Seldom a day goes by without some new controversy on, or about, Twitter. Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform worked like a mainline injection of methamphetamine to boost that effect. Consider a February 15 announcement which, even a year ago, would likely have struck most people as boring and technical:

“[S]tarting today, we will no longer allow accounts to enroll in the text message/SMS method of 2FA unless they are Twitter Blue subscribers. … We encourage non-Twitter Blue subscribers to consider using an authentication app or security key method instead.”

And, just like that, Twitter users began grabbing for paper bags to hyperventilate into and calling their doctors for panic attack medication prescriptions. Selected tweets:

“Two factor authentication should not be gatekept for people who pay.”

“This is like a landlord charging extra for locks on apartment doors.”

“[R]emoving two factor authentication and making ppl PAY FOR IT?? when it should be offered no matter what (and is on most websites) is beyond messed up.”

Clue#1: Twitter did not remove Two-Factor Authentication.

Clue #2: Twitter is not requiring anyone to pay for Two-Factor Authentication.

You can still use Two-Factor Authentication on Twitter.

You can still use Two-Factor Authentication on Twitter without paying Elon Musk for a Twitter Blue subscription (and, depending on the method you choose, without paying anyone anything).

What you can’t do is use a particular method of Two-Factor Authentication — a method that was, according to Wired magazine as of last November, already “melting down” — on Twitter unless you’re a Twitter Blue subscriber.

You can download a free authentication app for your phone, or you can use a “hardware key” that’s cheap (mine cost less than $20), convenient (plug it into your computer, press the little flashing button on it, and you’re good to go), and works across many sites/platforms (I use mine on, among other sites, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, and Microsoft).

Why the change?

To boost Twitter Blue subscriptions? Well, maybe.

Or maybe because, as Musk says, “Twitter is getting scammed by phone companies for $60M/year of fake 2FA SMS messages.”

You probably have an “unlimited voice and text” account for your phone. Twitter doesn’t. It pays for what it uses, and it uses a lot. Some of that money goes to phone company scammers who have bots send bazillions of fake SMS authentication requests and rake in the text messaging fees.

Saving $60 million a year is good for Twitter, whether it increases new revenue from Twitter Blue subscriptions or not.

The added security of using an app or physical key instead of trusting a more vulnerable authentication method is good for you.

And those predisposed to cry over nothingburgers get a new one to cry about.

Everybody wins!

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

For the “privilege” of using medical marijuana without being arrested, about one of every 25 Floridians pays the state government $75 per year for a special identification card, and up to another $200 for periodic visits to a small sub-set of authorized doctors who can prescribe the common plant for a limited number of ailments.

Put a different way, just getting permission to use a common plant for medical purposes is a quarter-billion-dollar per year industry in the Sunshine State.

That’s before a single patient buys so much as a gram of legal cannabis. The legal sale of the actual stuff, of course, is also a growth industry (pun intended) — especially for the state government, which knocks down another $125 million or so per year in sales taxes and dispensary licensing fees.

Why are Floridians spending so much money begging for permission to use a ubiquitous plant that’s been medicine for millennia, has well-established medical uses, and is apparently just plain fun for some?

Because every time we try to put full legalization on the ballot so we can be as free 20 other states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, the measures get jammed up in court and Floridians are denied the right to vote on them.

The latest such measure is in court right now. If our judicial masters deign to allow it on the ballot, we’ll get to pass it in 2024.

We shouldn’t have to wait that long.

We shouldn’t have had to wait at all.

Criminalization of marijuana has always been a scam.

It started as a way of keeping federal agents employed after alcohol prohibition ended, and as a way of thwarting industrial hemp’s competition with wood-pulp paper and various textiles. And as it finishes, all we really ever got out of it were millions of arrests, lives and careers ruined, and corrupted law enforcement.

It was never a good idea, and a poll by the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab says 75% of Floridians want it to end.

Not two years from now, maybe. Now.

And really, there’s no need to wait.

The state’s next legislative session kicks off on March 7.

There’s no reason — at least no GOOD reason — why a majority of state representatives and state senators couldn’t put a bill fully legalizing marijuana and doing away with “permit” schemes on governor Ron DeSantis’s desk for signature by the end of March.

Make it happen, Tallahassee.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Over the last few decades, we’ve seen numerous bad actors escape punishment for their bad acts — ranging from theft to sexual misconduct to summary execution — for no better reason than that they were government employees, under the doctrine of “qualified immunity.”

Now the US Supreme Court appears to have dropped the “qualified” part in favor of just plain immunity, full stop.

On February 21, the court rejected an appeal from Anthony Novak, who was arrested and jailed for four days in 2016, before being acquitted on a charge of “disruption of police operations.”

Novak subsequently sued for damages, and his case seemed airtight:  The supposed “disruption” consisted of a Facebook page parodying the Parma, Ohio police department.

The “qualification” for immunity claims, per the Supreme Court’s 1982 ruling in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, is that a government employee’s conduct must not “not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”

Like, for example, the rights to free speech and freedom of the press enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

A “reasonable person” — in particular a “reasonable cop” from Ohio, where high school students must complete a semester of coursework on “US government,” and where police officers are required by law to swear or affirm that they will  “support the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America” — couldn’t have missed knowing about those clearly established constitutional rights.

Parma police officers Kevin Riley and Thomas Connor had no plausible claim of confusion as to whether they were violating Anthony Novak’s rights when they arrested him for saying things they didn’t like.

The immunity they’ve been granted first by  a federal judge, then by the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals, and now by the US Supreme Court, isn’t “qualified.”  It’s just a free pass for people with badges.

Come to think of it, why should such people receive any immunity at all, “qualified” or otherwise, for committing crimes?

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, right? I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere. “But Your Honor, how was I to know bank robbery was illegal?” won’t likely bring a judge down on your side of things.

The people who make their livings enforcing the laws should be held to a higher standard, not a lower standard — and certainly shouldn’t be allowed to play a get out of jail free card — when they violate those laws.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY