Category Archives: Law

Militarized Police

Posted on by

In a little over a year we’ve seen two amazing examples of how militarized our police forces have become. One was a “best case” scenario and the current one is just about as much of a worse case scenario as you can get. In 2013 the Boston Marathon was bombed by a pair of radicals. What happened afterwards was a combination of the full capabilities of the surveillance state, investigation, and militarized police. Through a series of cameras blanked across the area, the Boston PD and other law enforcement offices were able to identify the pair of bombing suspects. Eventually this turned into a chase, shoot out, and then a stand off. During the stand off we saw some pretty amazing pieces of equipment being deployed, including fully body armored SWAT teams, armored personnel carriers, infrared cameras, and other pieces of technology. All deployed to find one man huddled in a boat. Furthermore, the officers conducted full house searches without consent of the homeowners. All of these amounted to some pretty incredible uses of power by the city of Boston and the state of MA. All to find a terrorist.

Now, we’re seeing something similar playing out in Ferguson MO, where the police allegedly shot an unarmed black man in the suburb of St. Louis. This town has 21,000 people and has nearly identical pieces of equipment deployed to prevent protests over what’s clearly a case of perceived police overreach, brutality, and murder. According to Paul Szoldza of Business Insider, vets of the Afghan and Iraq war argue that they had less capable equipment when they were in their actual war zones. This is rather appalling. These are citizens that are essentially delegitimizing the rule of law because of the illegal actions of the police force. In response, the police force essentially sends in an improperly trained military force.

This is abhorrent. In the United States we should never see this type of behavior. We’d condemn these actions if it happened in Russia or a similar regime, yet here in the United States it’s acceptable. Furthermore, the FAA is complicit by enforcing a no fly zone thus restricting free speech – as it prevents any news helicopters from recording or reporting on the story as it unfolds. This isn’t an instance of a free press. It’s free as far as the military police allow it. I’m extremely concerned by these turn of events. I have no idea what we can do about this. It’s continually spreading and will likely only get worse.

Net Neutrality, Let your Voice be heard

Posted on by

The FCC is currently taking comments on the net neutrality issue. Please contact them. The agency is currently completely overwhelmed with the feedback on Net Neutrality, but even still, more voices might help tip the scales that are pretty obviously stacked against us. It’s like the scales used to weigh if the witch weighs the same as a duck in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. One of the most important things about net neutrality is the scope that the ISPs actually own in this debate. They are dictating the terms of this debate through money – they make the most, they charge the most, and they have monopolies. This cartoon really helps explain what the ISPs actually own (click here or the picture to see all of the comic).

Economix comix depiction of Net Neutrality

That’s right, basically if you live off a street that says “road not maintained by such and such county”(lots of them where I live) THAT’s the portion the ISP maintains. That’s why a lot of these arguments are over “the last mile.” Basically it’s the mile from their data center that connects to the backbone of the internet to your house. In other industries it might be maintained by one company, but any company can use it. Think about back when you had a modem. You could have that service provided by ANYONE – that’s why AOL got so big they offered free time to just about everyone. Almost everyone signed up and anyone could because the last mile wasn’t maintained by your phone company and had to be shared. DSL still has that requirement only Cable and FiOS don’t and that’s because they were classified as a “information service” rather than a common carrier. The highway above is a common carrier.

If you’d like to see this changed, please go to the FCC and comment (if you can) the link is here: http://www.fcc.gov/comments click on 14-28 and try to leave a comment.

It’s up to us to fight for net neutrality. I’ve left at least two comments. I’ve signed several petitions. I’ve donated to mayone.us all because one of these alone isn’t enough. I’ve contacted by Senator and I know he supports Net Neutrality. If your company is an internet company or uses a large amount of bandwidth on a regular basis see if your company will come out in support of Net Neutrality. It’s the only way we’ll win. We need to get over whelming support.

