AT&T Sues California Regulators For Trying To Make Broadband Affordable

Broadband

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

Five years years ago AT&T effectively stopped selling DSL and started hanging up on DSL and copper phone line customers. While killing landlines and DSL is understandable given the limitations of the dated copper-based tech, the problem is that thanks to concentrated telecom monopolization, many of these customers were left without any replacement options due to a lack of competition.

There are other issues at play too. AT&T has, for decades, received countless billions in tax cuts, subsidies, merger approvals, and regulatory favors in exchange for building infrastructure it either didn’t complete, didn’t maintain, or didn’t upgrade. There’s a rich back history of AT&T taking taxpayer money and then failing to deliver upgrades that were promised local municipalities.

Many of folks impacted by AT&T’s decision to hang up on copper are rural or elderly folks who relied on traditional landlines for reliable 911 access but are either outside the range of cellular, or find cellular to be less reliable and significantly more expensive on fixed budgets. The system has a tendency to downplay or ignore these folks.

So you can see how there’s a tension between private telecom monopolies and public interest regulators (the few we still have) tasked with protecting taxpayers and the public interest.

In 20 of the 21 states AT&T operates in, its lobbyists have managed to sell lawmakers on eliminating Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) obligations requiring it provide landline telephone service to any potential customer in its service territory. It’s easy to lobby lawmakers on the idea that the company needs to “move forward past outdated regulations,” and ignore the actual real-world impact or AT&T’s rich history of subsidy fraud or limitations of wireless as a fixed-line alternative.

But they’ve run into trouble in California, after the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) told AT&T in 2024 it can’t just hang up on these unwanted (taxpayer subsidized) connections. The CPUC said it’s not blocking AT&T from retiring its aging copper networks, but it wants some AT&T dedication to upgrading failing infrastructure to more modern fiber, not just throw “good enough” wireless at the problem.

Last week AT&T sued California and CPUC (full lawsuit here). AT&T is also asking the Trump FCC to intervene and prevent the CPUC from doing its job. AT&T, for its part, sells this as a story of California leveraging outdated regulations to block AT&T from embracing modernization:

“The federal government and virtually all States where AT&T historically offered POTS [Plain Old Telephone Service] have now eliminated outdated regulatory obstacles, allowing AT&T to begin powering down its POTS network and increasing its investments in modern communication technologies. California stands alone in resisting this progress.”

CPUC counters by saying they don’t want customers who used to have reliable landline service shoveled off to costly and less reliable wireless services instead of fiber. Or left without any connection whatsoever after spending the last four decades slathering AT&T with subsidies.

But it’s worth noting that AT&T’s legal assault is about more than just the fate of dying copper landlines.

California’s CPUC has been filling the void left by Trump regulators and attempting to ensure U.S. broadband is somewhat affordable. That’s involved conditions affixed to grants, affordability conditions applied to recent telecom mergers, and public safety requirements in response to climate-related risks. AT&T, as you might expect, doesn’t like that. Their goal is, with no hyperbole, no oversight at all.

So in addition to this lawsuit, they appear to be leveraging Dem politicians (like Assemblymember Tasha Boerner) in the state to push amendments to the state constitution that would strip the CPUC of its independence, ensuring that AT&T would have more direct lobbying control over the CPUC’s makeup through its robust lobbying control of state legislators.

The changes, which were approved by a California State Assembly vote (67-1), would need to be voted on by California residents later this year. As such, they are being sold to local state folks as a way to keep CPUC focused on soaring electrical utility rates. But the timing of the effort to limit CPUC’s oversight of broadband, just as AT&T tries to deliver the killing blow to the agency, is hard to miss.

Ultimately the broader narrative in the press sold to voters will be that California regulators are engaged in broad over-reach and hampering AT&T’s potential innovation. Downplayed or ignored will be the fact that federal consumer protection has largely been destroyed, and semi-independent regulators like the CPUC in a handful of states are the last line of defense in a country being devoured by corruption.

