Court rejects DOJ’s argument, will hear appeal from Megaupload’s innocent bystanders

When the US Department of Justice and New Zealand police seizedMegaupload’s servers and arrested its founder, Kim Dotcom, they struck a blow for copyright enforcement. Unfortunately, they also effectively seized the assets of Megaupload customers who never infringed anyone’s copyright and had no knowledge of such activity. Kyle Goodwin was one of these users, and he’s been fighting since January to have his data returned.

The court has now agreed to hold a hearing to address Goodwin’s situation. The EFF reports that the hearing will determine where Goodwin’s data currently is, what happened to it when the government executed its search warrant and denied him access, and whether or not he can get it back. It’s entirely possible that the court will rule that Goodwin has no right to access or retrieve his information; it’s simply agreed to consider the issue.

Still, this is a major success. The US Department of Justice fought Goodwin’s request for ahearing tooth and nail. In its filing, the government argued that it never actually seized Goodwin’s data — it copied certain other information and ordered the servers taken offline. According to the DOJ, Goodwin wasn’t entitled to a hearing because the government hadn’t actually done anything that could be construed as seizure. As for the loss of access to his data, it suggested he take that up with Carpathia Hosting, perhaps as an unsecured creditor might seek reimbursement from a bankruptcy.

Carpathia Hosting has asked what, exactly, it’s supposed to do with petabytes of data it can’t delete and isn’t paid for.

The irony of the Megaupload case is that the tone and nature of the government’s filings have had a significant impact on the development of our own Cloud Bill of Rights. Kim Dotcom isn’t a particularly sympathetic figure, and Megaupload was a well-known source of stolen, pirated material. As time as passed, it’s become increasingly clear that the Department of Justice pushed the New Zealand police to execute an improper warrant, deliberately staged an over-the-top seizure designed to intimidate and threaten Dotcom’s safety, and executed its own warrants with no regard for collatoral damage. Worse, the DOJ’s legal position is that it doesn’t have to respect citizen property because access to digital data isn’t an important facet of ownership in criminal cases.

By giving Goodwin a hearing, the court is at least acknowledging the need to consider these issues, and that’s considerably more than the government is comfortable with. It’s a small step forward, but an important one.

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Is a $675,000 fine for sharing 31 pirated songs too much?

Joel Tenenbaum is out of options. A Massachusetts District Court judge ruled the $675,000 fine levied against him is indeed appropriate andrefused calls for a new jury trial, meaning the former Boston University graduate student will pay a staggering $21,774 for every song he shared over P2P networks.

The case has made its way through the courts over the past five years, with a jury initially finding Tenenbaum guilty of copyright infringement and levying the fine. His lawyers argued the fines were excessive, and the Judge presiding over the case at the time agreed. She lowered the fines to $67,500, or $2,177 per song, which record industry lawyers balked at and appealed to higher courts.

Through these appeals, and a refusal by the Supreme Court to hear the case, the original $675,000 fine was reinstated. Tenenbaum’s final appeal was to request a new jury trial,which was denied by a new judge presiding over the case at the District Court level, effectively ending the case.

(On a side note, it probably didn’t help Tenenbaum that it took him forever to accept responsibility for his own actions, which only seemed to anger the judges even more. Additionally his lawyers seemed to love to grandstand more than actually defend — see this site — but I do digress.)

With no recourse left, Tenenbaum must now pay his fines. But are those fines excessive to a general public that does little (if anything) to stop piracy? You could probably argue that.

There is conflicting evidence that piracy actually results in losses to the extent that the courts are imposing on file sharing defendants. While RIAA and others point to the falling revenues of the industry in general as a sign that piracy is affecting them, it may be more due to the move away from physical media to digital than anything to do with piracy.

In fact, there’s actually evidence to the contrary. A North Carolina State University professor compiled data on download statistics of new music found on file sharing service BitTorrent. He actually found a correlation between high physical sales and the amount of time before actual release that the album is found on BitTorrent.

That suggests that RIAA’s moves to reign in its lawyers are a smart move. It’s a waste of money for them, and if they’re really complaining about falling revenues, maybe spending so much money on fighting a battle with so little return isn’t the wisest investment. Then again, copyright infringement is copyright infringement, and stealing is stealing.

