from the you-can't-win dept
We’ve moved past cops doing stuff because a dog gave them permission to do it. Now, we’re at the post-truth era of policing, where cops will do stuff because a machine told them to do it.
We already know ALPRs (automated license plate readers) generate false positives. And we know that these false positives can generate the sort of guns-out “encounters” no law-abiding citizen is prepared to handle. When you add addled “certainty” (an erroneous ALPR ping) to citizen bewilderment, things can get deadly pretty quickly.
But even when the guns don’t come out, it’s not because actual justice is being done. Cops are increasingly relying on tech to make decisions for them. And while your regular human being might acknowledge a blown judgment call of their own, they seem incapable of recognizing a mistake when it’s made by a computer.
That’s how we end up with situations like these, which seem like outtakes from a dystopian farce, rather than the new reality of American policing.
Supporters of Flock cameras and other automatic license plate readers often say that you have nothing to worry about if you’ve done nothing wrong. Yet a student in Georgia now has to fight a citation for not having insurance, despite presenting a valid insurance card when she was pulled over. It’s all thanks to an ALPR alert on her new car, reports WSB-TV.
There are things we’ve always been told are wise — if not imperative — to carry in any care we’re driving: driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance. You do know why they call it proof of insurance, right?
Well, despite the fact that the officer could have verified all three of these things using the handy-dandy laptop that fired off the Flock alert, the officer apparently refused to do so and took Flock’s word for it instead.
“Upon showing proof of insurance in this instance, she was still issued a ticket citation,” Jones said in an interview with WSB-TV. She did everything she was supposed to do, including having insurance and presenting proof when requested. Apparently, even the proof that law enforcement requires isn’t good enough when the computer says otherwise. This wasn’t even a one-time fluke, either. The very next day, she got pulled over in nearby Cobb County for exactly the same reason.
The computer says you’re a criminal. The stuff law enforcement has always considered proof of legal vehicle use is no longer acceptable. The people cops tend to refer to as “subjects” in police reports are now being made aware that this isn’t a term of law enforcement art, but rather a reference to their position in comparison to those who supposedly enforce the law. Your word against a cop’s, as the “fighting a losing battle in court” saying goes. Now, it’s your word against a cop’s computer. And even if your word is the same word cops trusted prior to Flock’s arrival, it’s no longer worth the paper it’s printed on.
Filed Under: alpr, false positives, stupidity, surveillance
Companies: flock, flock safety
Trump Orders The FCC To Punish A Reporter.
Where Did All The ‘Ministry Of Truth’ Screamers Go??
from the speech-police-got-your-tongue? dept
Remember the Disinformation Governance Board? As we were quick to point out, this organization was named in the dumbest possible way by some incompetent people within the Biden administration, which only fed into the [ahem] disinformation around it. The program, a part of DHS, was an advisory group with no enforcement capabilities, and was tasked with coordinating standard best practices for government agencies to respond to and counter foreign disinformation campaigns. But it was launched with a blatantly over-the-top Orwellian name and with only vague details of its actual role, leaving the field open to everyone to speculate… or to pollute.
And speculate they did. Almost immediately the media was awash in people screaming about how Biden was creating a “Ministry of Truth” who would “police your speech.”
Fox News absolutely lost their minds, apparently mentioning the Board and its named director, Nina Jankowicz approximately 300 times in the course of just eight months. According to a (somewhat misguided and unsuccessful) lawsuit that Jankowicz later filed, Fox News became obsessed about claiming she was the new censorship czar of America:
The next day, on April 29, 2022, 11 different speakers referenced Jankowicz and the Board on 11 separate segments. Hannity repeated the falsehood that the Board was “in charge of policing disinformation,” and that Jankowicz is now “the person that polices our thoughts.” Fox News tweeted: “What you’re seeing is a full-scale attack on free speech in a country that has been free for nearly 250 years.”
On Fox & Friends, Carly Shimkus said Jankowicz is “lead[ing] a government board in charge of deciding what we can and cannot say.” On Outnumbered, Emily Compagno said Jankowicz is “now the official referee of disinformation” and also a “self-obsessed social media neophyte [who the country has now set as] as the champion, as the arbiter of truth.” Greg Gutfeld followed suit on Gutfeld!, warning that the Board “will likely target you,” and stating unequivocally that the goal of the Board is “to police your opinions, to hide their bad news or magically turn it into good news.”
This went on and on and on and on, despite all of it being nonsense. The board had no enforcement authority at all. It wasn’t about policing anything, let alone free speech or “truth.”
Even today you’ll hear MAGA folks claim that Biden had planned to launch a “Ministry of Truth” to try to censor Americans for their political wrong think.
Now contrast that with the coverage of Trump from a month ago openly telling his FCC to get more aggressive about policing speech. We mentioned it briefly, and there were a few news reports talking about how Donald Trump was demanding his FCC punish speech about his negative polls.
And then he demanded that the FCC punish news anchor Kristen Welker for the thoughtcrime of noting that in recent elections Trump had a bit of a “mixed record” on the success of his endorsements.
