Senator Cassidy Has More Words, But No Actions, For RFK Jr.

Failures

from the do-more dept

Rinse, lather, repeat. That is supposed to be the self-serving message on the back of a shampoo bottle, but it can easily be applied to Senator Bill Cassidy’s response to all the bullshit RFK Jr. continues to pull when it comes to vaccines.

The last time we saw this was back in October of last year. In the wake of an absolutely insane press conference in which Kennedy and Trump decided to point the finger at Tylenol, of all things, as a major cause of autism spectrum disorder, Cassidy bravely took to social media and the radio to criticize the HHS Secretary for essentially not having a single fucking idea about which he was speaking… and then he did absolutely fuck all about it. And now, days after Kennedy’s CDC altered the agency’s childhood vaccine schedule recommendations, he’s once more out in public spilling all kinds of words in response.

Cassidy, a physician and longtime proponent of vaccinations, said this move will “make America sicker.”

“As a doctor who treated patients for decades, my top priority is protecting children and families. Multiple children have died or were hospitalized from measles, and South Carolina continues to face a growing outbreak. Two children have died in my state from whooping cough. All of this was preventable with safe and effective vaccines,” Cassidy wrote on the social media platform X.

“The vaccine schedule IS NOT A MANDATE. It’s a recommendation giving parents the power. Changing the pediatric vaccine schedule based on no scientific input on safety risks and little transparency will cause unnecessary fear for patients and doctors, and will make America sicker,” he added.

Well, gosh golly gee, Senator, if only there was someone in some kind of position of power that could actually do something about it. Maybe a respected figure in the Republican majority, one who is a doctor by background and who cast and whipped up critical votes to confirm Kennedy’s appointment, who could do more than offer stern warnings about how horrible this is all going to be. I’d like to find someone like that and implore them to take action. Like… any action. Do literally anything other than flap their lips, as though that were accomplishing anything.

The incredible part of all of this is the context in which Kennedy’s betrayal of Cassidy has occurred. According to Cassidy, Kennedy committed to the following, either in confirmation hearings or to him personally:

1. Not changing vaccine review processes or slowing down vaccine approvals
2. Leave the CDC’s ACIP committee unchanged
3. Not changing the CDC website’s language debunking misinformation about vaccines and autism
4. Basing vaccine approvals and schedule recommendations on established and peer-reviewed science

Lie, lie, lie, and lie! It’s a superfecta of broken promises made to a sitting senator that has the stature, standing, and ability to do something about it. He could back the effort to impeach Kennedy, as he absolutely should. He could hit him in funding. He could haul him before Congress and demand answers, using his bully pulpit to expose the dangers further than some ExTwitter posts.

“Senator Cassidy put his personal political preservation above all by casting the deciding vote to confirm RFK Jr., even after raising many valid concerns over Kennedy’s pursuit of a dangerous anti-vaccine agenda,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Public Health Watch, a project of Protect Our Care. “It is obvious that Kennedy was always hellbent on pushing vaccine misinformation to AmericansAmericans no matter how much the data and science show them to be safe and effective. And now, with each new baseless attack on vaccine safety and efficacy that  Secretary Kennedy carries out — like gutting the child vaccine schedule — more American lives are needlessly put in jeopardy. Dr. Cassidy knows this better than anyone, and it’s time he backs up his empty words of ‘concern’ with serious action.”

Instead, we have Cassidy’s mere words. Inaction is tacit endorsement, as far as I’m concerned. And every day that goes by in which Cassidy continues to not lift a single finger to protect his own constituents at a minimum, and all Americans more generally, is another violation of the Hippocratic Oath he once took.

It’s “do no harm”, Senator. Not “do nothing.”

Filed Under: bill cassidy, cdc, health and human services, rfk jr., vaccines

Fair Use Is A Right. Ignoring It Has Consequences.

