from the the-eu-approach-is-dangerous dept Fri, Jan 6th 2023 10:41am – Mike Masnick
Last summer, I mocked the EU a bit for setting up a new office in Silicon Valley, and sending an official here to “liaise with Silicon Valley companies affected by EU tech regulation,” noting how it felt weird to have EU internet police setting up shop in Silicon Valley. Given that, I was a bit surprised that the new office invited me to “moderate” a panel discussion last month about the Digital Services Act (DSA), a bill I have regularly criticized and which I think is going to be dangerous for free speech on the internet.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — America’s government was thrown into turmoil last night after a small band of insurrectionist traitors stormed the Capitol building while waving the flag of a foreign power.
There’s been ample insinuation that these agencies were politically motivated. But all of this was happening at a time when President Donald Trump was in power and his people were running DHS and the FBI. Rather than agencies intent on swaying the 2020 election for Biden, their actions seem like run-of-the-mill paranoia and attempts at control.
This brings us back to the money the FBI gave Twitter for “time spent processing requests.” In the last installment of the Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi reported on some of those requests, many of which were related to potential election misinformation. Twitter looked into the flagged tweets and accounts, sometimes complying with the FBI and sometimes not.
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Twitter’s “Guidelines for law enforcement” does state under a section titled “Cost reimbursement” that “Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).” But the fact that this garnered millions from the FBI was not, as far as I can tell, known until now.
But this is a misreading/misunderstanding of how things work. This had nothing to do with any “influence campaign.” The law already says that if the FBI is legally requesting information for an investigation under a number of different legal authorities, the companies receiving those requests can be reimbursed for fulfilling them.
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I do think it remains a scandal the way that 2703(d) orders work, and the inability of users to push back on them. But that is the law. And it has literally nothing whatsoever to do with “censorship” requests. It is entirely about investigations by the FBI into Twitter users based on evidence of a crime. If you want, you can read the DOJ’s own guidelines regarding what they can request under 2703(d).
Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, law enforcement must obtain a court order under 18 U.S.C. §2703(d) (2703(d) order) to compel a provider to disclose more detailed records about a customer’s or subscriber’s use of services, such as the following
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — New Twitter CEO Elon Musk, in a bold and forceful statement against sharing harmful disinformation, has suspended one of the largest purveyors of fake news on the entire social network: The New York Times.
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ARLINGTON, VA—Stating that America’s top rival on the global stage now had the ability to carry out such an attack, Pentagon officials warned this week that the entirety of China’s landmass could break off and zoom across the ocean to get us. “Advancements in Chinese military technology have reached a point where the whole country could just snap apart along the 14,000-mile border and careen at high speeds through the waters of the North Pacific Ocean, slamming right into the United States,” said Ely Rantner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, adding that the 3.7 million square miles of land carrying all 1.4 billion people residents of China would whiz in a straight line toward the U.S. mainland, completely bulldozing Hawaii on its path to strike the West Coast. “With that much land zipping over the ocean, China could easily bank off Japan or the Philippines and use the subsequent momentum to propel all of its weight right into us. Our intelligence indicates that the impact of smacking that hard into the United States would cause China to flip through the air and land with a devastating thud directly on top of our nation, flattening all 330 American citizens.” At press time, Congress had passed a bill giving the Defense Department $500 billion to build a national defensive hydraulic system that would lift the United States so high in the air that an enemy landmass attempting to barrel into it would instead glide right underneath.
Biden is warning of a coming nuclear apocalypse, but don’t worry! A thermonuclear war that wipes out most life on the planet wouldn’t be all bad! Let’s look at the bright side, shall we?
WASHINGTON, DC—After acknowledging the difficulty in constantly gaslighting the American public about everything from the economy to the war in Ukraine, the White House Press Secretary has been replaced by a literal gaslight.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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