Well, perhaps the demise of the Stop Killing Games movement in the EU was overstated. We were just talking about how the attempt to introduce new legislation to support the goals of the movement were defeated, despite a petition with over a million signatures and a parliamentary hearing that reportedly went very well. Given that all the movement is really after is restoring the copyright bargain in the video game industry such that cultural output in the form of games can’t be disappeared into the ether when a company decides to stop supporting it, the EU’s claim that copyright itself prohibits crafting new legislation was very disappointing.

But the movement is not only not done, but appears to have anticipated the decision. They are now moving onto their secondary plan: amending legislation already in process to achieve the same end.

In messages posted to Reddit, Stop Killing Games said there was “nothing surprising to anyone” in the decision, and that “the fight goes on.”

“This movement is defined by action and we will keep acting, we owe Ross [YouTuber Ross Scott, who launched Stop Killing Games in 2024] and the millions of people that have put their trust in us,” Stop Killing Games organizer Moritz Katzner wrote. “MEPs have recognized that, the California state assembly and even the courts have. Let’s keep winning.”

Katzner also laid out Stop Killing Games’ plans for the next few months, which includes continuing work on the Protect Our Games (POG) Act in the US and adapting it for the EU, pushing efforts based on existing legislation in the EU, and building up its new Stop Killing the Internet team.

The legislation in question is the EU’s Digital Fairness Act. The DFA has some lofty goals with some welcome aims, such as prohibitions on certain UI/UX practices online that are designed to push users to make uninformed decisions they wouldn’t otherwise make, or ending region-based restrictions on the use of technology. But there is plenty of concern about the law as well, with opportunities for it to focus on age-checks, deeper surveillance into the usership, and so on. If this thing is going to become law, it very much needs to focus on both consumer protections through freedom and not requiring corporations to take an even heavier hand in monitoring and restricting who can do what with the technology. And, above all else, it cannot curtail innovation.

But if consumer protection is a key goal of the DFA, the Stop Killing Games movement would fit nicely alongside it.

Stop Killing Games organizers, including founder Ross Scott, anticipated the Commission’s refusal and are now focusing on amending the Digital Fairness Act. They claim to have majority support in the European Parliament, with over 40 lawmakers backing the petition’s goals. The DFA, still in development, addresses broader digital rights issues, making it a potential vehicle for game preservation measures.

“We have made serious inroads in parliament. Just recently, we’ve even had an inquiry call on legislative action to the Commission signed by 45 members of European Parliament and collectively we have majority support on this issue. This means we’re in a position to pass legislation on this even without the Commission’s blessing.” – Ross Scott

Despite the recent set back, those heading up the movement believe they’re still in a good place to get something done. Alongside the legislation being proposed in California, it would be nice to see them start to stack up wins.

The ability to access publicly available information using automated tools is a central value and benefit of a free and open internet. Automated access—often called crawling or scraping—powers important, useful tools for locating, preserving, and analyzing online information. For example, crawling and scraping helps journalists, researchers, and watchdog organizations report the news, find security flaws, and investigate discrimination. Crawling the web allows non-profits like the Internet Archive to preserve historical copies of websites. Tools for automated comparison shopping allow consumers to find the best deals on items they want to buy. And so on.

Yet the open internet access is increasingly under threat from publishers and Big Tech companies alike. Fearing lost advertising and licensing revenues, website operators increasingly claim that they need to lock down their sites from bots that crawl public web content to train or operate AI models. Some companies are even trying to embed their business models into internet standards by changing Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) technical standards that shape much of the internet.

Many of their economic anxieties are understandable. AI bots can strain websites’ infrastructure, in some cases, degrading site performance or taking them offline altogether. Upgrading systems costs money that some sites may not have. And AI is likely to disrupt the business models many publishers adopted in response to the rise of the internet, if users rely on AI overviews instead of visiting source websites.

However reasonable these fears may be, the answer is not to change the IETF standards from neutral protocols that encourage openness to restrictive requirements designed to monetize internet access.

The worst of these proposed standards would give websites far greater ability to automatically block legitimate, lawful scraping and crawling. For example, the AI Preferences working group is working on proposals to give publishers a way to express “preference signals” against crawling web data for AI-related purposes, including to train models, generate outputs, and help users search the web. These preference signals would be expressed through robots.txt and could potentially become legally binding in some jurisdictions.

Another working group, called Web Bot Auth, is pursuing efforts to protect sites from overly-aggressive bots that strain website resources—a positive goal that could meaningfully improve the internet in the AI era. But Web Bot Auth is simultaneously pursuing a much more dangerous path as well: standards changes that would enable sites to cryptographically identify bots so that they can more easily block anyone they wish—not just “bad” actors, but competitors, dissidents, or anyone who hasn’t paid for the right to access sites using automated tools. If sites restrict crawling to a preapproved list of cryptographically authenticated bots, they could require licensing payments from those wishing to crawl their sites. This would close off the open web to researchers, archivists, and startups without the ability to pay for automated access.  

Websites may have legitimate reasons to worry about AI’s impacts on their traffic and advertising revenue, but those reasons must be weighed against the benefits of the open web. These proposals would effectively give website operators veto power over a wide range of important uses—from the investigations and archival works described above to accessibility tools for people with disabilities, to research efforts aimed at holding governments accountable.

That is why we are fighting back against these threats to open access. EFF and our allies in the open internet community have successfully resisted some of the most dangerous IETF proposals thus far—and won’t stop working to protect the open web from efforts to manipulate internet standards to undermine the right to freely access the internet in any legal way, including with automated tools.

Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

One of ICE’s largest detention centers is conveniently located only miles from the US border in El Paso, Texas. Erected on an apparently unused section of the Ft. Bliss military base, the detention center was crafted to hold up to 5,000 detainees at a time.

Camp East Montana has already earned the reputation as one of the worst places for detainees to be sent. Previous reporting has uncovered nasty things like guards setting up suicide death pools, rather than… you know… doing whatever they could to deter detainees from committing suicide.

In addition to this, there have been measles outbreaks and inspections detailing dozens of violations at the facility, including a seemingly deliberate unwillingness to provide basic medical care for detainees.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just released its report [PDF] on Camp East Montana and it doesn’t contain anything ICE (or its contractors) might legitimately consider to be a “win,” much less a “barely perceptible improvement.”

