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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Facebook recently rolled out a new "Link History" setting that creates a special repository of all the links you click on in the Facebook mobile app. Users can opt-out, but Link History is turned on by default, and the data is used for targeted ads. The company pitches Link History as a useful tool for consumers "with your browsing activity saved in one place," rather than another way to keep tabs on your behavior. With the new setting you'll "never lose a link again," Facebook says in a pop-up encouraging users to consent to the new tracking method. The company goes on to mention that "When you allow link history, we may use your information to improve your ads across Meta technologies." Facebook promises to delete the Link History it's created for you within 90 days if you turn the setting off. According to a Facebook help page, Link History isn't available everywhere. The company says it's rolling out globally "over time." This is a privacy improvement in some ways, but the setting raises more questions than it answers. Meta has always kept track of the links you click on, and this is the first time users have had any visibility or control over this corner of the company's internet spying apparatus. In other words, Meta is just asking users for permission for a category of tracking that it's been using for over a decade. Beyond that, there are a number of ways this setting might give users an illusion of privacy that Meta isn't offering. "The Link History doesn't mention anything about the invasive ways Facebook monitors what you're doing once you visit a webpage," notes Gizmodo's Thomas Germain. "It seems the setting only affects Meta's record of the fact that you clicked a link in the first place. Furthermore, Meta links everything you do on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and its other products. Unlike several of Facebook's other privacy settings, Link History doesn't say that it affects any of Meta's other apps, leaving you with the data harvesting status quo on other parts of Mark Zuckerberg's empire." "Link History also creates a confusing new regime that establishes privacy settings that don't apply if you access Facebook outside of the Facebook app. If you log in to Facebook on a computer or a mobile browser instead, Link History doesn't protect you. In fact, you can't see the Link History page at all if you're looking at Facebook on your laptop."pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Meet+'Link+History%2C'+Facebook's+New+Way+To+Track+the+Websites+You+Visit%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F24%2F01%2F02%2F227238%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F24%2F01%2F02%2F227238%2Fmeet-link-history-facebooks-new-way-to-track-the-websites-you-visit%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/227238/meet-link-history-facebooks-new-way-to-track-the-websites-you-visit?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

An anonymous reader shares a report: A court in Washington, D.C., has been stuck with a tough, maybe impossible question: What does full moon face emoji mean? Let me explain: In the summer of 2022, Ryan Cohen, a major investor in Bed Bath amp; Beyond, responded to a tweet about the beleaguered retailer with this side-eyed-moon emoji. Later that month, Cohen -- hailed as a "meme king" for his starring role in the GameStop craze -- disclosed that his stake in the company had grown to nearly 12 percent; the stock price subsequently shot up. That week, he sold all of his shares and walked away with a reported $60 million windfall. Now shareholders are suing him for securities fraud, claiming that Cohen misled investors by using the emoji the way meme-stock types sometimes do -- to suggest that the stock was going "to the moon." A class-action lawsuit with big money on the line has come to legal arguments such as this: "There is no way to establish objectively the truth or falsity of a tiny lunar cartoon," as Cohen's lawyers wrote in an attempt to get the emoji claim dismissed. That argument was denied, and the court held that "emojis may be actionable." The humble emoji -- and its older cousin, the emoticon -- has infiltrated the corporate world, especially in tech. Last month, when OpenAI briefly ousted Sam Altman and replaced him with an interim CEO, the company's employees reportedly responded with a vulgar emoji on Slack. That FTX, the failed cryptocurrency exchange once run by Sam Bankman-Fried, apparently used these little icons to approve million-dollar expense reports was held up during bankruptcy proceedings as a damning example of its poor corporate controls. And in February, a judge allowed a lawsuit to move forward alleging that an NFT company called Dapper Labs was illegally promoting unregistered securities on Twitter, because "the 'rocket ship' emoji, 'stock chart' emoji, and 'money bags' emoji objectively mean one thing: a financial return on investment."pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=The+Humble+Emoji+Has+Infiltrated+the+Corporate+World%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F24%2F01%2F02%2F1647233%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F24%2F01%2F02%2F1647233%2Fthe-humble-emoji-has-infiltrated-the-corporate-world%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/1647233/the-humble-emoji-has-infiltrated-the-corporate-world?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

"This year has been a major turning point in American health care," reports USA Today, "and patients can anticipate several major developments in the new year," including the beginning of a CRISPR "revolution" and "a new reckoning with drug prices that could change the landscape of the U.S. health care system for decades to come." Health care officials expect 2024 to bring a wave of innovation and change in medicine, treatment and public health... Many think 2024 could be the year more people have the tools to follow through on New Year's resolutions about weight loss. If they can afford them and manage to stick with them, people can turn to a new generation of remarkably effective weight-loss drugs, also called GLP-1s, which offer the potential for substantial weight loss... In 2023, mental health issues became among the nation's most deadly, costly and pervasive health crises... The dearth of remedies has also paved the way for an unsuspecting class of drugs: psychedelics. MDMA, a party drug commonly known as "ecstasy," could win approval for legal distribution in 2024, as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Another psychedelic, a ketamine derivative eskatemine, sold as Spravato, was approved in 2019 to treat depression, but it is being treated like a conventional therapy that must be dosed regularly, not like a psychedelic that provides a long-lasting learning experience, said Matthew Johnson, an expert in psychedelics at Johns Hopkins University. MDMA (midomafetamine capsules) would be different, as the first true psychedelic to win FDA approval. In a late-stage trial of patients with moderate or severe post-traumatic stress disorder, close to 90% showed clinically significant improvements four months after three treatments with MDMA and more than 70% no longer met the criteria for having the disorder, which represented "really impressive results," according to Matthew Johnson, an expert in psychedelics at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. Psilocybin, known colloquially as "magic mushrooms," is also working its way through the federal approval process, but it likely won't come up before officials for another year, Johnson said. Psychedelics are something to keep an eye on in the future, as they're being used to treat an array of mental health issues: eskatimine for depression, MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin for addiction. Johnson said his research suggests that psychedelics will probably have a generalizable benefit across many mental health challenges in the years to come. 2024 will also be the first year America's drug-makers face new limits on how much they can increase prices for drugs covered by the federal health insurance program Medicare.pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Will+2024+Bring+a+'Major+Turning+Point'+in+US+Health+Care%3F%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F24%2F01%2F01%2F0129241%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F24%2F01%2F01%2F0129241%2Fwill-2024-bring-a-major-turning-point-in-us-health-care%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/01/01/0129241/will-2024-bring-a-major-turning-point-in-us-health-care?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

