At the beginning of this year, Attorney General Eric Holder attempted to close an exploitable loophole in asset forfeiture laws. State and local law enforcement agencies often sought federal "adoption" of seizures in order to route around statutes that dumped assets into general funds or otherwise limited them from directly profiting from these seizures. By partnering with federal agencies, local law enforcement often saw bigger payouts than with strictly local forfeitures.

The loophole closure still had its own loopholes (seizures for "public safety," various criminal acts), but it did make a small attempt to straighten out some really perverted incentives. But deep down inside, it appears the DOJ isn't really behind true forfeiture reform. In fact, it seems to be urging local law enforcement to fight these efforts by pointing out just how much money these agencies will "lose" if they can't buddy up with Uncle Sam.

A cache of documents uncovered by the Institute for Justice today demonstrate that federal law enforcement officials in the Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Treasury are collaborating with local law enforcement organizations in California to undermine efforts to reform the state’s civil forfeiture laws. The California District Attorneys Association is circulating a set of emails from officials with the DOJ and Treasury indicating that the federal government would disqualify the state from receiving funds from the federal Equitable Sharing Program if it passes the pending reforms. The documents also reveal that the DOJ has already disqualified New Mexico from participating in the program, following passage of a sweeping civil forfeiture reform bill this spring.

The DOJ's insertion into the legislative process begins with talking points delivered in emails that stress the amount of money agencies will be "losing" if they're no longer allowed to federalize seizures. The documents show members of the Treasury Department affirming that California's reform will "force" the DOJ to cut state law enforcement agencies out of the loop -- supposedly because the Mother Ship can't secure convictions fast enough.

Citing “resources, desire, or technical capability,” Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture Legal Counsel Melissa Nasrah wrote in an email to Santa Barbara Senior Deputy District Attorney Lee Carter, “I highly doubt our federal agencies can figure out whether a conviction occurred in any timely manner,” and “it seems the legislation, in effect, takes decision-making authority away from Treasury. Accordingly, I think I would still advise our policy officials here that it would be prudent to not share with CA agencies should this law be passed.”

Sure enough, the "warnings" from the feds are echoed in a letter from the California District Attorneys' Association in opposition of the bill. The association expresses its abject dismay at the fact that law enforcement agencies might actually have to secure convictions to hold onto seized assets. According to the CDAA, asset forfeiture without accompanying convictions is a must because indictments and jail time alone aren't punitive enough.

The current version of the bill would essentially deny every law enforcement agency in California direct receipt of any forfeited assets. California's asset forfeiture law will be changed for the worse, and it will cripple the ability of law enforcement to forfeit assets from drug dealers when arrest and incarceration is an incomplete strategy for combatting drug trafficking.

The Treasury Department, for its part, argues that a conviction requirement would prevent the DOJ from a) being fair and b) performing the studious oversight that has prevented asset forfeiture from devolving into cops going shopping for stuff they want.

A transfer to a state-controlled fund would not be a permissible use of funds, especially when that central fund would redistribute money to all law enforcement agencies in the state, regardless of their eligibility or participation in our program.

All participating agencies must report their expenditures to DOJ at the end of their fiscal year. As you are aware, there are many law enforcement items that cannot be purchased with equitably shared funds, and some are fully prohibited both by policy and executive order. lf a participating agency turns its federally shared funds over to the State of California under those proposed amendments, DOJ can no longer provide appropriate oversight over final expenditures.

The CDAA goes on to complain that the proposed reforms would reverse the one-way screwing it has become accustomed to.

The vast majority of civil narcotic asset forfeiture cases in California resolve by default or settlement. Providing attorney fees to the party that "substantially prevails" could result in attorney fees being available when the People return 50 percent or more of the seizure in a settlement. This would be an unprecedented one-way benefit for a civil litigant, and a huge additional cost to prosecuting forfeitures. Further, in appropriate cases and under existing civil law, attorney fees are already available to claimants in a forfeiture action.

Note the use of "the People" to portray this as robbing the public of the benefits of seized funds when, in actuality, it's usually just the theft of funds from (lowercase) people.

It's easy to see why California law enforcement is panicking. There's almost $84 million at stake, if the CDAA's stats are accurate. These agencies want to control how they get these funds, what they have to do to hold onto them and how they're disbursed. Anything short of the status quo is just a win for drug dealers. This is hardly unexpected behavior. Nothing makes government agencies more defensive than furtive movements in the direction of their wallets.

That the DOJ has decided to pile on -- despite its nominal reform efforts -- is also less than shocking. After all, it takes a cut from every "adopted" investigation -- all the while enabling local entities to bypass statutory safeguards meant to keep the abuse of civil forfeiture to a minimum.

Back in 2010, the notoriously-litigious Motion Picture Academy sued GoDaddy for allowing a bunch of "infringing" domains to be registered. According to the Academy, anything that might use the word "Oscar" is under its control, thanks to several registered trademarks. Trademark infringement doesn't fall under Section 230 protections, which is basically the only reason this lawsuit managed to stay alive for five years.

Now, it's finally over. (Well, pending appeal…) Kieren McCarthy of The Register is reporting that the court has found in favor of GoDaddy.

The Academy was seeking $31m in damages for 293 domain names that it identified as being registered with and hosted by GoDaddy. An original list of 151 domains in 2009 was subsequently added to as the complaint progressed through the courts.

However, a significant number of the names registered were either found not to infringe the Academy's trademarks or were being used legitimately (usually by people called Oscar).

Far too many trademark holders believe holding a registered wordmark gives them veto power on any use of that word. This simply isn't the case, but acts of faith predicated on this belief have resulted in multiple bogus lawsuits and an even greater number of baseless legal threats.

The court found that GoDaddy had a significant number of domain-squatting deterrents built into its system. And, even if it didn't, the sheer number of domains registered with the company makes it impossible to police thoroughly, or at least not to the extent the Academy would like.

GoDaddy is the largest domain name registrar in the world with approximately 60 million domain names under management. GoDaddy has registered more than 150 million domain names since becoming an ICANN-accredited registrar in 2000, averaging over 25,000 domain registrations per day. On average, GoDaddy registers a domain name every 0.7 seconds.

[...]

Requiring GoDaddy to subject each domain registration to a costly, manual legal review is not commercially practical and would dramatically increase GoDaddy’s costs, which would in turn be passed on to the consumer.

The Academy further claimed that GoDaddy violated its trademarks with relevant ads (from Google) running on parked domain pages.


GoDaddy pointed out that it had no control over what ads would be run by Google on parked domain pages. It further pointed out that the Academy could have contacted Google to prevent the placement of Oscar-related ads on parked domain pages, but chose not to.

