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On Friday, a federal judicial panel convened in Washington, DC, to discuss the challenges of policing AI-generated evidence in court trials, according to a Reuters report. The US Judicial Conference's Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, an eight-member panel responsible for drafting evidence-related amendments to the Federal Rules of Evidence, heard from computer scientists and academics about the potential risks of AI being used to manipulate images and videos or create deepfakes that could disrupt a trial.

The meeting took place amid broader efforts by federal and state courts nationwide to address the rise of generative AI models (such as those that power OpenAI's ChatGPT or Stability AI's Stable Diffusion), which can be trained on large datasets with the aim of producing realistic text, images, audio, or videos.

In the published 358-page agenda for the meeting, the committee offers up this definition of a deepfake and the problems AI-generated media may pose in legal trials:

Enlarge / Taylor's C709 Soft Serve Freezer isn't so much mechanically complicated as it is a software and diagnostic trap for anyone without authorized access. (credit: iFixit/YouTube)

Many devices have been made difficult or financially nonviable to repair, whether by design or because of a lack of parts, manuals, or specialty tools. Machines that make ice cream, however, seem to have a special place in the hearts of lawmakers. Those machines are often broken and locked down for only the most profitable repairs.

The Federal Trade Commission and the antitrust division of the Department of Justice have asked the US Copyright Office (PDF) to exempt "commercial soft serve machines" from the anti-circumvention rules of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The governing bodies also submitted proprietary diagnostic kits, programmable logic controllers, and enterprise IT devices for DMCA exemptions.

"In each case, an exemption would give users more choices for third-party and self-repair and would likely lead to cost savings and a better return on investment in commercial and industrial equipment," the joint comment states. Those markets would also see greater competition in the repair market, and companies would be prevented from using DMCA laws to enforce monopolies on repair, according to the comment.

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Amid safety scandals involving "many loose bolts" and widespread problems with Boeing's 737 Max 9s, Boeing is apparently considering buying back Spirit AeroSystems, the key supplier behind some of Boeing's current manufacturing problems, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

Spirit was initially spun out from Boeing Commercial Airplanes in 2005, and Boeing had planned to keep it that way. Last year, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun sought to dispel rumors that Boeing might reacquire Spirit as federal regulators launched investigations into both companies. But now Calhoun appears to be "softening that stance," the WSJ reported.

According to the WSJ's sources, no deal has formed yet, but Spirit has initiated talks with Boeing and "hired bankers to explore strategic options." Sources also confirmed that Spirit is weighing whether to sell its operations in Ireland, which manufactures parts for Boeing rival Airbus.

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Avast, a name known for its security research and antivirus apps, has long offered Chrome extensions, mobile apps, and other tools aimed at increasing privacy.

Avast's apps would "block annoying tracking cookies that collect data on your browsing activities," and prevent web services from "tracking your online activity." Deep in its privacy policy, Avast said information that it collected would be "anonymous and aggregate." In its fiercest rhetoric, Avast's desktop software claimed it would stop "hackers making money off your searches."

All of that language was offered up while Avast was collecting users' browser information from 2014 to 2020, then selling it to more than 100 other companies through a since-shuttered entity known as Jumpshot, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Under a proposed recent FTC order (PDF), Avast must pay $16.5 million, which is "expected to be used to provide redress to consumers," according to the FTC. Avast will also be prohibited from selling future browsing data, must obtain express consent on future data gathering, notify customers about prior data sales, and implement a "comprehensive privacy program" to address prior conduct.

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Apple's iMessage service is not a "gatekeeper" prone to unfair business practices and will thus not be required under the Fair Markets Act to open up to messages, files, and video calls from other services, the European Commission announced earlier today.

Apple was one of many companies, including Google, Amazon, Alphabet (Google's parent company), Meta, and Microsoft to have its "gatekeeper" status investigated by the European Union. The iMessage service did meet the definition of a "core platform," serving at least 45 million EU users monthly and being controlled by a firm with at least 75 billion euros in market capitalization. But after "a thorough assessment of all arguments" during a five-month investigation, the Commission found that iMessage and Microsoft's Bing search, Edge browser, and ad platform "do not qualify as gatekeeper services." The unlikelihood of EU demands on iMessage was apparent in early December when Bloomberg reported that the service didn't have enough sway with business users to demand more regulation.