It was a half a century ago that America passed legislation to protect vanishing species and their habitats mdash; and since then, more than five dozen species have recovered. Just one example: In 1963 only 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles were found in the lower 48 states. But today there's more than 300,000 bald eagles, writes USA Today. "[T]hough its future remains uncertain, many experts say it remains one of the nation's crowning achievements." But 1,252 species are still listed as endangered in the U.S. mdash; 486 animals, and 766 plants mdash; with 417 more species categorized as "threatened." The perils of the changing climate add urgency to calls for increased funding and more protection. In North Carolina, for example, the rising sea steadily creeps over a refuge that's home to the sole remaining wild red wolf population. Off New England, warming waters forced changes in the foraging habits of the endangered North Atlantic right whale, putting the massive marine mammals in harm's way more often... One in 5 plant and animal species in the nation remain at risk of extinction, says Susan Holmes, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition. "Loss of habitat and climate change are absolutely some of the most important threats that we have." "We are at what I would say is a pivotal moment with the threats of climate change," she said. "We have to act faster than ever in order to ensure that these species are going to thrive."pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=20%25+of+America's+Plants+and+Animals+are+At+Risk+of+Extinction%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F31%2F050218%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F31%2F050218%2F20-of-americas-plants-and-animals-are-at-risk-of-extinction%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/12/31/050218/20-of-americas-plants-and-animals-are-at-risk-of-extinction?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg, written by Naomi Kresge: In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of scientists from all over the world banded together in an open-source effort to develop an antiviral that would be available for all. They could never have anticipated the many roadblocks they would face along the way, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which made refugees out of a group of Kyiv chemists who were doing important work for the project. The group, which called itself Covid Moonshot, hasn't given up on its effort to introduce a more affordable, patent-free treatment for the virus. Their open-source Covid antiviral, now funded by Wellcome, is on track to be ready for human testing within the next year and a half, according to Annette von Delft, a University of Oxford scientist and one of the Moonshot group's leaders. More early discovery work on a range of potential inhibitors for other viruses is also still going on and being funded by a US government grant. "It's a bit like a proof of concept," von Delft says, for bringing a patent-free experimental drug into the clinic, a model that could be repurposed as a tool to fight neglected tropical diseases or antimicrobial resistance, or prepare for future pandemics. "Can we come up with a strategic model that can help those kinds of compounds with less of a business case along?" Of course, there was definitely a business case for a Covid antiviral, and some of the biggest drugmakers rushed to develop them. In 2022, Pfizer Inc.'s Paxlovid was one of the world's best-selling medicines with $18.9 billion in revenue. Demand has since cratered for the pill, which needs to be given shortly after infection and can't be taken alongside a number of other commonly prescribed medicines. Analysts expect the Paxlovid revenue to plunge just shy of $1 billion this year. However, there is still a need for a better Covid antiviral, particularly in countries where access to the Pfizer pill is limited, according to von Delft. Covid cases have surged again this holiday season, with the rise of a new variant called JN.1 reminding us that the virus is still changing to evade the immunity we've built up so far. Just before Christmas, UK authorities said about one in every 24 people in England and Scotland had the disease. An accessible antiviral could help people return to work more quickly, and it could also be tested as a potential treatment for long Covid. "We know from experience in viral disease that there will be resistance variants evolving over time," von Delft said. "We'll need more than one."pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Scientists+Still+Shoot+For+the+Moon+With+Patent-Free+Covid+Drug%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F29%2F2134242%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F29%2F2134242%2Fscientists-still-shoot-for-the-moon-with-patent-free-covid-drug%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/12/29/2134242/scientists-still-shoot-for-the-moon-with-patent-free-covid-drug?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Albania's Parliament said on Tuesday that it had suffered a cyberattack with hackers trying to get into its data system, resulting in a temporary halt in its services. A statement said Monday's cyberattack had not "touched the data of the system," adding that experts were working to discover what consequences the attack could have. It said the system's services would resume at a later time. Local media reported that a cellphone provider and an air flight company were also targeted by Monday's cyberattacks, allegedly from Iranian-based hackers called Homeland Justice, which could not be verified independently. Albania suffered a cyberattack in July 2022 that the government and multinational technology companies blamed on the Iranian Foreign Ministry. Believed to be in retaliation for Albania sheltering members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, the attack led the government to cut diplomatic relations with Iran two months later. The Iranian Foreign Ministry denied Tehran was behind an attack on Albanian government websites and noted that Iran has suffered cyberattacks from the MEK. In June, Albanian authorities raided a camp for exiled MEK members to seize computer devices allegedly linked to prohibited political activities. [...] In a statement sent later Tuesday to The Associated Press, MEK's media spokesperson Ali Safavi claimed the reported cyberattacks in Albania "are not related to the presence or activities" of MEK members in the country.pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Cyberattack+Targets+Albanian+Parliament's+Data+System%2C+Halting+Its+Work%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fit.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F29%2F0444230%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fit.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F29%2F0444230%2Fcyberattack-targets-albanian-parliaments-data-system-halting-its-work%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/12/29/0444230/cyberattack-targets-albanian-parliaments-data-system-halting-its-work?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