Downloading pirated music is one in the same as trading in stolen goods. Those who try to argue to the contrary sound foolish. At the same time, the court system needs to take a look at how its prosecuting these cases, and award the record industry damages more in line with reality.

Until then, nobody is going to take these judgements seriously.

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Valve’s updated Steam agreement bars class action lawsuit, but is it legal?

The legal beagles at Valve recently updated the Steam Subscriber Agreement, and if you’re like most folks, you clicked your consent without actually digesting the fine print. After all, who has the time or gumption to read through the legalese contained in EULAs (End User License Agreements) and ToS (Terms of Service) contracts? Unfortunately, agreeing to terms without reading what they are doesn’t exempt end users from whatever they’re agreeing to, and in this instance, Valve took away your ability to participate in class action lawsuits against the company.

Oh, but don’t worry yourself over it, because Valve “considered this change very carefully” and insists it has your best interests in mind. No, really, it does.

“It’s clear to us that in some situations, class actions have real benefits to customers. In far too many cases however, class actions don’t provide any real benefit to users and instead impose unnecessary expense and delay, and are often designed to benefit the class action lawyers,” Valve explained.

Point taken, and under the revised policy, customers who are unhappy with their Steam purchase and unable to resolve their dispute through normal support channels are limited to small claims court or “individual binding arbitration.” The good news is it will reimburse the cost of arbitration “under a certain amount” and regardless of the arbitrator’s decision, though that goes out the window if it’s determined the claim is frivolous or the costs unreasonable.

Can Valve really do that?

Wait! Before you click “I Agree,” understand that you’re giving up your right to participate in class action lawsuits against Valve.

Valve is far from alone in implementing anti-class action clauses to subscriber agreements. Microsoft and Sony both added class action waivers to their respective online networks back in 2011, and the full list of tech companies that have done the same or similar is rather long. It’s also apparently legal.

In AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion [PDF], the Supreme Court on April 27, 2011 ruled in a 5-4 decision that mandatory arbitration clauses are enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925. Companies like Microsoft, Sony, and now Valve are hanging their hats on that ruling, which essentially says they can avoid class action lawsuits simply by including arbitration agreements.

My brother happens to be a lawyer who’s been focusing on business litigation for the past decade, and I asked him if consumers are truly out of luck when it comes to these agreements. As with all things legal, the answer is a mix of yes, no, maybe, and sometimes.

“The Concepcion case certainly does make it much harder to challenge arbitration clauses like these, but I would not call it the death knell of class actions either,” Matthew Lilly, a partner in Finlayson Williams Toffer Rossevelt, & Lilly LLP of Irvine, California, explained to me. “There have been about 100 reported decisions in various state and federal courts that discuss Concepcion since that case came down. The majority of those cases cited favorably to that decision, but others have distinguished the facts or found other grounds to invalidate arbitration clauses notwithstanding Concepcion.”

As it stands right now, businesses hold the better hand in the courtroom poker table, but all bets are off if the Supreme Court ruling is repealed. According to Lilly, the odds are extremely low that the U.S. Supreme Court overrules Concepcion any time in the foreseeable future. Consumer backlash is sure to follow, but unless that leads to Congress amending the Federal Arbitration Act, Concepcion will live.

What happens if it’s amended?

This is all academic, but prior to the Concepcion case, “these types of clauses were often challenged, sometimes successfully,” Lilly explained. One way to challenge a contractual arbitration clause is to argue there is no contract to begin with. This would apply to instances where the consumer has no way to affirmatively assent to the agreement, which was something argued in Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp. back in 2001.

A second defense to a contract is called “procedural unconscionability.” This relates to how the contract was entered into and can vary from state to state.

“Consumers have argued… that ToS like these are procedurally unconscionable in that they are non-negotiable and the consumer has zero bargaining power to negotiate terms,” Lilly said.

Yet another way around arbitration clauses is by arguing “substantive unconscionability,” which is a fancy way of saying the terms of the contract are excessively oppressive, harsh, or otherwise unfair. If a court agrees with that assessment, the arbitration agreement could theoretically be rendered invalid.

One final example my brother shared with me is a 2009 case in which the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas held that Blockbuster’s arbitration clause contained in its ToS couldn’t be enforced simply because Blockbuster reserved the right to change the terms at any time. In doing so, the court opined that Blockbuster wasn’t offering anything in exchange for the plaintiff’s agreement to arbitrate.

