reason.com — Not too long ago, conventional wisdom held that the internet should enjoy minimal government oversight precisely because it was a technology that enabled open and free speech for everyone. The remedy for hateful and offensive remarks, that 1990s-vintage argument went, was more speech—or logging off.

cnet.com — This graph that network-monitoring firm Keynote Systems provided to us shows the worldwide availability of YouTube.com dropping dramatically from 100 percent to 0 percent for over an hour. It didn't recover completely until two hours had elapsed. Keynote Systems A high-profile incident this weekend in which Pakistan's state-owned telecommunications company managed to cut YouTube off the global Web highlights a long-standing security weakness in the way the Internet is managed.

reason.com — In a bizarre flashback to the 1990s, domestic restrictions on the use of encryption are being proposed once again. Politico has reported that a National Security Council committee discussed last week whether to ban encryption without a mandatory backdoor for government access to plaintext. "Senior officials debated whether to ask Congress to effectively outlaw end-to-end encryption, which scrambles data so that only its sender and recipient can read it," the article said.

cnet.com — Attorney General Eric Holder Getty Images The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI believe they don't need a search warrant to review Americans' e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and other private files, internal documents reveal.

cnet.com — U.S. Senator Mark Udall, right, says Americans' "right to be free from'unreasonable searches and seizures' applies regardless of whether itinvolves a letter stored in a desk or an email stored online." Getty Images Last month, Sen. Mark Udall and a handful of other privacy-focused politicians persuaded the IRS to promise to cease warrantless searches of Americans' private correspondence.

reason.com — California may not legally prohibit the Crossroads of the West gun show from taking place on state-owned fairgrounds, a federal judge ruled this week. U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo said the First Amendment means a state agency in Southern California may not single out gun shows–which host discussions of gun politics, safety, and how to comply with legal requirements–for a preemptive ban on future events.

reason.com — Baltimore's city computers are still down. They've been down since May 7, when the city learned that the ransomware known as RobbinHood had infected many of its computer systems and encrypted their files. To restore the data, the city was given four days to pay three Bitcoins—about $23,000 at today's prices. The city did not respond by the deadline. So the ransom increased to 13 Bitcoins—about $100,000—with a new deadline of May 17. Baltimore again refused to pay. The second deadline also passed.

reason.com — But that might not stop House Democrats from Net Neutrality–related histrionics. Declan McCullagh | March 26, 2019 KEVIN DIETSCH/UPI/NewscomWhen Republicans controlled the U.S. House of Representatives, they approved plenty of proposals that were, charitably, unlikely to become law. Obamacare's repeal was ritually advanced dozens of times.

cnet.com — The Center for American Progress seemed to have blockbuster news on Tuesday: an expose titled "Telecoms' Secret Plan To Attack Net Neutrality." On its Think Progress blog, the liberal advocacy group announced it had "obtained" a PowerPoint document "which reveals how the telecom industry is orchestrating the latest campaign against Net neutrality" through a pseudo-grassroots effort. The story was echoed on Slashdot, Boing Boing, and innumerable pro-regulation blogs.

reason.com — Even tech giants have to follow the law. Declan McCullagh from the April 2019 issue - view article in the Digital Edition In January, The New York Times reported that free speech had suffered a setback when Netflix restricted access to an episode of a comedy act at the request of the government of Saudi Arabia.

cnet.com — The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

reason.com — The state can’t scrub gun manufacturing info from the internet, so they’re trying to make distributing it a crime––First Amendment be damned.

cnet.com — A bizarre attempt by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to seize the domain name of a hip-hop blog accused of copyright infringement ended today with the government abruptly abandoning the lawsuit. Government officials initially trumpeted the seizure of the music blog, DaJaz1.com, and 81 others as an example of the law prevailing over pirates.

reason.com — Paying customers may be the next targets for social media "deplatforming."

reason.com — Compelled use of facial and finger recognition features runs afoul of the Fifth Amendment. Declan McCullagh | January 16, 2019 Kamachi209/Dreamstime.comA recent court ruling highlights the importance of strong legal protections for smartphone privacy--and should remind us that current law does only a scattershot job of protecting our electronic data.

reason.com — California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, isn't exactly known as a staunch defender of the rights of Golden State voters to legally keep and bear arms. But once fellow Democrat Gavin Newsom—who won the governor's race last night against Republican John Cox—takes office, defenders of the Second Amendment may come to miss the state's outgoing chief executive. Brown signed many anti-gun bills into law. But he vetoed many as well.

cnet.com — Hawaii's legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit. Its House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing this morning on a new bill (PDF) requiring the creation of virtual dossiers on state residents. The measure, H.B. 2288, says "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years. H.B.

reason.com — Social media execs did themselves no favors by becoming so closely identified with the Democratic Party and, more broadly, the elite progressive left. Now the industry's politically charmed existence, in which it enjoyed deregulatory Republicans as allies, has come to an abrupt end. This politicization is a recent phenomenon.

cnet.com — As U.S. special forces assaulted Osama bin Laden's walled compound in Pakistan, a Twitter user was already recording a rough outline of the events to come. Sohaib Athar, who describes himself as a 33-year-old programmer and consultant "taking a break from the rat race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops," happened to be staying up late at the time. And, from an account called Really Virtual, he live-blogged what he heard.

reason.com — California's blue state rebellion against President Donald Trump has spread to internet regulation. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit this week against California, arguing that the state's new law—which will strictly regulate the business practices of AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, and other internet providers if allowed to take effect—is "part of a pattern of recent actions by the state that purport to nullify federal law."

cnet.com — Sen. Patrick Leahy has abandoned his controversial proposal that would grant government agencies more surveillance power -- including warrantless access to Americans' e-mail accounts -- than they possess under current law. The Vermont Democrat said today on Twitter that he would "not support such an exception" for warrantless access. The remarks came a few hours after a CNET article was published this morning that disclosed the existence of the measure.

cnet.com — Verizon Wireless has begun selling information about its customers' geographical locations, app usage, and Web browsing activities, a move that raises privacy questions and could brush up against federal wiretapping law. The company this month began offering reports to marketers showing what Verizon subscribers are doing on their phones and other mobile devices, including what iOS and Android apps are in use in which locations.

reason.com — The official view of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) remains that the Second Amendment protects a "collective right rather than an individual right." But the organization nevertheless is helping the National Rifle Association (NRA) fend off extralegal attempts by New York state officials to put it out of business.

cnet.com — A lawyer for Gizmodo says the gadget blog could sue the sheriff's office in San Mateo County, Calif., for raiding an editor's home last Friday as part of a criminal probe into an errant iPhone prototype. The option of a lawsuit "is available because search is not the appropriate method in this situation," Thomas R. Burke, a media lawyer and partner in the San Francisco offices of Davis Wright Tremaine, told CNET.

cnet.com — Newly released files show a secret National Security Agency program is targeting the computerized systems that control utilities to discover security vulnerabilities, which can be used to defend the United States or disrupt the infrastructure of other nations. The NSA's so-called Perfect Citizen program conducts "vulnerability exploration and research" against the computerized controllers that control "large-scale" utilities including power grids and natural gas pipelines, the documents show.