Andy Maxwell reports via TorrentFreak: As the crew of Artemis 2 prepare to become the first humans to fly to the moon since 1972, the possibilities of space travel are once again igniting imaginations globally. More than 92% of internet users who want to learn more about this historic mission and the program in general are statistically likely to use Google search. Behind the scenes, however, the ability to find relevant content is under attack. Blundering DMCA takedown notices sent by a company calling itself DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. claim to protect the rights of an OnlyFans/Instagram model working under the name 'Artemis'. Instead, keyword-based systems that fail to discriminate between copyright-infringing content and that referencing the word Artemis in any other context, are flooding towards Google. They contain demands to completely deindex non-infringing, unrelated content, produced by innocent third parties all over the world. A recent deindexing demand dated December 13, 2022, lists DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. of Canada as the sender. The name of the content owner is redacted but the notice itself states that the company represents a content creator performing under the name Artemis. The notice demands the removal of 3,617 URLs from Google search. If successful, those URLs would be completely unfindable by more than 92% of the world's population who use that search engine. [...] At least 9 of the first 20 URLs in the notice demand the removal of non-infringing articles and news reports referencing the Artemis space program. None have anything to do with the content the sender claims to protect. [...] Theories as to who might own and/or operate DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. aren't hard to find but the company does exist and is registered as a corporate entity in Canada. Registered at the same address is a company with remarkably similar details. BranditScan is a corporate entity operating in exactly the same market offering similar if not identical services. BranditScan has sent DMCA takedown notices to Google under three different notifier accounts.pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Reckless+DMCA+Deindexing+Pushes+NASA's+Artemis+Towards+Black+Hole%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F29%2F0156206%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F29%2F0156206%2Freckless-dmca-deindexing-pushes-nasas-artemis-towards-black-hole%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/12/29/0156206/reckless-dmca-deindexing-pushes-nasas-artemis-towards-black-hole?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

