Facial recognition software is the wave of the future present. The FBI -- acting without a required Privacy Impact Assessment -- rolled out its system in 2014, finding that a 20% false hit rate was good enough for government (surveillance) work.

Following in the footsteps of Facebook, governments slanting towards the authoritarian side (that's you, Russia!) have deployed facial recognition software to help ensure its citizens are stripped of their anonymity.

Other governments not so seemingly bent on obedience to the state have done the same. UK law enforcement has quietly built a huge facial recognition database and Brazil experimented with police equipment that would turn officers into Robocops -- providing real-time facial recognition to cops via some sort of Google Glass-ish headgear. If what we know about facial recognition software's accuracy rates holds true, the goggles will, indeed, do nothing.

Germany has maintained an arm's-length relationship with its troublesome past. The Stasi and Gestapo's lingering specters still haunt current legislators, occasionally prompting them to curb domestic surveillance efforts. Concerns for the privacy of its citizens has also sometimes resulted in the government making angry noises at tech companies it feels are overstepping their boundaries.

Four years ago, it demanded Facebook destroy data on German citizens in its facial recognition database. Judging from the current push by German officials, it could just be thata the government didn't want any competition.

Speaking to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, [Interior Minister] Thomas de Maiziere said internet software was able to determine whether people shown in photographs were celebrities or politicians.

"I would like to use this kind of facial recognition technology in video cameras at airports and train stations. Then, if a suspect appears and is recognised, it will show up in the system," he told the paper.

This move towards a more Stasi-esque surveillance system is, of course, prompted by recent terrorist attacks in Germany. Nothing propels bad legislation and lowers the price on domestic surveillance real estate more efficiently than tragedies -- especially those "claimed" after-the-fact by members of the Islamic State.

For those more concerned with lonely baggage, the government is all over that, too.

He said a similar system was already being tested for unattended luggage, which the camera reports after a certain number of minutes.

The lesson here is never forget where you set down your duffel bag -- unless you like watching it being detonated by security teams from a safe distance.

As for the dystopian future awaiting Germans as their government does all it can to help the terrorists win, the Interior Minister offers this shrug of a statement:

"We will have to get used to increased security measures, such as longer queues, stricter checks or personal entry cards. This is tedious, uncomfortable and costs time but I don't think it's a limitation of personal freedom," he said.

Longer lines and more "papers, please" -- just the sort of thing that will push memories of Nazi Germany and the Berlin Wall into the background.

Well, one of the big Prenda cases may finally be over. As you may recall, the first truly scathing legal ruling against Team Prenda came a little over three years ago when Judge Otis Wright basically lit Team Prenda on fire. If you haven't read that whole decision in a while, it's still a thing of beauty. Here's just one paragraph:

Plaintiffs have demonstrated their willingness to deceive not just this Court, but other courts where they have appeared. Plaintiffs’ representations about their operations, relationships, and financial interests have varied from feigned ignorance to misstatements to outright lies. But this deception was calculated so that the Court would grant Plaintiffs’ early-discovery requests, thereby allowing Plaintiffs to identify defendants and exact settlement proceeds from them. With these granted requests, Plaintiffs borrow the authority of the Court to pressure settlement.

Since this was their first really major loss in court, Team Prenda still brashly insisted they would prevail on appeal, and that Judge Wright's ruling would not last. At the time Prenda mastermind John Steele even insisted that this was the only time that they had lost:

But very few people can argue that these [sanctions] are allowed, legally. The overwhelming majority of courts have found in our favor in hearings. The only cases that stand out are Judge Wright.

Of course, since then, court after court after court after court after court has ruled against Steele (there are more, I just got tired of finding them all). And, of course, Steele is facing discipline from the Illinois Attorney Discipline Board and, quite possibly, criminal trials (where the investigation likely began following Judge Wright's ruling, which passed along the info to law enforcement).

In the midst of all of this, Steele's big appeal of Wright's ruling, that he was so sure about, fell flat on its face back in June. For all of Steele's talk about how Wright was totally off base and there was no basis for sanctions, the 9th Circuit didn't buy it at all.

