julian sanchez

We recently wrote about PolitiFact trashing Lamar Smith for the numbers he used in support of SOPA -- numbers that PolitiFact says grade out to "false." What I somehow missed was at the very end of that article, they ask Smith to respond to the charges that his argument was false.

Hey, fellow Techdirtians or whatever adjective you want to call yourselves. Longtime reader Rikuo here. I’ve been following Techdirt for the better part of two years now, and was sure surprised to have been asked to write the Favorites list for Xmas week.

Once I stopped jumping and shrieking in pure fanboy excitement (and after the court injunction ordering me to never do that sort of stuff again), I sat myself down and decided to get serious.

Despite all of the significant concerns with SOPA, it appears that Rep.

Lamar Smith won't let a little thing like the American public stop his plan to help out his friends in Hollywood.

It's been confirmed (as has been rumored for weeks) that Smith is planning to hold the markup and followup Judiciary Committee vote over SOPA this Thursday.

Senator Ron Wyden has made it pretty clear, for the past few months, that the federal government is secretly interpreting the PATRIOT Act to mean that it can spy on the location of Americans without a warrant.

Wyden, who is likely aware of the interpretation due to his position on the Senate Intelligence Committee, can't say what the interpretation is, but it's become abundantly clear through his questioning.

Via Julian Sanchez, we learn that the TSA has apparently been taking its security theater on the road, with special mobile teams, as a part of its VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) program.

For many years, we've explained why the debate about copyright is not a moral issue at all.

Yet, whenever we get into discussions on it, sooner or later, someone makes an argument about how this or that creator "deserves to make a living" from their art.

There are two things wrong with this statement. First, it assumes, incorrectly, that the way you make a living is from copyright.

It is not.

Julian Sanchez points us to the news that a district court judge has rejected an attempt by the privacy-rights group EPIC to force Homeland Security to release some 2,000 full body scans from the TSA's new airport scanners.

We're still at a loss to explain why there's been so little outrage over the fact that the FBI got a total free pass for its massive abuse in getting phone records.

The Justice Department sure doesn't like oversight -- even when it's required by law.

I have to admit that I've been a bit in shock over Congress's decision to simply renew the Patriot Act, recently, without a single safeguard to protect against abuse.

That's because just before all this happened, we wrote about how a report from the government found (not for the first time) that the FBI regularly abused its authority to get phone records it had no right to.