This Week In Techdirt History: April 28th – May 4th
from the that-was-that dept
This week in 2019, Texas began pushing its bill that would allow the state to sue Twitter for banning conservatives, while Facebook filed a questionable lawsuit over fake followers and likes, and a New York saxophonist became the latest to join the bandwagon of suing Fortnite developers.
- The Supreme Court asked the White House to weigh in on the copyrightability of APIs, while the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a ruling that got Section 230 right.
- And while Congress was pushing a terrible bill to massively expand patent trolling, we looked at another frontier for bad IP verdicts: the world of trade secrets.
This week in 2014, Keith Alexander faced his toughest interview yet… at the hands of comedian John Oliver.
- Voltage Pictures was abusing trademark law to go after downloaders, while we looked at the vicious cycle of trademark abuse, and lawsuits accusing copyright trolls of extortion were proving successful.
- Senators Feinstein and Chambliss were taking another crack at a cybersecurity bill, while also letting James Clapper talk them out of requiring transparency around drone strikes.
- We also heard one of the dumbest ideas about the future of the movie business: that pricing would be based on the size of a viewer’s screen.
This week in 2009, we wrote about the misplaced sense of entitlement that was so dominant in the recording and newspaper industries in the internet age, while music and book publishers in Germany were demanding ISPs block file sharing sites, Google was denying similarities to The Pirate Bay, and the USTR was fearmongering about Canadian piracy.
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Pablo Escobar’s Brother Now Also Fails To Get EU Trademark On His Brother’s Name
from the trademark-is-a-hell-of-a-law dept
Roberto Escobar appears to want to keep banging his head against this particular brick wall for some reason. Roberto, brother to infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, has been trying to assert trademark and other rights to his brother’s name for years now. It started in Columbia, in which the country flat out refused to grant him the mark out of concern that the public would not be served by any commerce occurring using that name, given its history. Then he tried to extort a billion dollars out of Netflix over the show Narcos under the novel theory that his relationship with his brother and his distaste for the creative license used within the show. That ended up in an undisclosed settlement.
And now Roberto has failed once more, this time in his attempt to secure a trademark for his brother’s name in the EU.
The General Court of the European Court of Justice denied an appeal from Roberto Escobar, the brother of the late Medellín Cartel leader, who asked the Luxembourg-based court to overturn a rejection from the EU’s trademark office to protect the name “Pablo Escobar.”
Consumers would “associate the name of Pablo Escobar with drug trafficking and narco-terrorism and with the crimes and suffering resulting therefrom,” the court wrote.
The board went on to remind Roberto, who really shouldn’t need to be reminded, that the body count his brother rung up is at least in the triple digits and that he is also most famous for his work as a narcotics kingpin. Roberto, laughably, claimed that denying the trademark due to his brother’s involvement in the drug trade was not valid since Pablo had never been convicted of any crimes specifically on the drugs side of things. Roberto also acknowledges having worked for, and going to jail for, being a member of the Medellin Cartel. Pretending like any of this hinges on the technicality over what specifically Pablo was convicted of is hilarious.
Look, this is a money-grab, and one that Roberto has been working on long before his brother found himself with an extra hole in his head on a rooftop in Columbia.
Prior to his brother’s death in a police raid in 1993, Roberto Escobar had already sought to capitalize on the family name. He registered a company in Colombia in 1984 and has brought legal action against companies that have referenced Escobar.
Pending any appeal in the EU courts, it appears Roberto has racked up another loss with this latest attempt to capitalize on his infamous brother’s name.
Filed Under: eu, pablo escobar, roberto escobar, trademark
Ctrl-Alt-Speech: This One Weird Trick To Save The Open Internet
from the ctrl-alt-speech dept
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.
Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed.
In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Alex Feerst, former General Counsel and head of trust & safety at Medium, and co-founder of the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership. Together they cover:
- Was There A Trojan Horse Hidden In Section 230 All Along That Could Enable Adversarial Interoperability? (Techdirt)
- EU Commission opens formal proceedings against Facebook and Instagram under the Digital Services Act (European Commission)
- OnlyFans Investigated over its duties to protect under-18s from restricted materials (Ofcom)
- Canadian banks need to do more to stop abusive e-transfers, survivors say (CBC)
- TikTok And Meta Aren’t Labeling State Propaganda About The War In Gaza (Forbes)
- How we fought bad apps and bad actors in 2023 (Google security blog)
- Meta’s oversight body prepares to lay off workers (Washington Post)
This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.