Copyright

from the dmca-takedown-abuse dept

Fair use is not just an excuse to copy—it’s a pillar of online speech protection, and disregarding it in order to lash out at a critic should have serious consequences. That’s what we told a federal court in Channel 781 News v. Waltham Community Access Corporation, our case fighting copyright abuse on behalf of citizen journalists.

Waltham Community Access Corporation (WCAC), a public access cable station in Waltham, Massachusetts, records city council meetings on video. Channel 781 News (Channel 781), a group of volunteers who report on the city council, curates clips from those recordings for its YouTube channel, along with original programming, to spark debate on issues like housing and transportation. WCAC sent a series of takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), accusing Channel 781 of copyright infringement. That led to YouTube deactivating Channel 781’s channel just days before a critical municipal election. Represented by EFF and the law firm Brown Rudnick LLP, Channel 781 sued WCAC for misrepresentations in its takedown notices under an important but underutilized provision of the DMCA.

The DMCA gives copyright holders a powerful tool to take down other people’s content from platforms like YouTube. The “notice and takedown” process requires only an email, or filling out a web form, in order to accuse another user of copyright infringement and have their content taken down. And multiple notices typically lead to the target’s account being suspended, because doing so helps the platform avoid liability. There’s no court or referee involved, so anyone can bring an accusation and get a nearly instantaneous takedown.

Of course, that power invites abuse. Because filing a DMCA infringement notice is so easy, there’s a temptation to use it at the drop of a hat to take down speech that someone doesn’t like. To prevent that, before sending a takedown notice, a copyright holder has to consider whether the use they’re complaining about is a fair use. Specifically, the copyright holder needs to form a “good faith belief” that the use is not “authorized by the law,” such as through fair use.

WCAC didn’t do that. They didn’t like Channel 781 posting short clips from city council meetings recorded by WCAC as a way of educating Waltham voters about their elected officials. So WCAC fired off DMCA takedown notices at many of Channel 781’s clips that were posted on YouTube.

WCAC claims they considered fair use, because a staff member watched a video about it and discussed it internally. But WCAC ignored three of the four fair use factors. WCAC ignored that their videos had no creativity, being nothing more than records of public meetings. They ignored that the clips were short, generally including one or two officials’ comments on a single issue. They ignored that the clips caused WCAC no monetary or other harm, beyond wounded pride. And they ignored facts they already knew, and that are central to the remaining fair use factor: by excerpting and posting the clips with new titles, Channel 781 was putting its own “spin” on the material – in other words, transforming it. All of these facts support fair use.

Instead, WCAC focused only on the fact that the clips they targeted were not altered further or put into a larger program. Looking at just that one aspect of fair use isn’t enough, and changing the fair use inquiry to reach the result they wanted is hardly the way to reach a “good faith belief.”

That’s why we’re asking the court to rule that WCAC’s conduct violated the law and that they should pay damages. Copyright holders need to use the powerful DMCA takedown process with care, and when they don’t, there needs to be consequences.

Reposted from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: censorship, channel 781, copyfraud, copyright, dmca, fair use, takedowns
Companies: wcac

Daily Deal: The Courses Digest, Labs Digest, and Exams Digest Bundle

Deals

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

The Courses Digest, Labs Digest, and Exams Digest Bundle gives you unlimited access to expertly crafted online courses, interactive labs and study tools. Whether you’re aiming for industry-recognized certifications or expanding your tech expertise, this bundle will help you get there with courses on CompTIA, AWS, Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, and more. It’s on sale for $69.97 for a very limited time.

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

Filed Under: daily deal

Judge Tears Into ICE Over Its Inhumane Facilities, Insane Amount Of Lying

Failures

from the tiny-evil-pinheaded-fuckwits dept

This ruling was released in the middle of last month and I really wish I had gotten to it sooner.

Let’s not pretend this will change anything about how this administration full of white Christian nationalists will treat detained migrants. And it definitely won’t change anything about how the American government in general treats anyone who is incarcerated, even if they’re just stuck there awaiting trial.