The district court did not abuse its discretion in ordering the Prenda Principals to post additional bond to cover Doe’s attorney’s fees on appeal. The district court had ample reason to do so. The Prenda Principals have engaged in abusive litigation, fraud on courts across the country, and willful violation of court orders. They have lied to other courts about their ability to pay sanctions.... They also failed to pay their own attorney’s fees in this case. Considering the Prenda Principals’ tactics throughout this case, it was not an abuse of discretion to increase the bond amount to cover the projected cost of attorney’s fees on appeal.

Given all that, the case went back down to Judge Wright and, finally, it appears that this case is really over. Earlier this week, Judge Wright basically closed out the case after Steele and Hansmeier* agreed to settle rather than try to fight on, with the insurance company that had originally secured the bond they needed to get to cover the possible sanctions, SureTec, agreeing to pay out the money. (*Well, not really Hansmeier -- since he filed bankruptcy, the bankruptcy trustee handled it for him instead).

Doe, Steele, and Hansmeier filed a stipulation and proposed order with the Ninth Circuit seeking to settle all issues that were the subject of the appeal, the relevant terms of which are as follows: (1) Doe shall be paid a total amount of $132,393.75, which consists of the original $81,319.72 sanction, $278.73 in interest, and $50,795.30 in costs and fees incurred on appeal; (2) Doe will move this Court for summary adjudication of SureTec’s obligation on the bonds in the amount of $132,393.75, which Steele and Hansmeier agree not to oppose; and (3) Doe, Steele, and Hansmeier agree not to file any further motions, appeals, or petitions for writ of certiorari on the issues adjudicated on appeal.

Judge Wright accepts the agreement and the case is basically, finally, over.

Lyft just announced an interesting partnership with MARTA, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority to basically help get more people to and from MARTA stations. It's an interesting approach to try to help make public transit more convenient:

Partnering with transit agencies like MARTA is a core part of our vision to build a sustainable transportation network. By helping fill the first and last miles between a passenger’s home and a MARTA station, we’re making it easier than ever to ride transit. We believe that when transit is within reach of everyone, our cities are more liveable, connected, and prosperous.

Of course, it's not entirely clear what's really involved in the "partnership" beyond marketing. Yes, Lyft is offering discount vouchers, but only for 10 rides. And you could already use Lyft or Uber to do this without the partnership.

Where this potentially gets more interesting is the decision of Dublin, California, to look to Lyft and Uber as a substitute for public transportation by subsidizing rides via those companies instead of taking a bus.

In a first for California, a public transit agency next month plans to begin subsidizing fares of people who take private Uber and Lyft cars to local destinations rather than riding the bus.

Passengers ordering Uber or Lyft car trips within two test areas of Dublin will be eligible to get door-to-destination service at a big discount under a partnership between the ride-hailing companies and the Wheels public bus system in Dublin, Alameda and Pleasanton.

The local transit authority is even suggesting that this might change the way they set up routes and serve certain communities. In fact, they've already killed off one (little used) bus route, suggesting that this new partnership can help replace that route more efficiently.

I can see why this might annoy some people -- and certainly those who don't trust big private companies like Uber and Lyft are going to complain. Similarly the bus driver's union rep is apparently pissed off. But this is still a really interesting experiment. If it allows municipalities to truly offer better, more efficient transportation and it's cheaper overall, then is it really a problem that some companies might also make some profits from it? It will be interesting to see how this experiment in Dublin works out and if other cities follow suit. And it seems like a much better idea than what's happening in Massachusetts, where the government has instituted a special tax on Lyft and Uber... and giving that money to the taxi companies who didn't innovate.

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also helps support Techdirt.

Okay, this is one of my absolute favorite books for understanding economics -- and especially the economics of information. Have you ever read a book where you keep finding yourself excited because you've discovered that other people had independently worked out a bunch of the ideas that had been sifting through your brain? That's what Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery by David Warsh was for me. It almost made me giddy, because I had just been working through my own mental model for the economics of abundance, and then I discovered that some pretty well known economists had been sorting the same things out themselves. It was exciting.