It’s a lopsided fight that historically telecom monopolies tend to win, which is why, as you can see with your own eyes, most U.S. broadband is patchy, expensive, sluggish, with abysmal customer service. Instead of empowering regulators that protect affordability and competition, we have a nasty tendency to lobotomize them on behalf of “free market competition” that isn’t real, and that monopolies don’t want.

Filed Under: affordability, california, california public utilities commission, cpuc, dsl, fiber, telecom, upgrades
Companies: at&t

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the joke-shortage dept

We’ve got a double-winner this week, but also a very very slow week overall on the funny side, so this will be a somewhat truncated post. On the insightful side, both top comments are similar thoughts in response to the judge dismissing charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, starting with this first-place winning comment from Huntly:

Fastest way to shut down Trump’s 1776 fund will be for Kilmer, Letitia James, James Comey and others who have been targeted by Government weaponization to start applying.

In second place for insightful, it’s an anonymous comment along similar lines, which also racked up the votes to be the first place winner on the funny side too:

Does Kilmar get a cut of the anti-weaponization fund?

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments about the legislative effort in California to stop companies from killing off old games. First, it’s JoeDetroit with a response to the comments from the Electronic Software Association:

“The eventual shutdown of outdated or obsolete games is “a natural feature of modern software,” the group added, especially when that software requires online infrastructure maintenance.”

Natural feature of “modern software”?! A big FU right there. Perfectly good software out there gets a new version that fucks everything up, harder to use, & has no real improvement is what we often get. As long as their is no security holes, I’ll run the older version, thanks.

As to “software requires online infrastructure maintenance” we’ve seen fan based wildcat servers that work very well many times. They use copyright to shut them down. It boggles my mind that they waste resources chasing down their best customers to stop them from enjoying their older products. Why do they care? It’s not costing them any money.

Next, it’s n00bdragon emphasizing our point that measures like this bill aren’t really the true fight:

I agree completely. All this other stuff feels like people pretending trying to do something even if that something is entirely useless and ineffective. Real copyright reform is needed and it should be targeted directly rather than these little culturally downstream problems.

Over on the funny side, we’ve already had the first place winner above, and beyond that there’s really just a lot of not-particularly-funny comments that received a tiny smattering of votes here and there (and none with enough to receive a badge). So we’ll just wrap things up with a single hybrid of second place and editor’s choice, from Thad responding to our headline about Trump Mobile’s “struggle” to ship any phones:

I don’t know about “struggled”. That would seem to imply that they’ve tried.

That’s all for this week, folks!

This Week In Techdirt History: May 24th – 30th

Techdirt

from the and-that-was-that dept

This Week in 2016

• You’re Entitled To Your Own Opinions, But Not Your Own Facts About Copyright, NY Times Edition
• Shameful: House Panel Votes Down Plan To Make Public Domain Congressional Research Public
• Sony Thinks It Can Charge An ‘Administrative Fee’ For Fair Use
• Federal Judge Catches DOJ Lying, Sanctions Lawyers With Mandatory Ethics Classes
• Yes, A Billionaire Looking To Destroy A Media Organization Through Lawsuits Is A Big Deal Even If You Don’t Like The Media Organization
• Apple, Arbiters Of Art, Say Game About Surviving The Gaza Strip Isn’t A Game, Even Though It Is

This Week in 2011

• Universal Music: We Need PROTECT IP Because Musicians Are Dying!
• Why Operation In Our Sites Is Illegal And Needs To Be Fixed ASAP
• Why We Haven’t Seen Any Lawsuits Filed Against The Government Over Domain Seizures: Justice Department Stalling
• US Copyright Group Breaks Its Own Record; Sues 24,583 For Allegedly Sharing Hurt Locker
• Judge Tells John Steele To Stop Mass Suing Anonymous People For File Sharing
• Ron Wyden: Puts Hold On PROTECT IP, Temporarily Withdraws Amendment On The PATRIOT Act

This Week in 2006

• Shocker — Cell Phone Driving Bans Don’t Really Make Roads Safer
• Life And Times Of A 419 Scammer
• Scammers Scamming Scammers
• FCC Could, But Probably Won’t, Do Anything About Net Neutrality
• Yet Another Camera Company Ponders Dropping Film
• People Powered Buzzword Du Jour: Crowdsourcing

