"The Biden administration announced Friday that 804,000 borrowers will have their student debt wiped away, totaling $39 billion worth of debt, in the coming weeks..." reports CNN.

That's an average of $48,507 per borrower, each of whom has "been paying down their debts for 20 years or more and should qualify for relief," according to a statement from the administration Friday's action addresses "historical failures" and administrative errors that miscounted qualifying payments made by borrowers, according to the Department of Education...

Since Biden took office, his administration has approved $116.6 billion in student debt relief for more than 3.4 million Americans, according to the Department of Education... Despite the Supreme Court last month striking down Biden's loan forgiveness program to provide millions of borrowers up to $20,000 in one-time federal student debt relief, his administration has continued to pursue other avenues to cancel debt and make it easier for borrowers to receive loan forgiveness...

While not part of today's actions, the Department of Education is also moving ahead with a separate and significant change to the federal student loan system that will enable Americans to enroll in a new income-driven repayment plan... Once the plan is fully implemented, people will see their monthly bills cut in half and remaining debt canceled after making at least 10 years of payments.
Last month the administration described student debt relief as "good for the economy... [G]ood for the country."

Congress will pour billions more dollars into the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its associated architecture, even as NASA science missions remain vulnerable to cuts. TechCrunch reports: Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees recommend earmarking around $25 billion for NASA for the next fiscal year (FY 24), which is in line with the amount of funding the agency received this year (FY 23). However, both branches of Congress recommend increasing the portion of that funding that would go toward the Artemis program and its transportation cornerstones, SLS and the Orion crew capsule. Those programs would receive $7.9 billion per the House bill or $7.74 billion per the Senate bill, an increase of about $440 million from FY 2023 levels. Meanwhile, science missions are looking at cuts of around that same amount, with the House recommending a budget of $7.38 billion versus $7.79 billion in FY 2023.

Overall, NASA received $25.4 billion in funding for FY '23, with $2.6 billion earmarked toward SLS, $1.34 billion to Orion, and $1.48 to the Human Landing System contract programs. Science programs -- which include the Mars Sample Return mission and Earth science missions -- received $7.8 billion overall.

dcblogs writes: According to federal officials at a U.S. House hearing Thursday, the monumental federal buildings in Washington are largely empty, with some agencies using 25% or less of their headquarters' building capacity on average. The government owns some 511 million of square feet of office space, and capacity problems open the door to the possibility of conversions to housing or commercial uses. Commercial reuse has happened before. In 2013, the General Services Administration leased the Old Post Office Building at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave., to the Trump organization for a hotel.

"The taxpayer is quite literally paying to keep the lights on even when no one is home," said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who chairs the infrastructure subcommittee meeting. The blame for the low utilization has several causes: a shift to hybrid work, out-of-date buildings that waste space, and designs before technology reduced the need for certain types of workers. The Republicans want federal workers to return to offices and reduce telecommuting to at least pre-pandemic levels. In February, the House passed H.R. 139, the Stopping Home Office Work's Unproductive Problems Act of 2023 -- or the Show Up Act -- requiring agencies to revert to 2019 pre-pandemic telework policies. A companion bill, S. 1565, is pending in the Senate. It has six Republican sponsors but no Democrats.

The Internet Archive has taken the rather unusual step of sending a DMCA notice to protect the copyrights of book publishers and authors. The non-profit organization asked GitHub to remove a tool that can strip DRM from books in its library. The protective move is likely motivated by the ongoing legal troubles between the Archive and book publishers. TorrentFreak reports: The Internet Archive sent a takedown request to GitHub, requesting the developer platform to remove a tool that circumvents industry-standard technical protection mechanisms for digital libraries. This "DeGouRou" software effectively allows patrons to save DRM-free copies of the books they borrow. "This DMCA complaint is about a tool made available on github which purports to circumvent technical protections in violation of the copyright act section 1201," the notice reads. "I am reporting a Git which provides a tool specifically used to circumvent industry standard library TPMs which are used by Internet Archive, and other libraries, to permit patrons to borrow an encrypted book, read the encrypted book, and return an encrypted book."