As NPR notes in its reporting on the GAO’s report, ICE is running through contractors rapidly, which suggests the companies hoping to get in on the temporary jail business aren’t particularly qualified to do so. To date, three different contractors have been in charge of this prison camp: Creative Corrections, Amentum Services, and this company (I guess it’s technically a company?) that was recently kicked to curb by ICE shortly after the GAO began its investigation:

When the Trump administration awarded a $1.26 billion contract this summer to build and operate a new tent city detention center in Texas, it made headlines, and not just because the facility, located at the Fort Bliss Army base, was expected to be the biggest of its kind in the country. The company that won the job, Acquisition Logistics, was so small it operated out of a single-family home in Richmond, Virginia. Almost nobody had heard of it. “A random house…just won $1.26 billion from ICE,” wrote the New Republic.

That likely explains a lot of the flaws the GAO uncovered. But the federal government has to take a lot of the blame itself. First off, this contract was somehow secured by the US Navy on behalf of ICE, which definitely makes it seem more shady than it already seems.

But ICE was so busy blowing billions on satisfying Trump’s bigoted fantasies that it couldn’t even be bothered to craft a contract that wouldn’t screw taxpayers out of even more money. In most prisons and detention centers, those being held by the government are often underfed. In the early days of Camp East Montana, it was the complete opposite:

The contract identified pricing for services needed to reach initial operational capacity of 1,000 detained noncitizens, along with pricing to increase the capacity of the facility by 250 detained noncitizens every week until it reached its full operational capacity of 5,000. Based on our review of contract documents and invoices, the Army began paying the full cost for guards, medical services, transportation, meals, and other services on August 1, 2025. However, there were no detained noncitizens at the facility until August 16. Between August 1 and August 15, 2025, the Army wasted up to $11.5 million for these services. Further, because the Army set a fixed price for meals based on the capacity of the facility, it paid about an additional $423,000 for meals it did not need when the facility was operating below its designated capacity from August 16, 2025, through September 30, 2025.

That’s the good news… somehow. It gets so much worse after that. While wasting food is certainly problematic when so many detainees at other prison facilities go hungry, this contractor was apparently so inept and inexperienced that pretty much everything it did made things worse or more dangerous for detainees.

According to an ICE report, there were no security cameras on the perimeter fencing and there were blind spots in the placement of cameras throughout the facility, increasing the risk of a sexual assault or an escape. In addition, during our visit to the facility on September 16, 2025, officials told us that the post responsible for monitoring security camera footage for all areas of the facility was understaffed.

[…]

Contractors told ICE they were unable to accommodate detained noncitizens using wheelchairs. According to an ICE report, the facility did not have any Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant showers in the housing units when it opened.

[…]

In January 2026, a contract security guard at Camp East Montana lost their loaded firearm at the facility. According to an ICE official, despite several searches of the facility, as of March 2026 the firearm had not been recovered.

[…]

[D]etained noncitizens with chronic conditions did not receive treatment and care in accordance with National Detention Standards. For example, none of the detained noncitizens with diabetes or HIV had treatment plans in place.

[…]

On March 3, 2026, ICE issued a discrepancy report related to a detained noncitizen escaping from Camp East Montana in October 2025. ICE oversight officials attributed the escape to the contractor’s inability to account for detained noncitizens

Your severity mileage may vary, but this covers everything from a lack of ADA compliance to losing a loaded handgun, with plenty of ineptitude/indifference in between.

There’s more. And it’s even worse than what’s seen above.

On February 20, 2026, ICE issued a discrepancy report for a detained noncitizen death by use of force in January 2026. The coroner’s autopsy found the death to be a homicide due to asphyxia. However, the contractor did not provide use of force and death reports to ICE, as required. In addition, evidence associated with the incident was missing or destroyed.

Don’t let the “or” fool you. Reports written by agencies that strive to be as neutral and non-judgmental as possible don’t tend to engage in speculation. If the GAO thinks evidence has most likely been destroyed, it’s going to portray it as just being one of two options. If the GAO thought it was more likely the evidence had just been misplaced or perhaps never gathered correctly, it would not have added “or destroyed” to this sentence.

What’s absolutely unclear is whether or not the contractor acted alone. The GAO doesn’t discuss this further, which does leave this part open to speculation. Either the contractor acted alone because it felt it might be held accountable for this death, or it was urged to eternally “misplace” evidence that might implicate the contractor and/or ICE itself.

Either way, there’s nothing in this report that suggests ICE or its contractors are going out of their way to ensure the health and safety of detainees. And if this is happening here, it’s certainly happening anywhere else ICE is stashing arrestees.

The government has decided the best use of our resources is rounding up as many non-white migrants as possible and toss them into prison camps. And it has decided it doesn’t care how this is done. It only cares that it gets done. This nation — if it manages to survive this constant onslaught on our ideals — will have to deal with repercussions of the actions of a handful of hateful people for decades to come.

Earlier this week we noted how ABC has been asking its audience to give the Trump FCC an earful about its clumsy efforts to censor journalists, comedians, and daytime talk show hosts:

The ad only hints at the fact that FCC boss Brendan Carr has launched a fake “investigation” of ABC because The View hosted Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico last February. As we’ve explored repeatedly, Carr is pretending that this appearance violates a dated and irrelevant FCC “equal time rule,” despite the fact the show has had a formal exemption since 2002.

It’s all weird, performative bullshit designed to chill speech and punish ABC because President Trump is a thin-skinned autocrat. It’s also intended to send a message to all major media outlets that if they platform people openly critical of our dim kakistocracy, they’ll be inundated with endless costly legal headaches and bad “press” (read: lots of hostility aimed at them by right wing propaganda outlets).

Despite the ABC ad being relatively timid, it clearly upset the similarly-thin-skinned Carr, who took to Elon Musk’s right wing propaganda website to whine about it:

Again, The View was already exempt from this rule, for more than two decades. Even if it wasn’t, the rule hasn’t been enforced in 26 years because it’s a relic that doesn’t matter. It was crafted for an era where a TV appearance could make or break a political candidacy, requiring that a politician of the opposite party ideology get “equal time” on broadcast airwaves.

But broadcast is increasingly irrelevant, as is the rule, which you’ll notice Carr doesn’t enforce for right wing radio (because this is an ideological crusade by a weak zealot). This is also a giant loser of a case on First Amendment grounds. But it could be a particularly problematic case for Carr during discovery, given the indications that Carr covertly worked with right wing broadcasters to falsely make it look like ABC’s affiliate actively broke the law by not filling out some paperwork.

Carr knows all of this but his audience of bots and MAGA zealots over at ex-Twitter obviously don’t. They will simply see women daytime TV hosts and “news” in the same line of sight and immediately suffer embolisms of hate.

“Some may dislike certain — or even most — of the viewpoints expressed on ‘The View’ or similar shows,” ABC said in one recent filing. “Such dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views.”

Carr doesn’t want this to ever see an actual courtroom. He just wants to intimidate corporate media giants, censor valid speech, and then bask in the adoration of the misinformed and deluded.

