Olives @olives@qoto.org

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously (414-0) to pass the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024: http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20240318/HR%207520%20-%20Pallone.pdf

https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-appeal-quashes-conviction-of-man-found-guilty-of-sending-a-grossly-offensive-email-to-local-politician
"In the UK, the Court of Appeal has taken a stance on what constitutes “malicious communications” – and when speech should not be construed as such, because it is part of a political debate.

The appellate court ruling in R (Crown) v. Thomas Casserly overturned the first instance judgment that found a man guilty of violating the 1988 Malicious Communications Act."

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-023-00953-1
"We exploit variations in the timing of decriminalization of same-sex sexual intercourse across US states to estimate the impact of these law changes on crime through difference-in-differences and event study models. We provide the first evidence that sodomy law repeals led to a decline in the number of arrests for disorderly conduct, prostitution, and other sex offenses. Moreover, in line with the hypothesis that sodomy law repeals enhanced mental health and lessened minority stress, we show that these repeals led to a reduction in arrests for drug and alcohol consumption."

Frankly, freaking out about minors possibly seeing porn is also fairly stupid.

https://www.heise.de/news/EU-Kommission-untersucht-AliExpress-wegen-moeglicher-Verkaeufe-illegaler-Waren-9655579.html
Come on, there are easier ways for minors to acquire "pornography" than ordering it off some site like Amazon. This is ridiculous.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/safe-act-two-steps-forward-one-step-back
"The Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act would make some much-needed and long fought-for reforms, but it also does not go nearly far enough to rein in a surveillance law that the federal government has abused time and time again."

"The first and most important reform the bill would make is to require the government to obtain a warrant before accessing the content of communications for people in the United States."

"this does not stop the IC or law enforcement from querying to see if the government has collected communications from specific individuals under Section 702—it merely stops them from reading those communications without a warrant"

"The second major reform the SAFE Act provides is to close the “data brooker loophole,” which EFF has been calling attention to for years. As one example, mobile apps often collect user data to sell it to advertisers on the open market. The problem is law enforcement and intelligence agencies increasingly buy this private user data, rather than obtain a warrant for it."

"This provision does include a potentially significant exception for situations where the government cannot exclude Americans’ data from larger “compilations” that include foreigners’ data."

"Unfortunately, the SAFE Act contains at least one truly nasty addition to current law: an entirely new crime that makes it a felony to disclose “the existence of an application” for foreign intelligence surveillance or any of the application’s contents. In addition to explicitly adding to the existing penalties in the Espionage Act—itself highly controversial— this new provision seems aimed at discouraging leaks by increasing the potential sentence to eight years in prison."
#privacy

https://reason.com/2024/03/15/the-government-doesnt-want-you-to-see-the-unused-space-force-logos/
"Reason filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Air Force in January 2020 for drafts or alternate designs for the logo of the nascent Space Force"

"the Air Force released 122 pages of communications between the public servants who designed the uniforms, logo, and seal for Star Fleet—excuse me, Space Force."
Haha, this is bound to be one interesting #FOIA.

"the Air Force redacted all images of the draft versions, citing Exemption (b)(5) of the FOIA"
Oh.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/03/ftc-doj-file-comment-us-copyright-office-supporting-renewal-expansion-exemptions-facilitating
"The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (DOJ) have submitted a comment to the U.S. Copyright Office to advocate for regulations that would facilitate consumers’ and businesses’ right to repair their own products.

The FTC-DOJ submitted the comment as the Copyright Office considers whether to recommend that the Librarian of Congress renew and expand temporary exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) prohibition against the circumvention of technology protection measures that control access to copyrighted content."
#copyright #dmca #RightToRepair

https://reason.com/2024/03/06/your-local-dmv-may-have-no-sense-of-humor/
"Pennsylvania is far from the only state that has banned acronyms from vanity plates. New York doesn't allow NOTPOLCE or, for whatever reason, AY000000. Tennessee banned ILVTOFU back in 2014 for a vegan application. In 2017, Georgia banned Donald Trump's infamous COVFEFE gaffe. Kentucky said no to KARMA."
#FirstAmendment

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/san-diego-city-council-breaks-trust
"In a stunning reversal against the popular Transparent & Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology (TRUST) ordinance, the San Diego city council voted earlier this year to cut many of the provisions that sought to ensure public transparency for law enforcement surveillance technologies."

"The city kept the ordinance unapplied and untested, and then in the late summer of 2023, a little over a year after passage, the mayor proposed a package of changes that would gut the ordinance. This included exemption of a long list of technologies, including ARJIS databases and record management system data storage. These changes were later approved this past January.

But use of these databases should require, for example, auditing to protect data security for city residents."

"are vowing to introduce even more amendments to further erode the gains of this ordinance so that San Diegans won’t have a chance to know how their local law enforcement surveils them, and no democratic body will be required to consent to the technologies, new or old"
#privacy

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/vending-machine-facial-analysis-invenda-waterloo-1.7126196
"An Ontario university is pulling dozens of vending machines that were tracking the age and gender of customers in the latest example of pushback against technology that tests the boundaries of #privacy rules."
#canada

https://nichegamer.com/steam-bans-order-us-for-having-an-adult-with-a-small-chest/
By the way, that was also NCOSE (a group of puritanical Christian fundamentalists led by Mormon fundamentalists).

Back in 2018, they bragged about lobbying #Steam (and misled them), and took responsibility for it. They would probably rather Steam bans all sexual content though.

#anime #WarOnPorn