Interestingly, an IA representative states that they are "not authorized by the copyright owners" to submit this takedown notice. Instead, IA is acting on its duty to prevent the unauthorized downloading of copyright-protected books. It's quite unusual to see a party sending takedown notices without permission from the actual rightsholders. However, given the copyright liabilities IA faces, it makes sense that the organization is doing what it can to prevent more legal trouble. Permission or not, GitHub honored the takedown request. It removed all the DeGourou repositories that were flagged and took the code offline. [...] After GitHub removed the code, it soon popped up elsewhere.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Newly raised concerns about lead-covered telephone cables installed across the US many decades ago are putting pressure on companies like AT&T and Verizon to identify the locations of all the cables and account for any health problems potentially caused by the toxic metal. US Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) wrote a letter to the USTelecom industry trade group this week after a Wall Street Journal investigative report titled, "America Is Wrapped in Miles of Toxic Lead Cables." The WSJ said it found evidence of more than 2,000 lead-covered cables and that there "are likely far more throughout the country."

WSJ reporters had researchers collect samples as part of their investigation. They "found that where lead contamination was present, the amount measured in the soil was highest directly under or next to the cables, and dropped within a few feet -- a sign the lead was coming from the cable," the article said. Markey wrote to USTelecom, "According to the Wall Street Journal's investigation, 'AT&T, Verizon and other telecom giants have left behind a sprawling network of cables covered in toxic lead that stretches across the US, under the water, in the soil and on poles overhead... As the lead degrades, it is ending up in places where Americans live, work and play.'"

Markey wants answers to a series of questions by July 25: "Do the companies know the locations and mileage of lead-sheathed cables that they own or for which they are responsible -- whether aerial, underwater, or underground? Are there maps of the locations and installations? If not, what plans do the companies have to identify the cables? Why have the companies that knew about the cables -- and the potential exposure risks they pose -- failed to monitor them or act?" Markey also asked what plans telcos have to address environmental and public health problems that could arise from lead cables. He asked the companies to commit to "testing for soil, water, and other contamination caused by the cables," to remediate any contamination, and warn communities of the potential hazards. Markey also asked USTelecom if the phone companies will guarantee "medical treatment and compensation to anyone harmed by lead poisoning caused by the cables." "There is no safe level of lead exposure -- none -- which is why I'm so disturbed by these reports of lead cable lines throughout the country," added US Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ). "It is imperative that these cables be properly scrutinized and addressed."

Another Congressman, Rep. Patrick Ryan (D-NY), said he is considering legislation on remediating contamination from the cables and that telecom companies should "do the right thing and clean up their mess." The Wall Street Journal said its testing in a playground in Ryan's district "registered high levels of lead underneath an aerial cable running along the perimeter of the park."

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is proposing legislation to create a commission with the power to declassify government documents related to UFOs and extraterrestrial matters. The New York Times reports: The measure offers the possibility of pushing back against the conspiracy theories that surround discussions of U.F.O.s and fears that the government is hiding critical information from the public. The legislation, which Mr. Schumer will introduce as an amendment to the annual defense policy bill, has bipartisan support, including that of Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, and Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, who has championed legislation that has forced the government to release a series of reports on unidentified phenomena. Support in the House is also likely. On Wednesday, the chamber included a narrower measure (PDF) in its version of the annual defense bill that would push the Pentagon to release documents about unidentified aerial phenomena.

The Senate measure sets a 300-day deadline for government agencies to organize their records on unidentified phenomena and provide them to the review board. President Biden would appoint the nine-person review board, subject to Senate approval. Senate staff members say the intent is to select a group of people who would push for disclosure while protecting sensitive intelligence collection methods. [...] Under Mr. Schumer's legislation, the president could decide to delay material the commission has chosen to release based on national security concerns. But the measure would establish a timetable to release documents and codify the presumption that the material should be public. "You now will have a process through which we will declassify this material," said Allison Biasotti, a spokeswoman for Mr. Schumer.