But it’s genuinely bad news for Carr and Trump that Disney Corporation is fighting back. If they can openly and legally demonstrate that Carr is a toothless extremist hack, other corporations are likely to be encouraged. And as Trump’s health and political power starts to buckle and fail, that sort of uncharacteristic corporate media courage could prove contagious.

flowkey is a fun, interactive piano learning platform that helps anyone go from absolute beginner to confident player — at their own pace. It combines step-by-step courses with thousands of songs you know and love, tailored for every skill level, from first-time learners to advanced pianists. The app listens as you play and gives instant feedback so you can improve faster, practice technique, and master sheet music with confidence. Whether you’re learning scales or your first full song, flowkey makes piano practice easy, fun, and rewarding. A one year subscription is on sale for $40, two years for $60, or five years for $80.

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

Remember a few years ago when both Texas and Florida passed laws trying to tell social media companies they couldn’t moderate political content? Those cases eventually made their way to the Supreme Court, where the Court (as it’s been known to do) kinda punted: sending the cases back to the lower courts on technical legal grounds, claiming that the plaintiffs, NetChoice and CCIA, had mistakenly filed the cases as “facial” challenges, rather than “as applied.” It’s not worth going into the legal weeds again about the difference here, especially since the ruling had tons of important and useful language making it clear that content moderation is protected by the First Amendment in the case dubbed “Moody” after Florida’s former Attorney General.

But, the two cases have continued to bounce around the courts over the past few years, and the district court in Florida has rejected both the plaintiffs and the state’s motions for summary judgment, but in doing so has again made some great arguments about how content moderation gets First Amendment protections. The case is still before Judge Robert Hinkle, who made the original ruling finding the law unconstitutional five years ago.

Now, after discovery, Hinkle is reviewing the amended complaint that tries to deal with Moody’s limits on “facial” challenges. He starts out by reinforcing that content moderation is obviously protected by the First Amendment:

Collecting third-party speech content into a single speech product is what social-media platforms do. As the Supreme Court said, the collection “is itself expressive, and intrusion into that activity must be specially justified under the First Amendment.” Id. The defendants’ contrary assertion was rejected in NetChoice I (this court’s preliminary-injunction order), and in NetChoice II (the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion affirming that order in relevant part), and in Moody (the Supreme Court’s opinion agreeing with the Eleventh Circuit in relevant part).

Florida tried to argue that because recommendation engines try to keep users on the platform, and that decisions are made by “algorithms” that somehow changes the equation. The court points out that this is technically illiterate, because humans still set the editorial guidelines:

The defendants say platforms decide which content to show any given user primarily based on the user’s viewing habits, showing the user the content most likely to keep the user on the platform longer. Perhaps so. See Moody, 603 U.S. at 735 (“The selection and ranking is most often based on a user’s expressed interests and past activities.”). And the defendants say this decision is made by algorithms, devoid of human involvement. Not so. Humans adopt the standards and guidelines, establish algorithms that incorporate them, and keep a great deal of content off the platforms on this basis, even though, as the defendants emphasize, the remaining content is organized to a substantial extent by algorithms based on a user’s viewing habits. This record establishes without genuine dispute that the six platforms specifically addressed in the plaintiffs’ motion have standards or guidelines that have a significant role in selection and organization of content. “And because that is true, they receive First Amendment protection.” Moody, 603 U.S. at 740.

Moody reiterated this point in discussing Texas’s similar legislation. The Court said the parties treated Facebook’s News Feed and YouTube’s homepage as the heartland applications of the Texas law—much as those and other platforms’ similar features are the heartland applications of the Florida law. See id. at 744. The Court said that at least on the record then before the Court, “the editorial judgments influencing the content of those feeds” were “protected expressive activity” that Texas could not “interfere with . . . simply because it would prefer a different mix of messages.” Id. (emphasis added). The Court said “influencing,” not “fully determining.” The record now before this court makes clear that editorial judgments of the six platforms addressed in the plaintiffs’ motion at least influence the content of their feeds. The First Amendment applies.

While Justice Barrett made some technically questionable statements in a concurrence about whether AI-driven algorithms might change the equation, Judge Hinkle says that even if she were right, it wouldn’t matter here:

But the defendants are plainly incorrect when they assert, in substance if not explicitly, that the First Amendment does not apply when there is mixed curation—some driven by human editorial discretion and some by algorithms or artificial intelligence. Responding to Justice Barrett’s concurrence, the Court said this case does not deal with “feeds whose algorithms respond solely to how users act online—giving them the content they appear to want, without any regard to independent content standards.” Moody, 603 U.S. at 736 n.5 (emphasis added). The Court continued, “Like them or loathe them, the Community Standards and Community Guidelines make a wealth of user-agnostic judgments about what kinds of speech, including what viewpoints, are not worthy of promotion. And those judgments show up in Facebook’s and YouTube’s main feeds.” Id. Justice Barrett joined that footnote.

And then the key point: the First Amendment protects content moderation. Full stop.

The unmistakable upshot is this: the First Amendment applies to mixed curation. The defendants’ contrary assertion is inconsistent with Moody, the many precedents discussed in Moody, and any coherent view of the First Amendment. This does not mean platforms are not subject to government regulation, but it does mean regulation must pass appropriate First Amendment scrutiny.

The judge also finds that there are constitutional problems with how vague the law is in some areas. And, in others, finds that the law would be impossible to comply with. In discussing the law’s prohibition on “post-prioritization or shadow banning algorithms” for any posts “by or about” a candidate for office, the court finds the provision baffling — saying its plain meaning makes no sense, and that Florida’s defense of it makes even less sense:

But the provision prohibits a platform from using “post-prioritization or shadow banning algorithms” for content by or about a user known to be a candidate. “‘Post-prioritization’ means action by a social media platform to place, feature, or prioritize certain content or material ahead of, below, or in a more or less prominent position than others in a newsfeed, a feed, a view, or in search results.” Fla. Stat. § 501.2041(1)(e) (emphasis added). Unless a platform shuts down completely, compliance with this provision is literally impossible; posts can only be ahead of or below other posts, and posts can only be in a more or less prominent position than other content.

The defendants say, though, that the provision does not mean what it says— that it requires posts by or about candidates to be placed in chronological order. Perhaps Florida courts will rewrite the provision in this way, but they have not done so to this point. One doubts the Florida legislature really intended to require all candidate posts to go to the top, allowing candidates and their supporters to flood every user’s feed, rendering platforms useless, or nearly so. And if that is not what the provision means, one is at a loss to divine any plausible meaning.

