A Tesla driver in Barrington Hills, Illinois, was arrested and charged after crashing their vehicle into a South Barrington police squad car last week.

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Apple says it will soon introduce an Apple Wallet feature to allow U.S. users to create a digital ID using their passport, which can be used at select TSA checkpoints for domestic travel.

Sam Tobin, reporting last week for Reuters:

Apple abused its dominant position by charging app developers unfair commissions, a London tribunal ruled on Thursday, in a blow which could leave the U.S. tech company on the hook for hundreds of millions of pounds in damages. The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) ruled against Apple after a trial of the lawsuit, which was brought on behalf of millions of iPhone and iPad users in the United Kingdom.

The CAT ruled that Apple had abused its dominant position from October 2015 until the end of 2020 by shutting out competition in the app distribution market and by “charging excessive and unfair prices” as commission to developers. [...] The case had been valued at around 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion) by those who brought it. A hearing next month will decide how damages are calculated and Apple’s application for permission to appeal.

Dan Moren and I discussed this at some length in the new episode of The Talk Show that dropped over the weekend. What makes this ruling interesting isn’t that it’s particularly significant or different from other regulatory/antitrust investigations around the world. It’s the fact that it’s completely in line with other regulatory/antitrust investigations regarding the App Store (and Play Store) from around the world.

When is the last time an investigation regarding the legality of the App Store’s dominant market position went in Apple’s favor, in any country? I can’t recall one. Apple is clearly fighting a losing battle here. Whether Apple ought to be losing all these legal and regulatory battles regarding the App Store is, from a strategic standpoint, almost irrelevant. The obvious fact is, they are losing them.

Apple has approached all this regulatory conflict from a perspective that they’re right, and the regulators are wrong. That the App Store, as Apple wants it, is (a) good for users, (b) fair to developers, and (c) competitive, not anti-competitive, legally. But even if Apple is correct about that, at some point, after being handed loss after loss in rulings from courts and regulatory bodies around the globe, shouldn’t they change their strategy and start trying to offer their own concessions, rather than wait for bureaucrat-designed concessions to be forced upon them?

However Apple thinks all of this should work out is not the way it is working out. The best time to adjust the rules of the App Store — its exclusivity on app distribution for the entire iOS platform, the exclusivity of Apple’s IAP for purchasing digital content, the commission percentage splits on IAP — was over a decade ago. The next best time to make those adjustments is now.

Mozilla has announced a new Firefox feature in development that improves on the current implementation found in Firefox and other major browsers like Chrome. Read more...

Now that streaming subscriber growth has slowed, we’ve noted repeatedly how the streaming TV sector is falling into all of the bad habits that ultimately doomed traditional cable TV.

That has involved chasing pointless “growth for growth’s sake” megamergers, imposing bottomless price hikes and new annoying restrictions, undermining labor, and cutting corners on product quality in a bid to give Wall Street that sweet, impossible, unlimited, quarterly growth it demands.

Last week Warner Brothers announced it was up for sale; ushering forth yet another acquisition or merger after literally two decades of terrible, harmful mergers (AOL, AT&T, Time Warner, Discovery) resulting in endless price hikes, layoffs, and dysfunction. And if as on cue, the company announced they’d be once again hiking prices on their HBO (Max Extreme Plus) streaming video service:

“HBO Max’s ad plan is going from $10 per month to $11/month. The ad-free plan is going from $17/month to $18.49/month. And the premium ad-free plan (which adds 4K support, Dolby Atmos, and the ability to download more content) is increasing from $21 to $23.

Meanwhile, prices for HBO Max’s annual plans are increasing from $100 to $110 with ads, $170 to $185 without ads, and $210 to $230 for the premium tier.”

The move comes after Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav spent much of last month whining about how the company’s streaming service was “way underpriced.” Despite the fact the company has raised prices every year for the past three years. Zaslav himself has been endlessly criticized for his soaring compensation package that’s never been commensurate with any sort of actual leadership skill.