Filed Under: canada, content moderation, eu, eu commission, oversight board, section 230
Companies: google, meta, onlyfans, tiktok
Three Cities Sue Axon; Claim It Has A Monopoly On Body Cams, Electronic Weapons
from the bit-thuggish,-but-probably-not-a-monopoly dept
As much as I dislike and distrust Axon (formerly Taser and the leading proponent of the “excited delirium” theory of cop exoneration), I just don’t think there’s much going on here. Sometimes there are actual monopolies. And sometimes, one business is just better at business than its competitors.
But that’s what a few cities are claiming in a new lawsuit, first reported by Cyrus Farivar for Forbes:
Baltimore, Maryland; Augusta, Maine; and Howell, New Jersey have sued Axon, alleging that the company has committed antitrust violations, abused its market power, and forced cities to pay exorbitant fees for a basic, but crucial piece of law enforcement tech.
Filed in federal court in New Jersey, the suit claims that the Arizona-based company formerly known as Taser International bought VieVu, one of its key competitors, to secure four major contracts that had eluded it: New York City, Oakland, Miami-Dade and Phoenix. Then, under its new Axon brand, it aggressively raised prices for clients that had few other options. Within a year, Axon’s body cam prices had risen 50 percent. By 2022, those prices had nearly tripled, reaching $490 per camera.
The lawsuit [PDF] stresses a lot of these points and says a lot of things about profit margins being inordinately high. But if that’s what the market bears, that’s what Axon can charge (is there a pun intended here? maybe?). And while it’s somewhat concerning that Axon managed to acquire VieVu (which it referred to internally as its “#2 competitor”), that alone is not enough to create a monopoly.
Also highlighted in the lawsuit are a bunch of things lots of businesses do, like tie up customers with lengthy contracts, force customers to only use refills made by the same company (Taser refills are pretty much proprietary ink cartridges), and vertically integrate as much as possible to make moving away from tied-in products extremely difficult. This is something Axon does with its body cameras and its front end for recording access, Evidence.com. Cameras without storage and access aren’t all that useful. And only Axon cameras work with Axon’s software.
Again, this is the sort of thing seen literally everywhere. While it does make customers unhappy, it works out pretty well for the companies using these tactics. That’s why so many companies do it. And that’s why some unhappy customers sue, much like these cities have.
It’s not all that remarkable that Axon increased its camera prices once it acquired VieVu. Then again, Axon has also given away cameras for free to increase market share and tie law enforcement agencies into far more lucrative data retention/access contracts.
But what’s probably most fatal to this lawsuit is the argument it makes in support of its monopoly theory:
Motorola, Panasonic, and Utility largely make up the rest of the BWC Systems market. As demonstrated by the dramatic price increases that Axon implemented after acquiring VieVu, none of these other competitors pose the same competitive constraint on Axon as did VieVu, and none were able to constrain the exercise of Axon’s monopoly power. These other competitors’ BWC Systems rarely provided significant competition to Axon in RFP processes conducted by police departments. A chart included in a December 2019 Axon investor presentation shows the meager market share these competitors had compared to Axon, with the closest competitor, Motorola, controlling only 7 of 69 U.S. Major City Chief Agencies compared to Axon’s 47.
It’s that first sentence. If you’re able to list a handful of other competitors in the market, you can’t credibly make a claim the market has been monopolized. Sure, Axon may have the largest share of the market, but it’s no more a monopoly than Google’s outsized share of the search engine market. Some companies manage to dominate markets because they’re making better products, have better marketing, or do both well enough that their name becomes synonymous for competitors‘ products — like Taser for any stun gun-esque weapon and Google becoming the go-to shorthand for performing a web search on any service.
The lawsuit also claims Axon “aggressively” defends its patents, to the point it has sued “potential competitors” in the “less lethal weapon” market out of existence. Again, while nobody likes a bully, this is sort of thing lots of patent holders do, even when they control far less market share than Axon does. Again, just because Axon is dominant doesn’t mean it’s a monopoly or that any of these claims — ones that could apply to plenty of other companies in plenty of other fields — add up to the conclusion this lawsuit wants a judge to reach.
I, for one, welcome this lawsuit, if for no other reason than it might expose some previously unknown facts about Axon, its management, its sales tactics, and its communications with law enforcement agencies. In other words, I’m here for the discovery. Axon may be a “gorilla” (as one of its execs encouraged its marketers to be) but it’s hardly a monopoly.
Filed Under: antitrust, baltimore, body cameras, body cams, competition, howell, new jersey, tasers
Companies: axon
Student Journalists Convince School To Ditch Its Spyware, But School Only Agrees To Not Spy On Its Journalists
from the we-respect-some-rights-for-some-people dept
Schools have always kept tabs on students using school-issued devices. Prior to the pandemic, this had mostly been limited to filtering software that prevents students from accessing content schools don’t approve of. Of course, this has also kept students from accessing content that might be useful to them personally (self-harm prevention, LGBTQ+ content) or scholastically (because Wikipedia is public [school] enemy #1).
