I’ve been incredibly angry — furious, even for ME — about the most loathsome and contemptible defamation suit I’ve ever seen in my career, and now Mike Masnick at TechDirt has written about the despicable case and about my anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss it. Reading it just makes me angrier.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/20/if-you-kill-two-people-in-a-car-crash-you-shouldnt-then-sue-their-relatives-for-emailing-your-university-about-what-you-did/

Just a reminder that two prominent Federalist Society members wanted to overthrow the government by fraud and then have the government murder you if you objected.

Eat that with your fuckin’ Chick-fil-A sack lunch.

The Supreme Court has clarified the subjective component of the "true threats" test, making the First Amendment's exception for true threats a bit clearer

https://popehat.substack.com/p/supreme-court-clarifies-true-threats

Sorry to hear of the passing of U.S. District Court Judge Ronald S.W. Lew. I had the privilege of externing for him back in ‘92. A fine man. He was also responsible for a memorable experience I’ve written about.

https://popehat.substack.com/p/the-fourth-of-july

How do we decide what a "true threat" is when we have no cultural consensus on what a "reasonable person" is?

https://popehat.substack.com/p/true-threats-and-american-cultural

A market-leading garage door controller is so riddled with severe security and privacy vulnerabilities that the researcher who discovered them, Sam Sabetan, is advising anyone using one to immediately disconnect it until they are fixed.

Each $80 device, used to open and close garage doors and control home security alarms and smart power plugs, employs the same easy-to-find universal password to communicate with Nexx servers. The controllers also broadcast the unencrypted email address, device ID, first name, and last initial corresponding to each one, along with the message required to open or shut a door or turn on or off a smart plug or schedule such a command for a later time.

The result: Anyone with a moderate technical background can search Nexx servers for a given email address, device ID, or name and then issue commands to the associated controller. (Nexx controllers for home security alarms are susceptible to a similar class of vulnerabilities.) Commands allow a door to be opened, a device connected to a smart plug to be turned off, or an alarm to be disarmed. Worse still, over the past three months, personnel for Texas-based Nexx haven’t responded to multiple private messages warning of the vulnerabilities.

“Nexx has consistently ignored communication attempts from myself, the Department of Homeland Security, and the media,” Sabetan wrote in a post published on Tuesday. “Device owners should immediately unplug all Nexx devices and create support tickets with the company requesting them to remediate the issue.”

Sabetan estimates that more than 40,000 devices, located in residential and commercial properties, are impacted, and more than 20,000 individuals have active Nexx accounts.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/04/open-garage-doors-anywhere-in-the-world-by-exploiting-this-smart-device/