Again: these are executives all out of original ideas, boxed in by Wall Street’s demand for impossible, endless growth. They can’t deliver consumers and labor what they want (better pay, better product, lower prices, better customer service), so execs have to resort to financial trickery, price hikes, and megamergers to goose stock valuations and provide significant tax relief.

They’re not building or improving anything, they’re just engaged in an elaborate shell game where they shuffle things around and pretend they’re savvy deal makers.

If you’re not familiar with what happens next: Warner Brothers is sold (probably to Larry Ellison and Paramount/CBS, which is already laying off people from its latest merger). The massive debt load triggers even more layoffs and additional price hikes, the quality of the overall product continues to deteriorate, and annoyed customers flee to fee alternatives, including piracy.

At that point the executives responsible blame everything but themselves (generational entitlement! VPNs!) until companies are finally forced to face evolutionary disruption by more convenient, cheaper alternatives, at which point the execs responsible have taken their bag and failed upward to other companies. And the cycle repeats itself all over again.

Con Edison, the energy company that serves New York City, refuses to say whether ICE or other federal agencies require a search warrant or court order to access its customers’ sensitive data. Con Edison’s refusal to answer questions comes after 404 Media reviewed court records showing Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a division of ICE, has previously obtained such data, and the FBI performing what the records call ‘searches’ of Con Edison data.

The records and Con Edison’s stonewalling raise questions about how exactly law enforcement agencies are able to access the utility provider’s user data, whether that access is limited in any way, and whether ICE still has access during its ongoing mass deportation effort.

“​​We don’t comment to either confirm or deny compliance with law enforcement investigations,” Anne Marie, media relations manager for Con Edison, told 404 Media after being shown a section of the court records.

In September, 404 Media emailed Con Edison’s press department to ask if law enforcement officers have to submit a search warrant or court order to search Con Edison data. A few days later, Marie provided the comment neither confirming nor denying any details of the company’s data sharing practice.

404 Media then sent several follow-up inquiries, including whether ICE requires a warrant or other legal mechanism to obtain user data. Con Edison did not respond to any of those follow-ups.

Con Edison’s user data is especially sensitive, and likely valuable to authorities, because in many cases it will directly link a specific person to a particular address. If someone is paying for electricity for a home they own or rent, they most likely do it under their real name. 

Federal agencies have repeatedly turned to Con Edison data as part of criminal investigations, according to court records. In one case, the FBI previously said it believed a specific person occupied an apartment after performing a “search” of Con Edison records and finding a Con Edison account in that person’s name. Another case shows the FBI obtaining a Con Edison user’s email address after finding it linked to a utilities account. A third case says “a search of records maintained by Con Edison, a public utilities provider to the greater New York City area” revealed that a specific person was receiving utilities at a target address. Several other cases contain similar language.

Court records also show HSI has accessed Con Edison data as part of criminal investigations. One shows HSI getting data from Con Edison that reveals the name associated with a particular Con Edison account and address. Another says “there was no indication in the records from Con Edison that the SUBJECT PREMISES is divided into multiple units.” A third shows that HSI “confirmed with Con Edison” who was a customer at an address at a particular point in time. 

Ordinarily HSI is focused on criminal investigations into child abuse, money laundering, cybercrime, and other types of criminal networks. But in the second Trump administration’s mass deportation effort, the distinction between HSI and ICE is largely meaningless. HSI has reassigned at least 6,198 agents, or nearly 90 percent, and 12,353 personnel overall to assist the deportation arm of ICE, according to data published by the Cato Institute in September. HSI also performs worksite enforcement.

The court records don’t describe how the investigators obtained the Con Edison data exactly, whether they obtained a search warrant or court order, or elaborate on how some officials were able to “search” Con Edison records.

Usually companies and organizations readily acknowledge how and when law enforcement can access customer data. This is for the benefit of users, who can then better understand what legal mechanisms protect their data, but also for law enforcement officials themselves, so they know what information they need to provide during an investigation. Broadly, companies might require a law enforcement official to obtain a search warrant or send a subpoena before they provide the requested user data, based on its sensitivity.