Google has implemented a comprehensive trademark protection policy for those domains participating in AdSense for Domains.

Despite being aware of the protections afforded by Google’s trademark policy, AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science) chose not to avail itself of the policy in relation to any of the domain names at issue.

AMPAS never contacted Google to object to the use of the AMPAS Marks in Google’s AdSense program, nor has AMPAS complained to Google that the use of the AdSense or AdWords programs infringe on the AMPAS Marks.

The court also noted that GoDaddy makes several proactive efforts to protect trademark holders -- like warning prospective registrants against registering domains using trademarked terms as well as shifting the liability to registrants, who must agree they are not knowingly committing infringement before a registration is granted. On top of that, GoDaddy strips ads from any domain being disputed to ensure no one is capitalizing on possible infringement.

Beyond its internal constraints, GoDaddy is forbidden by ICANN from unilaterally cancelling registrations. To do so without the permission of the registrant, a court order must be presented to GoDaddy. Obviously, this is what the Academy was seeking, but it skipped a step by taking GoDaddy to court for not immediately killing registered domains the moment the Academy started getting grumpy about it.

Because this is a trademark case, the Academy's arguments revolved around GoDaddy profiting from allowing the registration of "infringing" domains. As noted above, GoDaddy stripped all ads from the parked domains the Academy complained about. Even the sites that remained active hardly generated any money for GoDaddy or the registrants themselves. Over the years, the Academy has claimed anywhere from $6 to $31 million in damages. The court does the math and finds that if anything was actually owed to the Academy, the check amount wouldn't even reach four digits.

GoDaddy received approximately $107 in total revenue from popunder and Google-provided, third-party pay-per-click advertisements on seventy-two (72) of the 293 domain names at issue. The pop-under revenue accounted for less than $1 of the total revenue.

Of the 293 domain names at issue, 221 domain names generated no revenue from Google-provided, third-party pay-per-click advertisements. The most revenue generated by any domain was $13.67.

The total page impressions recorded from 2005 to 2014 for the 293 accused domains was 48,763: (a) 60 accused domains had less than or equal to 10 impressions, (b) 244 accused domains had less than 100 impressions. Some of the recorded impressions were made by AMPAS’s counsel and consultants. The 48,763 recorded impressions on the accused domains represent 0.00044% of all impressions (10,997,067,487) on all domain names participating in one of GoDaddy’s Parked Page programs.

The court finds that GoDaddy made significant good faith efforts to resolve the issues brought to its attention. Not only did it proactively strip ads from offending domains, but it instituted additional keyword blacklists for future use. But this wasn't good enough for the Academy, which still believed the only reason anyone would use the word "Oscar" in a domain name was to siphon profit away from the Academy.

As Kieren McCarthy points out, the Academy long thought it had an open-and-shut case. That's the sort of misconception often accompanies inflated senses of self-worth. To the Academy, the word "Oscar" only refers to one thing. But on the internet, it can mean thousands of things -- most of them entirely unrelated to its annual bloated act of self-congratulation.

Taken overall, the five-year court battle highlighted an enormous clash of cultures. The Academy Awards believes that anything at all to do with its name represents a calculated effort to extort millions of dollars, while GoDaddy as a company that deals with the broader internet and millions of web addresses barely registers the Oscars existence in their systems.

The decision will undoubtedly be appealed, but there's not much in this decision that points to a more favorable outcome. The Academy threw it weight around and expected that would be all it ever needed to do. It failed to provide anything that backed up its claims that an internet entity was (yet again) screwing a legacy out of its "rightful" earnings. GoDaddy, on the other hand, showed the court it had done everything it could to assist the Academy in its ridiculous trademark protection efforts, and got thanked for its efforts with five years of litigation.

Lots of folks have really strong opinions -- both positive and negative -- about Burning Man, the big "festival/experiment/one-week city in the desert" or whatever you want to call it. But no matter what you think of Burning Man, it's always seemed odd that the organization behind it acts like a crazy intellectual property maximalist at times -- including using twisted interpretations of copyright and trademark law to stop people from doing anything Burning Man doesn't like with photos from the event. It required attendees to sign over the copyright on any photos taken, for instance.

But the latest move by Burning Man is really crazy. Just as this year's festival was ending last week, the sandwich chain Quizno's (long known for their amusing internet-ready commercials), released a pretty funny commercial mocking the commercialization of Burning Man in a way that pokes almost as much fun at Quizno's itself as it does at Burning Man. It does, certainly, mock the event for becoming pretty commercialized and "a place for rich people to check off their bucket list." And, it appears that the Burning Man organization has absolutely no sense of humor and is trying to find some way to sue Quizno's over this, claiming it's "theft of intellectual property."

Burning Man takes issue with the clip and is considering legal action, not because of the mockery it makes of the more than 70,000-person annual event but because the video is theft of the event's intellectual property, according to Burning Man spokesman Jim Graham.

"We are pretty proactive about protecting our 10 principles, one of which is decommodification," Graham said. "We get a quite a number of requests each year from companies wanting to gift participants with their product or to capture imagery or video of their products at the event, and we turn them all down."

I have no idea what that last paragraph means. You can be proactive about protecting whatever principles you want, but it doesn't allow you to sue someone for making a parody. There was no intellectual property infringed in this ad. Get over yourself, Burning Man.

"We'll be coordinating with our legal team to see what action we can take," Graham said.

And hopefully your legal team tells you can't do jack shit about this. Nor should you. You should relax a bit and laugh at something funny and move on with your lives.

Some potentially good news this morning -- which may be undermined by the fine print. After many years of back and forth, the 9th Circuit appeals court has ruled that Universal Music may have violated the DMCA in not taking fair use into account before issuing a DMCA takedown request on a now famous YouTube video of Stephanie Lenz's infant dancing to less than 30 seconds of a Prince song playing in the background. Because of this, there can now be a trial over whether or not Universal actually had a good faith belief that the video was not fair use. This case has been going on forever, and if you've watched the video, it's kind of amazing that a key case on fair use should be focused on that particular video, where you can barely even make out the music. The key question was whether or not Universal abused the DMCA in not first considering fair use before sending the takedown. This is fairly important, because, of course, DMCA takedowns suppress speech and if fair use is supposed to be the "pressure valve" that stops copyright from violating the First Amendment, it has to actually mean something. Section 512(f) of the DMCA says that the filer of a DMCA notice may be liable for damages for "misrepresentations," but historically that has been an almost entirely toothless part of the law (in part because of earlier rulings in the Lenz case). People hoped that would change with this ruling, and while the beginning of the ruling suggests 512(f) is getting teeth, the end yanks them all away.