Filed Under: history, look back

Knox County, TN Rolls Back ‘Roots’ Book Ban After Backlash

Culture

from the fighting-works dept

It was just a week or so ago that we were talking about the absurd situation in Knox County, Tennessee, where local government used Tennessee’s book-banning laws to remove the book Roots from school libraries. Yes, this is the book by Alex Haley that spawned the 1970s miniseries of the same name and served as a cultural touchpoint for the understanding of American history and race relations across the country. Haley lived in Knox County himself. He even has a bronze statue placed in his honor in Morningside Park in Knoxville. Yet the book that earned him that statue was being banned in public schools.

The backlash to this occurring was swift and severe. It came from both local politicians and from the public around the country. The purity of just how bad and wrong this was hit a nerve. And, now, the county has caved to that pressure and have immediately reinstated Roots back onto public school bookshelves.

Knox County Schools Superintendent Jon Rysewyk said the district will return the 1976 novel to school library shelves, walking back a decision that had added Roots to a growing list of banned books and ignited debate about race, history and the reach of state law into public school libraries.

In a memo to the Knox County Board of Education dated May 26, 2026, Rysewyk said the decision to return Roots to shelves was effective immediately and that the initial removal “was in no way a commentary on the historical, cultural, or literary value of the novel.

And that’s bullshit, of course. Many of the other quotes from Rysewyk are very carefully lawyered, but this one stands out as obvious nonsense. Removing a book, any book, from school shelves is absolutely a commentary on the historical, cultural, and literary value of that book. You’re making a decision to hide away a literary work from children. If the work had value to those children, you wouldn’t be banning it.

Rysewyk goes on to note that he consulted with many lawyers on the passage that led to the book being banned and that there was no consensus whether that passage actually violated Tennessee’s law or not and that that’s why he reinstated it. Then he dropped this gem.

“Removing any book from circulation is, and should be, an immense decision. Our intent will always be to err on the side of access, which is the decision I have made with regard to “Roots,”” Rysewyk said.

No. No it won’t. Because last week was part of “always” and the initial decision was to err on the side of not pissing off racist goobers and removing access. Nice try, though. It was only when the revolt started coming from within the school board itself that Rysewyk was forced to walk this all back.

Knox County School board member Katherine Bike sent a memo to her colleagues demanding the book’s return. 

“Removing Roots is not a neutral act,” Bike wrote. “It sends a message to our students, particularly our Black students, about whose history is worth protecting. I don’t believe that is the message any of us intends to send. Intent and impact are two different things.” 

On Tuesday after the reversal was announced, State Rep. Sam McKenzie, whose district includes the Haley statue, called the ban a grave injustice and said he was disappointed but not surprised. 

“’Roots’ won a Pulitzer Prize and became a cultural touchstone that inspired and united millions of Americans,” McKenzie said. “I knew that taking it out of the hands of thousands of schoolchildren in Knox County would be a grave injustice.”

Now, what this should immediately result in is a recognition that public backlash can reverse bad policy. There are over 120 other books that are currently on the Knox County banned book list, not to mention similar anti-literature lists from the state’s other counties. Every one of them should get similar backlash. Banning Roots failed to work because of the name recognition of the book, the local interest in its author, and its obvious value to children. I have no reason to believe that there aren’t plenty of other works of literature in the other 120-plus books on the list worthy of defending.

That’s where the work actually needs to be done, now. Because the only thing we should be banning is the banning of books.

Filed Under: alex haley, book bans, culture, knox county, knox county schools, roots, tennessee

How AI Can Lead To False Arrests & Wrongful Convictions

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the hallucinating-your-arrest dept

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Baltimore County, Maryland on Oct. 20, 2025, a 17-year-old student named Taki Allen was sitting outside his high school after football practice when an artificial intelligence-enhanced surveillance camera falsely identified the Doritos bag in his pocket as a gun. Within moments police cars arrived, officers drew their weapons and Allen was forced to his knees and handcuffed while they searched him. All they found was a crumpled bag of chips. The AI’s misidentification and the human decisions that followed turned a normal evening into a traumatic confrontation.

