Techdirt has been following the important copyright case in India that is about how people in that country can access academic journals. Currently, many turn to "shadow libraries" like Sci-Hub and Libgen, because they cannot afford the often hefty frees that academic publishers charge to access papers. If a new "Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy" (pdf), just released as a draft by the Government of India, comes to fruition, people may not need to:

The Government of India will negotiate with journal publishers for a "one nation, one subscription" policy whereby, in return for one centrally-negotiated payment, all individuals in India will have access to journal articles. This will replace individual institutional journal subscriptions.

That's just one of the bold ideas contained in the 63-page document. Here's another: open access to all research funded by the Indian taxpayers.

Full text of final accepted author versions of manuscripts (postprints and optionally preprints) along with supplementary materials, which are the result of public funding or performed in publicly funded institutions, or were performed using infrastructure built with the support of public funds will be deposited, immediately upon acceptance, to an institutional repository or central repository.

Similarly, all data generated from publicly funded research will be released as open data, with a few exceptions:

All data used in and generated from public-funded research will be available to everyone (larger scientific community and public) under FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) terms. Wherever applicable, exceptions will be made on grounds of privacy, national security and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Even in such situations, suitably anonymised and/or redacted data will be made available. In all cases, where the data cannot be released to the general public, there will be a mechanism to release it to bonafide/authorised researchers.

All publicly funded scientific resources will be made shareable and accessible nationally through digital platforms, including laboratories, supercomputing and AI facilities. Publicly funded open educational resources will be made available under a "minimally restrictive" open content license. Libraries at publicly funded institutions will be accessible to everyone, subject only to "reasonable security protocols".

Another idea is the creation of a dedicated portal (remember those?), the Indian Science and Technology Archive of Research, which will provide access to all publicly funded research, including manuscripts, research data, supplementary information, research protocols, review articles, conference proceedings, monographs, book chapters, etc. There will also be a national science, technology and innovation "observatory", which will establish data repositories and a computational grid, among other things.

It's an incredibly ambitious program, with an ambitious goal: "To achieve technological self-reliance and position India among the top three scientific superpowers in the decade to come." The other two superpowers being the US and China, presumably. Whether that program is implemented, wholly or even just in part, is another matter, and will depend on the lobbying that will now inevitably take place, and the usual budgetary constraints. But it is certainly impressive in the completeness of its vision, and in its commitment to openness and sharing in all its forms.

Comments on the proposals can be sent to india-stip@gov.in until Monday, 25 January, 2021.

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A serious set of police reforms has passed through the Illinois legislature and is headed to the governor's desk. You can tell it's a good set of reforms because the police union hates it.

In the final hours of the legislative session, state senator Elgie Sims did no one any favors by introducing a 764-page amendment to the reform bill that had already passed. That's not a cool move, no matter what the ends are. No one can possibly hope to read and comprehend something of that size with only a few hours left in the session, as another state senator pointed out on his Facebook page.

But it's not as if the state senators had no idea what was contained in the bill. More than a week earlier, one of the state's police unions was already complaining about its contents and asking legislators to vote the bill down. The union's list of complaints looks like a comprehensive set of reforms -- something almost any other person or entity in the state would view as positives. Here's the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police's bitch list about the earlier, 611-page police reform bill, followed by commentary:

Eliminates Qualified Immunity for police officers, making them civilly liable to siren chasing trial lawyers

Qualified immunity needs to go. It has encouraged bad behavior by cops by making it almost impossible for them to be held accountable for their actions. As one Appeals Court judge recently pointed out, qualified immunity turns civil rights litigation into a rigged game citizens almost always lose.

Eliminates Officer’s rights to Collectively Bargain, creating a “special class” of public employee who does not have these rights in Illinois

A step towards eliminating police unions is a step towards accountability. This point can't be argued. History has proven this much.