The ruling in the 9th Circuit starts out great, but starts getting iffy pretty fast.

Her claim boils down to a question of whether copyright holders have been abusing the extrajudicial takedown procedures provided for in the DMCA by declining to first evaluate whether the content qualifies as fair use. We hold that the statute requires copyright holders to consider fair use before sending a takedown notification, and that failure to do so raises a triable issue as to whether the copyright holder formed a subjective good faith belief that the use was not authorized by law.

Sounds good, right? Anyone sending a DMCA notice needs to take fair use into account before sending a takedown. That may be trouble for all of those automated takedown filing systems out there, many of which we've written about. The court also reiterates that fair use is not "allowed infringement," but rather it's not infringement at all. This is also important (even though it says that directly in the law, many people pretend that it's just an "allowed" infringement). The court is not impressed by Universal Music's defense in the case, in which it argues that fair use is "not authorized by law" because, as Universal falsely claims, it is merely a "defense" to infringement. The court says that's wrong:

Universal’s interpretation is incorrect as it conflates two different concepts: an affirmative defense that is labeled as such due to the procedural posture of the case, and an affirmative defense that excuses impermissible conduct. Supreme Court precedent squarely supports the conclusion that fair use does not fall into the latter camp: “[A]nyone who . . . makes a fair use of the work is not an infringer of the copyright with respect to such use.”

So, that's all good. But... the details matter, and from that point on... they're weird. The court points to the earlier ruling, saying that the copyright holder "need only form a subjective good faith belief that a use is not authorized." Thus, as long as the issuer can come up with some sort of argument for why they didn't think it was fair use, they're probably safe.

As a result, Lenz’s request to impose a subjective standard only with respect to factual beliefs and an objective standard with respect to legal determinations is untenable.

And because of that, the court leaves a big out for just about any copyright holder. It says the court has no place in questioning how the copyright holder decided whether the use was authorized or not:

To be clear, if a copyright holder ignores or neglects our unequivocal holding that it must consider fair use before sending a takedown notification, it is liable for damages under § 512(f). If, however, a copyright holder forms a subjective good faith belief the allegedly infringing material does not constitute fair use, we are in no position to dispute the copyright holder’s belief even if we would have reached the opposite conclusion.

The court says a copyright holder can't just "pay lip service" to the idea that it checked on fair use, but in the same paragraph admits that, well, it basically can. Even worse, it says that forming a "good faith belief" doesn't require actually investigating the details:

In order to comply with the strictures of § 512(c)(3)(A)(v), a copyright holder’s consideration of fair use need not be searching or intensive. We follow Rossi’s guidance that formation of a subjective good faith belief does not require investigation of the allegedly infringing content.

So.... huh? (1) You need to take into account if it's fair use or not and you need to show a "good faith belief" that it's fair use, but... (2) you don't actually have to investigate anything, and the court cannot review your reasons for having a good faith belief. That's not a loophole. It's a blackhole that collapses 512(f) in on itself.

From there, it actually notes that automated takedowns... may be fine:

We note, without passing judgment, that the implementation of computer algorithms appears to be a valid and good faith middle ground for processing a plethora of content while still meeting the DMCA’s requirements to somehow consider fair use. Cf. Hotfile, 2013 WL 6336286, at *47 (“The Court . . . is unaware of any decision to date that actually addressed the need for human review, and the statute does not specify how belief of infringement may be formed or what knowledge may be chargeable to the notifying entity.”). For example, consideration of fair use may be sufficient if copyright holders utilize computer programs that automatically identify for takedown notifications content where: “(1) the video track matches the video track of a copyrighted work submitted by a content owner; (2) the audio track matches the audio track of that same copyrighted work; and (3) nearly the entirety . . . is comprised of a single copyrighted work.”

So, uh, what? Automated takedowns may be fine because that's sort of a way to consider fair use because... no reason given. That is not at all helpful.

On a separate note, the court confirms that the trial cannot move forward by arguing that Universal had "willful blindness" about the likelihood of fair use in the case, because Lenz didn't really show that Universal had willful blindness. So that's another dead end.

Finally, the court rejected Universal Music's claim that Lenz had to show monetary damages in order to recover damages under 512(f). The court says 512(f) spans more than just monetary damages. Of course, that's almost entirely meaningless in a world in which everyone has an out through "subjective good faith" that doesn't even require investigating anything.

So this is a ruling that looks good up top, but gets bad as you read the details. There is a dissent, from Judge Milan Smith, pointing out some of the problems with the majority ruling, and the loophole that it creates. As the dissent notes, stating that something is infringing when you haven't done any fair use analysis is a misrepresentation, and 512(f) covers misrepresentations. So, in the end, a possibly important ruling is undermined with a massive loophole, which likely will lead to a continuing barrage of DMCA takedowns, including automated takedowns that suppress speech. That seems... wrong.

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As you may have heard last week, a British Airways plane caught fire as it was taxiing on the runway preparing for takeoff. Thankfully, everyone on board escaped with just a few minors scratches and bruises. The plane wasn't so lucky. However, there were lots of other people around on other flights witnessing the whole thing and -- not surprisingly -- many of them have Twitter accounts. And, as has become fairly standard when visual news breaks somewhere with people around, they started tweeting photos. Here's David L. Somers at 4:16pm:

Just landed in Vegas to see this...plane on fire on the Tarmac...people still onboard and running off! pic.twitter.com/ul10hFFw9j

— David L. Somers (@DL_Somers) September 8, 2015

And here's Bradley Hampton at 4:17pm:

Plane on fire on LAS runway! @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/iQiHzV22Bq

— Bradley Hampton (@Bradley_Hampton) September 8, 2015

And here's Eric Hays at 4:20pm:

Just landed in Las Vegas, plane is on fire. People were on boaard but it looks like they all got off in time. pic.twitter.com/0AN5HvBB5G

— Eric Hays (@ericmhays) September 8, 2015

There were a bunch of others as well, but those were three of the earliest that got the most attention.

Now, some of us might marvel at this amazing world we now live in, where everyone can be a broadcast reporter should news suddenly happen around them. It's kind of amazing. But, perhaps even more fascinating is the somewhat insane mainstream media scrum that immediately follows. All three of these guys were almost immediately bombarded with news producers from TV, newspaper and online media, all asking for permission to use their photos. This is just a sampling because if I posted them all, i think my hand would cramp up from cutting and pasting so many embed codes. Notice that a bunch of the requests come from the very same news organizations, many asking if they can use it on all platforms/affiliates and such:

@DL_Somers Hi David. May we get your permission to use this photo?

— FOX5 Las Vegas (@FOX5Vegas) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers can we please use your pic on @23ABCNews? thx in advance either way

— Justin Burton (@jburtonnews) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers David, may KING 5 in Seattle use your photo, with credit?

