We’ve talked about the Australian social media ban that went into effect last week, how dumb it is, and why it’s already a mess.
But late last week, some additional news broke that makes the whole thing even more grotesque: turns out the campaign pushing hardest for the ban was run by an ad agency that makes gambling ads. The same gambling ads that were facing their own potential ban—until the Australian government decided that, hey, with all the kids kicked off social media, gambling ads can stay.
The big marketing campaign pushing the under-16 social media ban was called “36 Months”—framed (misleadingly) that way because they claimed that raising the social media age from 13 to 16 was keeping kids offline for an additional 36 months.
But, as Crikey details, the entire 36 Months campaign was actually planned out and created by an ad company named FINCH, which just so happened to also be working on a huge gambling ad campaign for TAB, which is a huge online betting operation in Australia. And, it wasn’t their only such campaign:
FINCH has worked on at least five gambling advertisements since 2017, according to public announcements and trade magazine reporting. Its clients include TAB Australia (a 2023 campaign called “Australia’s national sport is…”), Ladbroke, Sportsbet and CrownBet (now BetEasy).
There was staff overlap, too. Attwells’ LinkedIn lists him as both 36 Months’ managing director and FINCH’s head of communications from May to December 2024. FINCH staff worked on the 36 Months campaign.
Now, add to that the missing piece of the puzzle, which is that Australia had been investigating bans on online gambling ads, but just last month (oh, such perfect timing) it decided not to do that citing the under-16 banas a key reason why they could leave gambling ads online.
The Murphy inquiry suggested bookmakers were grooming children with ads online, butLabor’s new social media ban on under-16s is viewed as a solutionbecause it would, in principle, limit their exposure to such advertising online.
How very, very convenient.
This is exactly the false sense of security many ban critics warned about. Politicians and parents now think kids are magically “safe,” even though kids are trivially bypassing the ban. Meanwhile, the adults who might have educated those kids about online gambling risks—a problem that heavily targets teenage boys—now assume the government has handled it. Gambling ads stay up, kids stay online, and everyone pretends the problem is solved.
Crikey goes out of its way to say that there’s no proof that FINCH did this on behalf of their many gambling clients, but it does note that FINCH has claimed that it funded the 36 Months campaign mainly by itself, which certainly raises some questions as to why an advertising firm would do that if it didn’t have some other reason to do so.
Incredibly, Crikey notes that part of the 36 Months campaign was to attack anyone who called the social media ban into question by calling them big tech shills, even without any proof:
Spokespeople for 36 Months had previously accused an academic and youth mental health group of being bought off by big tech because of their unpaid roles on boards advising social media platforms on youth safety.
When Crikey asked them what proof they had, citing denials from those they accused, Attwells said he “hadn’t looked into it” but that they’d heard of a trend where technology companies would indirectly fund people to support work that supports “their agenda”.
“The money doesn’t go straight to them,” he said.
Yes: an ad agency funded by gambling clients, running a campaign that benefits those gambling clients, accused critics of being secretly funded by tech companies—without evidence—while claiming indirect funding is how these things work. Such projection.
There’s a famous concept around regulations known as “bootleggers and Baptists,” as a shorthand way of denoting some of the more cynical “strange bedfellows” that team up to get certain regulations in place. The canonical example, of course, being the temperance movement that sought to ban alcohol. Bootleggers (illegal, underground alcohol producers) loved the idea of prohibition, because it would greatly increase demand for their product, for which they could cash in.
But, no one wants to publicly advocate for prohibition on behalf of the bootleggers. So, you find a group to be the public face to present the cooked up moral panic, moralizing argument for the ban: the Baptists. They run around and talk about how damaging alcohol is and how it must be banned for the good of society. It’s just behind the scenes that the bootleggers looking to profit are helping move along the legislation that will do exactly that.
Here we’ve got a textbook case. The gambling industry, facing its own potential ban, appears to have had a hand in funding the moral panic campaign, complete with think-of-the-children rhetoric, that convinced the government to ban kids from social media instead. Now the gambling ads flow freely to an audience the government has declared “protected,” while the actual kids slip past the ban with zero new safeguards in place.
Instead of Bootleggers and Baptists, this time it’s Punters and Parents, or maybe Casinos and Crusaders. Either way it’s a form of regulatory capture hidden behind a silly moral panic.