The book is really well written too. Most of the first half is a fun look at historical economists (going beyond just the economics of information and growth, but using that as a sort of central theme). And then the rest focuses on the work of the economist Paul Romer, who basically brought things around in a very useful way when it comes to the economics of information. Actually, one of the things that bothered/stunned me a little was that this work had been done so recently. As I had been sorting through it, I kept thinking back to applying work from much earlier economists, without realizing that it was still considered such a challenging issue. A key point in the book is understanding how information is the key to economic growth, and in particular, the fact that information itself is abundant, rather than scarce. It's that abundance, and the ability to spread it, that creates new ideas, better efficiency, more growth and a better overall world. Before all that, many economists had actually been confused as to why some economies grew, and others didn't -- and they were equally confused about the role of technology in enabling economic growth. This book lays out a lot of points around this in a really useful manner. I reread it every few years and recommend it highly.

As you may have heard, if you have an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, even iPod Touch) you should be updating your devices, like a few hours ago. Seriously, if you haven't done it yet, stop reading and go update. The story behind this update is quite incredible, and is detailed in a great article over at Motherboard by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai. Basically after someone (most likely a gov't) targeted Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates with a slightly questionable text (urging him to click on a link to get info about prison torture), a team of folks from Citizen Lab (who have exposed lots of questionable malware) and Lookout (anti-malware company) got to work on the text and figured out what it did. And, basically the short version is that the single click exploits three separate 0days vulnerabilities to effectively take over your phone in secret. All of it. It secretly jailbreaks the phone without you knowing it and then accesses basically everything.

“It basically steals all the information on your phone, it intercepts every call, it intercepts every text message, it steals all the emails, the contacts, the FaceTime calls. It also basically backdoors every communications mechanism you have on the phone,” Murray explained. “It steals all the information in the Gmail app, all the Facebook messages, all the Facebook information, your Facebook contacts, everything from Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, WeChat, Telegram—you name it.”

So that's great.

The researches believe they've tracked back the exploit to a secretive hacking company called NSO Group. The full Citizen Lab writeup on all of this is quite fascinating as well. They estimate that this exploit from NSO probably costs in the range of a million dollars on the market, though obviously it's closed now. That doesn't mean that NSO or others don't have other exploits up their sleeves.

The report also notes that this kind of exploit is probably just used by nation states right now, but there's nothing to say that it couldn't move down the stack before too long, letting all sorts of mischievous characters look to basically completely pwn your phone. Pretty scary stuff, and yet another reminder of why it's so dangerous that folks like the NSA are hoarding 0days, rather than revealing them, and that the FBI is trying to force tech companies to break encryption and other tools that are necessary to block these kinds of attacks.

A former Defense Intelligence Agency officer has taken to LinkedIn to point out to all of us griping about the broken Vulnerability Equities Process -- exposed by hackers holding NSA zero-days -- have it all wrong. Michael Tanji says the NSA isn't here to protect developers from malicious attacks. It never was and it's never going to be.

Intelligence agencies exist to gather information, analyze it, and deliver their findings to policymakers so that they can make decisions about how to deal with threats to the nation. Period. You can, and agencies often do, dress this up and expand on it in order to motivate the workforce, or more likely grab more money and authority, but when it comes down to it, stealing and making sense of other people’s information is the job. Doing code reviews and QA for Cisco is not the mission.

Suck it up, Cisco. That gaping hole uncovered by the Shadow Brokers was discovered at least three years ago by the NSA and if it chose not to tell you about it, it had its reasons. Namely: national security.

The Obama administration made sympathetic noises in the wake of the Snowden leaks, suggesting the NSA err on the side of disclosure. It simultaneously gave the agency no reason to ever do that by appending "unless national security, etc." to the statement.