Once the pandemic hit, most schools relied on remote access by students. That’s where spying on students really ramped up. Fully convinced most students would cheat on schoolwork and tests if given the chance, far more intrusive spyware was deployed — including options that provided test proctors with access to laptop cameras to ensure students were not cheating when engaging remotely with tests or other schoolwork.
Never before had schools had access to students’ living spaces. But now they have this access. And even with the end of remote learning, schools are reluctant to scale back their use of always-on tech that gives administrators access to students’ off-campus web use.
Four student journalists at Lawrence High School in Kansas have managed to convince their school to walk back some of its intrusion. Since they did all the heavy lifting, I’ll turn it over to the students: Zana Kennedy, Delaney Haase, Arabella Gipp, and Avery Sloyer.
Journalism editors asked USD 497 school board members serving on the district’s policy committee today to better protect student journalism and overall student privacy rights.
Students suggested policy changes relating to First Amendment free press protections, Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and copyright. The meeting follows a recent initiative by four editors to disband the use of Gaggle, AI-driven student surveillance software, for journalism students in USD 497. On Friday, the students also raised additional concerns about Gaggle’s broader use and said change was needed to protect students from future technology shifts.
Gaggle is as popular with schools as it is problematic. Here’s how Gaggle operates, despite what school districts and the company’s own press releases might say about its capabilities:
One associate principal I spoke to for this story says his district would receive “Questionable Content” email alerts from Gaggle about pornographic photos and profanities from students’ text messages. But the students weren’t texting on their school-issued Chromebooks. When administrators investigated, they learned that while teens were home, they would charge their phones by connecting them to their laptops via USB cables. The teens would then proceed to have what they believed to be private conversations via text, in some cases exchanging nude photos with significant others—all of which the Gaggle software running on the Chromebook could detect. Now the school advises students not to plug their personal devices into their school-issued laptops.
That’s from Wired’s April 2023 report on school spyware. By this point, most students in the nation had already returned to their schools. Very few were still engaged in remote learning, but that fact didn’t stop schools from continuing to deploy spyware first intended to be used for remote monitoring due to pandemic-related school closures.
The good news is these student journalists managed to free themselves from these intrusions by citing state laws that increased protections for students, journalists, and this particular combination of both.
Current policy already mentions many provisions of the Kansas Student Publications Act. But students sought to include references to the Kansas Shield Law as well as the federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980 — both of which protect the reporting process from government monitoring.
Thanks to the student journalists’ tenacity, the school backed down and agreed to remove the spyware from the devices used by these students.
[T]he four seniors who led the charge — Morgan Salisbury, Maya Smith, Jack Tell and Natasha Torkzaban — refused to be quiet about it.
“I think all four of us are unapologetically loud when it comes to situations like this,” Torkzaban said.
Last week, after five months of sometimes-tense negotiations, the district agreed to remove student journalists from the surveillance program.
And while that works out well for the student journalists, it doesn’t do much to protect the rest of the student body from spyware. Fortunately for their classmates, the journalists aren’t solely interested in ridding themselves from school-based surveillance.
[T]he journalists want assurances that the rest of the students, and future students, won’t be subjected to unwarranted intrusions.
So, now the question is why the school didn’t immediately agree to strip this malware from all school-issued devices. That’s also the question being asked in an op-ed written by the Kansas Reflector’s opinion editor, Clay Wirestone.
Listen, I understand why district officials and parents want guardrails for students’ online activities while in school. That makes sense. We don’t want them looking up porn or making threats in class.
But that’s not what Gaggle promised, or what Unified School District 497 spokeswoman Julie Boyle told Smith. Both justified privacy violations with high-minded rhetoric about protecting students’ mental health. I’m sorry, but count me skeptical that clunky AI and adults making less than three dollars above the federal minimum wage have made a serious difference in the well-being of Lawrence children.
Instead, what you might expect to happen indeed happened: False red flags, uncomfortable meetings with administrators and clear-cut violations of student rights.
It’s easy to see why Gaggle wouldn’t want this to happen. Its contract with this single Kansas school district is worth about $163,000 a year. And, unfortunately, it’s also easy to see why school officials would be reluctant to stop spying on students. After all, if something bad does happen and no spyware has been deployed, officials might be criticized for not doing all they can to prevent bad things from happening, even if it’s extremely unclear Gaggle’s spyware is capable of preventing these sorts of things from occurring.