Thus, the court says these provisions are likely unconstitutionally vague.

Still, NetChoice/CCIA don’t win their own summary judgment motion, in part because the court says that their amended complaint is still a “quasi-facial challenge” which runs into the same issues the original challenge faced at the Supreme Court, and because of that the court holds off on granting summary judgment, meaning the case continues to move forward to trial, even as the judge makes it pretty clear this law is a complete constitutional mess.

So this is about as good a ruling as NetChoice and CCIA could realistically hope for, given the procedural mess the Supreme Court handed down in Moody. Hinkle has made it abundantly clear that he thinks Florida’s law is a vague, unconstitutional disaster that can’t survive contact with the First Amendment. And yet, because the Supreme Court decided that “facial vs. as-applied” was the hill to die on, he can’t just say so and end it. Instead, a law that everyone — including the judge — can see is unconstitutional gets to march all the way to trial.

That’s the real legacy of Moody’s procedural punt: it didn’t save these laws, but it did make killing them slower, costlier, and more painful than it has any right to be.

It’s absolutely irritating to be living under the thumb of an administration filled to the brim with facile subservients who think they’re the biggest and best people to ever walk the earth. It’s a bunch of boys pretending to be men, right up until they have to talk to the boss, at which point they return to their innate yes man positioning.

It’s even worse that this entire government pretends to be the biggest badasses around (DEPARTMENT OF WAR! SOCIAL MEDIA BLOODSPORT!). Everyone knows it isn’t, but everyone in this administration pretends otherwise. It’s the pettiest, weakest presidency we’ve ever endured, continually propped up by lackeys who think we’re fooled by its manliest-of-the-men facade. Even the most tentative jab will reveal the facade is mostly balsa and rice paper.

But even if this government is loaded with weak men and weak-willed men who serve/worship them, it still has a considerable amount of power. That allows it to perpetually punch down, targeting the people least likely to fight back.

This is the level of “government” this abhorrent death cruise of a presidency delivers on a daily basis: the multiplied force of the federal government being brought to bear against a single human being who dared to criticize a foreign politician. Yes! You are reading that correctly!

This isn’t even the normal pettiness directed at critics of this government. This is the administration getting all heated up because someone Trump likes (so long as they remain in their country) got besmirched by a solitary migrant seeking asylum in this country.

The Trump administration detained a Colombian immigrant this week in Phoenix after he spoke out against a Trump-endorsed candidate in his home country’s upcoming presidential election.

Franklin Humberto Coral Garrido, a progressive online activist known as Beto Coral, is a supporter of President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, a leftist who has clashed with President Trump. He has publicly criticized Abelardo De La Espriella, a right-wing candidate backed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Coral was arrested by immigration authorities on Tuesday, the same day Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memo determining that he was deportable from the United States.

That’s all it takes to get on Trump’s radar. And, apparently, that’s all it takes for bitch boy Rubio to fire up his MS Office Suite to compose a memo making this single person a priority for immigration officers. It’s even stupider that it first appears. Not only was Rubio prompted (most likely by his boss) to write this memo authorizing Coral’s detention, but he told his underlings this was justified entirely by Coral’s decision to utilize the rights afforded to him by the US Constitution:

“Coral Garrido has used his presence in the United States to conduct political activity in support of the Petro government” and has advocated against a candidate for president, Mr. Rubio wrote, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The New York Times.

That is not an arrestable/detainable offense! Like it or not, MAGA bigots, constitutional rights are given to US residents, even if they’re not currently citizens. There’s a very good reason for that — one that will never be fully appreciated by the MAGA faithful until they travel outside of this country and are subjected solely to local laws like cane beatings, summary executions, etc. for things that would at least get you a nominally fair trial in the US. The memo written by Rubio says things it definitely shouldn’t say, like this guy needs to be detained because he engaged in free speech.

Whether this is a leading indicator or just the tip of the ICEberg hardly matters. What does matter is that the government isn’t allowed to do this. And criticism of a foreign presidential hopeful should never form the basis for arrest or detention. Our freedom to criticize our own government is enshrined, cherished, and treated with the utmost respect (for the most part) by our court system. We — and by that I also mean any person currently residing on US soil — should be doubly free to criticize foreign governments without fear of reprisal.

But reprisal is all this government has. It can’t win hearts and minds, nor does it care to. It likes Stockholm Syndrome and the beaten dog dynamics of Trump’s relationship with his political appointees. It doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. The problem here is that the administration believes “not caring” is the same thing as “being right.” For now, though, rights still matter. Rubio’s proactive toadying doesn’t wish the Constitution into the cornfield. And if natural-born Americans think this administration won’t come after them if they displease Trump, they’re wrong. We’re only 18 months into this presidency that has already compared mild dissent to outright terrorism and insurrection. It’s not going to stop just because it’s run out of outspoken migrants to detain.

Here’s something no one but cops and the tech firms that love cops wanted: an ALPR that can scoop up pretty much any information being broadcasted by cars and the devices carried by the people inside them. As if ALPRs weren’t already controversial enough, here comes a tech company offering that makes most ALPRs (including those sold by Flock!) look absolutely innocuous.

Joseph Cox has the gory details for 404 Media:

A surveillance company plans to add sensors to automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) that would mean the devices, as well as capture the license plate of passing vehicles, would also sweep up unique identifiers of mobile phones, wearables, and other Bluetooth-enabled devices in those cars, potentially letting law enforcement identify specific drivers or passengers.

The technology, called SignalTrace, would turn ALPR cameras from devices focused on tracking cars to ones that can more readily track the location of particular people. 

That’s some wild stuff! And not in a good way!

The legal argument for license plate readers has always been this: A car traveling on a public road has no expectation of privacy. Sure, ALPRs can generate hundreds of millions of plate/location records every year, but the (clumsy) analogy given to courts is that it’s no different than something that could be accomplished by police officers who simply wrote down every license plate that passed by their patrol car.

Of course, to duplicate what ALPRs actually do, you’d have to actually exist in a hypothetical. If a million monkeys with a million typewriters can create Shakespeare, surely a million blue-clad monkeys could generate millions of plate/location data points with the sort of accuracy one would expect from high-speed, high-quality plate reader cameras.

But we don’t exist in the infinite monkey theorem. That’s a strike against ALPRs being nothing more than a “force multiplier.”

And there is currently no legal argument that justifies hoovering data from devices and vehicles, which is something the public certainly can’t do. But that’s what surveillance tech company Leonardo is offering, according to its own pitch document:

It bridges license plate recognition data with sensor-captured device identifiers—such as those from mobile phones, Bluetooth wearables, and vehicle systems—to create a unique, trackable ‘electronic fingerprint’ for investigative use.

