Apple challenging Chicago internet streaming tax

Chicago’s New PlayStation Tax Shows How Greedy Politicians Can Be - Foundation for Economic Education - Brittany Hunter:

November 14, 2018 - "PlayStation 4 users in Chicago were shocked when they turned on their consoles and saw a message from Sony. The message informed users that as of November 14, 2018, they would be required to pay a 9 percent 'amusement tax' for PlayStation subscriptions such as PlayStation Now, PlayStation Plus, PlayStation Music, and others....

"The amusement tax was actually passed several years ago and included almost all forms of entertainment. Whether residents are looking to spend an evening at the theater, see a concert, cheer on their favorite sports team, go to a nightclub, or even catch a movie, they are on the hook for an additional 5 percent tax. In 2015, the amusement tax was expanded ... with the creation of a 'cloud tax' ... the city began instituting a 9 percent tax for using platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, and others. And thanks to the inclusion of the streaming services, the amusement tax now brings in about $12 million annually. It also applies to anyone whose billing address is within city limits.

"Sony actually refused to enforce the tax and did not finally capitulate to the city’s wishes until mid-November.... While it is unclear why Sony decided to begin enforcing the tax at this time, it is likely that statements from government representatives scared the company into submission....

"Right after the 'cloud tax' was instituted, the Liberty Justice Center came forward to challenge the city’s new policy.... Unfortunately, the court ruled in favor of the city in May....

"Just a few months after the same court ruled in favor of the city, Apple filed a complaint in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. The tech company’s complaint touches on four different violations it believes the city is guilty of committing. But the primary complaint rests on Chicago’s violation of the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA).

"In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the ITFA into law, protecting Americans from illegal forms of taxation. Specifically, the bill prohibited 'state and local governments from taxing Internet access, or imposing multiple or discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce'.... For example, if internet users are already being taxed for their internet service, they should not be forced to then pay further taxes for using the internet to access streaming sites....

"Apple is also asserting that the new tax is a violation of the Illinois constitution.... Since the cloud tax is extended to everyone with a Chicago billing address, this means it is ... being levied on those who enjoy streaming services outside city limits, making it a violation of state law....

"Apple’s additional complaints involve violations of the federal commerce clause, as well as violations of the 14th Amendment right to due process. While the outcome of the case is unclear, Apple’s unwillingness to cooperate with the city’s ridiculous amusement tax is a testament to its integrity."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/chicago-s-new-playstation-tax-shows-how-greedy-politicians-can-be/
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Free speech and social media

Free Speech in the Age of Digital Platforms - Foundation for Economic Education - John Samples, Cato Institute:

August 17, 2018 - "Last week Facebook, Google, and Apple removed videos and podcasts by [a] prominent conspiracy theorist.... Many people are debating these actions, and rightly so....

"The tech companies have the right to govern speech on their platforms; Facebook has practiced such 'content moderation' for at least a decade.... The managers of the platform are agents of the shareholders; they have the power to act on their behalf in this and other matters. (On the other hand, if their decision to ban ... was driven by political animus, they would be shirking their duties and imposing agency costs on shareholders). As private actors, the managers are not constrained by the First Amendment. They could and should remove [someone if] they reasonably believed he drives users off the platform and thereby harms shareholders....

"I see two limits on business logic as a way of governing social media: free speech and fear.

"Elites in the United States value free speech in an abstract sense, apart from legal limits on government. Platform managers are free of the First Amendment, but not of those cultural expectations.

"Fear informs online struggles over speech. The right believes that platform managers are overwhelmingly left-leaning and ... trying to drive everyone on the right off their platforms and into the political wilderness.... The left fears people like [the banned guy] having access to a mainstream audience leading to electoral victories by authoritarians....

"The platforms need legitimacy for their governance. In other words, they need for users (and others) to accept their right to govern (including the power to exclude). Legitimacy would confer authority on the decisions of the platform managers.... What [Max] Weber called rational-legal authority seems to be the only choice for the platforms. In other words, they need a process (or due process) that looks like the rule of law (and not the rule of tech employees).