In the enshittification era, companies rushing to profit off the gold mine of mass commercial surveillance are routinely intent on pushing their luck. Automakers spy on your driving habits (without telling you) to sell that data to insurance companies that raise your rates. Your ISP, phone, and even electrical meter all report on your every movement and choice, often with only middling consent.
So of course this has also now expanded to your toilet. Kohler is under fire now after a researcher discovered that the company’s smart toilet devices record all manner of sensitive data, then don’t do a particularly good job securing that information.
This entirely predictable story is centered around Kohler’s $600 Dekoda toilet attachment, which uses “optical sensors and validated machine-learning algorithms” to deliver “valuable insights into your health and wellness.” Read: it tracks how often you poop, in case you had difficulty with that.
But while Kohler explains this data on your pooping habits is “end to end encrypted,” a researcher named Simon Fondrie-Teitler found that description to be… inaccurate:
“Responses from the company make it clear that—contrary to common understanding of the term—Kohler is able to access data collected by the device and associated application. Additionally, the company states that the data collected by the device and app may be used to train AI models.”
“End-to-end encryption” (E2EE) secures transmitted data so both the recipient and the sender can read it. Ideally, it’s supposed to prevent everybody else, including the developer and host company, from reading it. Kohler’s “end to end encryption” doesn’t do that:
“I thought Kohler might actually have implemented a related data protection method known as “client-side encryption”, used by services like Apple’s iCloud and the password manager 1Password. This technique allows an application to back up a user’s data to the developers servers, or synchronize data between multiple devices owned by a user, without allowing anyone but the user to access the data.
But emails exchanged with Kohler’s privacy contact clarified that the other “end” that can decrypt the data is Kohler themselves: “User data is encrypted at rest, when it’s stored on the user’s mobile phone, toilet attachment, and on our systems. Data in transit is also encrypted end-to-end, as it travels between the user’s devices and our systems, where it is decrypted and processed to provide our service.”
Why is Kohler pushing its luck here and distorting the definition of end to end encryption? Because it’s not satisfied with charging you $600 for the hardware. It wants in on the cash flow generated by selling data on your every habit to a vast, largely unregulated cabal of dodgy data brokers, who in turn historically have done a piss poor job securing private data from bad actors.
And while your electrical usage, pooping habits, and daily movement habits individually may not seem like much of a threat, this data is often unified under profiles by both corporations and global governments (which refuse to regulate these markets because it allows them to avoid warrants) as part of our ever-expanding mass, hyper-commercialized surveillance state.
Why does the government and an unregulated coalition of global corporations need data on how often you poop in a system with almost zero real world accountability for privacy abuses? Why ask why! Just sit back and enjoy the innovation.
Companies, like Kohler does here, will often try to dodge responsibility for bad choices by also insisting this data is “anonymized,” but that’s always been a gibberish term. Here in the States, it’s the inevitable enshittified outcome of our corrupt inability to pass even basic internet privacy protections, or implement meaningful corporate oversight. So this sort of shitty behavior will only get worse from here.
Ironically, I’d actually dispute this. There are indeed a lot of poorly chosen usages of the terms, but they’re not all imprecise and many are verifiable according to several academic definitions.
When I call Trump or Musk a fascist, I’m referencing my knowledge of Eco, Britt, and other standards covered in academia on the subject. We can check off the list of criteria easily. It’s not loose wording. It’s not a substitute for “people I don’t like” or “people I disagree with politically.” Not everyone I disagree with is a fascist. Every fascist is a person I disagree with. If the Hugo Boss fits, then it’s an accurate term.
Ironically people claiming that calling a fascist a fascist is defamation are twisting the meaning of the word defamation to mean “label I don’t like,” rather than “intentionally maliciously untrue label.” And more often, fascists are anti-intellectuals so they don’t even understand what fascism is academically speaking, so they’re not in a position to dispute if the definition is accurate.
Although I wouldn’t say that’s quite the same thing as a “verifiable fact” as distinct from a reasonable and well-supported opinion, it’s a good point and one that’s succinctly summed up by Thad in our first editor’s choice for insightful:
Motherfucker gonna sieg heil and endorse great replacement theory and then get mad when people call him a nazi.
Not only do I not care, this is a good thing and is how representative politics is supposed to work. Doing good things that voters want to raise your profile is literally how politics is supposed to align incentives!