On Dec. 24, 2025, Angela Lipps, a Tennessee grandmother, was released after spending five months in jail because facial recognition software had incorrectly connected her to fraud crimes in North Dakota, a state she had never visited. Police had arrested her at gunpoint while she was babysitting her four grandchildren.

These are unfortunate examples of how AI can lead to mistreatment of people because of technical flaws as well as misplaced human faith in the technology’s supposed objectivity. These cases involve different tools, but the underlying issue is the same. AI systems produce probabilities, and people treat them as certainties.

We are researchers who study the intersection of technology, law and public administration. In researching how police departments use AI and how digital technologies operate in a democratic society, we have seen how quickly the shift from probabilistic prediction to operational certainty happens in practice.

AI policing tools are used in dozens of U.S. cities, although no public registry tracks the full footprint. The tools ingest historical crime data and score neighborhoods on predicted risk so officers can be routed toward the resulting hot spots. The mechanism is straightforward, but its consequence is not. Once a system signals a possible threat, the question is no longer how certain the prediction is but what to do about it. A statistical output turns into a deployment decision, and the uncertainty that produced it gets lost on the way.

A matter of probabilities

When generative AI models such as ChatGPT or Claude respond to human requests, they are not searching a database and pulling out facts. They are predicting the most likely answer based on patterns in data they have been trained on. When asked, “Who invented the light bulb?” the models do not go to a source or fact-check a finding. They generate a statistically probable answer which is “Thomas Edison.” The reply might be right, but it might not capture the full story – such as Joseph Swan’s parallel invention at the same time as Edison’s. The danger arises when people believe that the model is retrieving truth rather than generating likelihoods.

This distinction matters. The most probable response is not the same as a factually verified answer, complete with context.

This reality can be highly problematic for policing and law. For example, when law enforcement agencies use AI systems trained on geographical data to estimate where criminal activity is likely to occur, the algorithms analyze historical crime data and geographic patterns. These systems generate statistical risk scores or heat maps for locations based on prior incidents. But such predictions may have little bearing on who was involved in a new crime in the area, even if an algorithm generates information that sounds authoritative.

Some researchers have argued that predictive policing systems do not increase the likelihood that racial minorities will be arrested more often relative to traditional policing practices. The broader concern, however, is not limited to measurable disparities in arrest outcomes alone. It is about how probabilistic predictions can become standardized operational decisions absent further verification.

Artificial intelligence researchers caution against using these models in isolation for crime and legal proceedings or decision-making. Research at the University of Virginia’s Digital Technology for Democracy Lab with police chiefs shows that some law enforcement groups follow strict policies that dictate when technology is used in tandem with, or in place of, human discretion, while others have no such policy.

What most users do not realize is that AI systems rarely produce binary answers: yes or no, a positive identification or a negative one. They generate probabilities. Some systems assign scores that assess the system’s confidence in a prediction. In those cases, engineers set a confidence threshold, a level of certainty that determines when the system should trigger an alert about a possible threat. You can think of this threshold as settings on a control knob. A 95% confidence level, for example, indicates that the model considers its interpretation to be highly likely.

A low threshold catches more potential threats but increases false alarms. A high threshold reduces mistakes but risks missing real dangers. Either way, these algorithmic thresholds are often invisible to the public and are set quietly by vendors or agencies, even though they shape when police action begins.

Where to draw the line

In medicine, these kinds of trade-offs are explicit. Diagnostic tools are calibrated on the relative harm of different errors. In infectious disease settings, for instance, systems that detect infections are often designed to accept more false positives to avoid missing contagious individuals. Then medical professionals look into the human cases. And the algorithm-based decisions are subject to professional standards, ethics reviews and regulatory oversight.

In policing, an AI system must balance false positives, where the system flags a threat that does not exist, and false negatives, where it fails to detect a real danger. The trade-off carries significant consequences. A lower threshold may generate more alerts and allow officers to intervene earlier, but it also increases the risk of mistaken identifications, which happened to Angela Lipps, or escalated encounters like the one Taki Allen experienced. A higher threshold may reduce wrongful interventions but could allow legitimate threats to go undetected.