"Facebook seems to be trying to establish rational-legal authority. It set out Community Standards that guide governing speech.... But do the Community Standards respect the culture of free speech?... Their basic law ... contravenes American free speech legal doctrine. Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, but not by Facebook.

"I conclude that either Facebook’s standard violates the culture of free speech or it reflects a difference between the culture of free speech (which does not include hate speech) and American First Amendment legal doctrine. If the latter, Facebook’s recognition of the difference will foster a greater gap between culture and law.... This asymmetry between inside the companies and outside is not good for the freedom of speech. It is also not good for the legitimacy of content moderation.

"As a legal matter, social media companies have broad discretion to police their platforms. That is how it should be. But they need to make their authority legitimate. If they do not, elected officials may one day act to compel fairness or assuage fears. As always, that will not be good news for the freedom of speech or limited government."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/free-speech-in-the-age-of-digital-platforms/
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Inside the FBI's encryption battle with Apple

Inside the FBI's encryption battle with Apple | Technology | The Guardian - Danny Yadron, Spencer Ackerman and Sam Thielman:

February 18, 2016 -"Two weeks ago, the FBI called Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, with a jarring message: the agency wanted Apple to help them hack an iPhone. Apple refused.... 16 February ... a federal magistrate ordered Apple to help the FBI unlock a single iPhone – the phone belonging to one of the killers in the December mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Apple again refused.

"But this carefully planned legal battle has been months in the making, ... as the government and Apple try to settle whether national security can dictate how Silicon Valley writes computer code....

"On 2 December a husband and wife opened fire on a local government office building in southern California.... One of the suspects, Syed Farook, had worked for the county, which meant the government owned his iPhone 5C. With a search warrant, Apple provided the FBI data from weekly backups Farook made with Apple’s iCloud service. But those backups stopped on 19 October, according to a federal search warrant request.

"FBI investigators believed there was more data about Farook’s motives in the phone but couldn’t get to it without unlocking the device. The phone’s contents were encrypted and Apple didn’t have the four-digit passcode. Modern iPhones also have an optional feature that will erase all data on the phone with 10 incorrect passcode entries. FBI agents weren’t willing to take the risk....

"In the 16 February court order, Apple was told to build software that, when combined with the unique identification number, would allow the FBI to guess Farook’s password as many times as it wanted. The court also ordered Apple to disable a feature that added a delay after multiple incorrect passcode entries. And since a four-digit passcode has only about 10,000 possible combinations, a powerful computer could plow through guesses fairly quickly, a technology executive said.

 "US officials on Wednesday stressed that their request for Apple is only limited to Farook’s phone. 'The judge’s order and our request in this case do not require Apple to redesign its products, to disable encryption or to open content on the phone,' the Justice Department said in a statement on 17 February.

"But Apple said that it would be impossible to limit the technology to this case. Once Apple built such an investigative tool, any iPhone’s security system – even the most modern ones – could be weakened by it, an Apple executive said.... Additionally, Apple’s lawyers are concerned that if a judge validates the FBI’s use of the All Writs Act in this case, it will give the government sweeping authority to dictate how Silicon Valley builds products in the future....

"To Justice Department officials, San Bernardino is a long-awaited test case. In October 2014, the FBI’s James Comey first told a Washington audience that encryption on mobile devices effectively left law enforcement 'dark' to emerging threats. Ever since, officials believed it was only a matter of time until they came upon a case like the San Bernardino shootings: a device from a terrorist whose lock screen they couldn’t bypass by guesswork to get at the data held on the phone, and not in Apple’s iCloud....

"Senior law enforcement officials were briefed on the decision to go after Apple in such a high-profile way, sources said. The FBI also appears to have been preparing its press strategy for the search warrant for weeks."