Hopefully it pays off, both because she deserves it and as a reminder to others that actually doing your job comes with benefits. The most remarkable thing has been Dems complete lack of self interest in the face of their constituents begging them to use the limited tools they have.
I’m certain some people are getting tired of this refrain, but I’m going to keep repeating it to make the point: we shouldn’t have to talk about measles in this country in 2025. This is a disease that had been officially put in elimination status for America over two decades ago. We were done with this, thanks in large part to a dedicated campaign of MMR vaccinations and a government that advocated for those same vaccinations. It was after that when the anti-vaxxer campaigns really began to spring up. RFK Jr. was, of course, one of, if not the, leading voices in that movement.
Now that he is in charge of American health, I suppose it’s not surprising to see measles included in a number of diseases that are raging when they shouldn’t be. We recently talked about an outbreak currently going in South Carolina, which itself originated from the Texas outbreak earlier in the year. Well, that outbreak is getting worse, and health officials are suggesting it will continue getting even worse for some time.
A measles outbreak that began in South Carolina at the start of October is showing no signs of slowing as officials on Tuesday reported 27 new cases since Friday. Those cases bring the outbreak total to 111.
In an update on Tuesday, South Carolina’s health department suggested the spread is far from over. Of the state’s 27 new cases, 16 were linked to exposure at a church, the Way of Truth Church in Inman. And amid the new cases, new exposures were identified at Inman Intermediate School. That’s on top of exposures announced Friday at four other schools in the region, which led to well over 100 students being quarantined.
The end result is that there are, as of this writing, over 250 people quarantining. All of them reportedly are both unvaccinated for measles and have been recently exposed to the disease. If any appreciable percentage of those in quarantine end up ill, and I have no doubt that will happen, it could mean that there is a much larger pre-symptom spread that occurred, which itself will lead to even more infections. That how infectious diseases work, after all, and there are few if any diseases as infectious as measles.
And these are, of course, in counties and areas where there are both relatively low vaccination rates and a very high rate of those seeking religious exemptions from vaccination requirements.
The two counties’ low vaccination rates are coupled with high rates of religious exemptions. Spartanburg has the state’s highest rate, with 8.2 percent of students exempt from the school vaccination requirement based on religious beliefs. Neighboring Greenville has a religious vaccination exemption rate of 5.3 percent.
It’s very interesting just how much one god or another enjoys infecting their believers with measles.
This continues to be a problem nation wide. We’re quickly approaching 2,000 (!!!!!) confirmed cases of measles this year, blowing past total case counts for the last several decades. More undiagnosed cases certainly exist. We’re going to blow way past that 2,000 number as well, in no small part thanks to this outbreak in South Carolina.
Measles is a horrible disease. Just get your damned shots.
It’s no secret that 2025 has givenAmericansplentytoprotestabout. But as news cameras showed protesters filling streets of cities across the country, law enforcement officers—including U.S. Border Patrol agents—were quietly watching those same streets through different lenses: Flock Safety automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that tracked every passing car.
Through an analysis of 10 months of nationwide searches on Flock Safety’s servers, we discovered that more than 50 federal, state, and local agencies ran hundreds of searches through Flock’s national network of surveillance data in connection with protest activity. In some cases, law enforcement specifically targeted known activist groups, demonstrating how mass surveillance technology increasingly threatens our freedom to demonstrate.
Flock Safety provides ALPR technology to thousands of law enforcement agencies. The company installs cameras throughout their jurisdictions, and these cameras photograph every car that passes, documenting the license plate, color, make, model and other distinguishing characteristics. This data is paired with time and location, and uploaded to a massive searchable database. Flock Safety encourages agencies to share the data they collect broadly with other agencies across the country. It is common for an agency to search thousands of networks nationwide even when they don’t have reason to believe a targeted vehicle left the region.
Via public records requests, EFF obtained datasets representing more than 12 million searches logged by more than 3,900 agencies between December 2024 and October 2025. The data shows that agencies logged hundreds of searches related to the 50501 protests in February, the Hands Off protests in April, the No Kings protests in June and October, and other protests in between.
The Tulsa Police Department in Oklahoma was one of the most consistent users of Flock Safety’s ALPR system for investigating protests, logging at least 38 such searches. This included running searches that corresponded to a protest against deportation raids in February, a protest at Tulsa City Hall in support of pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil in March, and the No Kings protest in June. During the most recent No Kings protests in mid-October, agencies such as the Lisle Police Department in Illinois, the Oro Valley Police Department in Arizona, and the Putnam County (Tenn.) Sheriff’s Office all ran protest-related searches.
