lina khan, rebecca kelly slaughter
Casual White House Starlink Use Is A Cybersecurity Nightmare, A Transparency Problem, And A Weird Marketing Stunt
from the but-her-emails dept
It’s best to view Elon Musk’s DOGE as an attack. While right wing propaganda (and gullible media outlets and politicians) frame DOGE as a “cost saving” effort at “improving government efficiency,” that’s just flimsy-ass cover for its real purpose: the dismantling of corporate oversight, environmental guard rails, consumer protection, civil rights, and the social safety net by weird zealots.
But DOGE is also just an incompetently run clown show.
There were already widespread concerns about Musk’s tween 4chan brats having widespread access to sensitive public information with no real oversight. But the randos that make up Trump and Musk’s rotating orbit of drooling sycophants also appear to be accessing this data using all manner of unsecured personal devices They couldn’t even launch the DOGE website competently with proper security.
Now there’s reporting out of the New York Times suggesting that Musk is casually integrating Starlink systems into the White House telecom network for no coherent reason outside of the fact it gives the illusion that it’s helping:
“Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is now accessible across the White House campus. It is the latest installation of the Wi-Fi network across the government since Mr. Musk joined the Trump administration as an unpaid adviser.”
The New York Times falsely calls this a “Wi-Fi” network, when Starlink is Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network. And in a complex as wired as the White House, there’s really no coherent reason to install it. The White House network is rife with gigabit capable fiber and gigabit-capable Wi-Fi that can far exceed anything Starlink delivers. Starlink would be a clearly inferior, slower, connectivity option.
According to the NY Times, one of Musk’s DOGE brats from X just decided one day to install a Starlink terminal on the White House roof, tripping security alarms and setting off a confrontation with Secret Service. All, purportedly, to “improve internet access” at probably one of the most well-connected buildings in the world.
There are only a few reasons to do this. One, is as a marketing stunt to help advertise Starlink as a miracle fix to a nonexistent problem. Two is to have a communications backchannel for stuff you don’t want tracked by any sort of White House network logging technologies. But even then, there are suggestions the Starlink traffic isn’t encrypted, creating a huge security risk:
“It was also unclear if Starlink communications were encrypted. At a minimum, the system allows for a network separate from existing White House servers that people on the grounds are able to use, keeping that data separate.”
It’s very rare, weird, and very dangerous to just mindlessly intermingle a private, and potentially unencrypted telecom connectivity option with existing White House systems and workflows, as numerous IT folks on Bluesky were quick to note:
And slapping a nontransparent comms channel on the roof of the White House so you and your weird authoritarian buddies can giggle about your illegal and unpopular dismantling of government functions is pretty far afield from all the “full transparency” they promised.
Again, if you don’t have any respect for the function of governance, you’re not going to be particularly careful as you and your earlobe nibbling tweens go about dismantling it. And if you have no shame or ethics, you also think nothing of leveraging your unelected influence to use the White House as a glorified marketing stunt. And if you’re incompetent, you’re going to be incompetent.
All very much in character for the fake government agency run by the fake super-genius engineer tasked with fake innovation and efficiency improvements.
Filed Under: doge, elon musk, encryption, national security, privacy, satellite, security, starlink, white house, wireless
Companies: spacex, starlink
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