Author: KS

Minority Astroturf Group Gets Comcast-Affiliated News Site To Remove Article About Minority Astroturfing On Net Neutrality

The key to the story, not surprisingly, was that the minority groups that are heavily funded by the giant broadband troika of Verizon, AT&T and Comcast apparently think that true net neutrality would be a disaster for the minority community — while the groups not funded by those corporate giants believe that more open and free internet devoid of fast and slow lanes is a good thing for the minority community. 

Reporter Lee Fang had written a similar article for Republic Report, touching on some of the same points about the disagreements between these groups. That story got syndicated to a bunch of other sites, including Salon, and some others wrote about it. One site was NewsOne, which describes itself as being a news site “for black America.” They had a blog post that discussed the Salon story and quoted heavily from it. That story no longer exists, taken down thanks to complaints from the same group it criticized.

So, where did the article go? Well, it just so happens that NewsOne is owned by Radio One, a company that is closely tied to Comcast. So, there’s a bit of a conflict there already. Fang called up NewsOne and was told that the order to take it down “came from corporate headquarters.”

Techdirt

 

Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack

President Obama, in his press conference on Friday, said ”it is heartbreaking to see what’s happening there,” referring to the weeks of civilian deaths in Gaza – “as if he’s just a bystander, watching it all unfold,” observed Brooklyn College Professor Corey Robin. Robin added: ”Obama talks about Gaza as if it were a natural disaster, an uncontrollable biological event.”

Each time Israel attacks Gaza and massacres its trapped civilian population – at the end of 2008, in the fall of 2012, and now again this past month – the same process repeats itself in both U.S. media and government circles: the U.S. government feeds Israel the weapons it uses and steadfastly defends its aggression both publicly and at the U.N.; the U.S. Congress unanimously enacts one resolution after the next to support and enable Israel; and then American media figures pretend that the Israeli attack has nothing to do with their country, that it’s just some sort of unfortunately intractable, distant conflict between two equally intransigent foreign parties in response to which all decent Americans helplessly throw up their hands as though they bear no responsibility.

The Intercept

Obama: ‘We Tortured Some Folks’

at a press conference today, President Obama appeared to more breezily admit to it by noting “we tortured some folks.” That seems like a… rather informal way to talk about war crimes, committed by the US government, which Obama himself refused to do anything about. Again, we feel the need to remind people that the only person in jail concerning the CIA’s torture program… is the guy who blew the whistle on the program, John Kiriakou.

Link (Techdirt)

Scholastic Turns Purchased Childrens Books Into Nothing At All

According to Scholastic’s 2012 press release, Storia (the DRMed ebook collection currently affected) allowed students and teachers to purchase ebooks and share them with up to 10 family members/students via its proprietary app. (The app is the DRM. Scholastic purchases don’t work outside of it. To quote its now-vanished FAQs page: “Storia eBooks are designed with unique learning features and enrichments that make them readable only while using the Storia eReading app.”) It also included enhanced content to encourage readers to dig deeper into unfamiliar subjects and allow teachers to connect with downloaded books via Smartboards and other computers. All in all, not a terrible product and one that comes from a particularly trusted name in academic publishing.

That’s all coming to an end now.

Link (Techdirt)

UK Woman Denied Passport Because Her Name Might Infringe On Disney’s Copyright

Her namesake may be able to travel across galaxies in Star Wars, but Laura Matthews from Southend – whose middle name is Skywalker – isn’t even able to get on a budget airline to the Med.

The 29-year-old added the middle name by deed poll in 2008, “for a bit of a laugh”, and recently tried to renew her passport, complete with her new name and the signature L. Skywalker. Her application was refused, with the Home Office telling her it “will not recognise a change to a name which is subject to copyright or trademark”.

