Six years ago, Twitter sued the US government in an attempt to detail surveillance requests the company had received, but a federal judge on Friday ruled in favor of the government’s case that detailing the requests would jeopardize the country’s safety.
If Twitter revealed the number of surveillance requests it received each calendar quarter, it “would be likely to lead to grave or imminent harm to the national security,” US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers concluded after reviewing classified information from the government. See below for the full ruling.
“While we are disappointed with the court’s decision, we will continue to fight for transparency,” Twitter said in a statement Saturday.
The ruling shows the difficulties of balancing privacy and and security on the internet. Public posts and private communications have opened up a treasure trove of information that law enforcement and intelligence services can investigate, and people may not suspect the government is listening in. On the other hand, encryption technology also has opened up communication conduits that are fundamentally impenetrable to government and law enforcement.
In Twitter’s transparency report, now updated for six-month periods, the company publishes numbers on law enforcement information requests, copyright infringement allegations, attempts to spread disinformation, reports of abuse, and other goings-on. The company argued in its 2014 lawsuit it shouldn’t be barred from revealing detailed tallies of national security-related information requests.
“We think the government’s restriction on our speech not only unfairly impacts our users’ privacy, but also violates our First Amendment right to free expression and open discussion of government affairs,” Twitter argued at the time.
Six years later, Twitter says transparency is still important to show how it interacts with governments.
There’s a scene in Touchstone Pictures’ 1984 movie Splash where a young Tom Hanks watches a beautiful naked mermaid run off into the ocean from which she came. In the original version, the camera follows Hanks’ gaze, showing a brief glimpse of a naked butt. Splash received a PG rating because of the shot (and the insinuation that came with it), but people watching the movie on Disney Plus are greeted with an entirely different version of the scene.
In the re-edited version, which went viral, thanks to the tweet below, Disney used CGI hair to cover actress Daryl Hannah’s body. A Disney representative confirmed to The Verge that a “few scenes” from Splash were “slighted edited to remove nudity,” but they did not specify when the edits were made.
The representative also confirmed that Splash’s rating would revert from PG-13 on Disney Plus (different from the original) back to PG. It’s likely that the original film (with its brief nudity) would have been rated PG-13 if it came out a few months later, but Splash was released in March 1984, and the PG-13 rating didn’t exist until July 1984.
Disney+ didn’t want butts on their platform so they edited Splash with digital fur technology pic.twitter.com/df8XE0G9om
The change has bewildered social media users. If nudity was the issue, why not bring Splash to Hulu, Disney’s other streaming service geared toward older adults? Others have asked why Disney felt the need to re-edit the scene at all; Disney Plus allows movies up to a PG-13 rating on its service, and Splash was only rated PG. Another person pointed out that a scene in Thor: Ragnarok that includes Hulk’s naked butt wasn’t censored when it was brought to Disney Plus. (Although, there’s likely a difference in perception between actual nudity and nudity as it pertains to a completely CGI character.)
Splash is the most egregious, albeit hysterical example of movies being re-edited for Disney Plus, but it’s not a unique case. A new version of Star Wars: A New Hope appeared on Disney Plus the day the streaming service launched, one that was “made by George made prior to the Disney acquisition,” the company confirmed to The Verge at the time.
Disney has also instituted pre-roll messages that play before certain movies to inform viewers that scenes have been edited for specific reasons. The company removed the word “fuck” from movies like Adventures in Babysitting and Free Solo, took out racial slurs that appeared in older titles like The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin, and edited other material in movies like Empire of Dreams that Disney no longer found suitable.
Splash has found itself in the middle of an ongoing debate over media being altered in digital spaces. It’s a debate that’s raged for decades; fans were upset when George Lucas edited A New Hope, making it so Greedo shot first instead of Han. People bemoaned Lucas and 20th Century Fox for not releasing the original version of the film anywhere, either. The only legal versions of A New Hope that exist for people to buy, download, or stream today feature Greedo shooting first. It wasn’t just that Lucas and Fox replaced the original scene with a slightly altered one, but the original also wasn’t available to purchase when reprints were made.
Last March, Simpsons producer James L. Brooks announced that future syndication packages, streaming, and future DVD releases will not include the season 3 premiere episode, “Stark Raving Dad.” The episode includes voice acting from Michael Jackson, and after renewed allegations against Jackson surfaced, The Simpsons’ team and Fox decided to effectively erase the episode. “This is our book, and we’re allowed to take out a chapter,” Brooks told TheWall Street Journal at the time.
“As physical media gives way to streaming, large corporations have greater and greater control over what we can and cannot see,” Slate’s Isaac Butler wrote on the issue. “This gives them unprecedented power to disappear bothersome work. Whether we agree with a particular instance of memory-holing or not, this practice is deeply troubling, its history even more so.”
Disney is more than just a large corporation. It is arguably the monolith. Disney bought 21st Century Fox, the same corporation that Butler wrote his concerns about. Disney also built an entire sales campaign around the idea of restricting access to physical versions of its films — something it referred to for years as “The Vault.” Now, scenes are being edited for its streaming service, and all people are getting is a message explaining why. Subscribers can’t watch the original films the way they were intended.
It’s an effort from companies to be better or more appropriate, but it doesn’t always work. There are better alternatives. Take Tom and Jerry, for example. The Warner Bros. cartoon series from the 1940s came with a disclaimer about the context of certain scenes when it was originally released on DVD by Warner Home Video and then again in 2014 when the episodes were made available digitally on iTunes and Amazon Prime. Warner Bros. didn’t erase or edit the show; instead, the company decided to give it a critical examination. History can’t be erased, but people can learn from it.
Retroactively editing films to suit a certain narrative or niche is an ongoing problem that’s caused concern in movie, television, and music circles. And as more people turn to streaming services, where files can be edited on the fly, concerns over the original presentation continue to grow. What may just be bad CGI hair over a butt in an old Tom Hanks movie today could be more elaborate edits and alterations tomorrow.
Space.com calls it “the first commercial satellite servicing mission.” But more specifically, it’s being called “the first in-orbit rendezvous and docking of two commercial satellites” in a statement from Northrop Grumman Space Systems, which also notes their “subsequent repositioning of the two-spacecraft stack.” And it was all done using robotics floating 36,000km (22,369 miles) above the Earth.
Space.com describes the historic servicing of Intelsat 901 communications satellite (also known IS-901): The satellite, which launched in 2001, had been running low on fuel needed to maintain its correct orbit. But rather than launch a replacement internet satellite, its owner, Intelsat, hired Northrop Grumman to conduct a first-of-its-kind mission. That project sent another satellite, called Mission Extension Vehicle 1 (MEV-1) to connect to IS-901 in February and take responsibility for keeping the internet satellite in the proper location to do its job…
MEV-1 will now spend five years attached to IS-901 to extend that satellite’s tenure. After the contract ends, MEV-1 will steer the old satellite to a safe orbit, detach, and join up with a different satellite to provide the same services. MEV-1 should be able to partner with satellites for a total of 15 years, according to a previous Northrop Grumman statement.
Northrop Grumman is planning to launch a second mission-extension vehicle later this year, which will also aid an Intelsat satellite.
Long-time Slashdot reader mi tipped us off to the story, which included a number of firsts. “Prior to this, no two commercial spacecraft had ever docked in orbit before,” Ars Technica writes.
CNBC notes it also resulted in “one-of-a-kind images“, since a geosynchronous satellite had never even been photographed before by another spacecraft.