While EFF and other civil liberties groups argue the law should require a search warrant for such searches, police are simply prompted to enter text into a “reason” field in the Flock Safety system. Usually this is only a few words–or even just one.
In these cases, that word was often just “protest.”
Crime does sometimes occur at protests, whether that’s property damage, pick-pocketing, or clashes between groups on opposite sides of a protest. Some of these searches may have been tied to an actual crime that occurred, even though in most cases officers did not articulate a criminal offense when running the search. But the truth is, the only reason an officer is able to even search for a suspect at a protest is because ALPRs collected data on every single person who attended the protest.
Search and Dissent
2025 was an unprecedented year of street action. In June and again in October, thousands across the country mobilized under the banner of the “No Kings” movement—marches against government overreach, surveillance, and corporate power. By some estimates, the October demonstrations ranked among the largest single-day protests in U.S. history, filling the streets from Washington, D.C., to Portland, OR.
EFF identified 19 agencies that logged dozens of searches associated with the No Kings protests in June and October 2025. In some cases the “No Kings” was explicitly used, while in others the term “protest” was used but coincided with the massive protests.
Law Enforcement Agencies that Ran Searches Corresponding with “No Kings” Rallies * Anaheim Police Department, Calif. * Arizona Department of Public Safety * Beaumont Police Department, Texas * Charleston Police Department, SC * Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Fla. * Georgia State Patrol * Lisle Police Department, Ill. * Little Rock Police Department, Ark. * Marion Police Department, Ohio * Morristown Police Department, Tenn. * Oro Valley Police Department, Ariz. * Putnam County Sheriff’s Office, Tenn. * Richmond Police Department, Va. * Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, Calif. * Salinas Police Department, Calif. * San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office, Calif. * Spartanburg Police Department, SC * Tempe Police Department, Ariz. * Tulsa Police Department, Okla. * US Border Patrol
For example:
In Washington state, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office listed “no kings” as the reason for three searches on June 15, 2025 [Note: date corrected]. The agency queried 95 camera networks, looking for vehicles matching the description of “work van,” “bus” or “box truck.”
In Texas, the Beaumont Police Department ran six searches related to two vehicles on June 14, 2025, listing “KINGS DAY PROTEST” as the reason. The queries reached across 1,774 networks.
In California, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office ran a single search for a vehicle across 711 networks, logging “no king” as the reason.
In Arizona, the Tempe Police Department made three searches for “ATL No Kings Protest” on June 15, 2025 searching through 425 networks. “ATL” is police code for “attempt to locate.” The agency appears to not have been looking for a particular plate, but for any red vehicle on the road during a certain time window.
But the No Kings protests weren’t the only demonstrations drawing law enforcement’s digital dragnet in 2025.
For example:
In Nevada’s state capital, the Carson City Sheriff’s Office ran three searches that correspond to the February 50501 Protests against DOGE and the Trump administration. The agency searched for two vehicles across 178 networks with “protest” as the reason.
In Florida, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office logged “protest” for five searches that correspond to a local May Day rally.
In Alabama, the Homewood Police Department logged four searches in early July 2025 for three vehicles with “PROTEST CASE” and “PROTEST INV.” in the reason field. The searches, which probed 1,308 networks, correspond to protests against the police shooting of Jabari Peoples.
In Texas, the Lubbock Police Department ran two searches for a Tennessee license plate on March 15 that corresponds to a rally to highlight the mental health impact of immigration policies. The searches hit 5,966 networks, with the logged reason “protest veh.”
In Michigan, Grand Rapids Police Department ran five searches that corresponded with the Stand Up and Fight Back Rally in February. The searches hit roughly 650 networks, with the reason logged as “Protest.”
Someagencies have adopted policies that prohibit using ALPRs for monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment. Yet many officers probed the nationwide network with terms like “protest” without articulating an actual crime under investigation.
In a few cases, police were using Flock’s ALPR network to investigate threats made against attendees or incidents where motorists opposed to the protests drove their vehicle into crowds. For example, throughout June 2025, an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer logged three searches for “no kings rock threat,” and a Wichita (Kan.) Police Department officer logged 22 searches for various license plates under the reason “Crime Stoppers Tip of causing harm during protests.”