Of course, consumers’ ability to present arguments like these are severely limited after Concepcion, so you’d be wise to familiarize yourself with Valve’s updated Steam Subscriber Agreement, as well as pay attention to any other service contracts before clicking the “I agree” button.

[Image credit: Lawlibrarymurdoch via Wikimedia Commons]

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New data shows dramatic increase in wireless surveillance by law enforcement

For the first time, we have an idea of the extent of law enforcement’s demands on wireless carriers for various information including texts, location data, and other information, and its not pretty.

According to documentation provided to The New York Times, law enforcement officers made 1.3 million such requests during 2011. Furthermore, the data shows a dramatic increase over the last few years, and, according to the NYT, carriers are at points responding to “several thousand requests” a day.

This data does not include all possible requests, as T-Mobile did not provide any numerical data in its response.

While some of us may react with disgust to this news, there may be some solace to be found in the fact that carriers are rejecting some of these requests that it finds legally questionable. In addition, Congress is getting involved and the subject of wireless snooping has become a focus point for the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus and proposed legislation.

“We cannot allow privacy protections to be swept aside with the sweeping nature of these information requests, especially for innocent consumers,” Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), who co-chairs the caucus, said in a statement. Markey added that the public needs to know this data is being requested, and who it’s being requested on, and the procedures for doing so.

The caucus sent a request for information to Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, as well as US Cellular, Leap/Cricket, MetroPCS, C Spire, and TracFone. All companies responded.

Legislation known as the GPS Act, which has bipartisan support, is currently making its way through the House and Senate. This act makes itmandatory for law enforcement to obtain a warrant before obtaining some types of wireless information.

The scale to which wireless surveillance has blossomed may be getting to the point that it must be monitored and regulated. While law enforcement does have the option to request information for “emergency” purposes, are they abusing that option in order to peer into the lives of US citizens? It’s a valid question.

Indeed, some carriers reported rejecting some requests deemed emergencies because their teams dedicated to responding to law enforcement requests did not feel the request met that threshold. There is some evidence out there that the police might be overstepping their bounds a bit.

You can’t blame them either. Wiretapping is much more legally burdensome, and requires a good deal of legal maneuvering to get a wiretap approved. With similar regulations not in place for wireless phones, obviously detectives are going to head for the path of least resistance.

That is enough to drive interest groups like the ACLU crazy. “The numbers don’t lie: location tracking is out of control. Congress needs to rein it in,” legislative counsel Chris Calabrese says.

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US President issues Executive Order that gives him control of the internet

Without even the faintest toot of a fanfare, President Barack Obama has issued an Executive Order that outlines an extreme level of communications preparedness in case of crisis or emergency, including the ability to take over any communication network, including the internet.

The Order, “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions,” takes many of the US government’s existing emergency communications preparations, and codifies the exact responsibilities of the various US secretaries/departments and intelligence agencies. For the most part, the Order is very sensible; basically, no matter what — come hurricanes, earthquakes, or nuclear war — the US government “must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions.”

To this end, the Order instructs the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (DOSTP) to issue an annual report detailing any changes that should be made to the national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) communications programs, capabilities, and policies. The DOSTP must also ensure that he has up-to-date information about the readiness of NS/EP systems, and advise the President on other matters, such as radio spectrum prioritization. The Order also outlines responsibilities for the Secretary of Defense, and other officials.

When we get to Section 5.2, however, there’s this interesting tidbit: “The Secretary of Homeland Security shall: … satisfy priority communications requirements through the use of commercial, Government, and privately owned communications resources, when appropriate.” In short, while it’s stressed that the government must have its own secure networks in place, the Executive Office reserves the right to do whatever it likes with commercial and private networks, in times of emergency or crisis. I’m not an expert on US law, or Executive Orders, so I will go easy on the possible interpretations or implications of Section 5.2 — but I would guess that this will mostly come down to how easily the President and his Executive Office can declare a state of emergency or crisis. If there’s a possible terrorist threat, is that grounds for locking down the US cellular carriers? If Iran attacks the US with a Stuxnet-like virus, is that grounds for the disabling of core internet routers?