Following policy adjustments by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in January, more foreign-born workers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields are able to live and work permanently in the United States. "The jump comes after USCIS in January 2022 tweaked its guidance criteria relating to two visa categories available to STEM workers," reports Science Magazine. "One is the O-1A, a temporary visa for 'aliens of extraordinary ability' that often paves the way to a green card. The second, which bestows a green card on those with advanced STEM degrees, governs a subset of an EB-2 (employment-based) visa." From the report: The USCIS data, reported exclusively by ScienceInsider, show that the number of O-1A visas awarded in the first year of the revised guidance jumped by almost 30%, to 4570, and held steady in fiscal year 2023, which ended on 30 September. Similarly, the number of STEM EB-2 visas approved in 2022 after a "national interest" waiver shot up by 55% over 2021, to 70,240, and stayed at that level this year. "I'm seeing more aspiring and early-stage startup founders believe there's a way forward for them," says Silicon Valley immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn. She predicts the policy changes will result in "new technology startups that would not have otherwise been created." President Joe Biden has long sought to make it easier for foreign-born STEM workers to remain in the country and use their talent to spur the U.S. economy. But under the terms of a 1990 law, only 140,000 employment-based green cards may be issued annually, and no more than 7% of those can go to citizens of any one country. The ceiling is well below the demand. And the country quotas have created decades-long queues for scientists and high-tech entrepreneurs born in India and China. The 2022 guidance doesn't alter those limits on employment-based green cards but clarifies the visa process for foreign-born scientists pending any significant changes to the 1990 law. The O-1A work visa, which can be renewed indefinitely, was designed to accelerate the path to a green card for foreign-born high-tech entrepreneurs. Although there is no cap on the number of O-1A visas awarded, foreign-born scientists have largely ignored this option because it wasn't clear what metrics USCIS would use to assess their application. The 2022 guidance on O-1As removed that uncertainty by listing eight criteria -- including awards, peer-reviewed publications, and reviewing the work of other scientists#226;"and stipulating that applicants need to satisfy at least three of them. The second visa policy change affects those with advanced STEM degrees seeking the national interest waiver for an EB-2. Under the normal process of obtaining such a visa, the Department of Labor requires employers to first satisfy rules meant to protect U.S. workers from foreign competition, for example, by showing that the company has failed to find a qualified domestic worker and that the job will pay the prevailing wage. That time-consuming exercise can be waived if visa applicants can prove they are doing "exceptional" work of "substantial merit and national importance." But once again, the standard for determining whether the labor-force requirements can be waived was vague, so relatively few STEM workers chose that route. The 2022 USCIS guidance not only specifies criteria, which closely track those for the nonimmigrant, O-1A visa, but also allows scientists to sponsor themselves.pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=New+US+Immigration+Rules+Spur+More+Visa+Approvals+For+STEM+Workers%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F29%2F0121220%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F29%2F0121220%2Fnew-us-immigration-rules-spur-more-visa-approvals-for-stem-workers%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/12/29/0121220/new-us-immigration-rules-spur-more-visa-approvals-for-stem-workers?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A group of clowns is suing their former employer Clowns.com for multiple labor law violations, according to recently filed court records. Four people -- Brayan Angulo, Cameron Pille, Janina Salorio, and Xander Black -- filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday alleging Adolph Rodriguez and Erica Barbuto, owners of Clowns.com and their former bosses, misclassified them as independent workers for years, and failed to pay them for their time. The Long Island-based company, which provides entertainers for events, violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York Labor Law, the lawsuit claims. The owners of Clowns.com didn't give employees detailed pay statements as required by New York law, the lawsuit alleges. "As a result, Plaintiffs did not know how precisely their weekly pay was being calculated, and were thus deprived of information that could be used to challenge and prevent the theft of their wages," it says. The clowns weren't paid for time "spent at the warehouse gathering and loading equipment and supplies into vehicles," or for travel time between parties, or when parties went on for longer than expected, they claim. Pille said she's "proud to join with my clown colleagues" to stand up to wage theft and misclassification. "For years, Clowns.com has treated clowns, who are largely young actors with no prior training in clowning who sign up for this job to make ends meet, as independent contractors."pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Clowns+Sue+Clowns.com+For+Wage+Theft%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F28%2F237219%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F28%2F237219%2Fclowns-sue-clownscom-for-wage-theft%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/12/28/237219/clowns-sue-clownscom-for-wage-theft?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple's AirTags are meant to help you effortlessly find your keys or track your luggage. But the same features that make them easy to deploy and inconspicuous in your daily life have also allowed them to be abused as a sinister tracking tool that domestic abusers and criminals can use to stalk their targets. Over the past year, Apple has taken protective steps to notify iPhone and Android users if an AirTag is in their vicinity for a significant amount of time without the presence of its owner's iPhone, which could indicate that an AirTag has been planted to secretly track their location. Apple hasn't said exactly how long this time interval is, but to create the much-needed alert system, Apple made some crucial changes to the location privacy design the company originally developed a few years ago for its "Find My" device tracking feature. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, San Diego, say, though, that they've developed (PDF) a cryptographic scheme to bridge the gap -- prioritizing detection of potentially malicious AirTags while also preserving maximum privacy for AirTag users. [...] The solution [Johns Hopkins cryptographer Matt Green] and his fellow researchers came up with leans on two established areas of cryptography that the group worked to implement in a streamlined and efficient way so the system could reasonably run in the background on mobile devices without being disruptive. The first element is "secret sharing," which allows the creation of systems that can't reveal anything about a "secret" unless enough separate puzzle pieces present themselves and come together. Then, if the conditions are right, the system can reconstruct the secret. In the case of AirTags, the "secret" is the true, static identity of the device underlying the public identifier that is frequently changing for privacy purposes. Secret sharing was conceptually useful for the researchers to employ because they could develop a mechanism where a device like a smartphone would only be able to determine that it was being followed around by an AirTag with a constantly rotating public identifier if the system received enough of a certain type of ping over time. Then, suddenly, the suspicious AirTag's anonymity would fall away and the system would be able to determine that it had been in close proximity for a concerning amount of time. Green notes, though, that a limitation of secret sharing algorithms is that they aren't very good at sorting and parsing inputs if they're being deluged by a lot of different puzzle pieces from all different puzzles -- the exact scenario that would occur in the real world where AirTags and Find My devices are constantly encountering each other. With this in mind, the researchers employed a second concept known as "error correction coding," which is specifically designed to sort signal from noise and preserve the durability of signals even if they acquire some errors or corruptions. "Secret sharing and error correction coding have a lot of overlap," Green says. "The trick was to find a way to implement it all that would be fast, and where a phone would be able to reassemble all the puzzle pieces when needed while all of this is running quietly in the background." The researchers published (PDF) their first paper in September and submitted it to Apple. More recently, they notified the industry consortium about the proposal.pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Researchers+Come+Up+With+Better+Idea+To+Prevent+AirTag+Stalking%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F28%2F2233206%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F28%2F2233206%2Fresearchers-come-up-with-better-idea-to-prevent-airtag-stalking%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/12/28/2233206/researchers-come-up-with-better-idea-to-prevent-airtag-stalking?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