He literally says: “she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”
That was a month ago. What have you heard about Trump “Ministry of Truth” since? There’s obviously been coverage of his banning of some White House reporters, but the story of him literally demanding the FCC start punishing reporters for not reporting things the way Trump wants them to report was literally him demanding the FCC act as a Ministry of Truth, with Brendan Carr gleefully at the helm.
And, unlike Jankowicz, who went out of her way to explain that she wasn’t policing anyone’s speech, and who resigned within weeks after the death threats and harassment made the job untenable, Carr has embraced the role of actual speech cop. Hell, a year and a half ago when The Hollywood Reporter called out Carr’s role as Trump’s speech police attack dog, Carr responded with a screenshot of the caricature of him as an attack dog and tweeted “woof woof.”
And, of course, when questioned about Trump’s latest ridiculous speech police demands, Carr immediately promised to dutifully get his Ministry of Truth working on it.
In an appearance on “The Sunday Briefing” on Fox News, the Trump-appointed Carr was asked about the president’s threat against Welker. Carr responded by suggesting that broadcast news channels could face consequences if the agency interprets their reporting to not serve the public, citing “fake polls” designed to “suppress” voters as a potential risk.
“President Trump is over the target. We’re looking at a lot of actions,” Carr said, responding to host Peter Doocy. “There’s a lot of interest right now in fake polls that are out there. The FCC may put guidance out soon to remind broadcasters about their obligations with effect to not airing fake polls, particularly if they’re done to suppress people heading into the fall.”
And yet, that story lasted all of what, two days? Does anyone even remember that it happened?
It’s incredible the double standard at work. Biden launches something that is very far from being “the Ministry of Truth,” and the MAGA media machine spends the next eight months — and, really, the next four years — blasting out the fake news every damn day that Biden had hired someone to police everyone’s speech.
Four years later, Donald Trump publicly demands that the FCC — a supposedly independent agency that, unlike the DGB, actually does have enforcement powers, in theory limited by the First Amendment — punish a network anchor. And the guy running it hops right to it, promising to go after polls showing Trump’s popularity is in the dumps.
And the story disappears.
In 2022, we got nothing but hand-wringing from the loudest “but muh free speech” voices. Bari Weiss’s “The Free Press” had an article “All Hail America’s New Truth Czar!” about the controversy:
And Weiss herself went on Fox News (naturally) to mock it as the Ministry of Truth.
Now that the FCC is actually acting as the Ministry of Truth with Weiss running CBS News (complete with Brendan Carr’s designated “bias monitor” to police its speech)… I can find zero coverage from CBS News — a newsroom with vastly more resources than The Free Press — of Trump demanding that his FCC police the speech of one of CBS’s main competitors.
Gosh. I wonder why.
The Disinformation Governance Board (still a terrible name and roll out plan) had no enforcement power and no authority over American speech. It never actually launched and was completely abandoned within weeks. Yet it received 300 Fox News segments over the rest of 2022, and to this day people will insist that Biden launched a “Ministry of Truth” to police domestic speech.
Meanwhile, the FCC actually licenses broadcasters, and its chair just took orders directly from the president to “punish” reporters for truthful speech, and said he’s “looking at a lot of actions.”
That news cycle lasted about two days and is barely remembered.
Woof woof!
Filed Under: 1st amendment, bari weiss, brendan carr, dhs, disinformation governance board, donald trump, fcc, free speech, joe biden, ministry of truth, polls, speech police
Companies: cbs news, fox news, nbc news
Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the so-you-say dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about the data on improving mental health among teens:
But this contradicts my agenda! Can’t you just ignore the facts “for the sake of the children?!?” …and my political and business aspirations?
Notice that all the proposed “do something” solutions for mental health issues never involve making the world a better place for teens to grow up in, stopping greedy selfish assholes from running the country, or cracking down on all the adults who take out their issues on their kids.
- Conservatives making up fake issues and making targets out furries and trans kids and immigrants and women et cetera et alia ad nauseum ad infinitum nunc est bibendum… is making their lives actively worse.
In second place, it’s SpcAgentOrange pushing back on our post about AI, copyright, and “theft”:
This is a whole lot of words dedicated to deliberately misreading. The executive did not say that this was the “largest theft of writing,” or the “largest theft of literature,” or “largest theft of copyrighted material in human history.” He said that it’s the “largest theft of labor in human history.” Whether or not it was ‘copyright infringement,’ these AI companies took the written works from thousands and thousands of writers, mostly without their consent or even their knowledge, and used it to create their own commercial product. Calling it “the largest theft of labor” is not wrong or hyperbolic – it’s a simple statement about what happened. These AI companies could have simply paid workers to create new training material. But they didn’t. They chose to rely on the labor of others without their consent. They stole their labor.
(Yes, yes, I hear the whining – “They didn’t steal their labor, because the labor was already done before they took the work – the books and papers and posts and movies and shows and all the rest had already been made, so AI companies didn’t actually take anything.” And if these systems weren’t being created specifically to put the original creators out of a job, that argument might move me.)