When multiple devices consistently move together with a vehicle, SignalTrace’s algorithms link them to that vehicle’s license plate and time-stamped location data. This correlation provides investigators with another layer of actionable intelligence, even if a suspect changes or removes a plate.

First off, let’s address this part of Leonardo’s assertion:

When multiple devices consistently move together with a vehicle…

That seems deliberately misleading. While it’s not illogical to expect surveillance tech to seek correlations between data points, you’d have to be deliberately ignorant to believe that data (i.e., captures that don’t include “multiple devices consistently moving together”) won’t be searchable. While disparate data may be mostly useless in investigations, having the option to search by identifiers other than license plate numbers means cops can track people and devices, rather than limit themselves to the movement of vehicles. And if you don’t think this will be abused, you’re so deep in denial as to be unreachable.

And there’s so much more! The Leonardo document says its tech can capture RFID info from key cards, asset tags, and pet microchips. It also says it can pull info from vehicle infotainment systems. While this may be limited to unique identifiers that link the car to the device, these systems contain plenty of other data that may not be as well-protected as drivers assume — things like GPS data, phone info for every device that has been paired with the system, as well as any communications (and connecting phone numbers) stored during hands-free operation.

Leonardo is angling for federal law enforcement contracts. And it certainly would like to hook up with whatever local agencies it can talk into paying for its services. While it’s not clear that anyone is purchasing Signal trace yet, Leonardo is already filling its pockets with federal dollars, as 404 Media reports:

Its U.S. arm has contracts with U.S. Special Operations Command and the General Services Administration, according to procurement records maintained by the transparency website Widely Reported.

At this point, there is no widely recognized legal argument that supports this sort of intrusiveness. While ALPRs get a pass because anyone can see cars and license plates when they’re traveling public roads and the Third Party Doctrine says nearly anything “willingly” handed over to third parties doesn’t require a warrant to obtain, this is something else completely.

There’s no law on the books or court precedent that says the government can, in effect, force devices carried by people in cars to turn this info over to the government just because the vehicle happened to pass a SignalTrace-powered camera.

This is tech that has no analogue in the public sphere. In other words, the general public doesn’t have access to tech that can obtain this info from other people’s devices. That was the argument used to excuse cops who used an iPhone’s night photography option to “see” through the tinted windows of a parked car. There’s also no “just a cop with a notebook and a pen” equivalent for this tech, which is what has been argued to route ALPRs around the Fourth Amendment.

Leonardo is setting up shop in the unsettled areas of the law. That’s not a great business model. Even if there’s initial interest from the government’s early adopters, securing sustained revenue streams would require the Constitution itself to be upended. I’m not saying it won’t happen. I’m just saying I wouldn’t bet my career on it.

We’ve been pointing out for years that the supposedly “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk is one of the most aggressive abusers of state power to create chilling effects against his critics. So it should come as little surprise to anyone paying attention, that he’s at it again: threatening to sue Rep. Ro Khanna for Khanna’s comments regarding Musk’s time running (though pretending not to run) DOGE, where Elon took great joy in killing USAID, despite having no congressional mandate to do so. At issue was the following comments from Khanna:

Khanna suggested that the Democratic Party take initiative to hold Musk accountable if they were to regain control over the House of Representatives or the Senate.

“I do believe once we take power, there needs to be accountability,” Khanna said on the “I’ve Had It” podcast. “There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk. You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires, but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.”

Khanna continued, “He needs to answer for that. He needs to be subpoenaed. He needs to face investigation. He needs to answer for what he did with DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency]. It’s not just ‘let’s move on.'”

Khanna is referencing a recent Lancet report, which projects the “effects of defunding” USAID on mortality through 2030, and concluding it could lead to 4.5 million child deaths.

So, first things first, Khanna’s statement is clearly not defamatory. First, he doesn’t say that Musk killed that many people. He just says that the results of his cuts while in government should be investigated, and points to the Lancet report. And note that he says “possibly sentenced.” This is clearly him giving his opinion that an investigation should happen based on the Lancet’s analysis. Opinions based on disclosed facts are not defamatory.

Also, Elon Musk is, obviously, a public figure. And thus Musk would need to show actual malice — specifically that Khanna knows that the claims are false. But obviously, Khanna believes the Lancet’s report is worth investigating. There’s no way to prove actual malice.

But, as with so many of Musk’s SLAPP suits, any suit here wouldn’t be about winning. It would be about punishing a public official for daring to suggest that maybe — just maybe — Musk did real damage while running DOGE.

It appears that Musk is really, really sensitive to these claims and has spent days crashing out about it:

One or both of those things apparently didn’t sit right with the richest person in the universe, who responded by calling the representative an “evil liar,” a “robber,” and an “insider trader.” Then he threatened to sue Khanna, agreed that he should be arrested, and told his 240 million X followers that “Ro the Robber should be in prison!!” That all happened on Monday, but apparently sleeping on it didn’t change Musk’s feelings about the situation. On Tuesday he shared a post encouraging him to “take Ro ‘the Robber’ for every penny that he has”

He later retweeted Rand Paul’s false claim that USAID funded COVID, adding “USAID money killed millions” — a baseless assertion backed by nothing, in direct contrast to the peer-reviewed Lancet study he’s threatening to sue Khanna over.

The whole thing is ridiculously censorial — Musk is trying to get Khanna to shut up and prevent Congress from examining the actual impact of his (brief, but very eventful) leadership of DOGE. Turns out Musk doesn’t like either free speech or government transparency when it comes to his own actions.

There’s an extra layer of irony in who, exactly, Musk has chosen to go after. When Khanna was first elected to Congress a decade ago, he was Silicon Valley’s guy — backed by a massive war chest of tech billionaire money. Now those same circles are cheering Musk on to “take every penny” from him, because Khanna has since suggested the ultra-rich might pay marginally more in taxes and that Congress look into what DOGE actually did. As recently as last year, when Musk and Trump had a brief falling out, Khanna was even among those who explored whether Musk might shift his support toward Democrats — that’s how vast Musk’s gravitational pull had become over the entire ecosystem, critics included. Now that pull is being used to threaten financial ruin over a Congressional Representative citing a peer-reviewed journal.

It remains a complete travesty that there’s been no accountability, no responsibility, and no full accounting of just how much damage Musk did in his few months taking a chainsaw to large parts of the federal government, despite having zero congressional authority to do any of that.

The fact that he’s now threatening to abuse the courts to “take every penny” from Khanna for daring to suggest Congress should actually do its job and figure out what the fuck happened in the Executive Branch last year should (not for the first time) put to rest the idea that Musk has ever been a free speech supporter. He’s petty, vindictive and censorial, and not above using his extreme wealth to punish those who point out he’s an emperor with no clothes.