Some law enforcement agencies argue that acting on imperfect signals is preferable to missing serious risks. But lowering the bar for algorithmic alerts based on probabilistic estimates effectively expands the number of people subjected to police attention. It is important to realize that these thresholds are not neutral features of the technology; they are choices embedded by the creators in the model’s code. Decisions about where to draw the line determine when an algorithmic suspicion becomes a real-world police action, even though the public rarely sees or debates how those thresholds are set.

Limits of optimization

Developers often use several methods to determine where to set a confidence threshold. Techniques such as “receiver operating characteristic curve analysis” examine how changing the threshold for an alert alters the balance between correctly identifying real events and mistakenly flagging harmless ones. Precision–recall analysis examines a similar trade-off, asking how accurate the system’s alerts are relative to the number of incidents it successfully detects.

These approaches could help calibrate systems more responsibly by testing how often an algorithm wrongly flags people or locations. Fine-tuning can improve system performance. But the techniques cannot resolve the underlying question of how much algorithmic uncertainty society is willing to tolerate.

In law, legal standards of proof determine how convincing evidence must be before a judge or jury can rule in favor of a plaintiff or defendant. Courts use formal standards of proof depending on the stakes, such as probable cause, preponderance of the evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt. These standards reflect a societal judgment about how much uncertainty is acceptable before exercising legal authority. A court does not accept a guess or a prediction; it follows a process to weigh evidence. Unlike humans, an AI model does not usually say, “I’m not sure.” A model typically has confidence in its reply, even when the answer is incorrect.

Stakes are rising as AI enters the courtroom, law enforcement, the classroom, the doctor’s office and the public sector. It is important for people to understand that AI does not know things the way many assume it does. It does not distinguish between “maybe” and “definitely.” That is up to us. We believe that technologists should design systems that admit uncertainty and need to educate users about how to interpret AI outputs responsibly.

Maria Lungu is a Postdoctoral Researcher of Law and Public Administration at University of Virginia and Steven L. Johnson, is Associate Professor of Commerce at University of Virginia

Filed Under: ai, arrests, policing, wrongful arrest

Court Temporarily Freezes Trump’s $1.776 Billion ‘Anti-Weaponization’ Slush Fund To Figure Out WTF Is Going On

Legal Issues

from the weaponize-this dept

It’s been less than two weeks since the Justice Department created the obviously illegal and unconstitutional $1.776 billion slush fund to pay off MAGA loyalists and January 6th insurrectionists. There are a variety of lawsuits looking to put a stop to it, and we just wrote about dozens of former federal judges asking the original judge in Trump’s bizarre “have my IRS give me $10 billion” case to reopen the case to stop the corrupt fund.

But in one of those cases, a judge has told the Justice Department to halt all activity related to the fund until there’s been more briefing.

The case was filed by a semi-random collection of people and organizations, including a former AUSA who headed up the prosecution of January 6th insurrectionists (and who Trump fired) named Andrew Floyd, but also a California professor who was arrested for protesting ICE nonsense, the city of New Haven in Connecticut, the National Abortion Federation, and Common Cause. Each has credible reasons to try to stop this slush fund from coming into existence.

The complaint details the MAGA obsession with the mostly false claims that Democrats weaponized the government against MAGA:

The creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund follows directly from President Trump and his allies’ longstanding and frequent accusations that Democrats used the government and the legal system as political weapons.

For example, in June 2023, after DOJ charged then-former President Trump with mishandling classified documents, Trump posted a video on social media exclaiming, “This is warfare for the law . . . . Our country is going to hell, and they come after Donald Trump, weaponizing the Justice Department, weaponizing the FBI.”

Republican lawmakers quickly adopted the same language. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis posted that “the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” and then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy pledged on Twitter that House Republicans would “hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

Even before his election to a second term, members of President Trump’s campaign spent months developing a scheme to compensate those of Trump’s political allies who were purportedly the victims of “weaponization.”