One school administrator suggested school violence — like far too common school shootings — justified always-on surveillance. Others simply repeated the talking points about “student mental health,” apparently incapable (or unwilling) to recognize virtually peering over students’ shoulders isn’t actually all that helpful when it comes to addressing difficult issues students routinely face.
As Wirestone points out in his op-ed, there are far better ways to deal with these issues — none of which involve omnipresent surveillance of students’ web activity:
I would suggest that surveilling young people electronically, intercepting their communications and leaving hard calls to computers does more harm than good. Teens will learn they can’t trust the people around them. Building relationships and listening to those same young people might take time, but at least it can be done honestly. Rather than seizing on spyware, adults should consider addressing climate change, the cost of living, affordable college and other measures. That might give young people something to look forward to, rather than anticipate with mounting dread.
As it stands now, the school has only agreed to drop this surveillance of student journalists because it might violate state law. Rather than do the right thing and treat all students as equally deserving of privacy, the school has chosen to do the bare minimum. To paraphrase Futurama’s Hermes Conrad, the school has pretty much promised that “it will respect students’ rights to extent that the law requires.”
But clearing this extremely low bar doesn’t help the rest of the district’s students and it doesn’t make this school district any better than any other entity deploying the same sort of spyware because it has decided to turn over student oversight to third party algorithms. Instead, it just makes it the single district that can’t be sued for violating the rights of student journalists under Kansas state law. That’s nothing to be proud of.
Filed Under: kansas, lawrence, lawrence high school, privacy, spyware, students, surveillance
Companies: gagggle
Hours After Aussie Gov’t Greenlights Online Age Verification Pilot, Breach Of Mandated Verification Database For Bars Is Revealed
from the karmic-timing dept
It’s almost laughable that these two stories happened so close to one another. The Australian government has just announced a pilot program to test an online age verification system:
And then, just hours later, it was reported that law enforcement is investigating an apparent breach of club and bar patrons’ personal data, which the venues are required to collect by law for people entering such establishments.
When we talk about the privacy and data risks of age verification, this is exactly the kind of thing we’re talking about. When you’re collecting that much sensitive private data, you become a target.
As the article linked above notes:
It is a legal requirement in NSW for licensed clubs to collect personal information from patrons on entry, under the state’s registered clubs legislation.
The information is required to be stored securely under federal privacy laws.
Sounds kinda like the age verification requirements for websites. You have to collect the info and then pinky promise to keep it secure. And it works until this happens:
An unauthorised website claims personal information of more than 1 million customer records from at least 16 licensed NSW clubs have been released online in a potential data breach.
Cybercrime detectives are investigating the reported breach with the website claiming to have records and personal information of senior government figures, including Premier Chris Minns, Deputy Premier Prue Car and Police Minister Yasmin Catley.
IT provider Outabox said in a statement it had become aware of the potential data breach of a sign-in system used by its clients by an “unauthorised” third party.
Hilariously, government officials are trying to play this down because it was just a breach rather than a hack. As if that makes a difference?
Gaming Minister David Harris said the government and police first became aware of the potential breach on Tuesday.
“We know that this is an alleged data breach of a third-party vendor, so it wasn’t a hack,” he said.
But this is exactly the concern regarding online age verification. Someone has to collect that information and then whoever is collecting the sensitive info becomes an immediate target, no matter how the data is accessed.
Incredibly, you might recall that just a few months ago we were giving the Australian government kudos for recognizing that age verification was a privacy and security nightmare. So, they knew that just last summer.
And yet, here we are with the latest announcement:
Despite those concerns from late last year, the government is now pushing ahead with a pilot to try and test some of those ideas.
Look, maybe head down to the nearest club in NSW to see how it’s working out before moving forward “despite these concerns”?
Meanwhile, if you think this breach isn’t that serious, well, for the million or so folks who visited one of those bars and clubs, things don’t look great:
Creator of the data breach tracking website haveibeenpwned.com, Troy Hunt, said the creators of the website had not released all of the information they had collected.
“Inevitably they do have the entire thing.”
He said the Outabox technology used by clubs scans patrons’ faces and matches them with their licence details.
Mr Hunt said people whose data has appeared on the site may need to replace their drivers licences.
“There are physical addresses, there are date of birth, there are names. That’s not good,” he said.
That’s not good at all.
So maybe let’s not repeat the mistake online?
Filed Under: age verfication, australia, bars, data breach, privacy
Companies: outabox
Court Supports NY State’s Quest To Require $15 Broadband For Poor People, Much To Big Telecom’s Horror
from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept
When the Trump administration killed net neutrality, telecom industry giants convinced them to push their luck and declared that not only would federal regulators no longer try to meaningfully oversee telecom giants like Comcast and AT&T, but that states couldn’t either. They got greedy.