It Eliminates impartial arbitration over burdensome residency requirements

Asking cops to live near the people they serve shouldn't be burdensome. When cops are commuting from distant suburbs and neighboring towns to protect and serve, it's pretty tough for them to feel any empathy for the people they police or contribute to any sense of community.

Allows for unrestricted and ungoverned disciplinary policies of law enforcement officers

Likely hyperbole, just like the line that opens the FOP's post:

Late on January 5th, the Illinois General Assembly filed a 611 page bill that eliminates law enforcement as we know it from every community in the State.

LOL. Ok.

Prohibits departments from taking advantage of cost-saving federal surplus programs

An less-dishonest phrasing would explain that this bill prevents cops from acquiring military gear like assault rifles, grenade launchers, and armored vehicles. The Defense Department's 1033 program has driven a wedge between the police and policed, and has delivered no measurable improvement to law enforcement safety or crime reduction.

Allows officers to be punished or fired based on anonymous and unsubstantiated or unverifiable complaints

Oh, I doubt that.

Mandates that those unsubstantiated and unverified complaints be kept to be used against officers forever, with no destruction and no limits on how they can be utilized to inflict harm on officers

Stop your crying. Arrest records are permanent, even if arrestees are never convicted of the alleged crimes. There's no reason officers shouldn't have a permanent record that reflects their years of service -- both the good and the bad. Files will note claims that are unsubstantiated and unverified. Those won't hurt officers because, well, verified/substantiated complaints rarely have a negative effect on law enforcement officers' careers.

Substantially increases both initial and ongoing education requirements with no money to pay for the increased costs and no assurances that the courses will even be offered

That's a problem that needs to be addressed. But dismissing it out of hand because all the details aren't in writing yet is counterproductive.

Mandates the use of body cameras by all departments for every officer with no money to pay for the cost of those cameras

Pretty sure the police will pay for the cameras. They'll pay for it the way they pay for everything else: tax dollars. Or, if money's tight, maybe cops could free up some of their asset forfeiture funds to buy this equipment.

Defunds any department that does not comply 100% with the draconian requirements of the legislation

Again, hyperbole. There should be consequences for not complying with [checks notes] state law, but very few local governments are actually willing to defund police departments. Losing some of your budget because of compliance failures is not "defunding."

Eliminates funding for law enforcement agencies

LOL. No.

Eliminates Cash Bail

Cash bail simply allows the less fortunate to see their fortunes suffer even further. It's pretty difficult to keep your life running while in jail and it's impossible to earn money to pay bail while behind bars.

Enacts multiple benefits for felons

Who even knows what the FOP is saying here. The FOP might be referring to the felony murder rule, which is curtailed by this legislation. Felony murder is a hell of a thing, allowing people to be charged with murder if some act they committed resulted in the death of a person -- even if they never directly interacted with that person. For instance, selling drugs that later result in someone's fatal overdose can trigger the felony murder rule.

Prohibits use of force in almost all situations, and makes officers criminally liable for virtually any use of force

No. It doesn't. It tempers the use of force by ensuring it's justifiable. And when it isn't, it can result in criminal charges. The implementation of standards for force deployment is not a "prohibition" just because it eliminates some officer discretion.

Removes prohibitions against obstructing police officers

It doesn't do anything of the sort. It simply makes it a misdemeanor not punishable by more than 48 hours in jail or 100 hours of community service. This makes it less likely obstruction charges will be used to punish people for not being sufficiently deferential to cops.

Charges officers with Official Misconduct, a class 3 felony, for banal and incidental issues

One man's banal is another man's egregious offense. What cops may think are "banal" violations are actually disturbing to those outside of law enforcement and often surface indicators of systemic problems departments aren't dealing with properly. Increasing the severity of the punishment is a good deterrent.

That's the FOP's take. And the FOP really didn't need to be so worried about it. No one was going to be able to pass a bill with all of this included. The last-second amendment stripped out a bunch of the really good stuff.

