Olives @olives@qoto.org

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

According to the same database, it appears that Apple also censored an app in 2024 for "pornography", although with a wider scope than just in one country. #WarOnPorn

https://reclaimthenet.org/jpmorgan-to-roll-out-controversial-biometric-payments
"America’s largest bank and one of the largest in the world, J.P. Morgan, is preparing to launch biometric payments next year and is currently carrying out pilot projects.

J.P. Morgan has chosen PopID – which verifies a person’s identity via facial recognition, among other methods – as the backbone for the project."

"The ultimate goal is to expand authentication based on individuals’ fingerprints, palms, and faces to anyone interested, but with a focus on stores, restaurants, and various event venues.

J.P. Morgan says this will be a faster and safer, as well as “personalized” way for customers to pay, while those with things to sell are promised higher turnover and improved customer loyalty, but also a centralized place to access transactions and marketing data, say reports."

#privacy #FaceRecognition

According to the E.U. "transparency database", the website known as "#Pinterest", is very puritanical and removes content left and right.

There is a literal tidal wave of entries relating to it. #WarOnPorn

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/congress-must-stop-pushing-bills-will-benefit-patent-trolls
"The U.S. Senate is moving forward with two bills that would enrich patent trolls, patent system insiders, and a few large companies that rely on flimsy patents, at the expense of everyone else.

One bill, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) would bring back some of the worst software patents we’ve seen, and even re-introduce types of patents on human genes that were banned years ago. Meanwhile, a similar group of senators is trying to push forward the PREVAIL Act (S. 2220), which would shut out most of the public from even petitioning the government to reconsider wrongly granted patents."

"Patent trolls are companies that don’t focus on making products or selling services. Instead, they collect patents, then use them to threaten or sue other companies and individuals. They’re not a niche problem; patent trolls filed the majority of patent lawsuits last year and for all the years in which we have good data. In the tech sector, they file more than 80% of the lawsuits. These do-nothing companies continue to be vigorous users of the patent system, and they’ll be the big winners under the two bills the U.S. Senate is considering pushing forward."
#copyright

https://reason.com/2024/03/13/ending-fees-and-fines-for-juvenile-offenders-is-best-for-rehabilitation/
"I was a judge and chief judge of Delaware's Family Court for over 17 years. In those roles, I held trials and oversaw plea agreements where I was required to order youths under 18 to pay fines and fees that ended up pushing them deeper into the criminal justice system when they inevitably did not pay. I have thus seen firsthand the problems that court-imposed financial obligations create for young people and their families who are often already struggling financially."

"financial penalties in general and the sheer amount of financial penalties in particular significantly increase the likelihood of recidivism, even after controlling for relevant demographics and case characteristics"
#HumanRights