The disturbing trend of the federal government seizing domain names without regard to the First Amendment continues. The FBI, along with the IRS, apparently seized a number of websites associated with MyRedbook.com, and arrested the operator of the site. The FBI notes that the site, which was a social network and resource for sex workers, included advertising that “facilitated prostitution.” It also accused the site of money laundering.
However, as the EFF is noting beyond the question of whether or not the FBI should even be in the business of targeting sex workers, there are serious First Amendment questions around such a seizure of a website
Category: Ignorant or unreasonable
It is now illegal to run TOR exit nodes in Austria
Not only the immediate perpetrator commits a criminal action, but also anyone who appoints someone to carry it out, or anyone who otherwise contributes to the completion of said criminal action.
In other words, it’s a form of accomplice liability for criminality. It’s pretty standard to name criminal accomplices liable for “aiding and abetting” the activities of others, but it’s a massive and incredibly dangerous stretch to argue that merely running a Tor exit node makes you an accomplice that “contributes to the completion” of a crime. Under this sort of thinking, Volkswagen would be liable if someone drove a VW as the getaway car in a bank robbery. It’s a very, very broad interpretation of accomplice liability, in a situation where it clearly does not make sense.
Lipscomb: Do you have a penis? Guilty!
In response to a third party subpoena, the internet service provider disclosed the Defendant’s wife as the owner ofthe IP address that was allegedly downloading Plaintiff’s copyrighted movies. (Amended Complaint at ¶ 26 (Doc. No. 11)).However, Plaintiff brought suit against the Defendant, not his wife, alleging that the Defendant’s wife likely did not engage in the infringing downloads. (Id. at ¶ 28). Plaintiff suspected that since Defendant resides with his wife and had the means to use the BitTorrent in the house where the infringement emanated, he was “most likely” the person to engage in the infringement.
So basically, if you’re male, then you must have been the one who did it.
Copyright troll Lipscomb: Do you have a penis? Guilty! (Fight Copyright Trolls)
PayPal unfreezes Protonmail funds after media storm…
Claims it was all a mistake.
Anuj Nayar, senior director of global initiatives at PayPal, told The Register that the whole furor had been caused [by] a couple of errors on its part.
Nayar added that senior executives will review procedures to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
Next time, PayPal will check if the company in question has the contacts necessary to bring this to the media, and will only freeze funds if there is little to no risk of a PR fallout.
Paypal suspends payments to Proton Mail without warning
The Proton Mail project, which offers end-to-end encrypted webmail from the user’s browser, has had a stick thrust into its operational spokes courtesy of PayPal.
(…)
PayPal has frozen Proton Mail’s account without warning: “No attempt was made by PayPal to contact us before freezing our account, and no notice was given”, the post states.
(…)
“When we pressed the PayPal representative on the phone for further details, he questioned whether ProtonMail is legal and if we have government approval to encrypt emails,” author Andy Yen claims.
Sadly, I can’t say this isn’t business as usual from Paypal.
US Embassy Blamed State Dept Investigator For Upsetting Its Relationship With Blackwater After Investigator Complained About Death Threat
Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.
American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.
White House poised to name patent reform opponent as new head of Patent Office
The Obama Administration is set to appoint Phil Johnson, a pharmaceutical industry executive, as the next Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, according to sources. The move is likely to anger patent reform advocates given Johnson’s past efforts to block legislation aimed at reining in patent trolls, and in light of his positions that appear to contradict the White House’s professed goal of fixing the patent system.
Just another case of the US Gov and Whitehouse saying one thing and doing the opposite.
If Hollywood thinks your copyright rulings have gone too far… they might have gone too far
Techdirt quotes the Hollywood Reporter as writing
Innovators lose because the Aereo decision makes it harder for them to know where the lines are drawn. The court said Aereo – which allowed users to use RS-DVR technology to transmit programs, from a small antenna to a hard drive and thence via packet on the Internet to mobile devices and PCs – was “substantially similar” to a cable system that uses a single big antenna to transmit programs via cables buried in the streets to television sets. The fact that Aereo also resembled an RS-DVR was discarded. With that much elasticity, how does a technologist know whether her brilliant idea too closely resembles a phonograph or player piano roll and therefore runs afoul of some vastly pre-Internet analysis?
Law enforcement cries foul after being forced to uphold the 4th amendment
another police spokesperson overreacts by suggesting warrants are somehow difficult to get:
Besides the delay, one problem is such a warrant might not be approved, said Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, which counts about 240,000 rank-and-file police officers as members.
“You have to make that jump: I bet he’s got a bunch of stuff on his phone. And that’s not good enough,” he said. “The officers are really going to have to point to something specific that ties that phone or that suspect’s use of phones to the commission of a crime.”
He makes that sound horrible, but that’s what the Constitution says. Just because there may be bad stuff in someone’s house the police don’t get to just search it. They have to point to something specific. That’s the 4th Amendment. Has Johnson never read it?
DOJ Says ‘Not Our Fault’ That Police Actually Believed FBI Report Calling Juggalos Gang Members
Justice Department attorney Amy Powell said the group and its fans have no standing to sue. She said the government is not responsible for how police agencies use information in the 2011 national gang report. Powell said a “subjective chill” as alleged by plaintiffs was not enough to be in court.
“There is no general right of protection to a social association,” she said, referring to First Amendment violations argued by Insane Clown Posse and its fans.
It’s an interesting theory to put forth, that the FBI, essentially the king of domestic police agencies, has no culpability for local police using its report, which included the demonizing of music fans. In other words, the FBI can simply label any group it likes a gang organization without recourse. Local police will, of course, simply point back to the report when questioned about their activities, and now we have a recursive loop of non-responsibility. I’m pretty sure that’s some kind of government agency golden egg.