It further notes that while MAGA keeps whining about weaponization, it appears to be doing far more weaponization of the government than anything Democrats have ever even been accused of doing. And, they point out that the Trump administration (while weaponizing the government) only seems to point to faux claims of weaponization by Democrats, refusing to even suggest their own side has ever done anything wrong and abused the levers of power:

Notably, none of the administration’s efforts to combat “weaponization” include any mention or review of abuses of government authority by Republican officials.

But Trump himself has used “the levers of government power” in unprecedented ways “to target individuals, groups, and entities for improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons.” See Ex. A ¶ II.C.

During his first term, Trump broke historical norms by being the first president to reject the post-Watergate firewall that separated the White House’s political decisions from independent DOJ criminal investigations.

In his second term, Trump has been arrogating and using power in increasingly unprecedented and abusive ways to carry out his personal political agenda.

For example, DOJ has sought indictments against Trump’s political opponents, including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and six Democratic members of Congress. 23 It has also launched investigations into Trump’s critics like California Senator Adam Schiff, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and former Special Counsel Jack Smith. 24 Trump revoked the security clearances of 50 people he accused of aiding former President Biden’s presidential campaign, including former top intelligence officials. Exec. Order No. 14152, Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information, 90 Fed. Reg. 8343 (Jan. 20, 2025).

The complaint shows how this is nothing more than a slush fund for often law-breaking Trump allies:

Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy over the January 6 insurrection, said he planned to apply to the Fund. He said that he assumed he could get between $2 and $5 million.

Jenny Cudd, another January 6 defendant, told reporters that “all J6ers will apply for restitution,” noting that news of the Anti-Weaponization Fund was widely circulating among January 6 defendants on social media and “group chats.”

Caroline Engelbrecht, a prominent election denier and founder of True the Vote, a group that amplified conspiracies that the 2020 election was stolen, stated: “I would put myself and True the Vote … squarely in that camp who have been targeted, and we have the receipts to show just how deep that targeting ran. And hopefully, we will see some level of compensation.”

Several attorneys aligned with Trump’s allies have confirmed that they, too, have already received many requests about submitting claims to the Fund.

For example, Steve Crampton, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, which defends and advocates on behalf of abortion opponents prosecuted under the FACE Act, said his group is “actively exploring available avenues to seek compensation for clients who were unfairly targeted by politically motivated government overreach.”

The judge declined to formally grant a temporary restraining order, but functionally accomplished the same thing by ordering that the DOJ cannot do anything regarding the fund until after there’s been more briefing on the details here.

Because full briefing of the issue will enhance the ability of the Court to make a sound decision. plaintiffs’ Expedited Motion, [Dkt. No. 30], is DENIED and defendants’ request for additional time is GRANTED; however, to ensure that no funds are irreversibly disbursed from the AntiWeaponization Fund (hereinafter, “Fund”) while plaintiffs’ Motion is pending, it is hereby ORDERED that defendants be and are ENJOINED from taking any further action pursuant to the creation or operation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund, which includes the transferring of money to the Fund; the consideration of any claims submitted to the Fund; and the disbursing of any funds from the Fund;

The judge set an aggressive briefing schedule: the government must file its opposition by next Friday, plaintiffs reply by the following Wednesday, with a hearing shortly after.

This is a temporary hold, not a permanent win. The government gets to file its opposition, there will be briefing, there will be a hearing. The fund could still come into existence. But for now, at least one federal judge decided that maybe — maybe — the DOJ shouldn’t be disbursing $1.776 billion to Proud Boys leaders and election deniers before anyone’s had a chance to argue why that’s an extraordinarily bad idea.

Filed Under: andrew floyd, doj, donald trump, insurrection, irs, new haven, todd blanche, weaponization fund
Companies: common cause, national abortion federation

Daily Deal: MasterBundle For Web Designers

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

A unique opportunity to get all that you need for your website in one single bundle. MasterBundle gives you over 1,300 essentials for setting your page to success. Get 20+ plugins, 100+ themes, 100+ templates, 200+ logos, and 800+ images great for creating a stunning, visit-worthy page. Not only that, this bundle also gives you unlimited platform space, and professional web tools to make sure that your website will reach your target audiences. It’s on sale for $70.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

City Lawmaker Responds To Flock Camera Ban By Demanding A Cell Phone Ban

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the u-mad-bro? dept

Flock Safety has made its bed. It has courted homeowners associations and gated communities since it first arrived on the market, apparently hoping to convert inherent racism into perpetual revenue streams.