It’s also worth noting that the US President has, since theCommunications Act of 1934, the power to “suspend or amend… the rules and regulations applicable to any or all stations or devices capable of emitting electromagnetic radiations within the jurisdiction of the United States” — i.e. Obama already has an internet kill switch (as did Bush and every other president since Hoover). The last few years have seen some proposed bills that would give the US government more control over the internet, ostensibly in the name of improved cybersecurity, but so far none of these bills have passed into law.

While Congress’s attempt to introduce improved cybersecurity measures has generally been received by the press as an attempt to curtail our internet liberties, the fact remains that cybersecurity will become an actual threat to our glorious country at some point. Cyberwarfare is undeniably in our midst; when so much can be achieved without political posturing or scrambling jets, countries would be crazy to not launch cyber attacks. It will be interesting to see how the President and Congress eventually deal with these threats, without stepping on the ACLU’s toes. As always, it will probably take a massive disaster or attack to pass a bill.

Another interesting point, I think, is the implementation. In the case of Section 5.2, the President assumes that the Secretary of Homeland Security can basically just… take over a private or commercial network. How does she do this? Can she demand that Verizon installs a core router in the White House bunker? Can she jump in a limo, head over to Verizon HQ, and announce to everyone that she’s now in charge?

In the case of a kill switch, it would require some 8,000 US ISPs (yes, there are that many) to comply with the President, or to attach their core infrastructure to a remotely-accessible power switch. The other option, of course, would be for the ISPs to install a physical switch at the White House, where, in case of emergency or crisis, the President could shut down the internet by gleefully mashing dozens of buttons at a time with his big hands. Thinking about it, he would probably get a special mallet made for the occasion.

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Confirmed: US and Israel waged cyberwar on Iran

In an unsurprising and yet wholly unsettling twist, it has emerged that Stuxnet — the virus that sabotaged part of the Iranian uranium enrichment program — was developed by the US and Israeli governments, and sanctioned by President Obama himself.

According to numerous American, European, and Israeli officials, Stuxnet was part of Olympics Games, a secret project begun by the Bush administration. Shortly after Obama became president, he sped up Olympic Games and ordered “increasingly sophisticated [cyber] attacks” on Iranian infrastructure.

When Stuxnet was deployed in 2009 by the US and Israel, it was originally designed to stay within Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant, damaging Siemens industrial equipment — but a programming error resulted in the worm spreading across the internet, and the eventual discovery by security companies such as Symantec and Kaspersky. According toThe New York Times, upon hearing that the worm had escaped, Obama asked his national security team, “Should we shut this thing down?” With evidence that the worm was still damaging the Iranian nuclear program, a new version of Stuxnet was released and Olympic Games continued.

While we always assumed that a governmental agency was behind Stuxnet — the worm is one of the most complex pieces of malware ever discovered, and it only targets a very specific software and hardware (Iranian uranium enrichment machines) — it’s a little bit humbling to learn that the US president was directly responsible.

To put this into perspective, not only is this the first ever confirmed case of governmental cyberwarfare — it’s a virtual a guarantee that a bunch of nations now have a cyberwarfare department. While the Chinese government never owned up to the cyber attacks on US tech companies in January 2010, we can only assume that this was the work of the Chinese equivalent of Olympic Games. Through Israel’s involvement in Stuxnet, we can assume it has a cyberwar group as well. The NYT also sourced information from European officials, too — so we can probably infer that at least the major EU nations have similar cyber security initiatives.

Does this mean that these countries are actually conducting regular cyber attacks, though? Certainly. In a world where Iran’s nuclear enrichment factory is connected to the internet, you can be damn sure that at least the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are keeping tabs on the rest of the world’s digital infrastructure. In this sense, cyber attacks (and cyber security) is just part and parcel of national defense. If China is regularly plundering other countries for intellectual property — modern-day industrial espionage — then the US must defend itself, and even strike back to keep the status quo.

Does this mean we’re on the cusp of full-scale cyberwar? Unlikely. A full-on cyber attack designed to cripple a nation’s infrastructure would be followed by physical, conventional warfare — and for the moment at least, I don’t think anyone is quite ready to start World War 3. It’s definitely possible that the US is softening up Iran and North Korea with cyber attacks, though, to ensure as little resistance as possible while dismantling the Axis of Evil.

Read more at The New York Times, or about Stuxnet

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London police can now download the contents of your phone in seconds

If you’re arrested around London anytime soon, watch out: the Metropolitan Police has distributed kiosks to 16 borough precincts that will allow them to extract data from your mobile device within minutes.