The courts didn’t like that much, repeatedly ruling that the FCC can’t abdicate its authority over broadband consumer protection, then turn around tell states what they can or can’t do.
The courts took that stance again last week, with a new ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit restoring a New York State law (the Affordable Broadband Act) requiring that ISPs provide low-income state residents $15 broadband at speeds of 25 Mbps. The law was blocked in June of 2021 by a US District Judge who claimed that the state law was preempted by the federal net neutrality repeal.
Giant ISPs, and the Trump administration officials who love them, desperately tried to insist that states were magically barred from regulating broadband because the Trump administration said so. But the appeals court ruled, once again, those efforts aren’t supported by logic or the law:
“the ABA is not conflict-preempted by the Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 order classifying broadband as an information service. That order stripped the agency of its authority to regulate the rates charged for broadband Internet, and a federal agency cannot exclude states from regulating in an area where the agency itself lacks regulatory authority. Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court and VACATE the permanent injunction.”
This ruling is once again good news for future fights over net neutrality and broadband consumer protection, Stanford Law Professor and net neutrality expert Barbara van Schewick notes in a statement:
“Today’s decision means that if a future FCC again decided to abdicate its oversight over broadband like it did in 2017, the states have strong legal precedent, across circuits, to institute their own protections or re-activate dormant ones.”
Telecom lobbyists have spent years lobbying to ensure federal broadband oversight is as captured and feckless as possible. And, with the occasional exception, they’ve largely succeeded. Big telecom had really hoped they could extend that winning streak even further and bar states from standing up to them as well, but so far that really hasn’t gone as planned.
One of the things that absolutely terrifies telecom monopoly lobbyists is the idea of rate regulation, or that government would ever stop them from ripping off captive customers stuck in uncompetitive markets. It’s never been a serious threat on the federal level due to regulatory capture and lobbying, even though it’s thrown around a lot by monopoly apologists as a terrifying bogeyman akin to leprosy.
Here you not only have a state retaining its authority to protect consumers from monopoly harm, but dictating to them that they must provide poor people with 25 Mbps broadband (which really costs ISPs at Comcast’s scale virtually nothing to provide in the gigabit era). Still, it’s the kind of ruling that’s going to give AT&T and Comcast lobbyists (and consultants and think tank proxies) cold sweats for years.
Filed Under: 25 mbps, affordable broadband act, broadband, low income, new york state, rate regulation
Trader Joe’s To Pay Legal Fees To Employee Union Over Its Bullshit Trademark Lawsuit
from the oops dept
It’s been nearly a year, but I won’t pretend that the outcome of this isn’t quite satisfying. Last summer, grocerer Trader Joe’s filed an absolute bullshit lawsuit against the union for its own employees claiming that the name of and merchandise sold by the union represented trademark infringement and would cause confusion with the public as to the source of those goods. The court dismissed that suit in fairly spectacular fashion, taking the company to task for those claims, given how clear the website and merch are that all of this is coming from the union and not the company itself. The ruling made some fairly clear speculation that the company was doing this instead just to make trouble for a union it’s trying to hassle, which is absolutely what it is doing. While the company decided to appeal the ruling, keeping all of its bad actions in the news for even longer, the original ruling judge has now also ordered the company to pay legal fees to the union, given the nature of the company’s lawsuit.
Trader Joe’s must pay more than $100,000 in attorneys’ fees for bringing an “exceptionally weak” trademark lawsuit against its employee union, a California federal judge has determined.
U.S. District Judge Hernan Vera said on Tuesday, opens new tab that Trader Joe’s case was meritless and that “the obvious motivation behind the suit” was to influence the grocery store chain’s fight with Trader Joe’s United over its drive to unionize Trader Joe’s employees.
“Recognizing the extensive and ongoing legal battles over the Union’s organizing efforts at multiple stores, Trader Joe’s claim that it was genuinely concerned about the dilution of its brand resulting from these trivial campaign mugs and buttons cannot be taken seriously,” Vera said.
Chef’s kiss, honestly. Nobody with a couple of braincells to rub together could seriously believe that the motivation behind this legal action was anything other than being a nuisance for the union as part of a larger effort to make its life as difficult as possible. All the other claims over trademark infringement are purely manufactured as part of that motivation. With that in mind, forcing the company to pay the legal fees the union racked up defending itself from this nonsense is absolutely appropriate.
Vera said on Tuesday that the weakness and impropriety of Trader Joe’s case justified ordering the company to pay the union’s attorneys’ fees.
“Employers should be discouraged from bringing meritless claims against unions they are challenging at the ballot box,” Vera said.