In July 2015, the marital infidelity website AshleyMadison.com was hacked by a group called the Impact Team, threatening to release data on all 37 million users unless the site shut down. In an article published earlier today, security researcher Brian Krebs explores the possible involvement of a former employee and self-describe expert in search engine optimization (SEO), William Brewster Harrison, who had a history of harassment towards then-CEO Noel Biderman and may have had the technical skills to carry out the hack. However, Harrison committed suicide in 2014, raising doubts about his role in the breach. Here's an excerpt from the report: [...] Does Harrison's untimely death rule him out as a suspect, as his stepmom suggested? This remains an open question. In a parting email to Biderman in late 2012, Harrison signed his real name and said he was leaving, but not going away. "So good luck, I'm sure we'll talk again soon, but for now, I've got better things in the oven," Harrison wrote. "Just remember I outsmarted you last time and I will outsmart you and out maneuver you this time too, by keeping myself far far away from the action and just enjoying the sideline view, cheering for the opposition." Nothing in the leaked Biderman emails suggests that Ashley Madison did much to revamp the security of its computer systems in the wake of Harrison's departure and subsequent campaign of harassment -- apart from removing an administrator account of his a year after he'd already left the company.

KrebsOnSecurity found nothing in Harrison's extensive domain history suggesting he had any real malicious hacking skills. But given the clientele that typically employed his skills -- the adult entertainment industry -- it seems likely Harrison was at least conversant in the dark arts of "Black SEO," which involves using underhanded or else downright illegal methods to game search engine results. Armed with such experience, it would not have been difficult for Harrison to have worked out a way to maintain access to working administrator accounts at Ashley Madison. If that in fact did happen, it would have been trivial for him to sell or give those credentials to someone else. Or to something else. Like Nazi groups. As KrebsOnSecurity reported last year, in the six months leading up to the July 2015 hack, Ashley Madison and Biderman became a frequent subject of derision across multiple neo-Nazi websites.

Some readers have suggested that the data leaked by the Impact Team could have originally been stolen by Harrison. But that timeline does not add up given what we know about the hack. For one thing, the financial transaction records leaked from Ashley Madison show charges up until mid-2015. Also, the final message in the archive of Biderman's stolen emails was dated July 7, 2015 -- almost two weeks before the Impact Team would announce their hack. Whoever hacked Ashley Madison clearly wanted to disrupt the company as a business, and disgrace its CEO as the endgame. The Impact Team's intrusion struck just as Ashley Madison's parent was preparing go public with an initial public offering (IPO) for investors. Also, the hackers stated that while they stole all employee emails, they were only interested in leaking Biderman's. Also, the Impact Team had to know that ALM would never comply with their demands to dismantle Ashley Madison and Established Men. In 2014, ALM reported revenues of $115 million. There was little chance the company was going to shut down some of its biggest money machines. Hence, it appears the Impact Team's goal all along was to create prodigious amounts of drama and tension by announcing the hack of a major cheating website, and then let that drama play out over the next few months as millions of exposed Ashley Madison users freaked out and became the targets of extortion attacks and public shaming.

After the Impact Team released Biderman's email archives, several media outlets pounced on salacious exchanges in those messages as supposed proof he had carried on multiple affairs. Biderman resigned as CEO of Ashley Madison on Aug. 28, 2015. Complicating things further, it appears more than one malicious party may have gained access to Ashley's Madison's network in 2015 or possibly earlier. Cyber intelligence firm Intel 471 recorded a series of posts by a user with the handle "Brutium" on the Russian-language cybercrime forum Antichat between 2014 and 2016. Brutium routinely advertised the sale of large, hacked databases, and on Jan. 24, 2015, this user posted a thread offering to sell data on 32 million Ashley Madison users. However, there is no indication whether anyone purchased the information. Brutium's profile has since been removed from the Antichat forum. Note: This is Part II of a story published last week on reporting that went into a new Hulu documentary series on the 2015 Ashley Madison hack.