Then it went to where the real bias has always existed: US law enforcement agencies. It promised to tie their systems in with those deployed by private citizens. It attempted to talk Ring (another company with too-close ties to cops) into bed, before shitting the shared bed in front of hundreds of millions of TV viewers during the most recent Super Bowl.

Flock’s reputation had already been in steep decline prior to the Super Bowl debacle, but that aborted arranged marriage saw its shady doings exposed to millions who previously weren’t aware there was a surveillance camera company even less concerned about rights and privacy than Ring.

Flock was doing things even Ring wouldn’t do. It was telling citizens one thing and giving cops something else entirely: a nationwide surveillance network with built-in ALPR (automatic license plate reader) capability with zero oversight. Flock said it would prevent federal abuse of local law enforcement camera networks and then did absolutely nothing to prevent this. Meanwhile, cop shops were using Flock’s cameras to track people across the country — you know, dangerous criminals like the woman (at the request of her abusive ex) who left Texas to seek an abortion in another state.

All of these concerns have resulted in Flock losing plenty of public market share. Sure, it may still be doing brisk business in the private market, but government contracts are where the real money is. Flock can’t seem to stop the bleeding. Multiple local governments have terminated contracts with Flock and plenty more are considering doing the same, especially now that it’s shady dealings have been called out by federal lawmakers like Senator Ron Wyden.

Still, the company has its supporters. And they’re exactly the sort of people you’d expect them to be. A public meltdown by a public servant is the subject of this excellent reporting by Joseph Cox of 404 Media. Here’s a bit of background, which also contains some super-useful background on Flock’s PR team.

Like in many other communities around the country, the use of Flock’s AI cameras has become a major topic of discussion in Bandera (Texas). In February, Bandera held a town hall meeting exclusively about Flock that Flowers moderated. Kerry McCormack, a former Cleveland city council member who is now on the public affairs team for Flock, came to that meeting to discuss the technology, demonstrating that the company is sending representatives even to tiny towns in order to promote its use. 

Dial in on a couple of things. First, there’s the fact that former public servants are now running flack for Flock. Second, there’s the mention of Bandera, Texas city council member Jeff Flowers, who’s apparently so smitten of Flock that he’s willing to go full batshit when confronted by public criticism. Bandera’s city council voted 3-2 to end its contract with Flock in response to public resistance, which included repeated vandalizing of the town’s eight cameras.

Flowers apparently couldn’t handle this vote or the resistance that generated it. He went right off the rails, almost immediately:

After the vote, Councilmember Jeff Flowers, a staunch Flock supporter, said that if people in the town wanted privacy then the city council should basically ban all technology, essentially calling people who did not want government surveillance hypocrites.

Nice. This deep disconnection from reality wasn’t limited to comments made during the vote. He also posted an op-ed (subtitled “Bandera Declaration of Independence”) in the local newspaper, in which he ignorantly continued to claim that rejection of government surveillance was a hypocritical stance taken by people who voluntarily own smartphones and access the internet.

Flowers said that at the next city council meeting he will propose “a total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits. If we are to be truly ‘private,’ we must leave our smartphones at the city line.” He will also propose “a total ban on outward facing cameras,” and “a total termination of all internet services and electronic record-keeping. We are going back to 1880, paper ledgers and cash only.”

Flowers is the kind of idiot that’s almost smart enough to be dangerous. But he’s not quite there yet. It’s one thing to “share” information with service providers, apps, and online services. It’s quite another to be forced to share information with the government. While the government may actually demand less information in exchange for services than most internet service providers, people are far more willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience when the recipient is another private party.

Pretending these two things are equivalent is lazy at best, and totalitarian at worst. They’re not the same thing. And even if the collection of data by third parties might result in warrantless access of this data by the government, very few citizens are going to affirmatively choose to surrender data to the government, even if it’s nothing more than an always-on collection of their movements via automatic license plate readers.