As I’ve said before, the bad PR associated with all of this should have been enough to motivate Trader Joe’s to course correct. Instead, it seems like even more pressure on the company from the public and courts is required.
Filed Under: free speech, legal fees, trademark, union, union busting
Companies: trader joe's
Pro-Cop Coalition With No Web Presence Pitches Report Claiming Criminal Justice Reforms Are To Blame For Higher Crime Rates
from the not-a-whole-lot-of-facts-in-here dept
Because it sells so very well to a certain percentage of the population, ridiculous people are saying ridiculous things about crime rates in the United States. And, of course, the first place to post this so-called “news” is Fox News.
An independent group of law enforcement officials and analysts claim violent crime rates are much higher than figures reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its 2023 violent crime statistics.
The Coalition for Law Order and Safety released its April 2024 report called “Assessing America’s Crime Crises: Trends, Causes, and Consequences,” and identified four potential causes for the increase in crime in most major cities across the U.S.: de-policing, de-carceration, de-prosecution and politicization of the criminal justice system.
This plays well with the Fox News audience, many of whom are very sure there needs to be a whole lot more law and order, just so long as it doesn’t affect people who literally RAID THE CAPITOL BUILDING IN ORDER TO PREVENT A PEACEFUL TRANSFER OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER FROM HAPPENING.
These people like to hear the nation is in the midst of a criminal apocalypse because it allows them to be even nastier to minorities and even friendlier to cops (I mean, right up until they physically assault them for daring to stand between them and the inner halls of the Capitol buildings).
It’s not an “independent group.” In fact, it’s a stretch to claim there’s anything approaching actual “analysis” in this “report.” This is pro-cop propaganda pretending to be an actual study — one that expects everyone to be impressed by the sheer number of footnotes.
Here’s the thing about the Coalition for Law Order and Safety. Actually, here’s a few things. First off, the name is bad and its creators should feel bad. The fuck does “Law Order” actually mean, with or without the context of the alleged coalition’s entire name?
Second, this “coalition” has no web presence. Perhaps someone with stronger Googling skills may manage to run across a site run by this “coalition,” but multiple searches using multiple parameters have failed to turn up anything that would suggest this coalition exists anywhere outside of the title page of its report [PDF].
Here’s what we do know about this “coalition:” it contains, at most, two coalitioners (sp?). Those would be Mark Morgan, former assistant FBI director and, most recently, the acting commissioner of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) during Trump’s four-year stretch of abject Oval Office failure. (He’s also hooked up with The Federalist and The Heritage Foundation.) The other person is Sean Kennedy, who is apparently an attorney for the “Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.” (He also writes for The Federalist.)
At least that entity maintains a web presence. And, as can be assumed by its name, it spends a lot of its time and money ensuring bad cops keep their jobs and fighting against anything that might resemble transparency or accountability. (The press releases even contain exclamation points!)
This is what greets visitors to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund website:
Yep, it’s yet another “George Soros is behind whatever we disagree with” sales pitch. Gotta love a pro-cop site that chooses to lead off with a little of the ol’ anti-antisemitism. This follows shortly after:
Well, duh. But maybe the LELDF should start asking the cops it represents and defends why they’re not doing their jobs. And let’s ask ourselves why we’re paying so much for a public service these so-called public servants have decided they’re just not going to do anymore, even though they’re still willing to collect the paychecks.
We could probably spend hours just discussing these two screenshots and their combination of dog whistles, but maybe we should just get to the report — written by a supposed “coalition,” but reading more like an angry blog post by the only two people actually willing to be named in the PDF.
There are only two aspects of this report that I agree with. First, the “coalition” (lol) is correct in the fact that the FBI’s reported crime rates are, at best, incomplete. The FBI recently changed the way it handles crime reporting, which has introduced plenty of clerical issues that numerous law enforcement agencies are still adjusting to.
Participation has been extremely low due to the learning curve, as well as a general reluctance to share pretty much anything with the public. On top of that, the coding of crimes has changed, which means the FBI is still receiving a blend of old reporting and adding that to new reporting that follows the new nomenclature. As a result, there’s a blend of old and new that potentially muddies crime stats and may result in an inaccurate picture of crime rates across the nation.
The other thing I agree with is the “coalition’s” assertion that criminal activity is under-reported. What I don’t agree with is the cause of this issue, which the copagandists chalk up to “progressive prosecutors” being unwilling to prosecute some crimes and/or bail reform programs making crime consequence-free. I think the real issue is that the public knows how cops will respond to most reported crimes and realizes it’s a waste of their time to report crimes to entities that have gotten progressively worse at solving crime, even as their budget demands and tech uptake continue to increase.