Texas's ban on TikTok at state institutions violates the First Amendment, claims a lawsuit filed Thursday by a group of academics and civil society researchers. CNN reports: The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, which works to study the impact of technology on society. The lawsuit specifically challenges Texas' TikTok ban in relation to public universities, saying it compromises academic freedom and impedes vital research. "The ban is not just ineffective but counterproductive. It's impeding researchers and scholars from studying the very things that Texas says it's concerned about -- like data-collection and disinformation," Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Institute, told CNN.

The lawsuit cites the example of a University of North Texas researcher who studies young people's use of social media, who has been forced to abandon research projects that rely on university computers and to remove material about TikTok from her courses. The Knight Institute lawsuit notes that Texas has not imposed a ban on other online platforms that collect similar user data, such as Meta and Google. It further argues that a ban doesn't "meaningfully" constrain China's ability to collect sensitive data about Americans, because this data is widely available from other data brokers.

"It's entirely legitimate for government officials to be concerned about social media platforms' data-collection practices, but Imposing broad bans on Americans' access to the platforms isn't a reasonable, effective, or constitutional response to those concerns," Jaffer told CNN. "Like it or not, TikTok is an immensely popular communications platform, and its policies and practices are influencing culture and politics around the world," said Dave Karpf, a Coalition for Independent Technology Research board member and associate professor in the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. "It's important that scholars and researchers be able to study the platform and illuminate the risks associated with it. Ironically, Texas's misguided ban is impeding our members from studying the very risks that Texas says it wants to address."

The FTC has asked a federal court to temporarily halt Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard. Microsoft won its fight against the FTC on Tuesday, after a California judge said the agency had failed to show the deal would be illegal under antitrust law. The FTC appealed that loss yesterday, and Microsoft said it would fight that appeal. Reuters reports: In its motion, the FTC asked for an order that would prevent the deal from closing until after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled on a separate stay request filed with that court. Any outstanding regulatory hurdle makes it more likely the agreement between Microsoft and Activision will expire on July 18 without the deal having been completed. After July 18, either company will be free to walk away from the deal unless they negotiate an extension.

In its motion for the stay to Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, the FTC argued her denial of a preliminary injunction to halt the deal "raises serious, substantial issues for the Court of Appeals to resolve." Specifically, the FTC said she had applied the wrong standard in considering the agency's request for a preliminary injunction. "Granting an injunction pending appeal is warranted because the FTC is likely to succeed on appeal," the agency wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: Bungie has won almost $500,000 in damages from a Destiny 2 player who harassed one of its community managers and his wife with abusive, racist, and distressing calls and messages, and sent an unsolicited pizza order to their home in a manner designed to intimidate and frighten the couple. According to members of Bungie's legal team, the judgment from a Washington state court sets important precedents that will empower employers to go after anyone who harasses their employees online, and strengthen the enforcement of laws against online trolling and harassment. "This one is special," Bungie's attorney Dylan Schmeyer tweeted.

As laid out in the court's judgment, the defendant, Jesse James Comer, was "incensed" when the community manager -- whom both Bungie and the court declined to name, to protect them from further harassment -- spotlighted some fan art by a Black community member. Using anonymous phone numbers, Comer left a string of "hideous, bigoted" voicemails on the community manager's personal phone, some asking that Bungie create options in Destiny 2 "in which only persons of color would be killed," before proceeding to threaten the community manager's wife with more racist voicemails and texts. Then he ordered a pizza to be delivered to their home, leaving instructions for the driver to knock at least five times, loudly, to make the intrusion as frightening as possible.

The court ruled that Comer was liable to pay over $489,000 in damages, fees, and expenses it had accrued in protecting and supporting its employees, investigating Comer, and prosecuting the case against him. As laid out in a Twitter thread by Kathryn Tewson, a crusading paralegal who worked on the case, the judgment is significant because it recognizes that patterns of harassment escalate from online trolling to real-world violence; establishes that harassment of an employee for doing their job damages the employer as well, which can then use its resources to go after the culprit; and recognized a new tort -- a legal term for a form of injury or harm for which courts can impose liability -- around cyber and telephone harassment. While it may seem odd to celebrate a judgment that awards a company -- rather than an individual -- with damages for personal harassment, the significance of the case is that its legal precedent empowers and motivates employers to use their resources to protect employees who face harassment as part of their jobs. Bungie and its lawyers have broken important new ground that could improve the level of protection for workers in the game industry and beyond.