But it still needs to be seen to be believed. The baseline disregard for detainees health and well-being is nothing new. Neither are the attempts of law enforcement officials to lie their way out of a lawsuit. But the absolute stupidity of the lies and the complete lack of effort of those attempting to shield themselves from accountability goes past the normal ghoulishness we associate with the people doing the imprisoning.

There’s a new level of contempt on display here — one that indicates these people have nothing to fear from the courts because this administration will never consider these acts and the lies used to cover them up as something in need of punishment.

The background of the case is this: Erron Anthony Clarke arrived in the United States in 2018 on a work visa at the request of a US employer. He remained in the country after his visa expired but married a US citizen which put him on track to obtain permanent residency. He picked the wrong time to pursue his legal options, as the New York Times reports:

On Nov. 6, Mr. Clarke applied to become a permanent resident, noting in his application that he had worked in the United States without authorization. As part of his application process, he arrived on Dec. 5 for a fingerprinting appointment at an ICE office in Hauppauge, N.Y. He was pulled over and arrested by immigration enforcement agents shortly after leaving the facility. ICE immediately began proceedings to deport him.

These are the conditions he dealt with while being detained by ICE: he was placed in a 6′ x 6′ cell with eight other people. The cell’s temperature dipped below 30 degrees and occupants were forced to sleep on the floor next to an open toilet. The lights stayed on 24 hours a day. The only reprieve from these conditions came when ICE moved him to other detention centers in order to prevent him from appearing in court.

For 12 hours that night, Mr. Clarke was detained in the tiny room in the federal courthouse. On Dec. 6, he was moved to an ICE detention facility in East Meadow, N.Y., only to be brought back to the squalid conditions three days later.

After petitioning for his release, Mr. Clarke was again transferred on Dec. 10 to an ICE detention facility, this time in Newark. After the agency initially ignored his order to present him for a hearing, he appeared on Dec. 11 before Judge Brown, who ordered him immediately released. Yet Mr. Clarke was held for another night in Newark.

New York federal court judge Gary Brown isn’t happy to have found this sort of thing going on almost literally under his nose in the Islip (New York) courthouse detention facilities. He’s even less happy to have been repeatedly lied to by federal law enforcement officers, whose contempt for the rule of law meant they couldn’t even be bothered to lie semi-competently.

From the decision [PDF] (that I’ll be quoting extensively):

The ICE agent swears that “[b]ased on that investigation, Acting Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer John T. Keane executed a Form I-200, Warrant for Arrest of Alien.” Yet the documents submitted do not fully support this. The arrest warrant is unsigned and dated December 5, 2025 – the date of Clarke’s biometrics appointment and ensuing arrest – and bears no time notation. That warrant offers check boxes to indicate the basis of probable cause; the only box marked states the warrant emanated from “biometric confirmation of the subject’s identity and a records check of federal databases.” Thus, the warrant was issued after the biometric appointment.

Crucially, in issuing the warrant, the officer did not indicate that removal proceedings had been commenced, even though there are two boxes to so indicate. At the Court’s direction, ICE also supplied a Notice to Appear (NTA) – the charging document that commenced removal proceedings. The NTA is also dated December 5, 2025, again without a timestamp. There remains a serious question as to whether the NTA preceded Clarke’s arrest; if not, then ICE improperly arrested him. ICE’s declaration offers no insight into this question.

Also, the alleged “investigation” apparently occurred on the same day that Clarke’s spouse filed the paperwork to convert him to a full-time resident due to his marriage to her. That means ICE was doing nothing more than running searches on anyone expected to appear at the court in hopes of finding people it could detain and remove. This action had nothing to do with Clarke or his pending legal residence status and everything to do with expelling him from the country before his application for permanent residence was processed.

Then there’s the matter of the holding facilities, which were their own violation of Clarke’s rights. The court demanded answers from ICE. It did get ICE to talk. But all ICE had to offer was another set of lies.

First, it defied the judge’s oral and written order demanding Clarke be released immediately on December 11. The government received both before 3 pm on December 11, but ICE held Clarke for another night before finally releasing him on December 12.