Law enforcement is a job and an extension of government bureaucracy. Things that aren’t easy or flashy just aren’t going to get done. It’s not just a cop problem. It persists anywhere people are employed and (perhaps especially) where people are employed to provide public services to taxpayers.
Those agreements aside, the rest of the report is pure bullshit. It cherry-picks stats, selectively quotes other studies that agree with its assertions, and delivers a bunch of conclusory statements that simply aren’t supported by the report’s contents.
And it engages in the sort tactics no serious report or study would attempt to do. It places its conclusions at the beginning of the report, surrounded by black boxes to highlight the author’s claims, and tagged (hilariously) as “facts.”
Here’s what the authors claim to be facts:
FACT #1: America faces a public safety crisis beset by high crime and an increasingly dysfunctional justice system.
First off, the “public safety crisis” does not exist. Neither does “high crime.” Even if we agree with the authors’ assertions, the crime rates in this country are only slightly above the historical lows we’ve enjoyed for most of the 21st century. It is nowhere near what it used to be, even if (and I’m ceding this ground for the sake of my argument) we’re seeing spikes in certain locations around the country. (I’ll also grant them the “dysfunctional justice system” argument, even though my definition of dysfunction isn’t aligned with theirs. The system is broken and has been for a long time.)
FACT #2: Crime has risen dramatically over the past few years and may be worse than some official statistics claim.
“Dramatically” possibly as in year-over-year in specific areas. “Dramatically” over the course of the past decades? It’s actually still in decline, even given the occasional uptick.
FACT #3: Although preliminary 2023 data shows a decline in many offenses, violent and serious crime remains at highly elevated levels compared to 2019.
Wow, that sounds furious! I wonder what it signifies…? First, the authors admit crime is down, but then they insist crime is actually up, especially when compared to one specific waypoint on the continuum of crime statistics. Man, I’ve been known to cherry-pick stats to back up my assertions, but at least I’ve never (1) limited my cherry-picking to a single year, or (2) pretended my assertions were some sort of study or report backed by a “coalition” of “professionals” and “analysts.” Also: this assertion is pretty much, “This thing that just happened to me once yesterday is a disturbing trend!”
There’s more:
FACT #4: Less than 42% of violent crime and 33% of property crime victims reported the crime to law enforcement.
Even if true (and it probably isn’t), this says more about cops than it says about criminals. When people decide they’re not going to report these crimes, it’s not because they think the criminal justice system as a whole will fail them. It’s because they think the first responders (cops) will fail them. The most likely reason for less crime reporting is the fact that cops are objectively terrible at solving crimes, even the most violent ones.
FACT #5: The American people feel less safe than they did prior to 2020.
First, it depends on who you ask. And second, even if the public does feel this way, it’s largely because of “studies” like this one and “reporting” performed by Fox News and others who love to stoke the “crime is everywhere” fires because it makes it easier to sell anti-immigrant and anti-minority hatred. It has little, if anything, to do with actual crime rates. We’re twice as safe (at least!) as a nation than we were in the 1990s and yet most people are still convinced things are worse than they’ve ever been — a belief they carry from year to year like reverse amortization.
Then we get to the supposed “causes” of all the supposed “facts.” And that’s where it gets somehow stupider. The “coalition” claims this is the direct result of cops doing less cop work due to decreased morale, “political hostility” [cops aren’t a political party, yo], and “policy changes.” All I can say is: suck it up. Sorry the job isn’t the glorious joyride it used to be. Do your job or GTFO. Stop collecting paychecks while harming public safety just because the people you’ve alienated for years are pushing back. Even if this assertion is true (it isn’t), the problem is cops, not society or “politics.”
The authors also claim “decarceration” and “de-prosecution” are part of the problem. Bail reform efforts and prosecutorial discretion has led to fewer people being charged or held without bail. These are good things that are better for society in the long run. Destroying people’s lives simply because they’re suspected of committing a crime creates a destructive cycle that tends to encourage more criminal activity because non-criminal means of income are now that much farther out of reach.
You can tell this argument is bullshit because of who it cites in support of this so-called “finding.” It points to a study released by Paul Cassell and Richard Fowles entitled “Does Bail Reform Increase Crime?” According to the authors it does and that conclusion is supposedly supported by the data pulled from Cook County, Illinois, where bail reform efforts were implemented in 2019.