— KING 5 News (@KING5Seattle) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers, Hi, I'm a reporter for @ABC's @WNTonight. Glad you're okay. May we have permission to use this photo on all platforms?

— Erin Dooley (@erindooley) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi David, may Fox 10 in Phx have permission to use this photo as well?

— Linda Fox 10 (@lindawfox10) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers I'm sure you're annoyed by these requests... but can we also use this pic on-air tonight? Thanks.

— Seth Kaplan (@Seth_Kaplan) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers Hello! Can we please have your permission to use this photo on-air and online?

— ABC7 News (@abc7newsBayArea) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers can we use this picture?

— FOX21 News (@FOX21News) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers hey there -- i'm with @KATUNews, may we use this image on air?

— Mila Mimica (@MilaMimica1) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi, I'm with NBC Bay Area? Is it OK to use photos on all NBCU platforms w/ credit to you? thx!

— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers I work for Channel 13 in Las Vegas. Can we use your picture on our newscast?

— Tessie Sanchez (@vegassanchez24) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers Andres here with CNN, Can we use your photo permanently on all our platforms and affiliates?

— Andres Gonzalez (@andago101) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi David - may we please use this photo on @itvnews?

— Stephen Jones (@SteveJonesITV) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers Is this your picture? If so, please can we use it for our coverage on Sky News (UK), obviously with a credit? Let me know, thanks

— Huw Borland (@SkyNewsHuw) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi, I'm requesting on behalf of all media agencies in Kenya, can we use this photo on all our platforms before it's stolen?

— *Michael Shoe Maker* (@ki_bet) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi David! Here's another request from the CBS in San Diego... Can we add it to our story?

— Paco Ramos (@kicknpac) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi, I'm with the NY Daily News. Could we have permission to use this pic if we credit back to you? Thanks.

— TWLevinson (@TmasReports) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi David - can we use your picture on @SkyNews platforms? Thanks

— Tom Boadle (@TomBoadle) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers Would it be OK for FOX11 in Los Angeles to use your photo? We can give you a credit.

— Steve Herren (@Pasadenanews) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers Hey David. I'm with NBC News. May we have permission to use your photo across all our platforms? Thank!!

— Gemma (@GemmaDiCas) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers May CBS News use this photo for affiliates, web, international and network thanks stay safe!

— Sammy Rose Been (@Sammy_Roses) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers CAN CBS USE THIS PIC?

— david parrish (@dparrishcbs2) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers CBS in Las Vegas, can we use your picture?

— Rebecca Krshul (@rebeccanicolle) September 8, 2015

@DL_Somers we are SaferSkies Nigeria do we have your permission to use this picture on our site and sister publications? @NLIGlobal1

— Safer SkiesNG (@SaferSkiesNG) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers my name is Rugba Karika with NTA 2 channel 5 news. Please can I have your permission to use this picture? Thanks in advance.

— Elyon (@fega_RK) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers hi I work for saudi channel 2 , may I get your permission to use this pic?

— Mawzez! (@Sooma_4) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers hi david CBS Channel 2 news here can we have permission to use this photo? we will credit u on allmedia platforms plz let us know

— Jen P (@Jenwestbay) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers AMAZING PIC DAVID! can we show on the news in Orlando tonight?

— ERIN DREW KENT (@ERINDREWKENT) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers @7ANQ_ hi david , can we use your pic on @spagov ?

— ): #56 (@milani_1899) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi May I have permission to use this photo on all platforms?

— AZoooz (@AZIZALALI1) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi David did you take this pic? Could we please use it for our FOX News coverage?

— John Potratz (@johnpotratz) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi David. I work for the NBC station in Houston (KPRC-TV). May we have permission to use your photo?

— Steve Lulgjuraj (@EPSteveL) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi David. I work for Reuters and we're reporting on this. Would you mind following me so I can DM you about the picture? Thanks.

— George Sargent (@georgesarge) September 9, 2015

@DL_Somers Hi there! I'm from WCBS News New York...can we use this photo on air and all platforms? We will credit you!

— Ariana Induddi (@Ariana_Induddi) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi Bradley... FOX31 in Denver would like to see if we can get permission to use your photos on air and online.

— KDVR FOX31 Denver (@KDVR) September 9, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton I work for NBC Bay Area News. Can we please use your photos. We would credit you.

— Anthony Leong (@anthonyleong83) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi Bradley, I work for ABC11 in North Carolina, can we use this picture online and on-air?

— Taylor Lisenby (@TaylorLisenbyTV) September 9, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton @Bradley_Hampton Hi Bradley, Can we use your images with credit at The Australian? Many regards, hope everyone is safe

— Marc Dodd (@marcdodd) September 9, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Bradley, Kelsey from CBS News here. May we have permission to use your images of this event on our platforms w/ credit?Thx

— Kelsey Gore (@KGoreCBS) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton I'm with CBSNews - May we use your plane on fire photos for affiliates, web, international and web? Thanks stay safe

— Sammy Rose Been (@Sammy_Roses) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Andres here with CNN, Can we use your photo permanently on all our platforms and affiliates?

— Andres Gonzalez (@andago101) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Are you okay? If so, can CNN use this photo?

— Adrienne (@adriennelu15) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi, I'm with the NY Daily News. Could we have permission to use your pics if we credit back to you? Thanks!

— TWLevinson (@TmasReports) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton @FoxNews would like to use for Cox Media Group, with credit

— Bonnie Buck (@bonniebuck) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi, can NBC Bay Area use these photos across all NBCU platforms with credit to you? thanks!

— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Oh no! HOpe everyone's ok. Can we share this photo on our platforms? You'll be credited.

— Fresco News License (@frescolicense) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton hi Bradley, Polly with @Newsweek. Can we use this photo with credit?

— Polly Mosendz (@polly) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Bradley, may KING 5 in Seattle use your photo, with credit?

— KING 5 News (@KING5Seattle) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi Bradley, I work with NBC News. Can we have permission to use your photos across all platforms? Will credit you. Thanks!

— Michelle Cho (@mcho24) September 9, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi Bradley. Can we use your pics on BBC News please?

— James Cook (@BBCJamesCook) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton What a picture! Can FOX31 in Denver get your permission to use on air and on http://t.co/bBIlMoRQV7 with credit to you?

— KDVR FOX31 Denver (@KDVR) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi Bradley, may we use your photo w/ credit at @wsvn?

— Brandon (@Launerts) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi Bradley--Can we have permission to use South Florida Reporter with credit to you?