It was the court case the entire crypto industry was waiting for -- the showdown between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Ripple, an early digital assets firm behind the popular XRP token. From a report: The SEC alleged that sales of XRP constituted offering unregistered securities, while Ripple defended its $25 billion market, chiding the SEC's lack of clear guidance. On Thursday, a federal judge agreed partly in favor of both parties, with Ripple -- and the broader crypto industry -- appearing the early victor. The existential question for the U.S. crypto sector has been whether the thousands of tokens, from Bitcoin and Ether to Dogecoin and Pepecoin, are securities -- a financial term for an investment contract, which would require registration with the SEC. Crypto firms have argued that working with the agency is impossible under the current rules, while the SEC has accused nearly every token, with the clear exception of Bitcoin, as operating illegally.

Ripple became an important trial balloon for the debate. In 2020, the SEC charged the company -- founded in 2012 with the promise of disrupting the global payments network through its proprietary token, XRP -- and two of its executives with raising over $1.3 billion through an unregistered digital asset securities offering. Unlike other subjects of SEC lawsuits, Ripple challenged the case, which has been litigated for the past three years in the Southern District of New York. The proceedings have enraptured the crypto industry, especially as the SEC has aggressively pursued other exchanges and projects for allegedly offering unregistered securities. A decision that found XRP was not a security could buoy other firms and weaken the SEC's torrent of lawsuits against the industry, while a total victory for the SEC would have proved disastrous and likely climbed its way to the Supreme Court.

The former chief executive officer of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network was arrested following a probe into the company's collapse, Bloomberg reported Thursday. From the report: The arrest took place Thursday morning, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the criminal case isn't public. The Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a lawsuit against Mashinsky and the company Thursday, according to court records. Celsius was one of several high-profile crypto firms that imploded last year. The company gained popularity paying high interest rates on digital-asset deposits. But following the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin and a downturn in the digital-asset markets the company was left with a giant hole in its balance sheet and unable to meet an influx of customer withdrawals.

Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, are calling (PDF) for an investigation into popular online tax filing companies, accusing them of sharing sensitive taxpayer data with Meta and Google without user consent. The Verge reports: On Tuesday, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and others asked the Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission, Treasury Department, and the IRS to investigate whether TaxSlayer, H&R Block, and TaxAct violated taxpayer privacy laws by sharing sensitive user information with the two tech firms. Senators also released (PDF) their own report Wednesday detailing the accusations, first raised by The Markup last November.

The report alleges that for years, tax preparation companies infused their products with Meta and Google tracking pixels that revealed identifying information -- like a user's full name, address, and date of birth. The senators also suggest that some of the information provided, like the forms a user accessed, could be used to show "whether taxpayers were eligible for certain deductions or exemptions." The senators claim that the companies did not receive user consent to share this information, which could violate laws banning tax preparers from sharing tax return information with third parties, especially since much of this data could be used for advertising purposes.

A U.S. judge has dismissed a lawsuit in which the founder of WallStreetBets, which helped ignite investors' fascination with "meme" stocks, accused Reddit of wrongly banning him from moderating the community and usurping his trademark rights. From a report: Jaime Rogozinski, who founded WallStreetBets in 2012, said Reddit ousted him in April 2020 as a pretext to keep him from controlling a "a famous brand that helped Reddit rise to a $10 billion valuation" by late 2021. Rogozinski had applied to trademark "WallStreetBets" in March 2020, when the community reached 1 million subscribers. It now has 14 million.

In a 15-page decision, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney in San Francisco rejected Rogozinski's claim that he owns the WallStreetBets trademark because the market associated it with him and he made the brand famous. She also dismissed Rogozinski's state law claims related to his ouster, saying either that they were preempted by a federal law that provides "broad immunity" to websites publishing mainly outside content, or that he lacked standing to sue.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On his way to catch a flight, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) was asked to have his photo taken by a facial recognition machine at airport security. The Transportation Security Administration has been testing use of facial recognition software to verify travelers' identification at some airports. Use of the technology is voluntary, the TSA has told the public and Congress. If you decline, a TSA agent is supposed to verify your identification, as we have done at airport security for years. When Merkley said no to the face scan at Washington's Reagan National Airport, he was told it would cause a significant delay, a spokeswoman for the senator said. There was no delay. The spokeswoman said the senator showed his photo ID to the TSA agent and cleared security.