But part of the phrase "national security" is the word "security." (And the other part -- "national" -- suggests this directive also covers protecting US companies from attacks, not just the more amorphous "American public.") Allowing tech companies who provide network security software and hardware to other prime hacking targets to remain unaware of security holes doesn't exactly serve the nation or its security. So, while Tanji may claim the NSA isn't in the QA business, it sort of is. The thing is the NSA prefers to exploit QA issues, rather than give affected developers a chance to patch them.

And if an NSA operative left behind a bag of tech tools in a compromised server, it really doesn't do much for the argument that the government can be trusted with encryption backdoors -- the sort of thing FBI Director James Comey is still hoping will materialize as a result of his never ending "going dark" sales pitch. Julian Sanchez, writing for Cato, points out the NSA's mistake should lead to some pretty severe trust issues.

This hack also ought to give pause to anyone swayed by the government’s assurances that we can mandate government backdoors in encryption software and services, allowing the “good guys” (law enforcement and intelligence agencies) to access the communications of criminals and terrorists without compromising the security of millions of innocent users. If even the NSA’s most closely guarded hacking tools cannot be secured, why would any reasonable person believe that keys to cryptographic backdoors could be adequately protected by far less sophisticated law enforcement agencies? The Equation Group hack is a disturbingly concrete demonstration of what network security experts have been saying all along: Once you create a backdoor, there is no realistic way to guarantee that only the good guys will be able to walk through it.

So, that's one huge problem with both the hoarding of exploits and the NSA's refusal to actually participate in the Vulnerability Equities Process. The definition the NSA has chosen for "national security" doesn't mesh with statements made by its cybersecurity overseers.

Back in 2014, federal cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel insisted in a post on the White House blog that the process is strongly weighted in favor of disclosure. The government, he assured the public, understands that “[b]uilding up a huge stockpile of undisclosed vulnerabilities while leaving the Internet vulnerable and the American people unprotected would not be in our national security interest.”

Maybe things have changed in the past couple of years, but they haven't changed as much as Michael Tanji claims. He states that the NSA is no longer charged with playing cyber-defense.

The one element in the intelligence community that was charged with supporting defense is no more. I didn’t like it then, and it seems pretty damn foolish now, but there you are, all in the name of “agility.” NSA’s IAD had the potential to do the things that all the security and privacy pundits imagine should be done for the private sector, but their job was still keeping Uncle Sam secure, not Wal-Mart.

That's simply not true. The NSA may secretly wish it had been completely rerouted to "attack" mode. That would more easily justify the hoarding of vulnerabilities and its ongoing refusal to hand over info to affected developers. But it's still supposed to be playing defense -- which means it has an obligation to both the American public who use software/hardware the NSA would rather see left unpatched, as well as the developers it's purposefully leaving open to malicious attacks.

The NSA has decided the best way to handle these competing directives is to muddy the waters by making them inseparable.

Because computers are now the easiest way to spy on people, and because everyone — even U.S. adversaries — uses the same Internet, there has long been what officials like to call a "healthy" or "creative" tension between the foreign espionage mission and the information assurance mission of the NSA.

Crudely put, the IA's cyber mission is to find security holes in Internet infrastructure and common software and patch them; the signals intelligence mission is to find the same holes and keep them open as long as possible so they can be used to spy on foreigners.

When the two directorates merge, some fear that the much larger and better funded signals intelligence mission will simply absorb the IA mission.

As it stands now, the offensive side of the NSA's cybersquad is roughly twice the size of its defensive team -- which clearly indicates which end of the equation the NSA believes is more important to its national security mission.

The NSA's actions in regards to the Vulnerability Equities Process shows it believes some forms of national security are more equal than others. It's far more interested in ensuring its collections continue to be fed than it is with patching security holes -- holes it has often created -- that affect millions of US citizens and dozens of hacker-tempting firms.

It also shows the government is not to be trusted when it demands "good guy only" access. It can't protect the backdoors it's already created and it has only the slightest interest in protecting the nation from the bad guys that will inevitably find its secret entrances.

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Over on LinkedIn a guy named Jim Weber wrote about how he was banned permanently from Twitter because he shared a few GIFs from the Olympics.