Stupid laws, poor Decisions, and corruption

Posted on by

Uber and Lyft have been all over the news lately. They’ve been getting pushed out of city after city. They have had rulings go against them, like one in PIttsburgh today. The ironic thing is that the Judges were completely sympathetic to the people of Pittsburgh and Uber/Lyft, but had to rule in that way because of the way the law is written. I think it’s fair to say that the judges believe that if the people of Pittsburgh want these services they will have to work with the city council to have the commission responsible for Taxis change the rules so that Uber and Lyft are legal. Uber plans to running through the holiday weekend, in a similar fashion that they are in Austin, Texas where the services are also illegal.

The Supreme Court of the US has ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby in a case around if a privately held company has to pay for birth control based upon religious exceptions. However, there have been a lot of points indicating that there is hypocrisy in their approach. Through their 401(K) they own stocks in companies that manufacture birth control. They are willing to pay for vasectomies and vVagra, which seem incongruent with their beliefs. To be internally consistent Hobby Lobby should be against paying for vasectomies as well – the only difference between them and the Pill is that it is on the man not the woman. Should the results imply that Hobby Lobby must be internally consistent and be forced to divest those stocks and be prevented from paying for vasectomies? I’m not sure, but I think that there could likely be a lawsuit over that – forcing Hobby Lobby to explain the rationale of refusing to pay for one over the other. Which may have a different unintended consequence of hours getting cut to Wal-Mart levels and no one getting insurance except for salary employees.

Apparently a DOJ antitrust lawyer was invited to a big Comcast shindig for the Olympics. The only reason the person didn’t go was because of the rules put in place to prevent her from going. I think there are two ways to interpret this. First, she’s sincere and wants to go, but is aware that it could look bad for her and Comcast if she went. Second, she’s sincere and is saying that it would be corrupt if she went even though it did look like a lot of fun. I can see both sides, but I think it’s pretty fair when people assume this is part of the general corruption within the US government. Where the government has a revolving door between the regulated and regulators. How can you hope to not have general corruption though being a decent person. You get to know the people you’re working with and you want to help them because that’s what good people do. It’s the most likely type of corruption to happen – corruption through complicity.

All in all, these three stories don’t play well for the US being a shining light on the hill. We’ve seen the MIddle East blow up of late and there’s a lot of discussion as to why. One reason is that we’re trying to push democracy on people that aren’t ready for it, however, are we even ready for it? Each of these stories shows that we have broken laws that could be captured by business or other entities. I think that for a country to export their version of democracy they need to have their house in order and show how well the system can work. I liken it to process improvement. Porsche is one of the best examples around this – they became some of the best Lean consultants in the world through fixing all of their problems first. You need to build credibility and show you can execute, then you partner with a struggling supplier and build the change together. You cannot force it down their throat.

Our system is broken in many places and the past few weeks really highlights that.

Supreme Court makes some rulings that will have far reaching effects

Posted on by

This week is the end of the Supreme Court session. Three big rulings have happened in relationship to technology that are vitally important. The first ruling known as Alice which is a key decision in changing how people look at software patents. Second, was a ruling on Aereo, a company that provided a streaming service for over the air way signals. Third, a case about if cops do not need a warrant to search your cell phone.

Alice, has really reinforced the non-obvious clause for patent cases. In fact, it was reinforced in a way that will likely make it difficult for determining non-obviousness. Especially because it strengths the argument that an algorithm is a natural extension of a mathematical truth. Secondly, it requires something novel to be done with a piece of hardware. This means that you can’t simply just take “on a computer” into the patent and have it be valid. I think this will have some really positive implications on the patent trolls out there. Since, it’s required to do something novel, such as using RFID to do the work, you can’t simply say automation through a computer any more. I think this is a great step forward. I’m sure it will cause a lot of heartburn and many more extremely prominent cases to gain some greater level of clarity.

Aereo is officially dead. It’s been decided that Aereo was infringing on copyright in a massive way. They were found to have been completely violating copyright in every sense of the word. This is pretty scary in my opinion. It means that a company that wants to provide an otherwise free service through streaming is violating a copyright holder. This means anyone that acts as a sort of repeater is violating copyright. It certainly means anyone that is transmitting copyrighted material in any medium is violating copyright. This I think is devastating. Furthermore, I don’t believe that this ruling even required specific instances of copyright violation. This puts both Google and Twitch in a precarious position, because they are streaming potentially copyrighted material all the time. It also means that any company that streams other free content is violating copyright. I’m afraid that this is going to scare a lot of other companies out of these spaces. There’s a clear need for this service and the Supreme Court killed that innovation.