Some more controversial elements were eliminated from the final version of the bill to secure its passage. One would have reduced the power of police unions to bargain over disciplinary procedures. Another would have ended qualified immunity for civil rights violations, which would have made individual officers — instead of taxpayers — financially liable if a court found they intentionally violated the constitution.

Dammit. Passing a qualified immunity ban somewhere in the nation would be a great start -- a test case to see if it actually would result in the parade of litigation horrors cop officials claim it would. That will have to wait for another day and another legislature.

But a lot of good stuff remains. The passed version expands the state's officer misconduct database and lengthens the retention of disciplinary records. It gives the state board more power to strip misbehaving officers of their certification. It forces police officers to provide more details on arrests whenever resisting arrest is one of the charges. It adds a duty to intervene when officers witness other officers violating rights. It enacts new procedures for no-knock search warrants. And it mandates body cam use across the state by 2025.

The governor has stated he will sign the bill. This is good news for Illinois residents. And it should be good news for cops… at least the good ones. This doesn't change anything good cops already do. It only makes things worse for bad cops, despite the FOP's hysterical claims about it being the end of law enforcement. It should be a new beginning -- one that can be used to rebuild failing agencies and help them rid themselves of their worst components.

The podcast went on pause over the holidays and amidst the deluge of... events — but now we're back! And to kick things off, we've got a cross-post from Nick Gillespie's Reason podcast. Mike recently joined Nick for an interview about Section 230 and why a decentralized internet is better than a heavily-restricted one, and you can listen to the whole thing on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Last week, I explained my thoughts on why the Parler takedown from AWS didn't bother me that much -- considering that there were many other cloud and webhosting solutions out there. Yet Parler has quickly discovered that many other providers aren't interested in hosting the company's cesspool of garbage content either. As I pointed out, at some point, some element of that has to be on Parler for attracting such an audience of garbage-spewers. Either way, we figured the site would eventually be back up, and now it appears that it's on its way. The site put up a holding page with a few "Parlezs" (their version of tweets) from its execs and lead cheerleaders.

The site appears to be using Epik for hosting and DDoSGuard for DDoS protection. Neither of these are that surprising. Epik has built up something of a specialty in hosting the garbage, hate-filled websites no one else wants to touch. It has hosted Gab, 8chan/8kun, and The Daily Stormer among others. DDoSGuard is a somewhat sketchy Russian company that provides services to an equally sketchy group of sites -- and some terrorist groups. Brian Krebs has recently discussed how DDoSGuard may create some significant liability issues:

A review of the several thousand websites hosted by DDoS-Guard is revelatory, as it includes a vast number of phishing sites and domains tied to cybercrime services or forums online.

Replying to requests for comment from a CBSNews reporter following up on my Oct. 2020 story, DDoS-Guard issued a statement saying, “We observe network neutrality and are convinced that any activity not prohibited by law in our country has the right to exist.”

But experts say DDoS-Guard’s business arrangement with a Denver-based publicly traded data center firm could create legal headaches for the latter thanks to the Russian company’s support of Hamas.

Ooof. There's a lot more in Krebs' writeup.

But what struck me as most ridiculous about Parler's holding page (beyond trying to hide behind MLK Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" as if Parler's raging nut job userbase is somehow oppressed) is that the company is still claiming that beyond being a place for (a misunderstood concept of) "free speech," that the impetus behind the site was about "protecting privacy."

That reads:

Now seems like the right time to remind you all — both lovers and haters — why we started this platform. We believe privacy is paramount and free speech essential, especially on social media. Our aim has always been to provide a nonpartisan public square where individuals can enjoy and exercise their rights to both.

We will resolve any challenge before us and plan to welcome all of you back soon. We will not let civil discourse perish!

The "privacy is paramount" line is one that Parler really only started spewing more recently. Rebekah Mercer used a similar line when she outed herself as a co-founder of the platform and it never made any sense at all. After all, Mercer was also behind Cambridge Analytica, a company involved in what is now considered one of the biggest privacy breaches in the history of social media. The whole "privacy" claim seemed like little more than a convenient talking point to pretend that their approach was somewhat different than Facebook's or Google's.