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/17/inside-the-fbis-encryption-battle-with-apple
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Apple CEO defends encyption with 'no backdoors'

Apple’s Tim Cook Lashes Out at White House Officials for Being Wishy-Washy on Encryption - Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept::

January 12, 2016 - "Apple CEO Tim Cook lashed out at the high-level delegation of Obama administration officials who came calling on tech leaders in San Jose last week, criticizing the White House for a lack of leadership and asking the administration to issue a strong public statement defending the use of unbreakable encryption.

"The White House should come out and say 'no backdoors,' Cook said. That would mean overruling repeated requests from FBI Director James Comey and other administration officials that tech companies build some sort of special access for law enforcement into otherwise unbreakable encryption. Technologists agree that any such measure could be exploited by others....

The Washington Post reported in September that the White House had decided not to pursue legislation against unbreakable encryption. But the intelligence community’s top lawyer was quoted in an email saying that that the administration should be 'keeping our options open … in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement.'

"And Comey has been urging technology companies to voluntarily alter 'their business model' and stop offering end-to-end encryption by default.

"Despite the growing pressure tech companies are feeling from governments worldwide to stop letting terrorists take advantage of their services, Cook has continued to defend the importance of encryption in protecting all digital transactions — from text messages and emails to bank information and medical records.

"Cook has been outspoken in his opposition to the idea that we need to sacrifice privacy and digital security for the sake of public safety. During an episode of 60 Minutes on December 20, he said, 'We’re America, we should have both'....

"[T]echnologists and cryptographers have been insisting for decades almost unanimously that trying to pierce impenetrable end-to-end encryption to provide the government with access would be more dangerous than beneficial."

Read more: https://theintercept.com/2016/01/12/apples-tim-cook-lashes-out-at-white-house-officials-for-being-wishy-washy-on-encryption/
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Blaming Snowden for Paris massacre: "How dumb do they think people are?"

Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS - The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald:

"Whistleblowers are always accused of helping America’s enemies... So it’s of course unsurprising that ever since Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing enabled newspapers around the world to report on secretly implemented programs of mass surveillance, he has been accused by 'officials' and their various media allies of Helping The Terrorists™....

"I was a bit surprised just by how quickly and blatantly — how shamelessly — some of them jumped to exploit the emotions prompted by the carnage in France to blame Snowden: doing so literally as the bodies still lay on the streets of Paris.... But now ... credible news sites are regurgitating the claim that the Paris Terrorists were enabled by Snowden leaks — based on no evidence or specific proof of any kind, needless to say, but just the unverified, obviously self-serving assertions of government officials....

"The implicit premise of this accusation is that The Terrorists didn’t know to avoid telephones or how to use effective encryption until Snowden came along and told them. Yet we’ve been warned for years and years before Snowden that The Terrorists are so diabolical and sophisticated that they engage in all sorts of complex techniques to evade electronic surveillance....

"Any terrorist capable of tying his own shoe — let alone carrying out a significant attack — has known for decades that speaking on open telephone and internet lines was to be avoided due to U.S. surveillance.... The Snowden revelations weren’t significant because they told The Terrorists their communications were being monitored; everyone — especially The Terrorists — has known that forever. The revelations were significant because they told the world that the NSA and its allies were collecting everyone else’s internet communications and activities.

""As but one of countless examples, here’s a USA Today article from February 2001 — more than 12 years before anyone knew the name 'Edward Snowden' — warning that al Qaeda was able to 'outfox law enforcement' by hiding its communications behind sophisticated internet encryption... The Christian Science Monitor similarly reported on February 1, 2001, that 'the head of the U.S. National Security Agency has publicly complained that al Qaeda’s sophisticated use of the internet and encryption techniques have defied Western eavesdropping attempts'.... All the way back in the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration exploited the fears prompted by Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City attack to demand backdoor access to all internet communications.

"How dumb do they think people are to count on them forgetting all of this, and to believe now that The Terrorists only learned to avoid telephones and use encryption once Snowden came along? Ironically, the Snowden archive itself is full of documents from NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, expressing deep concern that they cannot penetrate the communications of Terrorists because of how sophisticated their surveillance-avoidance methods are (obviously, those documents pre-date Snowden’s public disclosures)....