Had the Commission ruled otherwise, Apple would have had until August to open its service. It would have been interesting to see how the company would have complied, given that it provides end-to-end encryption and registers senders based on information from their registered Apple devices.

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After more than a year as an exclusive invite-only social media platform, Bluesky is now open to the public, so anyone can join without needing a once-coveted invite code.

In a blog, Bluesky said that requiring invite codes helped Bluesky "manage growth" while building features that allow users to control what content they see on the social platform.

When Bluesky debuted, many viewed it as a potential Twitter killer, but limited access to Bluesky may have weakened momentum. As of January 2024, Bluesky has more than 3 million users. That's significantly less than X (formerly Twitter), which estimates suggest currently boasts more than 400 million global users.

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The Federal Trade Commission has succeeded in keeping alive its first federal court case against a geolocation data broker that's allegedly unfairly selling large quantities of data in violation of the FTC Act.

On Saturday, US District Judge Lynn Winmill denied Kochava's motion to dismiss an amended FTC complaint, which he said plausibly argued that "Kochava’s data sales invade consumers’ privacy and expose them to risks of secondary harms by third parties."

Winmill's ruling reversed a dismissal of the FTC's initial complaint, which the court previously said failed to adequately allege that Kochava's data sales cause or are likely to cause a "substantial" injury to consumers.

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Amazon will no longer pursue a $1.4 billion acquisition of iRobot, maker of Roomba robot vacuums after the companies announced today that they have "no path to regulatory approval in the European Union."

On the same day, iRobot announced an "operational restructuring plan" in which 350 employees, or 31 percent of iRobot's workforce, will be laid off. CEO Colin Angle, one of the company's cofounders, will also step down, and the company has hired a chief restructuring officer for its "return to profitability." The company will refocus on its core cleaning product lineup, pausing efforts in air purification, robotic lawn mowing, and education.

As part of the deal's terms, Amazon will pay $94 million to iRobot, most of it earmarked for paying back a three-year, $200 million loan the company took out when the Amazon acquisition was announced in August 2022. iRobot stated in its release that it expected to report losses of "between $265 and $285 million" in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Theranos CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes. (credit: Max Morse for TechCrunch)

Elizabeth Holmes—the disgraced and incarcerated founder of the infamous blood-testing startup Theranos—is barred from participating in federal health programs for nine decades, according to an announcement from the health department Friday.

The exclusion means that Holmes is barred from receiving payments from federal health programs for services or products, which significantly restricts her ability to work in the health care sector. It also prevents her from participating in Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs. With a 90-year term, the exclusion is lifelong for Holmes, who is currently 39.

The exclusion was announced by Inspector General Christi Grimm of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General.

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It’s taken a while, but social media platforms now know that people prefer their information kept away from corporate eyes and malevolent algorithms. That’s why the newest generation of social media sites like Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky boast of being part of the "fediverse." Here, user data is hosted on independent servers rather than one corporate silo. Platforms then use common standards to share information when needed. If one server starts to host too many harmful accounts, other servers can choose to block it.

They’re not the only ones embracing this approach. Medical researchers think a similar strategy could help them train machine learning to spot disease trends in patients. Putting their AI algorithms on special servers within hospitals for "federated learning" could keep privacy standards high while letting researchers unravel new ways to detect and treat diseases.

“The use of AI is just exploding in all facets of life,” said Ronald M. Summers of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Maryland, who uses the method in his radiology research. “There's a lot of people interested in using federated learning for a variety of different data analysis applications.”

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On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to review an appeal from X (formerly Twitter), alleging that the US government's censorship of X transparency reports served as a prior restraint on the platform's speech and was unconstitutional.

This free speech battle predates Elon Musk's ownership of the platform. Since 2014, the social media company has "sought to accurately inform the public about the extent to which the US government is surveilling its users," X's petition said, while the government has spent years effectively blocking precise information from becoming public knowledge.

Current law requires that platforms instead only share generalized statistics regarding government information requests—using government-approved reporting bands such as "between 0 and 99 times"—so that people posing as national security threats can never gauge exactly how active the feds are on any given platform.

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is currently seeking comments on new rules that would further restrict platforms' efforts to monetize children's data.