But in the case of Parler, it's even more ridiculous. After all, this was a company that required users who wanted to get its version of "verified" to hand over their social security numbers. And, of course, before Parler shut down, a hacker was able to grab nearly the entire corpus of Parler posts, including pictures and videos that did not have location metadata stripped out. This allowed multiple reporters to find and highlight Parler users as they stormed the Capitol, exposing exactly who was raiding the Capitol and what evidence they revealed about their own activities. Indeed, it's becoming clear that law enforcement is using this data to go around arresting tons of people.

Doesn't seem that privacy protecting, after all, now does it?

Of course, much of this seems to be due to just plain old incompetence, rather than malice. Last week there was also a fascinating thread on Parler's clueless CTO, who didn't seem to understand some fairly basic things about running a large internet-scale service. That thread, by software engineer Sarah Mei is worth reading, if only to reach the conclusion, that Parler "might have done better with four ferrets in a trench coat."

So, yes, the site may be coming back, but to say that it takes privacy seriously, while asking for social security numbers, hosted on a dodgy host, with a DDoS provider best known for its Russian home-base and its willingness to provide services to terrorists and online criminals... I would suggest that anyone who thinks of Parler as supportive of privacy, do so at their own risk.

As we've written about recently, Beijing's creep into Hong Kong control has turned into nearly a dash as of late. What started with July's new "national security" law that allowed the mainland to meddle in Hong Kong's affairs led to arrests of media members in July, the expulsion and arrest of pro-democracy politicians in November, and then expanded arrests of members of the public who have said the wrong things in January.

And as that mad dash to tighten its grip before a new American administration takes office continues, Beijing appears to be starting the process of censoring the internet in Hong Kong as well. In a move likely designed to make this all look reasonable, the first reports revolve around a website used to post information about Hong Kong police.

Hong Kong’s biggest mobile telecom companies appear to have severed access to a website that listed the personal information of police officers, setting off fears that the authorities may use a new national security law to adopt censorship tactics widely used in mainland China.

Users attempting to access the site, called HKChronicles, on their mobile devices first noticed the disruption on Wednesday evening, according to the site’s owner, Naomi Chan, an 18-year-old high school student. Disruption came without any warning or explanation, she said.

Now, I can write the comments from some of you here to save you the trouble: if this is a site dedicated to doxxing police officers, how is blocking it unreasonable? Your desire to write that comment is almost certainly precisely why this site is the first to have gotten the mainland censorship treatment. But that's entirely besides the point.

Instead, frame it in your mind this way: a site that had previously been accessible by Hong Kong citizens no longer is as a result of the desires of mainland China. In other words, don't get lost in the details, just realize that this is likely the start of a trend. I don't think anyone really wants to suggest in the comments that Beijing will censor this site and stop there, do they? I hope not, because nobody thinks this is anything other than the first domino to fall on its way to internet censorship.

The disruption raised the prospect that the city, long a bastion of online freedom, could begin to fall under the shadow of the tight censorship system that separates mainland Chinese internet from the rest of the online world. On Hong Kong social media, many people worried that the authorities could eventually bring the city’s overall access to the open internet to an end.

“Their talking point has been the national security law will only target a small group of people,” said Lokman Tsui, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who specializes in online communication.  “In practice it hasn’t been limited to a small group of people,” Mr. Tsui said. “My concern is that internet censorship similarly won’t be limited to a small group of websites.”

It's worth noting that, for now, the method for censorship is different than the mainland's Great Firewall, but the end result is the same. I suppose the questions that remain are just how much more action Beijing is going to take prior to January 20th and what the Biden administration intends to do about any of this once it is in office.