Google has indicated that it is ready to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 2020 over its Chrome browser's Incognito mode. From a report: Arising in the Northern District of California, the lawsuit accused Google of continuing to "track, collect, and identify [users'] browsing data in real time" even when they had opened a new Incognito window. The lawsuit, filed by Florida resident William Byatt and California residents Chasom Brown and Maria Nguyen, accused Google of violating wiretap laws. It also alleged that sites using Google Analytics or Ad Manager collected information from browsers in Incognito mode, including web page content, device data, and IP address. The plaintiffs also accused Google of taking Chrome users' private browsing activity and then associating it with their already-existing user profiles. Google initially attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed by pointing to the message displayed when users turned on Chrome's incognito mode. That warning tells users that their activity "might still be visible to websites you visit."pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Google+Agrees+To+Settle+Chrome+Incognito+Mode+Class+Action+Lawsuit%3A+https%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F28%2F1750234%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F28%2F1750234%2Fgoogle-agrees-to-settle-chrome-incognito-mode-class-action-lawsuit%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/12/28/1750234/google-agrees-to-settle-chrome-incognito-mode-class-action-lawsuit?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Times is targeting various companies under the OpenAI umbrella, as well as Microsoft, an OpenAI partner that both uses it to power its Copilot service and helped provide the infrastructure for training the GPT Large Language Model. But the suit goes well beyond the use of copyrighted material in training, alleging that OpenAI-powered software will happily circumvent the Times' paywall and ascribe hallucinated misinformation to the Times. The suit notes that The Times maintains a large staff that allows it to do things like dedicate reporters to a huge range of beats and engage in important investigative journalism, among other things. Because of those investments, the newspaper is often considered an authoritative source on many matters. All of that costs money, and The Times earns that by limiting access to its reporting through a robust paywall. In addition, each print edition has a copyright notification, the Times' terms of service limit the copying and use of any published material, and it can be selective about how it licenses its stories. In addition to driving revenue, these restrictions also help it to maintain its reputation as an authoritative voice by controlling how its works appear. The suit alleges that OpenAI-developed tools undermine all of that. [...] The suit seeks nothing less than the erasure of both any GPT instances that the parties have trained using material from the Times, as well as the destruction of the datasets that were used for the training. It also asks for a permanent injunction to prevent similar conduct in the future. The Times also wants money, lots and lots of money: "statutory damages, compensatory damages, restitution, disgorgement, and any other relief that may be permitted by law or equity."pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=New+York+Times+Copyright+Suit+Wants+OpenAI+To+Delete+All+GPT+Instances%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F28%2F1324214%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F23%2F12%2F28%2F1324214%2Fnew-york-times-copyright-suit-wants-openai-to-delete-all-gpt-instances%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a /div/ppa href="https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/12/28/1324214/new-york-times-copyright-suit-wants-openai-to-delete-all-gpt-instances?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p

San Francisco, California—Face recognition—fast becoming law enforcement’s surveillance tool of choice—is being implemented with little oversight or privacy protections, leading to faulty systems that will disproportionately impact people of color and may implicate innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit, says an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report released today.

Face recognition is rapidly creeping into modern life, and face recognition systems will one day be capable of capturing the faces of people, often without their knowledge, walking down the street, entering stores, standing in line at the airport, attending sporting events, driving their cars, and utilizing public spaces. Researchers at the Georgetown Law School estimated that one in every two American adults—117 million people—are already in law enforcement face recognition systems.

This kind of surveillance will have a chilling effect on Americans’ willingness to exercise their rights to speak out and be politically engaged, the report says. Law enforcement has already used face recognition at political protests, and may soon use face recognition with body-worn cameras, to identify people in the dark, and to project what someone might look like from a police sketch or even a small sample of DNA.

Face recognition employs computer algorithms to pick out details about a person’s face from a photo or video to form a template. As the report explains, police use face recognition to identify unknown suspects by comparing their photos to images stored in databases and to scan public spaces to try to find specific pre-identified targets.

But no face recognition system is 100 percent accurate, and false positives—when a person’s face is incorrectly matched to a template image—are common. Research shows that face recognition misidentifies African Americans and ethnic minorities, young people, and women at higher rates than whites, older people, and men, respectively. And because of well-documented racially biased police practices, all criminal databases—including mugshot databases—include a disproportionate number of African-Americans, Latinos, and immigrants.

For both reasons, inaccuracies in face recognition systems will disproportionately affect people of color.

“The FBI, which has access to at least 400 million images and is the central source for facial recognition identification for federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, has failed to address the problem of false positives and inaccurate results,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch, author of the report. “It has conducted few tests to ensure accuracy and has done nothing to ensure its external partners—federal and state agencies—are not using face recognition in ways that allow innocent people to be identified as criminal suspects.”

Lawmakers, regulators, and policy makers should take steps now to limit face recognition collection and subject it to independent oversight, the report says. Legislation is needed to place meaningful checks on government use of face recognition, including rules limiting retention and sharing, requiring notification when face prints are collected, ensuring robust security procedures to prevent data breaches, and establishing legal processes governing when law enforcement may collect face images from the public without their knowledge, the report concludes.

“People should not have to worry that they may be falsely accused of a crime because an algorithm mistakenly matched their photo to a suspect. They shouldn’t have to worry that their data will end up in the hands of identity thieves because face recognition databases were breached. They shouldn’t have to fear that their every move will be tracked if face recognition is linked to the networks of surveillance cameras that blanket many cities,” said Lynch. “Without meaningful legal protections, this is where we may be headed.”

For the report:

Online version: https://www.eff.org/wp/law-enforcement-use-face-recognition

PDF version: https://www.eff.org/files/2018/02/15/face-off-report-1b.pdf

One pager on facial recognition: https://www.eff.org/document/facial-recognition-one-pager

Contact: Jennifer Lynch

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched its “Catalog of Missing Devices”—a project that illustrates the gadgets that could and should exist, if not for bad copyright laws that prevent innovators from creating the cool new tools that could enrich our lives.

“The law that is supposed to restrict copying has instead been misused to crack down on competition, strangling a future’s worth of gadgets in their cradles,” said EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow. “But it’s hard to notice what isn’t there. We’re aiming to fix that with this Catalog of Missing Devices. It’s a collection of tools, services, and products that could have been, and should have been, but never were.”

The damage comes from Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA 1201), which covers digital rights management software (DRM). DRM was designed to block software counterfeiting and other illegal copying, and Section 1201 bans DRM circumvention. However, businesses quickly learned that by employing DRM they could thwart honest competitors from creating inter-operative tools.