Even when law enforcement is specifically looking for vehicles engaged in potentially criminal behavior such as threatening protesters, it cannot be ignored that mass surveillance systems work by collecting data on everyone driving to or near a protest—not just those under suspicion.
Border Patrol’s Expanding Reach
As U.S. Border Patrol (USBP), ICE, and other federal agencies tasked with immigration enforcement have massively expanded operations into major cities, advocates for immigrants have responded through organized rallies, rapid-response confrontations, and extended presences at federal facilities.
USBP has made extensive use of Flock Safety’s system for immigration enforcement, but also to target those who object to its tactics. In June, a few days after the No Kings Protest, USBP ran three searches for a vehicle using the descriptor “Portland Riots.”
USBP also used the Flock Safety network to investigate a motorist who had “extended his middle finger” at Border Patrol vehicles that were transporting detainees. The motorist then allegedly drove in front of one of the vehicles and slowed down, forcing the Border Patrol vehicle to brake hard. An officer ran seven searches for his plate, citing “assault on agent” and “18 usc 111,” the federal criminal statute for assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer. The individual was charged in federal court in early August.
USBP had access to the Flock system during a trial period in the first half of 2025, but the company says it has since paused the agency’s access to the system. However, Border Patrol and other federal immigration authorities have been able to access the system’s data through local agencies who have run searches on their behalf or even lent them logins.
Targeting Animal Rights Activists
Law enforcement’s use of Flock’s ALPR network to surveil protesters isn’t limited to large-scale political demonstrations. Three agencies also used the system dozens of times to specifically target activists from Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), an animal-rights organization known for using civil disobedience tactics to expose conditions at factory farms.
Delaware State Police queried the Flock national network nine times in March 2025 related to DxE actions, logging reasons such as “DxE Protest Suspect Vehicle.” DxE advocates told EFF that these searches correspond to an investigation the organization undertook of a Mountaire Farms facility.
Additionally, the California Highway Patrol logged dozens of searches related to a “DXE Operation” throughout the day on May 27, 2025. The organization says this corresponds with an annual convening in California that typically ends in a direct action. Participants leave the event early in the morning, then drive across the state to a predetermined but previously undisclosed protest site. Also in May, the Merced County Sheriff’s Office in California logged two searches related to “DXE activity.”
As an organization engaged in direct activism, DxE has experienced criminalprosecution for its activities, and so the organization told EFF they were not surprised to learn they are under scrutiny from law enforcement, particularly considering how industrial farmers have collected and distributed their own intelligence to police.
The targeting of DxE activists reveals how ALPR surveillance extends beyond conventional and large-scale political protests to target groups engaged in activism that challenges powerful industries. For animal-rights activists, the knowledge that their vehicles are being tracked through a national surveillance network undeniably creates a chilling effect on their ability to organize and demonstrate.
Fighting Back Against ALPR
ALPR systems are designed to capture information on every vehicle that passes within view. That means they don’t just capture data on “criminals” but on everyone, all the time—and that includes people engaged in their First Amendment right to publicly dissent. Police are sitting on massive troves of data that can reveal who attended a protest, and this data shows they are not afraid to use it.
Our analysis only includes data where agencies explicitly mentioned protests or related terms in the “reason” field when documenting their search. It’s likely that scores more were conducted under less obvious pretexts and search reasons. According to our analysis, approximately 20 percent of all searches we reviewed listed vague language like “investigation,” “suspect,” and “query” in the reason field. Those terms could well be cover for spying on a protest, an abortion prosecution, or an officer stalking a spouse, and no one would be the wiser–including the agencies whose data was searched. Flock has said it will now require officers to select a specific crime under investigation, but that can and will also be used to obfuscate dubious searches.
For protestors, this data should serve as confirmation that ALPR surveillance has been and will be used to target activities protected by the First Amendment. Depending on your threat model, this means you should think carefully about how you arrive at protests, and explore options such as by biking, walking, carpooling, taking public transportation, or simply parking a little further away from the action. Our Surveillance Self-Defense project has more information on steps you could take to protect your privacy when traveling to and attending a protest.
For local officials, this should serve as another example of how systems marketed as protecting your community may actually threaten the values your communities hold most dear. The best way to protect people is to shut down these camera networks.
Everyone should have the right to speak up against injustice without ending up in a database.