In Trump’s America, the First Amendment is a dead letter. If you’re seen as anti-Trump, you apparently no longer have any rights at all. We’ll get to the man who moved a box of zines and got thirty years — he wasn’t even at the protest, but the judge claimed he was aiding a “terrorist on the run” (he was not). To understand how that’s even possible, though, you first have to look at how some people who actually tried to overturn democracy were treated. Because they walked.

Just look at the treatment of the January 6th insurrectionists, who literally sought to hang the Vice President, invaded the Capitol, blocked the certification of the free and fair 2020 presidential election, and generally tried to take down the federal government. While some were convicted of their crimes and given jail sentences commensurate with their actual crimes, Donald Trump then pardoned them all and is now trying to pay them millions of dollars, claiming that it was so unfair that the government was “weaponized” against them.

Now, compare them to the Prairieland protestors, who went to the Prairieland ICE detention center in Texas last year on July 4th. It was like plenty of the angry protest gatherings we’ve seen lately: a bit rowdy, with a few individuals going too far. Some set off fireworks. Some engaged in vandalism. One person fired a gun which appears to have hit a local police officer (who was released from the hospital soon after with no lasting damage).

It seems totally reasonable for prosecutors to prosecute the actual crimes that happened: mainly the person who fired a weapon at someone, and perhaps some of the vandalism. But, instead, the federal government tried to turn this into “an antifa terror cell” engaging in “domestic terrorism.” While a small number of those arrested knew each other and had planned to show up and be disruptive, many others didn’t know those who were engaged in the planning or the vandalism. They were just there.

some of the defendants – like Batten, Elizabeth Soto and her husband, Ines Soto, were not involved in the planning, arrived separately at the protest, and left when guards at the facility asked them to do so.

The whole case was always nonsense:

“This indictment stretches far beyond a specific, violent criminal action that might have taken place,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It characterizes these people who put together a protest as being in an antifa cell and tars all of them with this label of domestic terrorists.”

Levinson-Waldman said the overreach threatens the civil liberties of all Americans. 

“This is not just about antifa,” she said. “Anything that somehow feels at odds with this administration’s policies could be considered domestic terrorism and will be pursued with the full force of the federal government.”

But the cases were filed in North Texas before two of the most Trumpy judges around: Mark Pittman and Reed O’Connor. As we discussed back in March, the DOJ was able to get convictions against the protestors, including the one who wasn’t even there (hold that thought… it’s coming further down). A big part of the evidence was the weapons that some of the protestors brought to the protest. But, this is Texas. You’d think that in “we love the Second Amendment, Texas” that this wouldn’t be seen as a crime, but we’re dealing with a clearly ideologically driven prosecution.

This week, some of those convicted had sentences handed down, and they are so extreme and so long that they literally seem unbelievable.

Eight activists found guilty of terrorism-related charges in connection with an attack on an immigration detention facility in Texas in which a police officer was shot were sentenced to decades in prison Tuesday. One person in the group was sentenced to 100 years in prison, federal court records show.

Benjamin Song, who shot an Alvarado Police Department officer in the neck during the July 4 incident at Prairieland Detention Center outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area, was sentenced ​to a century behind bars, according to court documents reviewed by USA Today.

Maricela Rueda, another defendant, was sentenced to 70 years in prison, records show.

Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto, Autumn Hill and Meagan Morris were each sentenced to 50 years in prison….

Again, Batten and Soto had no connection to those who planned the event or who showed up with weapons or engaged in violence. And they left when guards asked them to leave. And now they’ve been sentenced to 50 years in prison. For what?

Even if we compared these sentences to the absolute longest sentence for January 6th insurrectionists, they are nowhere near as long as this. From The Guardian’s coverage of the sentencing:

The punishment for the protesters exceeds the lengthiest prison sentences given out for the attack on the Capitol on January 6. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys who was convicted of seditious conspiracy, was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right group the Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Tarrio and Rhodes were found guilty of detailed planning to overturn a presidential election. All anyone involved in the Prairieland case did was… get mad about ICE kidnapping and kicking their neighbors out of the country, and maybe a bit of vandalism.

Song, who was sentenced to 100 years did fire his weapon and hit a law enforcement agent, meaning he was always going to face some more serious sentence, but he claims he did so because he thought the officer was going to shoot protestors. From The Guardian again:

In a statement, Song said he had fired at the police officer, Lt Thomas Gross, because Gross had his weapon drawn and Song believed he was about to shoot a protester.

“I never want to see good people, standing for what they believe in, gunned down in the street,” he said. “Now 21 people have been arrested, have been persecuted, have been punished. For knowing me or being my friend? This is wrong. This is mass punishment. Collective punishment. This is guilt by association. This is injustice.”

Even worse, Judge O’Connor (who has been one of MAGA’s favorite judges, and who has no problem making it clear that he rules on purely ideological grounds) allegedly told some of the defendants that the long sentences were necessary to make sure that leftist ideology was seen to be punished:

If you can’t see that, it’s a post from a group that is supporting the defendants (and hasn’t yet been confirmed by other reporting) saying that O’Connor said, from the bench: “the state wants to send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology.”

If accurate, that would be incredibly damning. Judges aren’t supposed to increase sentences to stamp out ideology. That’s about as blatant a clear First Amendment violation you could imagine.

The Intercept has some other quotes from the courtroom, and while they don’t have the same ideology quote from O’Connor, the quotes they do have from him are pretty bad on their own:

O’Connor, the judge, said several times that the defendants had committed an “assault on democracy.”

“What happened here was not by any stretch of the imagination a protest,” he said during the sentencing of one defendant.

I mean… come on. January 6th was an “assault on democracy.” It was quite literally an attempt to overturn a democratic election. What happened in Texas was quite clearly a protest where a few protestors went too far. It happens at plenty of protests. It’s not an “assault on democracy” unless you’re a partisan activist. Given that we’re talking about Reed O’Connor, the claims of being a partisan activist have stuck on him for years.

Again, it’s clear that some of the defendants did break some laws, though most seemed to be minor property damage. There is zero indication of anything even remotely looking like a “terrorist” plot.

But the worst, most ridiculous case is that of Daniel “Des” Sanchez-Estrada. He wasn’t even at the protest. He was arrested for… moving some left wing zines after his wife — Maricela Rueda, one of the people just sentenced to 70 years — was arrested. Prosecutors claimed that moving a box with zines in it amounted to “corruptly concealing a document.” It sounds unbelievable, but you can read the criminal complaint against him, which really is just about him taking a box of leftist zines from his and his wife’s house (after she called him from jail) to another apartment.