— Media Alert (@MediaAlert) September 9, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton May the European Pressphoto Agency move your photos on our wire with credit to you?

— Matt Campbell (@EPAFOTOG) September 9, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi Bradley, hope everyone is alright, can we use please?

— Alexander Ward (@alexanderj_ward) September 9, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi Bradley, I work for 10News in San Diego. Can we use your photo online if we credit you?

— Stacy Haynes (@StacyeHaynes) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Great photo. May we use your photos with credit for our news coverage? Please reply. TX

— MailOnline Pictures (@MailOnline_Pics) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton CBS in Las Vegas, can we use your picture?

— Rebecca Krshul (@rebeccanicolle) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Can Demotix news agency in the UK syndicate this photo and the others you have to our media clients with a credit to you?

— Matthew Richards (@forestmat) September 8, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton hi bradley, can we use your photo with credit in Manfouha, (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) newspaper!

— مجلاد (@jallad) September 9, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton hi CBS Channel 2 news here, can we have permission to use this photo we will credit you on all media platforms. thank you!

— Jen P (@Jenwestbay) September 9, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton Hi there! I'm from WCBS News New York...can we use this photo on air and all platforms? We will credit you!

— Ariana Induddi (@Ariana_Induddi) September 9, 2015

@Bradley_Hampton can we use this image on our platforms for Newsday please respond thanks and great photo Bill Perlman Newsday Photo Editor

— Newsday Photography (@newsdayphoto) September 9, 2015

@ericmhays Hey Eric. Can KTLA use your pic with on screen credit to you? Thanks.

— Nidia Becerra (@nidia_b) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays can we please use your plane fire pic on @23ABCNews? - thx either way in advance

— Justin Burton (@jburtonnews) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays Hi Eric, may we have permission to use this photo on-air and online?

— ABC7 News (@abc7newsBayArea) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays We hope everyone is okay! Can we share this with news outlets on our platform? All uses will credit you as the photographer.

— Fresco News License (@frescolicense) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays ----- Is this ok if WBZ-TV in Boston uses?

— Chris (@ChrisNWBZTV) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays Are you okay? If so, can CNN use this photo?

— Adrienne (@adriennelu15) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays Hi Eric. I'm with ABC/KGO in San Francisco. May we air your photo?

— hjtuggle (@hjtuggle) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays hey there -- could we please use this photo on @KATUNews?

— Mila Mimica (@MilaMimica1) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays Glad to see you’re OK. Can KMGH-TV in Denver use this image for all of our platforms? Please let us know.

— 7NEWS Denver Channel (@DenverChannel) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays Can we use your pic with credit on Sanook News (Thailand) ? Thanks.

— Sanook! News (@SanookNews) September 9, 2015

@ericmhays Sir, may MMB air this photo?

— Анхны Индиго© (@anhniiindigo) September 9, 2015

@ericmhays Can we use your photo? What's your #? THanks.

— Chuck (@CNNEditorChuck) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays Hi Eric I'm with ABC News. Wondering if we have permission to use this photo on all ABC platforms with courtesy? Thanks!

— Emerald Zellers (@EmeraldZellers) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays CBS in Las Vegas, may we use your picture?

— Rebecca Krshul (@rebeccanicolle) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays newsday would love to use your photo in our paper tomorrow, can you give us permission? with credit of course photo@newsday.com

— Newsday Photography (@newsdayphoto) September 9, 2015

@ericmhays can we use this photo on all of our platforms @WAOW in Wisconsin? We'll give you credit.

— John Laughrin (@jlaughrin_WAOW) September 9, 2015

@ericmhays Hi, I'm with the NY Daily News. Could we have permission to use this pic? Thanks!

— TWLevinson (@TmasReports) September 8, 2015

@ericmhays Hi Eric, can KDVR/KWGN in Denver use your picture with credit? Thank you!

— 小鬼。 (@svmmmer) September 8, 2015

What's kind of amazing is that all three guys basically sat around after all this graciously giving permission to most of the requests over and over and over and over and over again. Some of the requests were more detailed. Some asked the tweeters to get in contact to sign something. The most forward one was the AP who actually sent a "social media release form" as an attached image to a tweet:

@Bradley_Hampton Please reply if you agree with attached statement so @AP can use your photo of plane fire. Thanks. pic.twitter.com/84npYJ5XBw

— Joseph Altman (@APaltman) September 8, 2015

The Weather Channel wanted Eric to "verify" his permission:

@ericmhays may we have permission to feature your photo? Verify here: https://t.co/HKODFM0luo

— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) September 8, 2015

A bunch of other people noticed the nutty scrum and had fun with it, including jokingly asking for permission to retweet, to share on other social networks, to describe on the radio, to draw the picture, to look at and (my favorite) to look at and then not have nightmares about flying.

So what to make of all this? On the one hand, it seems like a fairly strong graphical representation of permission culture these days. In nearly every one of these cases, the news organizations in question would likely have extremely strong fair use protections. And it doesn't look like any of the three guys above were looking to profit from their photos. To some extent, having taken and posted the photo may have actually been more of a nuisance for them, since they all then had to spend time responding to all those requests. As filmmaker Nina Paley has discussed in the past, permission culture gets super annoying when everyone has to keep asking, and you just want them to be free to use it. But, of course, in an age where every news organization is afraid to get hit with a massive damages award in a copyright lawsuit, they're all going to ask.

That system seems fairly broken. We have at least some solutions for this. Creative Commons can handle some of it, but Twitter has no way to officially designate a CC license on a photo you've posted. That would certainly help a lot. But, overall, the whole thing just seems silly. These photos are news -- and they're initially being posted on public social media for a reason -- because those who took them wanted them to be shared and spread. It seems silly that we need such an insane level of permission gating that every news agency on the planet has to bother these guys to ask for permission.

Remember Tanya Cohen? Earlier this year I wrote a story calling bullshit on a long non-sensical rant by "Cohen" in which "she" argued that the US was somehow against human rights and true free speech because it refused to criminalized "hate speech" with hate speech loosely defined as any speech "Tanya Cohen" didn't like. While some of the free speech crew attacked Cohen's piece, I pointed out that, to me, it was very clearly satire. There was no way anyone actually believed those statements. Take this one for example:

Anyone guilty of hate speech – which should carry criminal penalties of 25 years to life – should be sent to special prisons designed to re-educate them and to instill values of tolerance, freedom, democracy, and human rights in them.