Link (Techdirt)

Who Cares If Ireland Is Another Country, Of Course DOJ Can Use A Warrant To Demand Microsoft Cough Up Your Emails

A NY judge has ruled against Microsoft in a rather important case concerning the powers of the Justice Department to go fishing for information in other countries — and what it means for privacy laws in those countries. As you may recall, back in April, we wrote about a magistrate judge first ruling that the DOJ could issue a warrant demanding email data that Microsoft held overseas, on servers in Dublin, Ireland. Microsoft challenged that, pointing out that you can’t issue a warrant in another country. However, the magistrate judge said that this “warrant” wasn’t really a “warrant” but a “hybrid warrant/subpoena.” That is when the DOJ wanted it to be like a warrant, it was. When it wanted it to be like a subpoena, it was.

Microsoft fought back, noting that the distinction between a warrant and a subpoena is a rather important one. And you can’t just say “hey, sure that’s a warrant, but we’ll pretend it’s a subpoena.”

Link (Techdirt)

After CIA Angrily Denied Spying On Senate, CIA Admits It Did And Apologizes

Here’s a surprise. An internal investigation by the CIA has determined — just as Senator Dianne Feinstein charged — that the CIA illegally hacked into the network of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers in order to spy on what they were doing with regards to a report on the CIA’s torture program. They did this despite an earlier instance of a similar problem after which the CIA promised it would not touch the Senate Intelligence Committee network any more.

(…)

Either way, given that the CIA is now effectively admitting to the charges, it does seem noteworthy to highlight the DOJ’s decision not to do anything. After all, as Chris Soghoian points out, if this same bit of hacking were done by a 19 year old hactivist, he’d be rotting in jail, and there would be all sorts of condemnations about what a horrible person he was.

Link (Techdirt)

Max Mosley Sues Google For Still Finding Photos He Doesn’t Like

Oh Max Mosley. The guy who’s basically guaranteed that the press keeps writing about the “sex party” pictures involving him and five sex workers that were leaked to the press years ago. Mosley has basically dedicated his life to reminding the public about those pictures by fighting a ridiculous war to blame everyone for those pictures existing on the internet. He’s actually won a few lawsuits against Google, in which the company has been told to do the impossible: make the photos of him disappear. Now he’s decided to sue the company yet again, this time in the UK (he’s already sued in France and Germany). Mosley’s really big win over the original newspaper, News of the World, was mostly over the fact that they called it a “Nazi sex party” and he insists that the party wasn’t Nazi-themed (an area of some sensitivity, as Max’s father was friends with Hitler).

This case is not directly related to the recent “right to be forgotten” situation in the EU, but might be considered a close cousin of it. It’s still based on the ridiculous assertion that the fact that some of these pictures are still online can be blamed on Google. Mosley, apparently, is not big on understanding how the internet works. And he’s not above stretching the rulings in the courts:

His lawyers said the case concerned “the ability of individuals within the UK to enforce their rights against the large corporations that control access to the internet”. The statement added: “It seeks to compel Google to stop gathering and publishing images that the English high court decided in 2008 were unlawful in the landmark privacy case Mosley v News Group Newspapers.”

Link (Techdirt)

Keith Alexander: I’m Worth $1 Million Per Month Because I’m Patenting A Way To Stop Hackers

The Keith Alexander story just keeps getting more and more bizarre. Almost immediately after retiring from the top position at the NSA, where he oversaw the total failure of the NSA’s supposed “100% auditing” system, allowing Ed Snowden (and who knows how many others) to escape with all sorts of documents, Alexander announced that he had set up a cybersecurity firm — with the ridiculously Hollywood-ish name of IronNet Cybersecurity. A month ago, it was revealed that he’s going around asking banks to pay him $1 million per month for his “expertise.” That caused a few to wonder if he’s selling classified info, because really, what else could he offer?

Alexander has a new answer: Patents! Yes, Keith Alexander is claiming that he has an amazing new anti-hacker technique that is brilliant and wonderful and deserving of at least nine patents.

Link (Techdirt)

When fact is stranger than fiction…

For about $12, Sprint will soon let subscribers buy a wireless plan that only connects to Facebook.

For that same price, they could choose instead to connect only with Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest—or for $10 more, enjoy unlimited use of all four. Another $5 gets them unlimited streaming of a music app of their choice.

Link (Techdirt)