He was just sentenced to 30 years in prison.

I need to repeat that. He moved a box of zines. He wasn’t at the protest.

He’s now been sentenced to THIRTY YEARS in prison.

For scale, this is in Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton (currently running for the US Senate) let a repeat child sex abuser plead down to one day in jail. One day for a child abuser. Thirty years for moving a box of pamphlets.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has rightly called out how utterly unconstitutional this is:

Texas artist Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison today for transporting a box of zines, or political pamphlets. The prosecution claimed Sanchez moved the zines so they wouldn’t incriminate his wife, who attended a protest outside the Prairieland immigration detention center near Dallas, where a police officer was wounded by gunfire.

The zines at issue may have discussed controversial political views, but they said nothing about the shooting or the Prairieland protest, and prosecutors did not allege that Sanchez’s wife, Maricela Rueda (who was sentenced to 70 years today), fired any shots or had anything to do with the shooting.

According to The Intercept, O’Connor insisted that moving the box of zines was helping a “known terrorist.”

Sanchez Estrada said he still could not understand why he was convicted.

“I am a father, I am a husband, I am a teacher, a poet — I am many things, Your Honor, but I am not a terrorist,” he told the court.

O’Connor said he disagreed with the idea that moving the box of the zines was harmless. At the time of Sanchez Estrada’s actions, Song was still on the run from police.

“What was at stake at that time was a known terrorist was on the run for shooting a police officer during a terrorist attack,” he said.

Even if Song was a “known terrorist” (he’s not), that still…. means nothing. Sanchez moved a box of zines. What the fuck does that have to do with Song being on the run? The answer is absolutely nothing.

Yes, the Trump administration has been desperately trying to drum up some sort of violent organized opposition because they need that to justify the suppression of everyone’s rights as part of their continued authoritarian project. That the Trump Justice Department and a couple of famously partisan judges played along with this travesty of a prosecution, doesn’t make it legitimate by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s just another sign that in Trump’s America those who violate the law in support of Trump get told they can do whatever crimes they want, and Trump might even get them paid, but protesting the ongoing fascism, may get you sent to prison for decades. It’s so extreme that it’s almost difficult to believe it has happened in the United States. This case will go down in history among the most ridiculous, partisan, bullshit attacks on free speech, and Judges Pittman and O’Connor will both be remembered for being the judges responsible for this travesty.

There aren’t many governments out there actually trying to be more transparent. Every so often, a law gets passed that benefits the public more than its benefits the government, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.

California experienced one of these anomalies fairly recently. In 2019, a law was passed that finally made police misconduct records public records. They were no longer something simply buried in PD filing cabinets until they could be destroyed. They became presumptively public, putting the burden on the government to explain refusals to relinquish records.

The law enforcement wing of California’s government was less than pleased. As soon as it became apparent the bill had a good chance to become law, law enforcement agencies began destroying records. After its passage and enactment, the state’s Attorney General began pretending the law wasn’t retroactive and the state itself was sued by police unions. The law still stands and police agencies hoping to keep these records out of the public’s hands have been shut down repeatedly at multiple levels of the court system.

Now, the state is poised to take a big step backwards in terms of transparency, thanks to the efforts of a legislator whose bill doesn’t even have the support of her own party. In March, Assembly member Blanca Pacheco introduced a bill that would have erected a significant paywall for public records, with the obvious intent of deterring records requests.

After running into internal and external opposition, Pacheco performed a legislative head-fake:

Amid opposition from transparency advocates and public access concerns from her own Assembly colleagues, though, the Downey Democrat diluted her proposal to simply give governments more time to respond to records requests, a change that allowed the measure to sail through the Assembly in May. 

Now that it’s gotten over this initial legislative hurdle, Pacheco is turning her proposal back into the one she really wants — the one that couldn’t pass without being stripped of its objectionable clauses.

Now, she’s brought the controversial elements back — and they are even more restrictive than before, drawing fierce opposition from transparency advocates.

The latest version of her proposal, Assembly Bill 1821, is co-written by the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties. It would allow government agencies to delay responding to certain requests and to charge $22 to $66 an hour to search for and review the records they deem are for “commercial use.” 

Government agencies could also take requests to court if they believe someone is asking for the records for a malicious reason. 

Pacheco says this is nothing more than some needed “minor amendments or minor tweaks” meant to prevent government agencies from being “inundated” by records requests, “especially” those “generated by artificial intelligence.”

But that’s just one of several explanations given by Pacheco. She also says the new fee structure is meant to prevent taxpayers from “subsidizing” public records requests made by commercial entities. She also claims several discussions with local governments prompted this effort, as well as stuff she learned while she was enjoying paid-for trips to multiple tourist destinations for the ostensible purpose of getting better at legislating.

The initiative originated from one of Pacheco’s many trips sponsored by special interest groups last year, her spokesperson, Alina Evans, told CalMatters in March. Last year, Pacheco reported receiving more than $45,000 in sponsored travel — the most of any California lawmaker — including a study tour in Spain, a golf tournament in Pebble Beach and a conference in Maui. When asked Wednesday, however, Pacheco said she did not remember which one inspired her measure and said the idea came from multiple conversations with local governments. 

While I can absolutely believe most government agencies would prefer to handle fewer public records requests, public records request laws are supposed to benefit the public that pays for all of this, not the agencies that are supposed to serve the public.

Pacheco claims these are minor tweaks. The mandatory fees ($22 to $66 an hour) and giving agencies more options to sue records requesters aren’t small adjustments. They’re changes that will lead to exactly what so many government agencies want: fewer requests, more opacity, and a whole lot of leeway when it comes to responding.

Pacheco’s measure would create barriers that would chill the public from filing requests, effectively gutting the state’s open records act and violating the spirit of Californians’ constitutional right to government information, transparency advocates argue. 

“The only way that there’s any government accountability is that people know what the government is doing,” said David Snyder, a former journalist and now the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.

[…]

[C]alifornia would be the first state to explicitly allow agencies to sue for “malicious intent.” Requesters the court deems malicious would have to pay an hourly fee to obtain records to compensate agencies for their time. 

[…]

“It would be easily weaponized by agencies seeking to thwart transparency and accountability, as has already happened elsewhere in the country,” Snyder said.

The threat of a lawsuit alone would “chill requesters from submitting public requests,” said Shaila Nathu, a senior attorney with ACLU of Northern California, which also opposes the bill. 

Governments (including those in California) are already allowed to reject requests they deem “burdensome” or “vexatious.” They’ve always been able to go to court to justify refusals to release records. This addition gives California agencies a new offensive weapon in the war on transparency.