It all started when I saw a GIF of her sublime first pass on the floor routine two weeks ago on the front page of Reddit. Wanting to share what an awesome moment this was, I downloaded the GIF and uploaded it to Twitter with these four words: "Aly Raisman: She's good."

[To be fully transparent, I also tweeted GIFs of this awesome Japanese wrestler celebrating with her coach and this incredible Perfect 10 by a Chinese diver during the games.]

I had read that the IOC was banning the press from using GIFs but I didn't see how that applied to me. Sure, I didn't have the rights to any footage at the Olympics — just like countless blogs and users don't have rights to the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and NCAA footage that they create GIFs out of and profit from every day.

Weber notes that he figured the worst that would happen is that those tweets would get taken down. Instead, his account was banned. Permanently (though, as it turned out later, not really). The story has gone pretty viral (on Twitter, naturally), with lots of people expressing anger at Twitter. It also appears that soon after the story started spreading, Twitter actually changed its mind and put back his account.

Here's the thing, though: if you want to get upset about this, don't get upset at Twitter. Get furious at parts of the DMCA and how some courts have interpreted it lately (and the International Olympic Committee -- it almost always deserves the anger that is pointed in its direction for its extreme protectionist/copyright policies). But remember, not too long ago, the ISP Cox lost big time in an important DMCA case, at the key issue that swayed the judge was the lack of a competent "repeat infringer policy." And what was one of the key things in that case? The fact that Cox didn't permanently ban people.

So if you're the legal team at Twitter, and you're keeping up on the caselaw, you better believe that you're going to make sure that you have a serious "repeat infringer policy" that kicks people off permanently for sharing a few pieces of copyright-covered material. Because even as basically everyone is saying "what? you shouldn't lose your account permanently for sharing a few happy gifs from the Olympics," in court it would be spun as "Twitter has a history of failing to reasonably implement a repeat infringer policy, as required by the DMCA in Section 512(i)(1)(A)." And if the Olympics or whoever gets a judge like the one in the Cox case, who doesn't seem to care much about whether people use the internet or not, Twitter might just lose.

Yes, Twitter probably could have handled this a lot better, but if you want to get angry, get angry that copyright law is so fucked up these days.

Oh, also, this is a decent reminder to be at least somewhat careful about relying too much on anyone's platform. Weber claims to recognize that...

Not only do I not plan to start a new Twitter account, I'm hesitant to post anything to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat with the knowledge that they can and will permanently shut down your account with the snap of their fingers.

... except his post about all of this is published on LinkedIn, which is really no different than any of the other social media platforms he listed above. So there's a bit of irony in declaring that he's hesitant to post on social media platforms... on a social media platform.

If you do a Google search on Roy Den Hollander, as I just did, you may discover that basically every result is a story about some absolutely ridiculous lawsuit he has filed. There was the time he sued a nightclub claiming that requiring him to buy a $350 bottle of vodka was a human rights violation. Or the time he sued a bunch of night clubs for violating the 14th Amendment by having "Ladies' Nights." Or the time he sued Columbia University for offering women's studies courses. Or the time he wanted to file a lawsuit to force women to register for the draft. And these are all stories from just the first page of Google results (or following links from those stories). But, you get the idea.

And now he's back with a new lawsuit. He's basically suing the entire mainstream media claiming that how they report on Donald Trump is a RICO violation. No, really.

This is an action against the above named defendant news reporters and commentators (“Reporters”) for violating the civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1961 et al., (“RICO”) by repeatedly committing the racketeering activity of wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1343, when they (1) create and cause to be broadcast and disseminated false and misleading news reports concerning the Donald J. Trump candidacy for President of the United States (“Trump Candidacy”); (2) provide commentary based on a false set of facts or fail to reveal the alleged factual basis for the assertion of their judgments; and (3) lobby on various news-talk shows in furtherance of their opposition to the Trump Candidacy.