To be sure, there are people working for Flock who think Flowers is worthy of a high five or two, if not a permanent position in the PR department. They’re no smarter than Flowers is. This is not a win for Flock. This is another unforced error by surveillance state enthusiasts who are voluntarily creating more negative press for Flock. Flock loses. Flowers rants. Flock loses again. If either party was truly smart, they’d be distancing themselves from each other.

Filed Under: alpr, bandera, jeff flowers, surveillance state, texas, traffic cams
Companies: flock safety

Trump FCC Proposes Vile New Trans Panic TV Warnings

Failures

from the ignorance-and-fear dept

Last month the FCC quietly issued a public notice saying the Brendan Carr run agency was demanding that the TV Oversight Management Board (TVOMB) create new TV ratings to alert viewers to “transgender and gender non-binary programming” and “the discussion or promotion of gender identity themes” included in children’s programming.

You are to ignore that the FCC has no actual authority to even be proposing this. The TV Oversight Management Board is an independent, industry-created coalition that manages the TV ratings system without legal influence by the FCC.

The FCC’s justification for these demanded changes are based entirely on the false claims of a bunch of anonymous “parents” who may or may not even exist:

“Recently, parents have raised concerns that controversial gender identity issues are being
included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents. Specifically, the industry guidelines that parents rely on are rating shows with transgender and gender non-binary programming as appropriate for children and young children, and doing so without providing this information to parents, thereby undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families.”

Of course these issues have only been made “controversial” by Republicans, who have taken brutal and ignorant aim at a very small segment of the population in order to actively hurt marginalized people and divide, misinform, and disorient the electorate. Like gay marriage was during the George W. Bush administration, trans rights are an effective wedge issue that exploits public fear, bigotry, and ignorance to redirect public attention away from things like, say, historic levels of corruption.

The idea that media and tech companies are actively flooding the population with a bunch of dangerous “gender non-binary programming” aimed specifically at children is a popular Republican lie designed to agitate and mislead, but there’s no evidence to support the claim. Still it pops up a lot; like Josh Hawley’s false claim at a recent hearing that Netflix is pushing trans-heavy kids programming.

Understandably the proposal didn’t sit well with organizations like GLAAD, which pointed out that it’s grotesque, ignorant, and dangerous to conflate gender fluidity with obscenities, drug abuse, and violence:

“And the Public Notice does not state how a change in TV ratings will impact gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters and stories on TV. Applying warning labels to programs with transgender and nonbinary characters and stories incorrectly equates them to programming with coarse and crude language, sexual situations, or violence. 

This makes life harder for LGBTQ Americans. It sends a message that the FCC can pressure the TVOMB to add even more ratings that stigmatize other diverse groups.”

A broader coalition of 40+ public interest groups ranging from Free Press to Public Knowledge were equally disgusted by the proposal:

“This is Carr’s latest attempt to shut down speech and shift U.S. public discourse to please President Trump. Television-program ratings are wholly outside of the FCC’s control, and the use of this public-comment procedure to coerce change raises constitutional concerns. The FCC should abandon this contrived and morally repugnant exercise.”

Part of Carr’s actual job at the FCC is supposed to involve protecting the public from corporate power, whether it’s a telecom monopoly that leverages corruption to rip off broadband customers, to a cable company using sleazy fees to jack up the cost of TV service. Carr’s not interested in that. He’s repeatedly given large companies free reign to engage in whatever consumer abuses they see fit.

Carr likely figures that the more time the public spends freaking out about nonexistent trans kids’ programming, the less time they have to realize that he’s been captured by industry to the detriment of everyone.

Instead of doing his job, Carr’s obsessed with being a weird little zealot and authoritarian lapdog, whose post-FCC legacy, if he has one, will be one of ignorance, censorship, distraction, and fear.

Filed Under: brendan carr, bullying, censor, fcc, free speech, lgbtq, media, regulator, trans panic, trans rights, tv, tvomb
Companies: glaad