Right now, that means you could be breaking the law just by doing something as simple as repairing your car on your own, without the vehicle-maker’s pricey tool. Other examples include rightsholders forcing you to buy additional copies of movies you want to watch on your phone—instead of allowing you to rip the DVD you already own and are entitled to watch—or manufacturers blocking your printer from using anything but their official ink cartridges.

But that’s just the beginning of what consumers are missing. The Catalog of Missing Devices imagines things like music software that tailors your listening to what you are reading on your audiobook, or a gadget that lets parents reprogram talking toys to replace canned, meaningless messaging.

“Computers aren’t just on our desktops or in our pockets—they are everywhere, and so is the software that runs them,” said EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry. “We need to fix the laws that choke off competition and innovation with no corresponding benefit.”

The Catalog of Missing Devices is part of EFF’s Apollo 1201 project, dedicated to eradicating all DRM from the world. A key step is eliminating laws like DMCA 1201, as well as the international versions of this legislation that the U.S. has convinced its trading partners to adopt.

For the Catalog of Missing Devices:
https://www.eff.org/missing-devices

Contact: Cory DoctorowCorynne McSherry

Boston, Massachusetts—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged a federal judge today to reject the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to dismiss an important lawsuit challenging DHS’s policy of searching and confiscating, without suspicion or warrant, travelers’ electronic devices at U.S. borders.

EFF and ACLU represent 11 travelers—10 U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident—whose smartphones and laptops were searched without warrants at the U.S. border in a groundbreaking lawsuit filed in September. The case, Alasaad v. Nielsen, asks the court to rule that the government must have a warrant based on probable cause before conducting searches of electronic devices, which contain highly detailed personal information about people’s lives. The case also argues that the government must have probable cause to confiscate a traveler’s device.

The plaintiffs in the case include a military veteran, journalists, students, an artist, a NASA engineer, and a business owner. The government seeks dismissal, saying the plaintiffs don’t have the right to bring the lawsuit and the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to border searches. Both claims are wrong, the EFF and ACLU explain in a brief filed today in federal court in Boston.

First, the plaintiffs have “standing” to seek a court order to end unconstitutional border device searches because they face a substantial risk of having their devices searched again. This means they are the right parties to bring this case and should be able to proceed to the merits. Four plaintiffs already have had their devices searched multiple times.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy allows border agents to search and confiscate anyone’s smartphone for any reason or for no reason at all. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) policy allows border device searches without a warrant or probable cause, and usually without even reasonable suspicion. Last year, CBP conducted more than 30,000 border device searches, more than triple the number just two years earlier.

“Our clients are travelers from all walks of life. The government policies that invaded their privacy in the past are enforced every day at airports and border crossings around the country,” said EFF Staff Attorney Sophia Cope. “Because the plaintiffs face being searched in the future, they have the right to proceed with said Cope.

Second, the plaintiffs argue that the Fourth Amendment requires border officers to get a warrant before searching a traveler’s electronic device. This follows from the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Riley v. California requiring that police officers get a warrant before searching an arrestee’s cell phone. The court explained that cell phones contain the “privacies of life”—a uniquely large and varied amount of highly sensitive information, including emails, photos, and medical records. This is equally true for international travelers, the vast majority of whom are not suspected of any crime. Warrantless border device searches also violate the First Amendment, because they chill freedom of speech and association by allowing the government to view people’s contacts, communications, and reading material.

“Searches of electronic devices at the border are increasing rapidly, causing greater numbers of people to have their constitutional rights violated,” said ACLU attorney Esha Bhandari. “Device searches can give border officers unfettered access to vast amounts of private information about our lives, and they are unconstitutional absent a warrant.”

Below is a full list of the plaintiffs along with links to their individual stories, which are also collected here:

• Ghassan and Nadia Alasaad are a married couple who live in Massachusetts, where he is a limousine driver and she is a nursing student.

• Suhaib Allababidi, who lives in Texas, owns and operates a business that sells security technology, including to federal government clients.

• Sidd Bikkannavar is an optical engineer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

• Jeremy Dupin is a journalist living in Massachusetts.

• Aaron Gach is an artist living in California.

• Isma’il Kushkush is a journalist living in Virginia.

• Diane Maye is a college professor and former captain in the U. S. Air Force living in Florida.

• Zainab Merchant, from Florida, is a writer and a graduate student in international security and journalism at Harvard.

• Akram Shibly is a filmmaker living in New York.

• Matthew Wright is a computer programmer in Colorado.

For the brief:
https://www.eff.org/document/alasaad-v-nielsen-opposition-motion-dismiss

For more EFF information on this case:
https://www.eff.org/cases/alasaad-v-duke 

For more ACLU information on this case:
https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-eff-sue-over-warrantless-phone-and-laptop-searches-us-border

For more on privacy at the border:
https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017

Contact: Sophia CopeAdam SchwartzJosh Bell

San Diego, California—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to further limit the government’s ability to conduct highly intrusive searches of electronic devices at the border by requiring federal agents to obtain a warrant if they want to access the contents of travelers’ phones.

“The Ninth Circuit four years ago issued an important ruling requiring officials to show they have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to forensically search digital devices. While that was an improvement over the government’s prior practice of conducting suspicionless searches, the court didn’t go far enough,” said EFF Staff Attorney Sophia Cope. “We are now asking the Ninth Circuit to bar warrantless device searches at the border.”

“Our electronic devices contain texts, emails, photos, contact lists, work documents, and other communications that reveal intimate details of our private lives. Our privacy interests in this material is tremendous. Requiring a warrant is a critical step in making sure our Fourth Amendment protections survive into the digital age,” said Cope.