The mainstream media just failed a basic civics test so badly that you’d think their brains have been pickled by the kinds of folks who spend all their time on X (oh, wait…). Headlines across major outlets are breathlessly reporting that Donald Trump “blocked states from passing AI laws” with an executive order. Except, that’s not how any of this works, and anyone who stayed awake during middle school social studies should know better.
Look at this:
That’s the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and the Guardian all confidently telling their readers that Trump can magically override state sovereignty with a memo. These aren’t fringe blogs—these are supposedly serious news organizations with actual editors who apparently skipped the day they taught how the federal government works. They have failed the most simple journalistic test of “don’t print lies in the newspaper.”
Executive orders aren’t laws. They’re memos. Fancy, official memos that tell federal employees how to do their jobs, but memos nonetheless. You want to change what states can and can’t do? You need this little thing called “Congress” to pass this other little thing called “legislation.” Trump can’t just declare state laws invalid any more than he can declare himself emperor of Mars.
Even the text of the actual executive order admits all this:
My Administrationmust act with the Congressto ensure that there is a minimally burdensome national standard — not 50 discordant State ones. The resulting framework must forbid State laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order. That framework should also ensure that children are protected, censorship is prevented, copyrights are respected, and communities are safeguarded. A carefully crafted national framework can ensure that the United States wins the AI race, as we must.
Right there in black and white: “must act with the Congress.” Apparently, someone in the White House briefly remembered how government works, even if the president and the entire mainstream media have forgotten.
And look, I actually do mostly agree that we’d be much better off with a single federal solution here, rather than a bunch of piecemeal (and perhaps conflicting) rules from every state. But, that’s why you actually have to work with Congress, and if there’s anything this Congress has shown over the past 11 months, it’s that it is inherently unable to do anything particularly competently.
Only a few news orgs managed to call out the problems with this executive order. Barron’s rightly noted that there would be “court battles” over the law:
NPR, however, came out and pointed out that this overall executive order probably isn’t legal:
NPR’s right. The order contradicts itself so blatantly it’s almost impressive. First paragraph: “we need Congress.” Rest of the document: “never mind, we’ll just do whatever we want.”
Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General shall establish an AI Litigation Task Force (Task Force) whose sole responsibility shall be to challenge State AI laws inconsistent with the policy set forth in section 2 of this order, including on grounds that such laws unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing Federal regulations, or are otherwise unlawful in the Attorney General’s judgment, including, if appropriate, those laws identified pursuant to section 4 of this order.
You can’t just say that because a law goes against the intent of this executive order that the DOJ can challenge it. That’s not how that works. At all.
But here’s where this gets kinda funny (in a stupid way): that “interstate commerce” language could backfire spectacularly. Almost all state laws trying to regulate the internet—from child safety laws to age verification to the various attempts at content moderation laws—might run afoul of the dormant commerce clause by attempting to regulate interstate commerce if what the admin here claims is true (it’s not really true, but if the Supreme Court buys it…). Courts had been hesitant to use this nuclear option because it would essentially wipe out the entire patchwork of state internet regulation that’s been building for years, and a few decades of work in other areas that hasn’t really been challenged. Also, because they’ve mostly been able to invalidate those laws using the simple and straightforward First Amendment.
If Trump’s DOJ starts aggressively pursuing dormant commerce clause challenges to keep his Silicon Valley donors happy, they might accidentally create precedent that invalidates every state’s attempts to regulate social media, require age verification, or mandate content filtering. Every red state law targeting “Big Tech censorship,” every blue state law pretending to protect kids online—all of it could get swept away by Trump’s own legal strategy.
Wouldn’t that be something? In some ways, it would be hilarious, since I think almost all of these state laws are awful and a mess and waste everyone’s time… but it would certainly put a dent in a ton of efforts by Republicans and Democrats alike. All to keep the AI bros happy.
There’s also some extortion in here:
Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Commerce, through the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, shall issue a Policy Notice specifying the conditions under which States may be eligible for remaining funding under the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program that was saved through my Administration’s “Benefit of the Bargain” reforms, consistent with 47 U.S.C. 1702(e)-(f). That Policy Notice must provide that States with onerous AI laws identified pursuant to section 4 of this order are ineligible for non-deployment funds, to the maximum extent allowed by Federal law. The Policy Notice must also describe how a fragmented State regulatory landscape for AI threatens to undermine BEAD-funded deployments, the growth of AI applications reliant on high-speed networks, and BEAD’s mission of delivering universal, high-speed connectivity.