Cops need warrants to search your cell phone. This is a huge ruling. This means that if you have a lock on your cell phone that they cannot access the contents without getting a court order. This is pretty big. So I suggest making sure that you lock your phone and think about encrypting it. It truly provides a great deal more protection than in the past. Furthermore, if they violate this and do not get a court order, then the evidence is inadmissible. I am hoping that this lays the legal framework for an overturn of the collection of NSA Metadata. Based on the wording in the ruling, it seems that it would lend a great deal of weight to an argument claiming that the Metadata is part of the phone. If the police cannot access your call history through your phone without a warrant, then logically you’d need a warrant to get the information from a third party – that you HAVE to rely on.

I think that these cases will have a great deal of long term impact on the direction of technology and law in the next few years. I would not be surprised if there were more legal challenges based upon these rulings within the next few months. Expect the EFF to look to expand the logic of the cell phone warrant requirement. Look for companies that are getting hit by patent trolls to push back harder like New Egg has and really beat them down. I’m really concerned about the long term impact of Aereo though. Who knows the implications of that.

We know that NSA is hurting tech companies – that’s a good thing

Posted on by

Snowden leaked his documents a year ago. We’ve been getting a slow trickle ever since. However, some of these documents are getting date and surely the NSA is doing more stuff than they had in the past. That being said, they are continually being surprised by a new document that’s released or another. They clearly haven’t fully figured out the full list of documents that Snowden managed to take. Furthermore, they haven’t learned anything by not changing the techniques that they currently use. The NSA should have systematically shut down every program that could have been possibly leaked and moved onto something different. They haven’t, which means that they don’t really feel they need to change anything unless we force them to acknowledge that they’re doing something Americans (and the rest of the world) don’t want.

Today the guy that founded Netscape (a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist) thinks that the fact the Edward Snowden released these documents hurt US technology companies. He thinks that because we now know that the US government does bad things with OUR tech company’s technology before it reaches a customer is hurting our companies. He blames Snowden. This is the most assinine thing I’ve ever heard. Marc Anderssen should be pissed off at the US government and praising Snowden because NOW US tech companies can DO something about it.

This is what a good manager or leader does. They support and acknowledge the fact that a person raise the attention of a problem, used them to address the root cause of the problem, and move on to the next problem. This is what Lean process improvement is all about. You NEVER shoot the messenger, you shoot the root cause of the problem eliminate it and make sure it never comes back. Saying that Snowden is a traitor because he highlighted the fact that the US government is taking good companies work (Cisco) and add malware is counter productive. We need to know when anyone government or otherwise is intentionally trying to break the internet. I do not believe that Mr. Netscape believes that the person who leaked the TransPacific Partnership is a traitor – when they essentially highlighted a similar problem.

I also believe, that labeling Snowden a traitor implicitly removes any blame from those companies that are being harmed by the US government. In many cases those companies have bee fully complicit with not just the US government, but “rogue” states (Iran, China, and other oppressive regimes) as well as companies (like Comcast, TWC, etc..) through enabling deep packet inspection (which allows anyone to snoop at anything you do. All of these have to have been enabled by a US technology company. These companies found a benefit to their benefit by doing this.

Now other companies, like Google, WordPress, and others are trying to get around both of these by encrypting their data. I actually suggested this as a tool to get around data caps or fast/slow lanes (if all data is encrypted you can’t slow or speed up traffic). This will inherently force a more net neutral internet (baffling deep packet inspection) and defeating much of the tools of the NSA.

All of these are good things. We know this because of Snowden. We know that tech companies need to address problems that the NSA and other government agencies have caused. This is a cause for celebration not condemnation. We need more people like him so that the internet can continue to thrive and be an economic driver. Don’t blame the messenger, if the US government is hurting US tech companies, we need to know so we can stop that from happening.