"U.S officials are eager here to demonize far more than just Snowden. They want to demonize encryption generally as well as any companies that offer it. Indeed, as these media accounts show, they’ve been trying for two decades to equate the use of encryption — anything that keeps them out of people’s private online communications — with aiding and abetting The Terrorists. It’s not just Snowden but also their own long-time Surveillance State partners — particular Apple and Google — who are now being depicted as Terrorist Lovers for enabling people to have privacy on the internet through encryption products.

"Then there’s the blame-shifting benefit. For most major terror attacks, the perpetrators were either known to Western security agencies or they had ample reason to watch them. All three perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo massacre 'were known to French authorities,' as was the thwarted train attacker in July and at least one of the Paris attackers. These agencies receive billions and billions of dollars every year and radical powers, all in the name of surveilling Bad People and stopping attacks.

"So when they fail in their ostensible duty, and people die because of that failure, it’s a natural instinct to blame others: Don’t look to us; it’s Snowden’s fault, or the fault of Apple, or the fault of journalists, or the fault of encryption designers, or anyone’s fault other than ours. If you’re a security agency after a successful Terror attack, you want everyone looking elsewhere, finding all sorts of culprits other than those responsible for stopping such attacks."

Read more: https://theintercept.com/2015/11/15/exploiting-emotions-about-paris-to-blame-snowden-distract-from-actual-culprits-who-empowered-isis/
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Tech groups want NSA data collection curbed

Tech Groups Pressure Congress To End NSA Bulk Data Collection - BuzzFeed News - Hamza Shaban:

April 16, 2015 - "A host of technology trade groups are lobbying Congress to end the government’s controversial metadata collection program that was brought to public prominence by Edward Snowden almost two years ago. In a letter sent to intelligence and judiciary leadership yesterday, groups representing a vast array of tech firms, including Google, IBM, Facebook, and Apple, expressed support for fundamental surveillance reform.

"The groups take specific issue with Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which federal agencies claim gives authority to collect American phone records without a warrant. The six groups that sent the letter, including TechNet, the Information Technology Industry Council, and the Information Industry Association, also appealed for increased government transparency. Their primary concern was that the current state of affairs is leading to a worldwide erosion of trust.

"'U.S. technology providers continue to face concerns from global customers regarding the safety and security of their offerings,' the groups wrote. 'In fact, foreign competitors and foreign governments regularly seize on this opportunity to challenge U.S. technological leadership by raising questions about our nation’s surveillance regime'....

"Key spying provisions of the Patriot Act, Section 215 among them, are set to expire on June 1.... While the provision has been reauthorized in the past, this will be the first time it’s been voted on since Snowden revealed the NSA’s phone-monitoring program of U.S. citizens."

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/hamzashaban/tech-groups-pressure-congress-to-end-nsa-bulk-data-collectio
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Ron Paul launches a new crusade for internet freedom | Texas on the Potomac

Ron Paul launches a new crusade for internet freedom | Texas on the Potomac | a Chron.com blog:

July 5, 2012 - "Ron Paul, working with his son, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has now written an online manifesto called 'The Technology Revolution: A campaign for liberty manifesto.'

"The manifesto outlines the Paul’s plan for the internet which, unlike the plans of both Democrats and Republicans, calls for a complete lack of regulation of the internet by the government.  The Paul’s tout the benefits of the unregulated internet, saying, '... decentralization has unlocked individual self-empowerment, entrepreneurialism, creativity, innovation and the creation of new markets in ways never before imagined in human history.'

"The manifesto lists a number of the positive outcomes that came from a completely unregulated internet, such as: Apple’s products like the iPod, iTunes and iPad, as well as the app store which, without government regulation, created almost a half-million jobs.... Ron and Rand Paul disagree with both the GOP-led regulations of SOPA and PIPA as well as the more liberal-led idea of “net-neutrality' that still advocates that the government monitor the doings of private companies."

Read more: http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2012/07/ron-paul-launches-a-new-crusade-for-internet-freedom/
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Read the manifesto here:
The Technology Revolution Final Rev 629