Well, now it turns out that Tanya Cohen may be facing some fairly serious criminal penalties "herself" -- and, somewhat ironically, it appears that those charges are based mostly on sending some public web URLs to an FBI confidential informant pretending to be a terrorist. And, of course, "Tanya Cohen" is not Tanya Cohen at all, but rather Joshua Goldberg -- who was arrested last Thursday in connection with at least some of his trolling. Soon after that, a larger set of revelations about the trolling came out, suggesting that Goldberg was a one-man trolling army, setting up a huge variety of different accounts saying different things and often pitting one of his own accounts against another.

Some commentators have suggested that Goldberg was an extreme free speech supporter -- but it's difficult to tell if Goldberg believed in much of anything beyond trolling. He seemed to be an equal opportunity troller, willing to troll just about anyone. He set up fake profiles of real people and made them say heinous things. He had personas that were extreme free speech supporters. He had personas that were extreme anti-free speech supporters. He had personas that were white power racists. He had personas that advocated exterminating Palestinians. He had personas that were ISIS-supporting jihadis. It's that last one, rather than any of the other ones, that now has him facing criminal charges for material terrorist support.

You can read the details in the criminal complaint against Goldberg. Now, to be clear: Goldberg appears to be a world class asshole, and a somewhat obsessive and thorough internet troll (though the Cohen stunt really seemed so ridiculous that I'm still surprised people fell for it). And he also appeared to be playing with real fire. Trying to troll free speech/anti-free speech people is one thing. Trying to troll ISIS supporters is another. Among other things, his "Australi Witness" persona tried to take credit for the high profile shootings in Texas at a "Draw Muhammad" event. Here's what he posted about "himself" online:

Hello, this is Australi Witness. You might know me for inspiring the attacks in Garland, Texas, where two mujahideen entered an event mocking the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) with intent to slaughter the kuffar in it. When I encouraged the attacks in Texas, my biggest inspiration was the Australian Muslim human rights activist Mariam Veiszadeh, who has worked tirelessly and diligently to outlaw blasphemy against Islam in Australia. Any true Muslim knows that blasphemy against the Prophets of Allah (SWT) is a capital crime which cannot be tolerated under any circumstances, and Mariam Veiszadeh's work has provided me with a great deal of inspiration. All who defame the Prophet (PBUH) must be crushed. Bill Leak and Larry Pickering will soon meet their demise, as will Josh Bornstein.

The trolling is almost too convoluted to follow, but Mariam Veiszadeh and Josh Bornstein are both real people -- but are both people that Goldberg was trying to smear with other efforts, including setting up a fake persona pretending to be Bornstein, and then somehow convinced the Times of Israel to publish an absolutely ridiculous opinion piece advocating for the outright extermination of Palestinians, which didn't make the real Bornstein very happy.

But, it was those claims of inspiring the Texas attacks that caught the FBI's attention -- and suddenly made Goldberg the target of one of the FBI's patented "own plots," in which it sends in a "confidential informant" -- either an undercover FBI agent or, more commonly, a ex-con looking for some extra cash from the FBI to be a "paid informant" -- to see if it can entice the target to join a totally fake terrorist plot. From the criminal complaint, you see that after the FBI's "confidential human source" (CHS) made contact with Goldberg (playing the persona of "AusWitness"), it was actually the FBI informant who repeatedly suggested taking things up a notch. And then AusWitness played along, pushing the FBI informant to go do an attack.

Yes. This is some weird shit: it's a conversation between a renowned internet troll and an FBI informant, neither knowing who the other really is and each working angles to try to get the other to do something, without either one ever realizing the other is playing a really different game. And the end result is a totally fake bomb plot... and criminal charges.

The conversation between the two began with Goldberg as "AusWitness" pretending that he may have accidentally outed a fellow ISIS supporter in Australia, and pretending that he "felt guilty" about posting about the guy on 8chan. The FBI informant consoles Goldberg a bit and then switches the subject:

August 15, 2015 07:27
CHS - I don't know what else to say ahki.

August 15, 2015 07:33
CHS - Maybe we can put some more irons in the fire bro. I think we're on the same page as far as ideas go.

August 16, 2015 21:02
AW - What do You mean, brother?

August 16, 2015 22:40
CHS - Sounds like you're trying to do some planning Australia. I'm trying to do the same here. I have to get some sleep classes start again tomorrow but let's talk about this more tomorrow night

Notice that it was "CHS" the FBI informant who brings up the idea of starting a plot in the US. The next day, Goldberg does a trolly bit, baiting the FBI informant, by talking about mythical attacks that were supposed to happen and how "hopefully" they'll be some more attacks on 9/11 this year -- and the FBI informant responds:

We could probably figure something out.

Goldberg/AusWitness then asks the FBI informant if he has any bombs, and the informant admits he doesn't know how to make bombs. That's when Goldberg/AusWitness sends over some URLs of publicly available websites:

August 19, 2015 06:28
AusWitness - What weapons do you have brother? I can send you guides on how to make bombs if you need help making them.

August 19, 2015 06:29
CHS - I only have the one weapon but I do t think that is what Allah wants for me. I was arrested just before with the one weapon. Guides would be great ahki something bigger than just a gun attack alhamdulillah.

August 19, 2015 06:44
AusWfness - Alight, akhi. I'm gonna send you some bomb-making guides on Twitter soon.

The message sent on twitter contained five URLs to public facing websites. It sounds like the kind of websites pretty much any idiot could find with a quick Google search, and which might help some people create explosives, but (more likely) would lead people to injure themselves trying. From the complaint, describing what was sent:

... five website links that contained instructions on how to construct explosives, including pipe bombs or incendiary devices are listed.

Later, Goldberg/AusWitness did suggest a target (a memorial event in Kansas City commemorating first responders in NYC on 9/11), but again, we're still in a conversation between a troll and an FBI informant. Still, it turned out that was really enough. Amazingly, at about this same time, some folks down in Australia, who were also being trolled by Goldberg figured out who he was, and got into a conversation with him online, in which he basically admitted to everything, and even talked about his pro-ISIS trolling, laughing off the idea that anyone was actually going to do anything based on his online efforts, saying "these guys are pussy keyboard warriors." The people who had this conversation with Goldberg passed it along to Australian law enforcement, who shared it with the FBI... just as they were wrapping up their investigation. The FBI, in the complaint, notes that it wasn't sure if Goldberg's trolling efforts was really that relevant, and admit they had no idea about it when they began the investigation, but are including it just in case it's important.

Either way, here's the crux of the complaint against Goldberg:

Based on the facts and circumstances described above, there is probable cause to believe that Joshua Ryne Goldberg (Goldberg) illegally distributed information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction, namely that on or about August 19, 2015 through and including August 28, 2015, in Clay County, in the Middle District of Florida, Goldberg distributed information pertaining to the manufacturing of explosives, destructive devices, or weapons of mass destruction in furtherance of an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence by sending to a person five website links for websites that provided instructions that could be utilized to construct or make explosives, destructive devices, or weapons of mass destruction, as part of a plot to explode a bomb on September 13, 2015 at a memorial ceremony in Kansas City, Missouri that commemorates the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 842(p).