And to think, I'd been looking for an opportunity to point people to Ken "Popehat" White's Lawsplainer entitled IT'S NOT RICO, DAMMIT:

Would it be RICO if . . .

NnnnoooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

via GIPHY

. . . .

No.

But how do you know? I haven't even described the case yet.

It's never RICO!

I mean, not literally never. But I can say with a very high level of confidence that if you're asking me, it's not RICO.

But it's an important case! And the facts are terrible! This defendant did really bad things.

That's not what RICO means. RICO is not a fucking frown emoji. It's not an exclamation point. It's not a rhetorical tool to convey you are upset about something. It's not a petulant foot-stomp.

RICO is a really complicated racketeering law that has elaborate requirements that are difficult to meet. It's overused by idiot plaintiff lawyers, and it's ludicrously overused by a hundred million jackasses on the internet with an opinion and a mood disorder.

There's more at that link. You should read it if you ever wonder if a case is a RICO case.

The lawsuit prattles on and on, but it's not RICO. And, of course, it's not going anywhere, because of the First Amendment. And, honestly, the court might as well just say "No, go away" and point to the First Amendment, but instead will be forced to waste it's time in writing up a more comprehensive explanation for why the media reporting, no matter how much you disagree with it, is not breaking the law.

Olympics watchers repeatedly begged Comcast for live opening ceremonies, more live events, less host prattle, and fewer ads ahead of the recent games in Rio. What did Comcast deliver instead? A smorgasbord of abysmal bloviation, tape delays, and so many advertisements that many people stopped watching in disgust. As a result, the Rio Olympics were the lowest rated Summer Olympics since 2000, with average viewership down 17% and an overall audience that was 25% smaller than 2012 in the 18-to-49 demo.

We've already noted how a big reason was Comcast/NBC's absolute refusal to actually listen to paying customers and heed lessons from the cord cutting era. But a Bloomberg headline this week proudly crowed that Millennials were somehow to blame for the slide. Amusingly, the piece cites a comment from NBC exec Steve Burke, who last June described a scenario he said would be a "nightmare":

"We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20 percent,” the chief executive officer of NBCUniversal said at a conference. “If that happens, my prediction would be that millennials had been in a Facebook bubble or a Snapchat bubble and the Olympics have come, and they didn’t know it."

That is, so we're clear, an NBC exec predicting that if NBC's Olympics ratings dropped, it would be the fault of Millennials living in a bubble -- not possibly due to anything NBC did. And with ratings dropping from 17 to 25%, Burke's nightmare scenario effectively came true. NBC is quick to point out that streaming was actually up, but that wasn't able to help an overall dive in ratings. And while Comcast/NBC is quick to insist it's adapting to consumer demand, people young and old found Olympic streaming to be an annoying and cumbersome experience littered with paywalls, delays, authentication issues, and other headaches:

"I’m sure NBC were patting themselves on the backs for how easy it would be to watch online this year, but that’s only true for cable subscribers, a slowly shrinking percentage of the US population, especially for Millennials. The reason NBC is losing Millennials to other platforms for entertainment is because all of those platforms have lowered the barriers to enjoy the programming. I can sign up for Hulu, Netflix, and HBO nearly in an instant. Oh, and did I mention they’re all ad free (with a premium on Hulu)?

Had NBC offered the entire Olympic Platform for a small fee (less than $10), they probably would have seen their Millennial numbers skyrocket. Hell, they could have charged $5 more for an “Ad Free” presentation and padded their pockets even more. But instead, they relied on the old dying models of traditional broadcast network and revenue models of years past, and it bit them in the ass.

Why is streaming so clunky and difficult? Because most cable industry streaming efforts are designed to give the illusion of innovation, flexibility and adaptation, without actually providing any of these. Why? Because offering a truly easy, inexpensive online streaming service (Olympics or otherwise) would cannibalize the traditional cable TV cash cow. As such, easy, flexible and inexpensive streaming remains an intentional afterthought, and will until cord cutting finally reaches critical mass. In short, like so many legacy industries, pay TV won't truly adapt until the house is fully engulfed in flames.