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All of these statements can be true:

• The Chinese government engages in all manner of dangerous, unethical behavior and Chinese companies should be carefully monitored for threats to national security, facing productive penalties when public evidence is provided.
• The US government engages in all manner of dangerous, unethical behavior and US companies should be carefully monitored for threats to national security, facing productive penalties when public evidence is provided.
• Some of the US hyperventilation over Chinese tech and telecom is xenophobic nonsense exploited by US companies for financial gain.

Throughout the Trump administration's assault on Chinese companies, transparent evidence of wrongdoing has been an afterthought. There was little to no evidence provided by the administration to justify its year-long assault on TikTok, which arguably distracted government leaders from far more pressing threats to national security. Similarly, while blocklisted network hardware vendor Huawei engages in some atrocious behavior around the world, evidence that the company directly spies on US citizens at the behest of China (the core accusation) has also never been publicly proven, despite ample hyperventilation.

Fast forward to last week, when the Trump administration announced it had blocklisted Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi for its alleged ties to the Chinese military:

"The Defense Department said that Xiaomi, along with eight other firms it added to its blacklist, was working to support China’s People’s Liberation Army by giving it access to its technology. In a statement, the Defense Department accused Xiaomi of being part of an orchestrated campaign to support the "modernization goals of the People's Liberation Army by ensuring its access to advanced technology and expertise."

The problem, again, is that there's no evidence of this, and when the shoe is on the other foot, US companies get understandably angry. Xiaomi, which recently passed Apple to become the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, has denied any connection to the Chinese military, and the Trump administration has provided no evidence that one exists. A not insubstantial portion of these efforts are driven by xenophobia and greed (in many instances US companies just don't want to compete with cheaper kit), yet there's an over-arching pretense in the press that this somehow isn't the case.

The other problem we like to downplay is the US' blistering hypocrisy on this subject. US telecom giant AT&T is fused so tightly to our global intelligence efforts, you'd have a hard time physically determining where AT&T ends and the NSA begins. The US had no problem breaking into Huawei to install its own backdoors, or stealing network hardware in transit to install backdoors, or, you know, spying on absolutely everybody, including allies, all the time, for several generations, with zero respect for boundaries or the rule of law. We provided IT support to a continent of brutal fascists during Operation Condor, for fuck's sake.

If the US wants to be taken seriously on this subject, it has a hell of a lot of work to do, starting with leading by example. And again, if there's direct evidence that a Chinese company has been spying on Americans, then provide it and let's have a transparent conversation about it. But most coverage and discussion of Trump's war on Chinese tech involves pretending a lack of public evidence is okay, pretending the US' dodgy history on this very subject doesn't exist, pretending that a lot of these efforts aren't driven by bigotry or simple greed, and pretending that the Trump administration has any idea whatsoever what it's doing.

At the beginning of his term, President Trump promised he'd turn regular America into police-loving America:

President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.

But cops kept being cops and the "dangerous anti-police atmosphere" continued. Actually, it escalated. When a Minnesota cop pressed his knee into the neck of an unarmed black man until the man was dead, the country exploded.

Voters decided Trump was no longer worthy of leading the nation. In response, Trump claimed the election had been stolen and insinuated the only way to keep America great was to overthrow anyone who stood in the way of Trump being President for another four years -- even if the electoral college vote and the popular vote said otherwise. Following an incendiary "rally," Trump supporters marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Building to stop VP Mike Pence and the Senate from certifying the election results.

Fans of peaceful transitions of power were horrified. Trump supporters overran the Capitol, stole documents, took selfies, destroyed property, attacked Capitol police officers, planted explosive devices, and otherwise made it clear that opposing Trump meant inviting violence.

Some people disingenuously speculated that this was the boiling-over point for disenfranchised (mostly white) Americans who felt beltway insiders and coastal elites had sold them out to special interests and political correctness for years, elevating the plight on non-white Americans and foreign interests ahead of their own constituents.