Again, the key part: that he sent five public URL links to an FBI informant.

Once again, no one is denying that Goldberg is a world class asshole troll. Some may feel that he deserves to be locked up for that aspect of his life. But it seems rather noteworthy that at no point was anyone even remotely in danger here. At no point was anyone even remotely connected to ISIS or any terrorist organization involved here. Instead, you had a one-man internet trolling army pretending to be ISIS trying to troll someone else he thought was a wanna-be ISIS supporter in the US, but who actually turned out to be working for the FBI. And Goldberg was never actually a part of the plot. He wasn't planning to take part in it. He just sent the guy some links to websites about making bombs. The FBI doesn't say, but it seems likely that those websites are still very much online and accessible.

It's hard not to cheer on seeing an internet troll get "hoist on his own petard," but there was no terrorist plot here. There were just two people playing other people online for different reasons, trying to get the other to do something.

Meanwhile, now that we know a little bit more about "Tanya Cohen" -- and it similarly reveals that the person who repeatedly kept trying to convince me that "Cohen" was real was... also Joshua Goldberg. One of his many other personas was "Moon Metropolis" and he kept a blog and a twitter feed, in which he pretended to not just be the anti-Tanya Cohen, but to insist to me and others that Cohen was absolutely real and meant every word of "her" crazy rants:

Since then, he sent me a few similar links, continually insisting that Cohen was (a) real (b) crazy and (c) very typical out in the world -- even sending me some other "examples" of people who said similar things to Cohen. Except, it appears that even his support was just another Goldberg persona. That "Aussie Freedom Fighter" account? Pretty sure that's just another Goldberg persona... and he was just desperately trying to do some sort of triple troll. Create trollish account. Then troll the person who called out the fact that the troll account was fake... and support it with another troll. It's a jerky thing to do. And, apparently, when you try to pull the same jerky bullshit on the FBI, they may eventually come down on you with terrorism charges.

Oh yeah. One more thing: it seems that Goldberg was never really that good in covering his tracks. Just days after my original post, a Twitter user going by @healing_bible and @preacherskidd actually told me that Tanya Cohen was likely a creation of Moon Metropolis... who was really Joshua Goldberg... leading Moon Metropolis to flip out in return. @healing_bible, whoever you are, step on up. You win a prize. You figured it out months before the FBI ever did. And next time you tell me to investigate something, perhaps I'll actually take you up on it. Also, based on that, it appears that Goldberg as "Moon Metropolis" was active in the comments of Cohen's own stories insisting that "Cohen" was real, while again insisting that this kind of crazy thinking was common around the globe. So, yeah, create troll story with one account, attack it and "legitimize" it with another. Trolling 101.

In the end, it's quite clear that Goldberg was an extreme internet troll, who engaged in a variety of trollish personas. And, in the end, one of those personas got him arrested and facing some pretty serious criminal charges. But, as nice as it may sound to throw a troll in jail, it's hard to see how he actually did anything that supported terrorism in any way... unless you consider internet trolling a form of terrorism. And then, you might find someone like "Tanya Cohen" to agree with you. But I'm guessing Joshua Goldberg might not agree. Then again, it might just depend on which persona he's decided to take on that day.

Down in Australia, it appears that phone giant Vodafone is facing a bit of a scandal as it's come out that the company went digging into a journalist's phone records after she wrote some stories about security flaws in a Vodafone system. Remember, a decade ago, when there was a big scandal at HP, when it spied on board members to try to stop leaks? That was bad. This is worse. This is directly violating a customers' privacy, just because you're upset about some leaks.

In a 2012 email from then ­Vodafone Hutchison Australia head of fraud Colin Yates to then Vodafone global corporate secu­rity director Richard Knowlton, Mr Yates warns of the “huge risk” to the company if a string of allegations — which he “has no reason to believe” are not factual — “gets into the public domain”.

Of particular concern to Mr Yates was the hacking of the “call charge records and text messages” from the mobile of Fairfax investigative reporter Natalie O’Brien, then a Vodafone customer.

On January 10, 2011, the day after O’Brien broke a story about major security flaws with Vodafone’s Siebel data system — ­including that private call records could be illegally accessed — ­Vodafone investigators had discussions about searching her phone records to find the Vodafone sources for the story.

You can see the story by O'Brien here, in which she revealed that people could access Vodafone customer information, because a source she was talking to had the password to the company's database. This resulted in an investigation by Australia's Privacy Commissioner into Vodafone's security practices. Meanwhile, Vodafone tried to play the whole thing down as a "one-off incident" of someone abusing the password to the system.

Meanwhile, in the background, they were abusing their own systems to try to figure out who was talking to O'Brien -- and were admitting internally that they were misrepresenting the real situation publicly:

Following her story, Vodafone executives allegedly “told the press, the NSW Privacy Commissioner and other high-profile Australian agencies that the breach was a one-off incident”.

Mr Yates wrote to Mr Knowlton: “As you know this is in fact not the case and VHA has been suffering these breaches since Siebel went live and did nothing or very little to close off the weaknesses that allowed them to occur.”

Investigating a privacy breach by breaching the privacy of the reporter who exposed it is... perhaps not the proper response.

There's been a bit of hysteria in the US lately about "the Chinese stealing our secrets." Now, there's plenty of evidence of corporate espionage going on from China, but the actual impact of it appears to be quite overblown. But as we're in a giant moral panic about everything China related, the White House launched a big "crackdown" on such things recently -- and so far it seems to have resulted in the DOJ destroying innocent people's lives, while getting a lot of egg on its face. The latest: late on Friday the DOJ announced that it was completely dropping all charges against Xi Xiaoxing, the head of Temple University's physics department, who had been arrested earlier this year for apparently sharing the schematics of a special device known as a pocket heater with Chinese scientists. The only problem? It turns out he didn't actually share the schematics of a pocket heater with the Chinese -- the FBI just assumed what he shared must be a pocket heater. But it wasn't.

The schematics, prosecutors said, revealed the design of a device known as a pocket heater. The equipment is used in semiconductor research, and Dr. Xi had signed an agreement promising to keep its design a secret.

But months later, long after federal agents had led Dr. Xi away in handcuffs, independent experts discovered something wrong with the evidence at the heart of the Justice Department’s case: The blueprints were not for a pocket heater.

Faced with sworn statements from leading scientists, including an inventor of the pocket heater, the Justice Department on Friday afternoon dropped all charges against Dr. Xi, an American citizen.