Officials hope this will enable them to respond quicker to situations like last July’s riots. Police suspected that Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Messenger was used as the communication medium of choice among riot ringleaders. While RIM did cooperate with authorities in allowing access to the network, that cooperation did little for those in the field attempting to quell the unrest and respond proactively to situations.

UK-based mobile forensics company Radio Tactics is supplying the system. Called ACESO (pictured below), the device works much like the units used in retail outlets to transfer data between your old and new mobile phone. ACESO downloads call logs, pictures and video, text messages and social networking data. This speeds up the analysis of mobile devices suspected to be involved in the commission of a crime, which previously had to be sent to a forensics lab.

Privacy advocates are sure to be concerned with the use of such a system, and the potential for misuse. It is not clear when and how police officers would use these units. Are devices confiscated and searched before a person is arrested, or will police only use the device once the suspect is arrested and charged with a crime?

Another issue is data storage. The Metropolitan Police are mum on what happens to the data if charges are dismissed. We all expect these police officers to do the honorable thing and delete that data, but there’s quite a few of us out there who have a distrust of law enforcement, and believe that we’re being watched regardless. It seems necessary for the agency to come out and address these concerns.

It’s worth noting that the Metropolitan Police have already had some problems when it comes to the mishandling of property: last month a member of its staff was arrested for the theft of confiscated electronics, some of which included personal data. Officials say they have “rigorous” procedures in place to protect your privacy, though.

Regardless of the procedures in place, what we know so far does not address the obvious issues. A simple suspicion of a crime appears to be enough to trigger the usage of this system. Given the fact that there is often quite a bit of personal data that should be of no interest to police on these phones, privacy advocates are sure to find it intrusive.

There is also the potential for abuse here too. While we’d like to think our police officers are upstanding, some go a bit too far in their efforts to investigate a crime. What protections are our governments giving us to prevent overuse or misuse of this system? So far, there isn’t an answer to that question from what I can see.

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IBM Watson heads to Wall Street

After conquering Jeopardy, battling patent trolls, making inroads into medical insurance claims, and threatening to replace customer service representatives, IBM’s Watson is now looking to take its first foray into Wall Streetesque financial services. Working with Citigroup, IBM has entered into an “exploratory agreement” that will cover everything from streamlining the banking experience for customers, through to “empowering financial professionals to make better business decisions.” In other words, watch out stock traders: Watson’s coming.

Watson, powered by IBM’s DeepQA software, is fundamentally a huge question answering machine. You feed in as much data as possible — general knowledge in the case of Jeopardy, or financial and customer data in the case of Citigroup — and Watson then gets to work, making links from seemingly disparate data.

As far as stock trading goes, Watson is obviously well-suited to helping financial professionals make quick and well-informed decisions based on (potentially) decades of past data. On the other side of the fence, Citigroup hopes that Watson’s ability to understand natural language (as shown off in Jeopardy) will be able to provide “a first-of-a-kind customer interaction solution.” This will probably take the form of telephone and online banking where Watson helps you complete a typed or spoken request.

That Watson is wading into stock trading is exciting, but probably not as shocking as it first seems. Yes, Watson will probably be very good at advising (and maybe even making) trades, but the concept of algorithmic trading — automated, computer-controlled trading — is already very mature and used by every major bank. Still, until IBM actually hooks Watson up to a stock market, it’s probably not too wise to prejudge the outcome; Watson is obviously pretty wizardly, and for all we know he might devise a trading scheme that earns Citigroup billions more than its existing algorithms. It would be nice to think that that money will somehow make it back to the bank’s customers, but it will probably just be spent on more Watsons.

Read more about the inner workings of Watson

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Hackers give Anonymous a taste of their own medicine

Considering Anonymous’ disparate nature,and no central authority calling the shots, it’s a surprise this group has not turned on each other already. Antivirus firm Symantec reports that associates of the group are finding themselves victims of denial-of-service software that has been infected by a Trojan horse.

In previous attacks, Anonymous hacktivists have shown an affinity for Slowloris, a simple tool for DDoSing websites. The group distributes this software through a how-to guide on Pastebin. On January 20, however, hackers broke into this document and changed the Slowloris download links to a modified version of the software infected with Zeus, a popular Trojan horse.