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Stephen T. Stone about the ideology of the Trump regime:
Throw a rock at the Trump regime and you’ve got a good chance of hitting a eugenicist. That includes Trump himself, whose steadfast belief in IQ—itself an invention meant to quantify and therefore justify racist beliefs—and obsession with genetics are hallmarks of eugenicist beliefs.
Next, it’s Flakbait with a comment about the ICE officer who dodged extradition and then got arrested:
How does it feel, ICE?
This is straight out of ICE’s playbook. They have arrested numerous people outside courthouses who were heading in for their legal immigration hearing. Now this ICEhole gets taken down while in town for a legal hearing. That’s just a tasty bit of comeuppance.
Over on the funny side, both our winners come in response to our post about Elon Musk’s extreme failure to fight CSAM. In first place, it’s Pixelation with a quick reaction:
Obviously…
Biden did it.
In second place, it’s Heart of Dawn with another response:
Musk has decided to fight in the war on CSAM on the side of CSAM.
Things were pretty slow on the funny side beyond that, so we’ll just keep it to one single editor’s choice. It’s Thad with a response to the reminder that Trump allegedly kept Hitler’s speeches as “bedside reading material”:
Well, kept them at bedside, anyway. I’m skeptical about the “reading” part.
That’s all for this week, folks!
This Week In Techdirt History: September 20th – 26th
from the those-were-the-days dept
This Week in 2016
- Indian Court Says ‘Copyright Is Not An Inevitable, Divine, Or Natural Right’ And Photocopying Textbooks Is Fair Use
- Former UMG Exec: Major Label Music Should Cost More And DMCA Safe Harbors Should Be Destroyed
- Will The Washington Post Give Back Its Pulitzer And Stand Trial With Snowden?
- Senate Comes To Its Senses: Does NOT Support Ted Cruz’s Plan To Block Internet Governance Transition
- Journalists Blaming Facebook For Decline Is Just As Tiresome As When They Blamed Craigslist & Google
- Arguments Over Internet Governance Transition Get Even More Stupid
This Week in 2011
- Pirate Party Takes 9% Of The Vote In Berlin Elections, Wins A Bunch Of Seats In Parliament
- Italy Proposes Law That Will Ban People From The Internet Based On Single Accusation Of Infringement From Anyone
- MPAA Shuffles The Deck Chairs
- Is It A First Amendment Violation To Get Pulled Over For Flashing Your Lights To Warn Others Of Cops?
- Craigslist Trying To Destroy The Life Of Someone Who Made Posting To Craigslist Easier
- Entertainment Industry Now Shaking Down People At $10 Per Infringement
This Week in 2006
- Target Targets Blogger Who Posted Anti-Theft Procedures
- Some Things Not To Say To Customers After Your Board Is Accused Of Spying…
- Napster, Still Struggling, Puts Itself Up For Sale
- Band Just Notices That Run DMC Sampled Their Song Twenty Years Ago; Files Lawsuit
- Facebook Ready To Seal The Deal — But For Only $1 Billion
- The Growing Backlash Against Automated Cheating Detectors
RELATED
Media reform and journalism protection law can help counter disinformation
"Terming the government’s latest initiative to amend the Cyber Safety Act “ominous,” Mahfuz Anam, editor of this paper, wrote in his September 25 column that “there is no way that media can be protected under the draft cyber protection law.”
- He proposed “a separate cyber law for the media, or at least a separate set of rules and guidelines” that would prevent cybercrime without hampering freedom of speech, expression and publication.
- His suggestion echoes, in part, recommendations made by the Media Reform Commission (MRC) under the interim government.
It is therefore worth revisiting those recommendations, particularly the proposed reforms aimed at protecting journalism while addressing the growing threats posed by disinformation and “fake news.” The MRC’s proposals broadly resemble rules and regulations already being implemented in many European countries and the UK
[. . .] Members of the cabinet sub-committee working on the draft law told us that its aim was to strike a balance between protecting the media and safeguarding society from the misuse of digital platforms. The proposed changes would apply to mainstream media—newspapers, television, radio and online outlets—as well as social media platforms.
As the media landscape evolves rapidly, these threats are becoming more complex. Developed economies, equipped with advanced technology and greater resources, have responded by strengthening oversight, enforcing standards and regulations, and increasing accountability for major technology companies. These measures have not been intended to curtail civic rights, including freedom of the press and freedom of expression. Rather, they seek to reduce potential harms on major platforms such as Meta and Google, while providing specific protections for journalism against government interference and platform censorship.
Our government, however, appears to be conflating these distinct objectives. The proposed amendments may neither adequately protect citizens from cybercrime nor safeguard media freedom. Consider Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed’s remarks to delegates of the International Republican Institute on September 13. He said the proposed Cyber Safety (Amendment) Act, 2026 would “help restore decency in the digital space, protect women and young people from cyber-bullying, and ensure professional safeguards for journalists while preventing any misuse of the law.”
Kamal Ahmed is consulting editor at The Daily Star. He led the Media Reform Commission under the interim government. His X handle is @ahmedka1.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries, and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.
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