You would think that this is the sort of thing that the DOJ would check before arresting the guy and destroying his life.

“I don’t expect them to understand everything I do,” Dr. Xi, 57, said in a telephone interview. “But the fact that they don’t consult with experts and then charge me? Put my family through all this? Damage my reputation? They shouldn’t do this. This is not a joke. This is not a game.”

And he's not kidding about putting his family through a terrible situation. A dozen FBI agents "with guns drawn" stormed his home when he was arrested back in May. His whole family was there at the time.

Meanwhile, as the NY Times report notes, this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. Just a few months ago, the DOJ similarly dropped all charges against Sherry Chen, who worked for the National Weather Service. The story here is perhaps even more ridiculous. Chen, in a visit back to China to see her parents, had also visited with a former classmate, who was a senior official in the Ministry of Water. In passing he asked her some questions about how certain projects concerning US reservoirs were funded. Chen later emailed him some links to public websites that contained some basic info (not even that relevant to the original question). She also put him in touch with a colleague she had worked with at the Army Corps of Engineers who might be able to answer more questions. That person reported the emails to officials saying she was "concerned" about what was happening.

And, from there, the DOJ flipped out. It got a warrant, searched her emails and work computers and discovered a very weak link. In searching around, Chen had accessed another database, just for US government workers, using a colleague's password, since she didn't have a password to that particular database (but was allowed to access it). She had downloaded some info that was useful to a project she was working on, and had told her former classmate back in China that if he wanted info from the database, he would need to go through more official channels, suggesting the colleague at the Army Corps. of Engineers... who had just turned her in as a possible spy.

She was later arrested and her name was all over the press -- and then eventually dropped months later when the DOJ finally took the time to realize that she hadn't actually done anything wrong, and it had jumped to all sorts of crazy conclusions because of her one 15 minute meeting and her sending a few emails with public information.

A week before trial was to begin, Mr. Zeidenberg requested a meeting with Carter M. Stewart and Mark T. D’Alessandro, two United States attorneys for the Southern District of Ohio.

“Why,” Mr. Zeidenberg said he asked, “if she’s a spy, is she coming back from China and telling her colleagues that ‘I met this guy in China and this is what he wants to know’? Why is she telling the guy in China, ‘Here’s my boss’s phone number’? Why is she asking for a password over email? Why would you do that?”

Mr. Zeidenberg says the prosecutors listened. On March 10, the day after their meeting, they dismissed the charges.

“Thank God,” Mr. Zeidenberg added.

You'll notice, of course, that both of the individuals arrested are American citizens, but were born in China, leading to reasonable accusations that the DOJ is overreacting to Chinese-Americans and assuming that anything they do with people back in China may be espionage.

Again, it's likely that there is real espionage going on. No one denies that. But when we scare ourselves so much that we're looking for ghosts, we're taking down innocent people because the DOJ is just too amped up looking for "bad guys" and either unable or unwilling to actually look at the evidence first. That's really, really messed up.

This week, we took a look at an interesting question: should the police be able to take control of self-driving cars? One anonymous commenter won most insightful comment of the week by pointing out one of the key problems with this idea:

The problem is that if the police have the ability to take remote control of a car, then the bad guys will also have that capability, along with secret services, therefore the car should normally avoid collisons with anything, and obey hand signals and visible signal lights..

More Important is giving the occupants the ability to override the automatic system, so that for example they can force the car to drive away from, or even through a hostile crowd. Without that options, it becomes easy for gangs to hijack vehicles, spread out across the road to force the car to stop, and then move in behind the car.

In second place, we've got the result of an exchange on our post about an incoherent anti-Netflix editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The writer's bizarre comparison to the airline industry prompted one commenter to wonder what point he thought he was making, spurring Michael to offer up an interpretation:

I think he is trying to argue that the airline industry - which is clearly failing, hated by most of it's customers, being propped up by the government, and showing little or no signs of change is a shining example of a good way to run a business.

Oh, I guess that's what the cable industry actually DOES think.

For editor's choice, we start out on our post about the EPA's wrongheaded support of using copyright law to prevent people from tinkering with their cars' software. Ninja expanded on the point that potential dangers are not a reason to prevent modification:

This cannot be emphasized enough. Thinkering with mechanical parts can do a whole world more damage to the environment than anything else. Many people here remove pollution control mechanisms from their trucks because it decreases the consumption by 3-4%. You stop it by having vehicles undergo obligatory auditing or something but not by preventing people to mess with what they own. This is specially true when you are dealing with agriculture equipment where a lot of farmers do their own maintenance and need access to the software because they wouldn't have the funds to pay for maintenance from the company itself.

Next, after we wondered if Danny Rodriguez's Supreme Court win would help prevent any unauthorized searches, That One Guy made a solid case for why it won't because of a fundamental flaw in the system:

No, it won't, and in fact it won't even slow such searches down. All a cop has to do is claim that they were unaware of the SC ruling, and they'll get to search cars to their heart's content.

So long as police can rely on the 'Good faith exception', they don't have to pay the slightest bit of lip service to what the law actually says, so long as they think they're within the law when they do something(or are willing to lie and claim as such). If anything, the 'good faith exception' provides incentives for cops not knowing the law, as the less they know, the more they can get away with.

For cops, 'Ignorance of the law' is not only a valid excuse in court, it's a desired state.

Over on the funny side, first place goes to a response to Apple's refusal of a court order to decrypt messages for the DOJ. Ben suggested a rephrasing of the reply:

Apple should respond to the DOJ:

No messages were found responsive to your request

(to paraphrase the DOJ's seemingly favorite response to a FOIA request)
... and since they don't have any decrypted iMessages, it would actually be true.

For second place, we head to our post about Getty Images and its disastrous anti-penguin copyright crusade. One commenter suggested we dub the meme-penguin's successor "Getty Streisand" in honor of the debacle, but an anonymous reply provided an even better moniker:

I prefer Petty Images.

For editor's choice on the funny side, just for fun, we've got a double-serving of Star Trek references of varying obscurity thrown out by our commenters this week. First, after someone invoked a paradox on our post about confidential informants, one anonymous commenter harkened back to the original series episode I, Mudd:

Every cop in Tampa is now standing still, head listing to the left, repeatedly muttering 'Norman, coordinate'.

Next, on a DailyDirt post about the many challenges involved in space elevators, another anonymous commenter showed off his even more encyclopaedic Trek knowledge with an obscure reference to the Voyager episode Rise:

yeah, like spending time with Neelix in a enclosed space for hours. No thanks, I would rather listen to Harry's latest recital.

That's all for this week, folks!