On top of this, the proposal would allow agencies to take however long they want to respond to requests. Most requests are now handled through online portals, but the 10-14 day timeline for request responses would now only apply to requests “made in person” or via email during “normal business hours.” It seems like a small thing, but in practice would allow agencies to ignore a large majority of records requests indefinitely.

The bill is still a few steps away from landing on the governor’s desk. But beyond a few people in government agencies who think the public has too much power, Pacheco seems to be on her own here. With any luck, it will remain that way and this terrible proposal will become something else that can be ignored indefinitely. But never underestimate the government’s constant trend towards opacity. It takes periodic resets to set it back on the road towards accountability. This is nothing more than Pacheco crafting an off-ramp, and being urged on (mostly secretly) by agencies who love the public’s money, but feel they owe nothing to the public in return for their paychecks.

The Ultimate AWS Data Master Class Bundle has 9 courses to get you up to speed on Amazon Web Services. The courses cover AWS, DevOPs, Kubernetes Mesosphere DC/OS, AWS Redshift, and more. It’s on sale for $40.

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

In theory, there’s a way to build a prediction market that actually provides valuable insight on issues through the wisdom of the crowds. But that’s not at all what we have with the current crop of prediction markets, mainly Kalshi and Polymarket, which seem to have leap-frogged FanDuel and DraftKings as the deservedly hated gambling apps that pretend not to be gambling apps. While we haven’t spent too much time talking about those markets here on Techdirt, we have mentioned some examples of where they are found to be distorting information, rather than revealing deeper insights.

But, really, if your entire marketing pitch is that you’re a tool for revealing truths, it should be existentially embarrassing for it to be revealed that your advertising strategy is to have influencers blatantly fake bets to pretend they had won, when they really would have lost. It’s like the opposite of a truth market. It’s false advertising.

A piece published over the weekend by the Wall Street Journal (whose publisher actually has a deal with Polymarket) is incredibly damning, suggesting pretty clearly that Polymarket and a crew of young influencers it has hired have engaged in outright fraud that both the FTC and the CFTC would go after, if either agency were inclined to act:

In his videos, George Makihara appears to have a lucrative side hustle making bets on Polymarket.

In January, the college student posted a video that showed him winning $100,000 on a wager that President Trump would publicly say the word “McDonald’s” that month.  

The bet was one of 145 that Makihara appeared to place on Polymarket’s website between January and mid-May, based on his videos—bets adding up to almost $410,000. 

But none of those bets were real, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation.

The basics of the scam are pretty straightforward: Polymarket hired one of those “influencer marketing” companies to round up college kids to make social media videos showing them winning bets on Polymarket. Except, it turns out that the bets shown in those videos aren’t real. They’re faked, using a fake version of Polymarket, with the clever domain name Poiymarket (that’s a lower case i rather than an l there). And, of course, none of the influencers disclosed they were being paid by Polymarket, let alone that the bets shown in the videos were made up.

This doesn’t seem to be a one-off case of a rogue influencer either. The WSJ found over 1,100 videos by multiple creators, and determined that in 70% of the videos, no actual bets were placed, even as the videos showed the influencers winning $1.9 million. Within that, one smaller segment of the videos used faked or outdated news coverage to pretend the influencers had won about a million dollars — when, the WSJ worked it out, those same bets would actually have lost $166,000 if anyone had actually placed them.

And according to the reporting, this isn’t just a case of the marketing firm Polymarket hired going too far. The article reports that Polymarket created the fake website and required the influencers send them all their videos for approval before posting:

Creators said they send the finished videos to Polymarket for review. If a video isn’t engaging enough, or if it bears obvious signs of being faked, Polymarket will ask for the videos to be reshot, the creators said.

All of this clearly violates the FTC’s rules on disclosing paid promotion, not to mention being clearly deceptive advertising. That isn’t even mentioning that Polymarket apparently demanded that the ads target Americans, even as Polymarket isn’t supposed to be operating its prediction market in the US (even though tons of people are using it there via VPNs and proxies).

This is where the CFTC should step in. Polymarket has been doing the whole “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” thing about supposedly not targeting the US. But this report makes it clear that they absolutely are targeting the US and that it’s an important market to them. In a normal administration, the CFTC would take note of this and take action:

As of early June, it only paid clippers if at least 60% of their audience was in the U.S., according to instructional materials.

There’s also this excuse given by one of the influencers, who may be about to learn about deceptive advertising laws:

Razeen Khan, a college student in California, worked as a Polymarket creator for several months until March. He compared the videos to fast-food commercials, where food can appear more appealing than it does in real life. 

“We’re depicting what actually happens,” he said. “You’re still going to buy the burger.”

This is quite the choice in what to compare things to, Razeen, because the FTC now has a few decades on the record of going after companies for representing food in ads in a deceptive manner. In 1968, there was the Campbell’s Soup case, in which the FTC dinged the soup company for placing clear marbles in the bottom of bowls so that photos of the soup made it look like there were more noodles and vegetables in the soup than there really were.

The general rule of thumb to avoid having the FTC come down on you is that if any food is shown in an ad, it has to be the actual food. Everything else around it can be faked or made to look better. But the food has to be real. Hell, there was just a case against Burger King (which appears to have settled earlier this year), alleging that the burgers it showed in commercials were bigger than what was actually sold.

So, yeah, Razeen, I’d suggest maybe talking to a lawyer before you claim that you’re just doing the same thing that you think fast food companies do… when those fast food companies know that they can face serious legal penalties for faking things. Like you appear to have done.

Of course, the real question is whether this FTC will do anything about it. On the merits, it’s about as clean a case as the agency is ever going to get — so blatant that looking the other way carries its own cost. But part of the reason Kalshi and Polymarket seem to be everywhere these days is that the Trump administration has gone to bat for both companies in their fights with state regulators — and that Donald Trump Jr. has financial links to both companies. So the agency that should be the natural enemy of a company building fake websites to run faked ads, instead answers to a White House championing that company, while the president’s son personally profits from its success.

Which is its own kind of tell. A prediction market’s entire pitch is that it surfaces the truth — that the wisdom of the crowd, with real money on the line, produces better information than anyone else can. Polymarket just demonstrated what it actually thinks of that promise: when it needed to sell itself, it didn’t trust the real numbers. It hired college kids, built a counterfeit version of its own site, and manufactured the wins. The product that’s supposed to reveal the truth couldn’t market itself without faking it.

This is the rare case clean enough to force the question. If the FTC does nothing with a fraud this obvious, it won’t be because the case is too weak. Instead, it will tell you exactly whose interests the Trump FTC thinks are worth protecting.