Posts Tagged technology

Facebook Sets Up Lobbying Group To Claim They Are Essential To Free Speech

From Blacklisted News via The Washington Post:

The Post also states that the lobbying effort will involve arguments that “strong restrictions imposed on tech giants could hurt US firms and ultimately serve to aid their competitors, particularly in China.”
Confirming its involvement to the Post, Facebook claimed that the lobbying group will “help build support for our industry.”
Facebook is desperate to avoid regulation because it would mean an entire overhaul of its business structure.

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Smart Guns Are A Bug, Not A Feature

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

But Stephens and his colleagues have found glaring technical challenges. Prototypes generally feature biometrics or proximity-sensing radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips to authenticate users and unlock firearms. The trouble is that fingerprint readers struggle with sweat or dirt, and friends in law enforcement advised Stephens that cops often wear gloves. A sensor error in a self-defense situation could prove fatal.

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Patriot Act Reform Fails By One Vote

From Ars Technica:

A majority of senators—59 out of 100—supported the amendment. But under the Senate’s dysfunctional rules, it takes a 60-vote supermajority to end debate on a proposal like this and move to a vote. So even though a majority of senators supported the amendment, it did not become part of the reauthorization bill.
Four senators—Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) missed the vote. The amendment would have passed if any of them had voted “yes.”

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Kickstarter Denies Company Building Gun Locks

From Guns America:

When Dave Hellekson invented the Pumalock Interrupter, he hoped to fund his new venture by launching a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. While the popular website prohibits funding for “weapon accessories,” Helleckson’s quick-access gun lock is, by definition, not an accessory.
That’s why he was surprised when Kickstarter instantly rejected his campaign. Assuming the company’s bots had mistakenly flagged his product, he reached out to a customer service agent, who replied:

“We disallow any weapons accessories regardless of their intended use. As such, we would not be able to approve this project, per both Kickstarter’s rules and the rules of our payments processor.”

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New Zealand Gun Database Leaked Private Information

From Reason:

Law-abiding gun owners who complied with New Zealand’s mandatory gun buyback program and surrendered their assault weapons to the government discovered Monday that their privacy had been compromised by poor website security.

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The Corporate Surveillance State

From The Guardian:

Imagine a government with the power to spy on any critic, reporter or activist. A state with the capacity to extort or silence by tracking not just a person’s movements but her conversations, contacts, photos, notes, emails … the entire content of one’s digital life.
This may sound like something from dystopian fiction, but such targeted surveillance is a grim reality of the digital age. It is increasingly a tool of repressive governments to stifle debate, criticism and journalism. Over and over, researchers and journalists have been uncovering evidence of governments, with the help of private companies, inserting malware through surreptitious means into the smartphones, laptops and other devices belonging to people they are seeking to suppress: people who play essential roles in democratic life, facilitating the public’s right to information.

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Police Can’t Force Your Password

From EFF:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a forceful opinion today holding that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects individuals from being forced to disclose the passcode to their devices to the police. In a 4-3 decision in Commonwealth v. Davis, the court found that disclosing a password is “testimony” protected by the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination.

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Judge Says There Should Be A License For 3D Printing Software

From Reason:

This week, Judge Robert A. Lasnik of U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, in deciding on motions for summary judgment in that suit, State of Washington et al. v. U.S. Department of State et al., agreed that removing those files from the USML was unlawful based on the APA arguments (though not the 10th Amendment ones), and reversed the federal government’s choice to allow free distribution of the files.
As discussed in Lasnik’s decision, the federal government’s initial reaction to the states’ suit “justified the deregulation of the CAD files [that could help make weapons]…by pointing to a Department of Defense determination that the items ‘do not provide the United States with a critical military or intelligence advantage’ and ‘are already commonly available and not inherently for military end-use.'”

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Searches Of Travelers’ Devices Unconstitutional

From Electronic Frontier Foundation:

In a major victory for privacy rights at the border, a federal court in Boston ruled today that suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices by federal agents at airports and other U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional.

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Lawmakers Want Tax Money To Fund Gun Technology

From Guns.com:

A group of House Democrats last week introduced a bill that would set aside Department of Justice funds to research so-called “smart guns.”
The aim of “The Advancing Gun Safety Technology Act” is to back “private-sector commercialization of gun-safety technology” through a $10 million pilot program in 2021 funded through DOJ. Companies who have an initial product design and a “demonstrable commitment to reducing unintentional or unauthorized shootings” would be eligible to apply for a grant through the program.

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TX Speaker Blocks Citizens From Facebook Page

From The Truth About Guns:

Now, Lone Star Gun Rights has filed suit against Bonnen for blocking their access to his Facebook page (where they’ve tried to counter his dubious claims about the constitutional carry bill). Does that sound crazy? Tell that to a New York thee-judge Appeals Court panel that ruled President Trump couldn’t block readers from his social media accounts.

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YouTube Continues Crackdown On Gun Channels

From Bearing Arms:

So, YouTube appears to have informally implemented a new, unspoken policy (i.e., I could not find this in the content guidelines) whereby it will demonetize videos which aren’t shot in a “controlled environment” such as a “shooting range.”

This raises a lot of questions, not the least of which is:
How does YouTube determine what usage is improper? Is there someone at YouTube with proper training on safe gun handling who will implement these policies?*
How will they know when someone is in a “controlled environment” or not, and who has the authority to reach that conclusion?
Is a shooting range, in fact, safer and more “controlled” than the creator’s private property such that this policy needs to be implemented, to begin with?
WHAT IS A MODIFIED WEAPON?
Who do you think you are?
What gives you right?

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Defense Distributed CEO Discusses Future

From Reason:

For Paloma Heindorff, who took over as head of the company last year after stints as director of development and vice president of operations, these innovations are an important part of keeping the powerful in check. “We’ve got to be developing technologies in the independent sector to be able to counterbalance the enormous control that the government has and the enormous access to information that corporations have,” she says.

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Lawsuit Fails Against Armslist

From Guns.com:

In a 5-1 ruling, the court held the federal Communications Decency Act shields the Oklahoma-based website in the case. This had the effect of clearing Armslist of liability in the Brady suit, which aimed to find blame with the company following a 2012 shooting with a firearm purchased from a listing on the site.
A judge in a previous 2016 ruling by a lower court also cited CDA, saying that since Armslist did not create the ad or directly become involved in the transaction, they cannot be held at fault over such third-party content.

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YouTube Demonetizes Self Defense Advocate

From Gun Dynamics:

Conservative YouTuber and second amendment activist Antonia Okafor reports that her entire channel was stripped of advertising revenue by the Google-owned video platform after she uploaded an interview about self-defense with a fellow conservative.

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