But the stats don’t back up the paper’s claims. The authors take issue with the county’s “community safety rate” calculations:
The Bail Reform Study reported figures for the number of defendants who “remained crime-free” in both the fifteen months before G.O. 18.8A and the fifteen months after—i.e., the number of defendants who were not charged in Cook County for another crime after their initial bail hearing date. Based on these data, the Study concluded that “considerable stability” existed in “community safety rates” comparing the pre- and post-implementation periods. Indeed, the Study highlighted “community safety rates” that were about the same (or even better) following G.O. 18.8A’s implementation. The Study reported, for example, that the “community safety rate” for male defendants who were released improved from 81.2% before to 82.5% after; and for female defendants, the community safety rate improved from 85.7% to 86.5%.66 Combining the male and female figures produces the result that the overall community safety rate improved from 81.8% before implementation of the changes to 83.0% after.
The authors say this rate is wrong. They argue that releasing more accused criminals resulted in more crime.
[T]he number of defendants released pretrial increased from 20,435 in the “before” period to 24,504 in the “after” period—about a 20% increase. So even though the “community safety rate” remained roughly stable (and even improved very slightly), the total number of crimes committed by pretrial releasees increased after G.O. 18.8A. In the fifteen months before G.O.18.8A, 20,435 defendants were released and 16,720 remained “crime-free”—and, thus, arithmetically (although this number is not directly disclosed in the Study), 3,715 defendants were charged with committing new crimes while they were released. In the fifteen months after G.O. 18.8A, 24,504 defendants were released, and 20,340 remained “crimefree”—and, thus, arithmetically, 4,164 defendants were charged with committing new crimes while they were released. Directly comparing the before and after numbers shows a clear increase from 3,715 defendants who were charged with committing new crimes before to 4,164 after—a 12% increase.
Even if, as the authors point out, more total crimes were committed after more total people were released (bailed out or with no bail set), the County’s assessment isn’t wrong. More people were released and the recidivism rate fell. Prior to G.O. 18.8A’s passage, the “crime-free” rate (as a percentage) was 79.6%. After the implementation of bail reform, it was 83.0%. If we follow the authors to the conclusion they seem to feel is logical, the only way to prevent recidivism is to keep every arrestee locked up until their trial, no matter how minor the crime triggering the arrest.
But that’s not how the criminal justice system is supposed to work. The authors apparently believe thousands of people who are still — in the eyes of the law — innocent (until proven guilty) should stay behind bars because the more people cut loose on bail (or freed without bail being set) increases the total number of criminal acts perpetrated.
Of course, we should expect nothing less. Especially not from Paul Cassell. Cassell presents himself as a “victim’s rights” hero. And while he has a lot to say about giving crime victims more rights than Americans who haven’t had the misfortune of being on the resulting end of a criminal act, he doesn’t have much to say about the frequent abuse of these laws by police officers who’ve committed violence against arrestees.
Not only that, but he’s the author of perhaps the worst paper ever written on the intersection of civil rights and American law enforcement. The title should give you a pretty good idea what you’re in for, but go ahead and give it a read if you feel like voluntarily angrying up your blood:
Still Handcuffing the Cops? A Review of Fifty Years of Empirical Evidence of Miranda’s Harmful Effects on Law Enforcement
Yep, that’s Cassell arguing that the Supreme Court forcing the government to respect Fifth Amendment rights is somehow a net loss for society and the beginning of a five-decade losing streak for law enforcement crime clearance rates.
So, you can see why an apparently imaginary “coalition” that supports “law order” would look to Cassell to provide back-up for piss poor assertions and even worse logic.
There’s plenty more that’s terrible in this so-called study from this so-called coalition. And I encourage you to give it a read because I’m sure there are things I missed that absolutely should be named and shamed in the comments.
But let’s take a look at one of my favorite things in this terrible waste of bits and bytes:
Concomitant with de-prosecution is a shift toward politicization of prosecutorial priorities at the cost of focusing on tackling rising crime and violent repeat offenders. Both local, state, and federal prosecutors have increasingly devoted a greater share of their finite, and often strained, resources to ideologically preferred or politically expedient cases. This approach has two primary and deleterious impacts – on public safety and on public faith in the impartiality of the justice system.
Under the tranche of recently elected progressive district attorneys, prosecutions of police officers have climbed dramatically and well before the death of George Floyd in May 2020, though they have since substantially accelerated.
Yep, that’s how cops see this: getting prosecuted is a “political” thing, as though being a cop was the same thing as being part of a political party. Cops like to imagine themselves as a group worthy of more rights. Unfortunately, lots of legislators agree with them. But trying to hold cops accountable is not an act of partisanship… or at least it shouldn’t be. It should just be the sort of thing all levels of law enforcement oversight strive for. But one would expect nothing more than this sort of disingenuousness from a couple of dudes who want to blame everyone but cops for the shit state the nation’s in (even if it actually isn’t.)
Filed Under: crime, moral panic, police
Companies: coalition for law order and safety