The infected client still works as expected, however behind the scenes it’s doing much more. Zeus steals passwords as well as other credentials including cookies. The link change occurred around the same time as the raid on Megaupload, Symantec says. Unless Anonymous checked the code behind the document, they would have never known anything changed.

It’s not clear how long the link has remained up, but the document has seen at least three major spikes in traffic. The guide was retweeted by the main Anonymous Twitter account in late January to 500,000 followers, just after the group retaliated the Megaupload indictment by DDoSing the RIAA and DoJ websites. There was also the DDoS campaign around the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement a few days later, and the DDoS protest against the Syrian government last month. This bad link has been around the block quite a few times.

What we’re learning here is that there’s a serious flaw in how Anonymous works. By being so amorphous and disparate, there is no control over the members of the group. Incidents like this can easily happen because there’s nobody watching the hen house, and Pastebin isn’t exactly the most secure way to distribute information. Anonymous now knows this, and anyone who has downloaded Slowloris through the group since then better check if they’re infected.

It is understandable that the group wishes to remain anonymous (excuse the pun), so it does not act as a single entity. But the right hand will never know what the left hand does in this group, so its highly doubtful this is the last time we’ll see hacker-on-hacker violence. Moral of the story here? DDoS at your own risk, or at least run some good antivirus software while you’re doing it.

As for who was behind the Pastebin hack in the first place, we may never know. The timing — January 20, just a day after the RIAA and DoJ DDoS — suggests that a federal agency might’ve been behind it, though.

Updated: It seems, just moments ago, that the leader of LulzSec, an Anonymous faction, has given up the rest of LulzSec’s leadership to the FBI.

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New speech-jamming gun hints at dystopian Big Brother future

Japanese researchers have created a hand-held gun (pictured above) that can jam the words of speakers who are more than 30 meters (100ft) away. The gun has two purposes, according to the researchers: At its most basic, this gun could be used in libraries and other quiet spaces to stop people from speaking — but its second application is a lot more chilling.

The researchers were looking for a way to stop “louder, stronger” voices from saying more than their fair share in conversation. The paper reads: “We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking. However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately interrupt other people when it is their turn in order to establish their presence rather than achieve more fruitful discussions. Furthermore, some people tend to jeer at speakers to invalidate their speech.” In other words, this speech-jamming gun was built to enforce “proper” conversations.

The gun works by listening in with a directional microphone, and then, after a short delay of around 0.2 seconds, playing it back with a directional speaker. This triggers an effect that psychologists call Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF), which has long been known to interrupt your speech (you might’ve experienced the same effect if you’ve ever heard your own voice echoing through Skype or another voice comms program). According to the researchers, DAF doesn’t cause physical discomfort, but the fact that you’re unable to talk is obviously quite stressful.

Suffice it to say, if you’re a firm believer in free speech, you should now be experiencing a deafening cacophony of alarm bells. Let me illustrate a few examples of how this speech-jamming gun could be used.

At a political rally, an audience member could completely lock down Santorum, Romney, Paul, or Obama from speaking. On the flip side, a totalitarian state could point the speech jammers at the audience to shut them up. Likewise, when a celebrity or public figure appears on a live TV show, his contract could read “the audience must be silenced with speech jammers.”

Then there’s Harrison Bergeron, one of my favorite short stories by Kurt Vonnegut. In the story’s dystopian universe, everyone wears “handicaps” to ensure perfect social equality. Strong people must lug around heavy weights, beautiful people must wear masks, and intelligent people must wear headphones that play a huge blast of sound every few seconds, interrupting your thoughts. The more intelligent you are, the more regular the blasts.

Back here in our universe, it’s not hard to imagine a future where we are outfitted with a variety of implanted electronics or full-blown bionic organs. Just last week we wrote about Google’s upcoming augmented-reality glasses, which will obviously have built-in earbuds. Late last year we coveredbionic eyes that can communicate directly with the brain, and bionic ears and noses can’t be far off.

In short, imagine if a runaway mega-corporation or government gains control of these earbuds. Not only could the intelligence-destroying blasts from Harrison Bergeron come to pass, but with Delayed Auditory Feedback it would be possible to render the entire population mute. Well, actually, that’s a lie: Apparently DAF doesn’t work with utterances like “ahhh!” or “boooo!” or other non-wordy constructs. So, basically, we’d all be reduced to communicating with grunts and gestures.

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