We’ve talked about BEAD a lot here. That’s the Biden-era program that poured billions of dollars into broadband investment, which took way too long because Trump’s first FCC had fucked up the allocation process of earlier broadband grants. The Biden admin didn’t want a repeat of that, and thus tasked NTIA with figuring out a better allocation system, which took so long that Trump is back in office.
And rather than figure out the best way to allocate those funds, he’s holding them for ransom, and states that comply with his policy wishes might get it, and those that don’t won’t. It’s hellishly corrupt, but that’s what you get these days.
The other potentially interesting tidbit that is going to create a huge mess is Section 7:
Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission shall, in consultation with the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, issue a policy statement on the application of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on unfair and deceptive acts or practices under 15 U.S.C. 45 to AI models. That policy statement must explain the circumstances under which State laws that require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models are preempted by the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on engaging in deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce.
This seems like an improper use of the FTC’s power to deal with unfair and deceptive practices, but the Trump administration abusing and twisting laws to get what it wants is kind of standard operating procedure these days.
The real story here isn’t that Trump signed some groundbreaking AI policy—it’s that the entire mainstream media apparatus completely failed to understand the most basic principles of American government. Executive orders aren’t magic spells that override federalism. They’re memos.
That said, the potential for this legal strategy to completely backfire is darkly amusing. If Trump’s DOJ successfully argues that state AI laws violate the dormant commerce clause, they’ll have handed every future administration—and every tech company—a nuclear weapon against state internet regulation. Every privacy law, every age verification requirement, every attempt by states to regulate online platforms could get vaporized by precedent that Trump’s own lawyers established.
It wouldn’t surprise me if one of the tech bro folks in and around the administration got that dropped into this executive order without much of the administration realizing it.
And at this stage that’s the result that matters. Because it’s a first step to build the momentum necessary so that someday all the Democrats, and even enough Republicans, will be able to get the impeachment effort over the finish line.
Of course, that day has not yet arrived. As it was there were 23 Democrats who still said no to impeachment. (Note: their “no” votes look like “yes” votes, but in this case “yes” meant “yes, let’s ignore these impeachment articles”). But it appears that number was originally going to be higher, suggesting that several “no” votes switched to “present” before the voting finished.
Voting “present,” as Democrat leadership declared it would, is, of course, a cowardly way of handling the question of whether impeachment should be pursued. After all, the oath every member of Congress took compels them to act to end Trump’s presidency as soon as possible. And the rationale that “leadership” cited for why they didn’t want to vote to move impeachment along was nonsense: no extensive investigations and hearings are necessary to chuck him out of office— Trump’s crimes are happening in plain sight. Impeachment can happen immediately, as soon as there are enough votes for it.
On the other hand, the fact that several “no” votes switched to “present” suggests Congress is starting to feel significant political pressure to finally get behind the impeachment effort. Also, voting “present” was a lot less destructive to the impeachment movement than a no vote would have been. So while the 47 “present voters” still chickened out on lending their support to the initiative, at least they didn’t try to sabotage it like so many Democrats had on an earlier occasion when Rep. Green had brought forth impeachment articles, when their “no” votes not only doomed the effort to fail but also kneecapped the overall impeachment movement, instead of letting it build momentum. Whereas this time the momentum survives. And with 140 Democrats now openly saying yes to the idea of impeaching Trump, it signals to those remaining hold-out Democrats, Republicans across the aisle, Senate colleagues, the public, and even Trump himself that comeuppance is at last coming.
And maybe even before the midterms, as exigency requires. Further impeachment articles therefore need to be brought forth again before too long, to keep pounding that drum until no one in Congress will be able to still to turn a deaf ear to the need to get Trump removal from office finally done.
There are so many members of the Trump Administration deserving of immediate ejection from their positions of trust. RFK Jr. and Hegseth aren’t even the only ones with body counts—Noem’s lawless goons and deportations have already caused deaths, as has Rubio’s unlawful closure of USAID, for instance—but RFK Jr. and Hegseth are a good place to start. RFK Jr. is responsible for the premature deaths of countless people due to his war on health science, and Hegseth for his war on everyone else. He’s not just destroyed the military readiness of our nation, leaked secrets to our adversaries, and squandered the nation’s military resources, human and otherwise, but he’s also doing murder and war crimes and making the rest of us accomplices to his atrocities.