The attendees of this rally-turned-raid likely included some of the supposedly disenfranchised. But it also included -- in large numbers -- the same sort of "elites" and "special interests" the allegedly disenfranchised were warring against in their proxy, Pyrrhic war on the Capitol.

They were business owners, CEOs, state legislators, police officers, active and retired service members, real-estate brokers, stay-at-home dads, and, I assume, some Proud Boys.

[...]

The members of the mob that attacked the Capitol and beat a police officer to death last week were not desperate. They were there because they believed they had been unjustly stripped of their inviolable right to rule. They believed that not only because of the third-generation real-estate tycoon who incited them, but also because of the wealthy Ivy Leaguers who encouraged them to think that the election had been stolen.

This wasn't an uprising by the downtrodden. This was a mass tantrum led by people with plenty of power and/or money.

Let's not forget that five people died during this "protest" over electoral college votes -- the same electoral college Trump supporters claimed was sacrosanct when it handed him a victory over Hillary Clinton, despite Trump losing the popular vote. This is what led to five deaths. And this is what will likely lead to increased domestic surveillance and has already converted Washington, DC into a war zone patrolled by the military.

This is apparently the America Trump supporters want. And some of the biggest Trump supporters are the same people we pay (and trust) to keep the peace. Trump spent four years unabashedly supporting law enforcement, no matter how awful their acts and violations. In return, police officers showed Trump they had his back… by breaking the law and assaulting [checks the goddamn tape] police officers.

Several police departments across the country have opened investigations into cops among their ranks to find out if they were involved in the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Washington, D.C. on January 6th.

The growing number of probes follows an announcement from the Seattle Police Department on Friday that two of its officers have been put on administrative leave pending an investigation into allegations that they were in the nation’s capital during the raucous events.

Seattle wasn't anomalous. It was indicative. Similar investigations have been opened in Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire.

And those four states aren't an anomaly. Here's The Appeal with updated numbers:

[Update, Jan. 14, 5:15 p.m., Eastern time: One more law enforcement officer has been reported as having attended the Jan. 6 rally, bringing the total to 29 officers from 13 states.]

There's a spreadsheet tracking law enforcement officers' involvement in violating federal laws. It includes officers who have been reassigned, suspended, or are still under investigation for their participation in this half-assed attempt to overthrow the part of the government these officers don't like. It also includes federal officers, including at least one Secret Service officer who made public Facebook posts encouraging the attack on the Capitol Building.

And it's not just the "left-wing" media reporting this. Here's an article from pro-cop site The Police Tribune.

Two Rocky Mount police officers have been federally charged for being inside the U.S. Capitol at the time of the Jan. 6 riot.

A veteran Houston police officer is also expected to be charged for the same behavior, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told KTRK on Wednesday.

And this report from BuzzFeed is fucking unreal. It's not often a cop tells another cop the beatings will continue until morale improves.

The [Capitol police] officer even described coming face-to-face with police officers from across the country in the mob. He said some of them flashed their badges, telling him to let them through, and trying to explain that this was all part of a movement that was supposed to help.

“You have the nerve to be holding a Blue Lives Matter flag, and you are out there fucking us up,” he told one group of protesters he encountered inside the Capitol. “[One guy] pulled out his badge and he said, ‘We’re doing this for you.’ Another guy had his badge. So I was like, ‘Well, you gotta be kidding.’”

The War on Cops continues.

This isn't irony. It's hypocrisy. Too bad it's a human trait and we have to rely on the human race to staff our law enforcement agencies. It would be nice to see the police align with the populace in the event of an actual revolution. But this wasn't a revolution. And it featured cops siding with themselves, willing to stomp any other law enforcement officer standing in the way of them invading and looting a federal government building to prevent a lawful election from being certified.

Yet another reason we should never trust cops. When push comes to shove, police officers will push, shove, and assault anyone who stands between them and their goals -- even if it's another law enforcement officer. Cops don't just dislike the people they serve. They dislike anyone who keeps them from doing what they want.