Through the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the FTC initially sought to give parents more control over what kinds of information that various websites and apps can collect from their kids. Now, the FTC wants to update COPPA and "shift the burden from parents to providers to ensure that digital services are safe and secure for children," the FTC's press release said.

“By requiring firms to better safeguard kids’ data, our proposal places affirmative obligations on service providers and prohibits them from outsourcing their responsibilities to parents,” FTC chair Lina Khan said.

Enlarge / Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, November 30, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | Bill Clark )

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other Republican senators are fighting a Federal Communications Commission plan to impose new data-breach notification requirements on telecom providers. In a letter sent to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel today, the senators claim the pending FCC action would violate a congressional order.

The letter was sent by Cruz, Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). They say the proposed data-breach notification rules are preempted by an action Congress took in 2017 to kill an assortment of privacy and security rules issued by the FCC.

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) was used in 2017 by Congress and then-President Donald Trump to throw out rules that would have required home Internet and mobile broadband providers to get consumers' opt-in consent before using, sharing, or selling Web browsing history, app usage history, and other private information.

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Windows' infamous "Blue Screen of Death" is a bit of a punchline. People have made a hobby of spotting them out in the wild, and in some circles, they remain a byword for the supposed flakiness and instability of PCs. To this day, networked PCs in macOS are represented by beige CRT monitors displaying a BSOD.

But the BSOD is supposed to be a diagnostic tool, an informational screen that technicians can use to begin homing in on the problem that caused the crash in the first place; that old Windows' BSOD error codes were often so broad and vague as to be useless doesn't make the idea a bad one. Today, version 255 of the Linux systemd project honors that original intent by adding a systemd-bsod component that generates a full-screen display of some error messages when a Linux system crashes.

The systemd-bsod component is currently listed as "experimental" and "subject to change." But the functionality is simple: any logged error message that reaches the LOG_EMERG level will be displayed full-screen to allow people to take a photo or write it down. Phoronix reports that, as with BSODs in modern Windows, the Linux version will also generate a QR code to make it easier to look up information on your phone.

Enlarge / Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel during a House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee hearing on March 31, 2022, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Kevin Dietsch )

A federal program that provides $30 monthly broadband discounts to people with low incomes is expected to run out of money in April 2024, potentially taking affordable Internet service plans away from well over 20 million households.

For months, supporters of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) have been pushing Congress to give the Federal Communications Commission more funding for the program. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel urged lawmakers to act yesterday during a House Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing.

In an opening statement, Rosenworcel said the ACP is providing discounts for over 22 million households. The FCC expects that number to reach 25 million by April, when the program would run out of money.

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Meta sued the Federal Trade Commission yesterday in a lawsuit that challenges the FTC's authority to impose new privacy obligations on the social media firm.

The complaint stems from the FTC's May 2023 allegation that Meta-owned Facebook violated a 2020 privacy settlement and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The FTC proposed changes to the 2020 privacy order that would, among other things, prohibit Facebook from monetizing data it collects from users under 18.

Meta's lawsuit against the FTC challenges what it calls "the structurally unconstitutional authority exercised by the FTC through its Commissioners in an administrative reopening proceeding against Meta." It was filed against the FTC, Chair Lina Khan, and other commissioners in US District Court for the District of Columbia. Meta is seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the FTC proceeding pending resolution of the lawsuit.

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After years of inaction, the FCC this week said that it's finally going to protect consumers against a scam that takes control of their cell phone numbers by deceiving employees who work for mobile carriers. While commissioners congratulated themselves for the move, there’s little reason yet to believe it will stop a practice that has been all too common over the past decade.

The scams, known as "SIM swapping" and "port-out fraud," both have the same objective: to wrest control of a cell phone number away from its rightful owner by tricking the employees of the carrier that services it. SIM swapping occurs when crooks hold themselves out as someone else and request that the victim's number be transferred to a new SIM card—usually under the pretense that the victim has just obtained a new phone. In port-out scams, crooks do much the same thing, except they trick the carrier employee into transferring the target number to a new carrier.

This class of attack has existed for well over a decade, and it became more commonplace amid the irrational exuberance that drove up the price of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. People storing large sums of digital coin have been frequent targets. Once crooks take control of a phone number, they trigger password resets that work by clicking on links sent in text messages. The crooks then drain cryptocurrency and traditional bank accounts.