The Ninth Circuit is being asked to throw out evidence obtained through a warrantless forensic search of the defendant’s cell phone at the U.S.-Mexico border in southern California. The case, U.S. v. Cano, is a drug prosecution and the first before the Ninth Circuit since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that because devices hold “the privacies of life,” police need a warrant to search the phones of people who are arrested.

In an amicus brief filed today in U.S. v. Cano, EFF urged the court to recognize that people traveling through our international borders deserve the same privacy protections that the Supreme Court has extended to arrestees. The Ninth Circuit’s rulings apply to states in the west and southwest, several of whom share borders with Mexico and Canada,

Warrantless border searches of luggage have been allowed under an exception to the Fourth Amendment for routine immigration and customs enforcement. But since digital devices provide so much more highly personal, private information than what is traditionally carried in a suitcase, agents should be required to show a judge that they have probable cause to believe that the device contains evidence of a violation of the immigration or customs laws, EFF said in the brief.

Digital device searches at the border have more than tripled since the inauguration of President Trump. This increase, along with the increasing number of people who carry these devices while traveling, has highlighted the need for stronger privacy rights while crossing the U.S. border. Last year, EFF and ACLU filed a lawsuit in Boston against the federal government on behalf of 11 travelers whose smartphones and other electronic devices were searched without a warrant at the U.S. border.

“Digital devices differ wildly from luggage and other physical items a person carries across the border,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Adam Schwartz. “Now is the time to apply the full force of constitutional privacy protections to digital devices.”

For the brief:
https://www.eff.org/document/eff-amicus-brief-us-v-cano

For more on privacy at the border:
https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017

Contact: Sophia CopeAdam Schwartz

Los Angeles, California—Playboy Entertainment's lawsuit accusing acclaimed website Boing Boing of copyright infringement—for doing nothing more than reporting on a historical collection of Playboy centerfolds—is groundless and should be thrown out, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told a federal court today.

As EFF and co-counsel Durie Tangri LLP explain in a request to dismiss the lawsuit filed on behalf of Boing Boing owner Happy Mutants LLC, Playboy’s copyright claim seeks to punish Boing Boing for commenting on and linking to an archive of Playboy “playmate” centerfold images that a third party posted. The blog contained links to an imgur.com page and YouTube video—neither of which were created by Boing Boing. But courts have long recognized that simply linking to content on the web isn’t unlawful.

“Boing Boing didn’t upload, publish, host, or store any images that Playboy owns, didn’t control the images, and didn’t contribute to the infringement of any Playboy copyrights,” said EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry. “It’s frankly mystifying that an entertainment company that has often fought to defend free speech rights  is trying to punish Boing Boing for doing what has made it a leading online source of news and commentary: unique and groundbreaking reporting on art, science, and popular culture.”

“Boing Boing’s reporting and commenting on the Playboy photos is protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer. “We’re asking the court to dismiss this deeply flawed lawsuit. Journalists, scientists, researchers, and everyday people on the web have the right to link to material, even copyrighted material, without having to worry about getting sued.”

For the brief:
https://www.eff.org/document/playboy-v-happy-mutants-eff-mtd

For more on fair use:
https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property

Contact: Corynne McSherryDaniel Nazer

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and mobile security company Lookout have uncovered a new malware espionage campaign infecting thousands of people in more than 20 countries. Hundreds of gigabytes of data has been stolen, primarily through mobile devices compromised by fake secure messaging clients.

The trojanized apps, including Signal and WhatsApp, function like the legitimate apps and send and receive messages normally. However, the fake apps also allow the attackers to take photos, retrieve location information, capture audio, and more.

The threat, called Dark Caracal by EFF and Lookout researchers, may be a nation-state actor and appears to employ shared infrastructure which has been linked to other nation-state actors. In a new report, EFF and Lookout trace Dark Caracal to a building belonging to the Lebanese General Security Directorate in Beirut.

“People in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Lebanon, and France have been hit by Dark Caracal. Targets include military personnel, activists, journalists, and lawyers, and the types of stolen data range from call records and audio recordings to documents and photos,” said EFF Director of Cybersecurity Eva Galperin. “This is a very large, global campaign, focused on mobile devices. Mobile is the future of spying, because phones are full of so much data about a person’s day-to-day life.”

“Dark Caracal is part of a trend we’ve seen mounting over the past year whereby traditional APT actors are moving toward using mobile as a primary target platform,” said Mike Murray, Vice President of Security Intelligence at Lookout. “The Android threat we identified, as used by Dark Caracal, is one of the first globally active mobile APTs we have spoken publicly about.”

Dark Caracal has been operating since at least 2012. However, one reason it has been hard to track is the diversity of seemingly unrelated espionage campaigns originating from the same domain names. The researchers believe that Dark Caracal is only one of a number of different global attackers using this infrastructure. Over the years, Dark Caracal’s work has been repeatedly misattributed to other cybercrime groups. In fact, EFF’s Operation Manul report from 2016 misidentified espionage from these servers as coming from the Indian security company Appin.

“One of the interesting things about this ongoing attack is that it doesn’t require a sophisticated or expensive exploit. Instead, all Dark Caracal needed was application permissions that users themselves granted when they downloaded the apps, not realizing that they contained malware,” said EFF Staff Technologist Cooper Quintin. “This research shows it’s not difficult to create a strategy allowing people and governments to spy on targets around the world.”