Then it produced a endless string of lies when the court demanded the full records of Clarke’s detention (and movements to and from the Islip holding cell), along with photos of the cell Clarke had been held in.

Not only did the government ignore most of the court order, the stuff it sort of complied was a blend of lies and preposterous assertions:

In response, the Government filed a declaration from Supervisory Detention Officer John C. Diaz, based entirely on ICE records and conversations with other officers.

In addition to being rank hearsay, the information presented in the Diaz Declaration proves evasive and demonstrably false. For example, Diaz swears that Clarke “was booked out of NCCC at 3:45 p.m., and into CIHR on the same day at 3:53 p.m.” Given that the two facilities are more than twenty miles apart, requiring a drive of 35 minutes or more, it is physically impossible that ICE officers moved Clarke from one facility to another in eight minutes. Even more preposterous is Diaz’s sworn statement that Clarke was “booked out [of the Central Islip hold room] on December 10, 2025, at 8:30 p.m.” and then “transported to Delaney Hall Detention Facility (“DHDF”) [in Newark. N.J.] where he was booked in at 9 p.m.” Since that journey of about 60 miles consumes, depending on traffic, more than 90 minutes to as much as three and a half hours, it is again objectively impossible that the transport was completed in 30 minutes.

Time-keeping at ICE detention facilities appears to be deliberately sloppy:

These misstatements of fact serve to undermine the information presented and the reliability of the records maintained by ICE. Moreover, the declaration contains material misstatements. Clarke’s stay at the NCCC provides a powerful example. Diaz presents a series of booking times and concludes under oath that Clarke spent a total of under 65 hours at the NCCC. (stating that Clarke “spent two days, sixteen hours and forty-five minutes at NCCC.”). This is important, Diaz emphasizes, “because NCCC does not house DHS detainees for more than seventy-two-hour periods.” However, examination of the NCCC booking times presented by Diaz in his declaration – from December 6 at 11 a.m. to December 9 at 3:45 p.m. – reveals that Clarke spent about 77 hours at NCCC.

It also lied about the rooms people were being held in — or, at the very least, refused to answer any questions about them truthfully.

While there are other misstatements in the Diaz Declaration, of greater concern isICE’s failure or refusal to provide information ordered by the Court. First, though ICE provided its approximate measurements of the Central Islip hold rooms (four rooms measuring, according to Diaz, about 10’ x 7’ or 8’), nowhere in his declaration does he provide the capacity of those cells, a critical question here. Id.

While even that could be seen as a convenient omission, ICE has flatly refused to provide the requested photographs of the facilities. (“DHS is not prepared at this time to provide photographs of CIHR.”). Though legally immaterial – DHS was ordered to provide such photographs – part of the expressed rationale proves revelatory. Diaz avers that:

CIHR is populated 24/7 by detainees, and taking photographs while detainees were present would create privacy concerns for those detainees. [ ] Moving detainees out of CIHR for the purpose of taking photographs is also challenging, because those detainees would have to all be transported to a different facility.

If ICE is incapable of clearing a cell for the split second it takes to snap a photograph, it raises – or perhaps answers – other questions, such as ICE’s ability to clean, inspect and maintain the Central Islip hold rooms.

ICE is sliding headfirst towards a contempt holding. And even if that will just become another thing ICE (and the administration overseeing it) chooses to blow off, at least all of this will be on the public record:

ICE’s failure and, in at least one instance, flat out refusal, to comply with the Court’s directives along with its provision of demonstrably false evidence, requires some comment. While this matter was necessarily conducted in haste, and the Court believes that the assigned AUSA struggled to handle these matters in a reasonable fashion, ICE’s transgressions which include (1) failure to produce the Petitioner for the hearing, (2) failure to provide the holding capacity of the Central Islip hold rooms, (3) refusing to provide photographs of the Central Islip hold rooms and (4) ignoring this Court’s order providing for Clarke’s immediate release, cannot be overlooked.