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Internet service providers and their lobby groups are fighting a US plan to prohibit discrimination in access to broadband services. In particular, ISPs want the Federal Communications Commission to drop the plan's proposal to require that prices charged to consumers be non-discriminatory.

In 2021, Congress required the Federal Communications Commission to issue rules "preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin" within two years. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last month released her draft plan to comply with the congressional mandate and scheduled a November 15 commission vote on adopting final rules.

The plan is likely to pass in a party-line vote as Rosenworcel has a 3-2 Democratic majority, but aspects of the draft could be changed before the vote. Next week's meeting could be a contentious one, judging by a statement issued Monday by Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr.

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One of the world's largest mobile data brokers, Kochava, has lost its battle to stop the Federal Trade Commission from revealing what the FTC has alleged is a disturbing, widespread pattern of unfair use and sale of sensitive data without consent from hundreds of millions of people.

US District Judge B. Lynn Winmill recently unsealed a court filing, an amended complaint that perhaps contains the most evidence yet gathered by the FTC in its long-standing mission to crack down on data brokers allegedly "substantially" harming consumers by invading their privacy.

The FTC has accused Kochava of violating the FTC Act by amassing and disclosing "a staggering amount of sensitive and identifying information about consumers," alleging that Kochava's database includes products seemingly capable of identifying nearly every person in the United States.

Enlarge / A box of Sudafed PE sinus pressure and pain medicine containing phenylephrine is displayed for sale in a CVS Pharmacy store in Hawthorne, California, on September 12, 2023. (credit: Getty | PATRICK T. FALLON)

Drug store giant CVS revealed late last week that it is voluntarily pulling some common cold and flu medicines from its shelves because they don't work—while many other ineffective products remain on the shelves.

The move by CVS comes after an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration last month voted unanimously that the common decongestant, phenylephrine, is ineffective at treating a stuffy nose. But it comes ahead of the FDA itself acting on the vote, which will likely lead the agency to revoke phenylephrine's approval, eventually.

In a statement to Ars, a CVS spokesperson suggested the FDA advisory panel's vote was the impetus for the change, but that it would "follow direction from the FDA."

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Bribery. Embezzlement. Terrorism.

What if an AI chatbot accused you of doing something terrible? When bots make mistakes, the false claims can ruin lives, and the legal questions around these issues remain murky.

That's according to several people suing the biggest AI companies. But chatbot makers hope to avoid liability, and a string of legal threats has revealed how easy it might be for companies to wriggle out of responsibility for allegedly defamatory chatbot responses.

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The beginning of this year saw a big change to the federal tax incentives applied to electric vehicles, altering which cars were eligible. And from next year, another change is coming, one that we think is long overdue. From January 1, 2024, you'll be able to have the amount of the credit applied immediately to the car's price at purchase rather than waiting until tax time.

The original IRS section 30D tax credit, meant to spur the adoption of plug-in vehicles, was tied to the storage capacity of a car's battery pack. But from this year, the $7,500 credit is now linked to domestic battery manufacturing rather than just battery capacity, with annually escalating percentages of the battery required to come from the US or a country with a free trade agreement in order to qualify.

The changes to the credit—which were made under 2022's Inflation Reduction Act—also address several problems with the old scheme. A $4,000 credit (IRS section 25E) was created for buyers of used EVs, and there are now income and price caps to address criticisms that the credit merely subsidized those wealthy enough not to need it.

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Last week, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, alleging that the online retailer was illegally maintaining a monopoly. Much of the FTC's complaint against Amazon was redacted, but The Wall Street Journal yesterday revealed key details obscured in the complaint regarding a secret algorithm. The FTC alleged that Amazon once used the algorithm to raise prices across the most popular online shopping destinations.

People familiar with the FTC's allegations in the complaint told the Journal that it all started when Amazon developed an algorithm code-named "Project Nessie." It allegedly works by manipulating rivals' weaker pricing algorithms and locking competitors into higher prices. The controversial algorithm was allegedly used for years and helped Amazon to "improve its profits on items across shopping categories" and "led competitors to raise their prices and charge customers more," the WSJ reported.

The FTC's complaint said:

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