With the impeachment articles against the two of them, Congress will now have a chance to clearly and boldly say, “Enough,” and start moving for their removal. And perhaps impeachment may even soon succeed, as RFK and Hegseth’s behavior has raised ire on both sides of the aisle. Impeaching either may not even be a political reach for Republicans, or at least trying to save them not worth the political capital. But even if Republican members of Congress continue to refuse to fulfill their own oversight responsibilities and support impeachment, by at least forcing the issue by filing these articles it forces everyone to make a public choice about whether or not they support removing them from office. Which means there can be a political price paid for that choice if any rep chooses wrong—as if the choice to fire someone like Hegseth or RFK Jr. is one that anyone is likely to regret.
But while their dismissal would be a good beginning to taking back our government from the incompetent monsters currently running it, and, on its own, help protect America from their further destruction, no impeachment of any Trump appointee itself solves the real problem, which is Trump himself. Everything he does endangers us, in such volume that it is simply not possible to address each threat one at a time. It is long past time to strike at the root of all the problems he and his cohorts have caused and evict him from the Oval Office. And while it will obviously take still more time to get there, it is good that Democrats have at last taken the first step.
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The government of India — especially under Prime Minister Narendra Modi — has never been shy about wanting to know what every one of its billion-plus citizens are up to at any given time.
Not only does the government apparently have access to pretty much every bit of internet traffic generated by its citizens, it has also taken steps to ensure those seeking to avoid this pervasive surveillance won’t be allowed to opt out via VPNs or other options that might make their web surfing a bit less visible.
Modi’s government has also made it clear it doesn’t like American companies that undercut its surveillance efforts by notifying residents that their smartphones may have been compromised by state actors.
India’s government sent a notice to private companies last week giving them 90 days to ensure that a government app was “preinstalled on all mobile handsets manufactured or imported for use in India.”
The order said the requirement was meant “to identify and report acts that may endanger telecom cybersecurity.” On Tuesday, the government explained that the app, Sanchar Saathi, was intended to prevent crime, including the theft and smuggling of phones and the call-center fraud that wreaks havoc within India and abroad.
Yeah, that’s fucked up. The government reiterated — even as it slowly walked backwards — that this was just a thing that anyone who didn’t want to be surveilled could easily avoid.
By Tuesday afternoon, the government appeared to be backpedaling. Jyotiraditya Scindia, the minister of communications, said that while “this app exists to protect them from fraud and theft,” it was also “completely optional.”
“If you don’t wish to register, you shouldn’t register and can remove it at any time,” he told reporters outside the Parliament building.
That assertion doesn’t appear to be supported by the facts. According to analysts, the order contained wording that suggested phone providers were expected to ensure the functionality of the government-mandated spyware was “not disabled.”
India’s government revoked an order on Wednesday that had directed smartphone makers such as Apple and Samsung to install a state-developed and owned security app on all new devices. The move came after two days of criticism from opposition politicians and privacy organizations that the “Sanchar Saathi” app was an effort to snoop on citizens through their phones.
“Government has decided not to make the pre-installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers,” India’s Ministry of Communications said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
That’s better. Much better. But it still leaves manufacturers with the option of pre-loading this snitchware app voluntarily, which might be an option some take to score a few points with what is presumably a “regime for life” government headed by a relatively charismatic autocrat.
And while the government is currently getting bashed for attempting to slide this past the populace, it continues to insist it’s the public that’s wrong about this:
While the order for it to be installed universally was revoked, the government continued defending the app on Wednesday, saying the intent had been to “provide access to cybersecurity to all citizens,” and insisting that it was “secure and purely meant to help citizens.”
While the app does allow users to make use of the tracking software to locate lost or stolen phones and/or defend against scammers using fraudulent numbers or online accounts, it was obvious from the secretive rollout that any benefits enjoyed by citizens were just the unavoidable byproduct of an app clearly meant to give the government expanding surveillance capabilities. It’s the sugar-coating on the poison pill. And all the government has to say in defense of its failed ratfuckery is that a rounding error (“2.6 million lost or stolen phones“) in a nation with 1.5 billion cell phones (that would be 0.17% of all phones) outweighs whatever evil it planned to do if it had been able to make this mandate stick.