Of these failings, perhaps the most indefensible is the agency’s refusal to provide photographs consistent with this Court’s order. A party who believes that a court order is unlawful – or in this case, unduly burdensome – does not have the right to resort to self-help. That party has legal alternatives – like a motion for reconsideration (which certainly would have been entertained here) or an interlocutory appeal – but cannot just simply refuse to comply.

Remember this the next time some government official is complaining about ICE being treated like a pariah or anonymous officers are bending reporters’ ears to tell them they’re just trying to do the right thing by enforcing immigration laws. They’re not. And they are the villains people think they are. This is what came to light as the result of a single detainee filing a complaint about the conditions of his incarceration. Imagine what could be exposed if people with actual power got involved.

Filed Under: bigotry, dhs, ice, mass deportation, rights violations, trump administration

Scope Of Chinese ‘Salt Typhoon’ Hack Keeps Getting Worse, As Trump Dismantles U.S. Cybersecurity Defenses

Failures

from the we're-cooked dept

Late last year, most major U.S. telecoms were the victim of a massive, historic intrusion by Chinese hackers who managed to hack into U.S. communications networks and then spy on public U.S. officials for more than a year completely undetected. The “Salt Typhoon” hack was so severe, the intruders spent another year rooting around the ISP networks even after discovery. AT&T and Verizon, two of the compromised companies, initially didn’t think it was worth informing subscribers this happened.

Like most hacks, the scale of the intrusion was significantly worse than originally stated. And it keeps expanding. This week, lawmakers finally revealed that they only recently realized that the same Chinese hackers accessed email systems used by some staffers on the House China committee in addition to aides on the foreign affairs committee, intelligence committee, and armed services committee:

“The attacks are the latest element of an ongoing cyber campaign against US communication networks by the Ministry of State Security, China’s intelligence service. One person familiar with the attack said it was unclear if the MSS had accessed lawmakers’ emails.”

Which means that they almost definitely had access to confidential lawmakers’ emails, something it will take our Keystone-Cops-esque government another six months to admit.

It can’t be overstated what a complete and massive hack this was. The Chinese government had broad, historic access to the sensitive phone and email conversations of a massive number of sensitive U.S. public and government figures, for years. Thanks, in large part, to big telecoms like AT&T leaving key network access points “secured” with default administrative usernames and passwords.

Last June, NextGov reported that lawyers at big telecoms had started advising their engineers to stop looking for signs of Salt Typhoon intrusion because they were worried about bad press and liability. Due to this coverup and a lack of transparency by the dying U.S. government, it’s likely we still don’t know the full scope of the intrusions.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has responded by gutting government cybersecurity programs (including a board investigating the Salt Typhoon hack), dismantling the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) (responsible for investigating significant cybersecurity incidents), and firing oodles of folks doing essential work at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Trump’s courts have made it impossible to hold telecoms accountable for privacy violations. His earlobe nibbler at the FCC, Brendan Carr, constantly undermines efforts to improve security in Chinese-made smart home devices, and is dismantling what little telecom oversight we had. Their big “win” on “national security” was transferring TikTok ownership to Trump’s unethical billionaire friends.

The Chinese hacked into most of our sensitive systems and spied on powerful people, across the entirety of U.S. governance, for years. The companies involved covered it up and the Trump administrations’ “fix” was to destroy our cybersecurity protections and corporate oversight.

The press, with scattered exception, yawned and put the story on page four.

This generational damage to U.S. IT infrastructure will likely take decades to recover from, and we can’t even begin the process of a proper, competent audit (assuming we’re even capable of that) until Trump is removed from office. Even then, course correcting may not be possible without fixing Trump’s domination of the Supreme and 5th and 6th Circuit courts, which have proudly declared all corporate oversight to be illegal.

Filed Under: china, cisa, compromised, corruption, donald trump, hacked, intelligence, national security, privacy, salt typhoon, security