For the full report:
https://www.lookout.com/info/ds-dark-caracal-ty

For more on Dark Caracal:
https://blog.lookout.com/dark-caracal-mobile-APT

For more on how to avoid downloading malware:
https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/how-avoid-phishing-attacks

Contact: Eva GalperinCooper Quintin

Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the Librarian of Congress today to limit the legal barriers people face when they want to repair and modify software-enabled products, so that they—not manufacturers— control the appliances, computers, toys, vehicles, and other products they own.

In comments filed in Washington D.C. today, EFF continued its years-long fight to enable owners and creators to repair, modify, and enhance products, or use snippets of films or songs, free of onerous threats that doing so somehow infringes companies' copyrights. Software-enabled devices and Internet-connected products and appliances are ubiquitous in modern life, and people aren't infringing anyone's copyright when, for example, they choose to permanently disable the embedded, on-all-the-time camera or microphone in their kids' toys, or send their car to their favorite mechanic, rather than high-priced dealerships, to be repaired.

“It’s absurd that a law intended to protect copyrighted works is misused instead to prevent people from taking apart or modifying the things they own, inhibit scientists and researches from investigating safety features or security enhancements, and block artists and educators from using snippets of film in noncommercial ways," said EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry. "The exemption process is one highly flawed way of alleviating that burden."

“We rely on the devices in our lives to learn and communicate, to keep us safe and get things done,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kit Walsh. “These devices should work for us and embody our preferences, not the commercial desires of their manufacturers. We, the users of these devices, should be able to decide how they affect our  lives and how we can improve and adapt them. That’s how we ensure that technology enhances our freedoms rather than undermining them.”

This year EFF petitioned the Librarian to exempt from Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) all modifications and repairs of software-enabled devices that don’t infringe copyrights. It’s also seeking exemptions that will allow people to tinker with smart speakers and digital home assistants such as Amazon Echo and Google Home. EFF is also seeking one clear, easier-to-use exemption for video excerpts that would allow educators, libraries, documentary filmmakers, remix artists, and others to use video snippets without fear of legal repercussions by copyright owners. The Librarian implements the exemption recommendations of the Copyright Office.

“Our approach is simple: we are seeking to expand the types of activities that should be exempt from Section 1201 of the DMCA to encompass repairs, modifications, enhancements, and innovations that don’t infringe copyright,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz. “We shouldn’t have to seek exemptions for things copyright law already allows. Instead, there should be a general rule that allows people to circumvent digital locks to do any non-infringing activity.”

For EFF’s comments:
https://www.eff.org/document/eff-1201-exemption-comments-2017-computer-program-repairs
https://www.eff.org/document/eff-1201-exemption-comments-2017-jailbreaking-0
https://www.eff.org/document/eff-1201-exemption-comments-2017-video-0
https://www.eff.org/document/huang-1201-exemption-comments-2017
https://www.eff.org/document/green-1201-exemption-comments-2017

For more on the Section 1201 exemption process:
https://www.eff.org/cases/2018-dmca-rulemaking

For more on the unintended consequences of Section 1201 of the DMCA:
https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca
https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca-rulemaking

 

Contact: Corynne McSherryKit WalshMitch Stoltz

Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Homeland Security today, demanding records about the agencies’ work on the federal Tattoo Recognition Technology program.

This secretive program involves a coalition of government, academia, and private industry working to develop a series of algorithms that would rapidly detect tattoos, identify people via their tattoos, and match people with others who have similar body art—as well as flagging tattoos believed to be connected to religious and ethnic symbols. This type of surveillance raises profound religious, speech, and privacy concerns. Moreover, the limited information that EFF has been able to obtain about the program has already revealed a range of potentially unethical behavior, including conducting research on prisoners without approval, adequate oversight, or safeguards.

EFF filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for more information about the Tattoo Recognition Technology program, which is a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) project sponsored by the FBI, beginning in January of 2016. Although the agencies released some records, they withheld others, and heavily redacted some of the documents they released. As a result, EFF is going to court today against DHS, DOJ, and NIST's parent agency, the Commerce Department, to make sure this important information is released to the public.

“These new automated tattoo recognition tools raise serious constitutional concerns,” said EFF Stanton Fellow Camille Fischer. “Tattoos have served as an expression of the self for thousands of years, and can represent our innermost thoughts, closely held beliefs, and significant moments. If law enforcement is creating a detailed database of tattoos, we have to make sure that everyone’s rights to freedom of expression are protected.”

One big danger of this surveillance is that it can create First Amendment freedom of association concerns when people are matched with others who have similar tattoos—sometimes incorrectly. For example, someone who wears a Star of David tattoo could be confused with a member of a Chicago street gang whose members also wear six-pointed-star tattoos. Recently, an immigrant was fast-tracked for deportation because immigration officials claimed he had a gang tattoo. The immigrant argued that the tattoo signified his place of birth.

“Federal researchers say they want to ‘crack the code’ of tattoos and speech, creating a powerful program that will encourage police to make assumptions about tattoo-wearers,” said EFF Staff Attorney Aaron Mackey. “But the reality is that body art is much more complex than that. The government must disclose more about this program so we can ensure that it doesn’t violate our rights.”

For the full lawsuit:
https://www.eff.org/document/tattoo-complaint

For more on tattoo recognition technology:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/06/tattoo-recognition-research-threatens-free-speech-and-privacy
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/5-ways-law-enforcement-will-use-tattoo-recognition-technology

Contact: Camille FischerAaron MackeyDave Maass