Is facial recognition technology really voluntary if a United States senator has trouble saying no? The TSA is using facial recognition technology for a limited purpose that the agency says is accurate. As flying reaches record highs again this summer, the technology could improve safety and efficiency with fewer risks than controversial uses of facial recognition such as police trying to identify crime suspects from vast numbers of images. But problems encountered by Merkley and others raise questions about whether the technology can be used fairly and how far it might spread in American life without true oversight.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Australian user data is accessible to TikTok employees based in China on a "very strict basis," the company's head of data security, Will Farrell, has said. In their first public appearance before Australian members of parliament since the government joined Canada, the US and the UK in banning TikTok from government-owned devices amid concerns about the company's connections to China, TikTok executives were questioned at length by a parliamentary committee examining foreign interference on social media. Liberal senator and chair of the committee James Paterson, who has led the opposition's push against the app, questioned how many times Australian user data had been accessed by TikTok staff based within China. Farrell could not provide the number immediately, but admitted it did happen.

Farrell said there were "a number of protections in place", including that employees only get the minimum amount of access to data to do their job, and when they access that data they need to provide a business justification that needs to be approved by their manager and the database owner within TikTok. If the data is being accessed across a national border, it has to be approved by the global security team based in the US, which also monitors all data access. "Employees can't get access without a clear justification and levels of approval," Farrell said. A similar security review would apply if an employee based in China tried to change the recommendations algorithm, he said.

The company's local head of public policy, Ella Woods-Joyce, said China's 2017 national security law -- which requires companies to give the government any personal data relevant to national security -- would apply to any company that had operations and staff in China. When asked on what ground TikTok would refuse to comply with the law, Woods-Joyce said TikTok had never been asked for personal data by the Chinese government and would refuse if asked. [...] It was revealed in December that employees had used the app to attempt to identify the source of a leak to journalists. Hunter told the committee that he stood by the sentiments expressed in his original article, and blamed "rogue employees" who had since been fired from the company for accessing the data. He said "serious misconduct from these rogue employees" had taken place. He said GPS location information was not collected in Australia.

"CNN reports on a wide-ranging class action lawsuit claiming Google scraped and misused data to train its AI systems," writes long-time Slashdot reader david.emery. "This goes to the heart of what can be done with information that is available over the internet." From the report: The complaint alleges that Google "has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans" and using this data to train its AI products, such as its chatbot Bard. The complaint also claims Google has taken "virtually the entirety of our digital footprint," including "creative and copywritten works" to build its AI products. The complaint points to a recent update to Google's privacy policy that explicitly states the company may use publicly accessible information to train its AI models and tools such as Bard.

In response to an earlier Verge report on the update, the company said its policy "has long been transparent that Google uses publicly available information from the open web to train language models for services like Google Translate. This latest update simply clarifies that newer services like Bard are also included." [...] The suit is seeking injunctive relief in the form of a temporary freeze on commercial access to and commercial development of Google's generative AI tools like Bard. It is also seeking unspecified damages and payments as financial compensation to people whose data was allegedly misappropriated by Google. The firm says it has lined up eight plaintiffs, including a minor. "Google needs to understand that 'publicly available' has never meant free to use for any purpose," Tim Giordano, one of the attorneys at Clarkson bringing the suit against Google, told CNN in an interview. "Our personal information and our data is our property, and it's valuable, and nobody has the right to just take it and use it for any purpose."

The plaintiffs, the Clarkson Law Firm, previously filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI last month.

Roger Thomas Clark, also known as Variety Jones, will spend much of the rest of his life in prison for his key role in building the world's first dark web drug market. Wired: Nearly ten years ago, the sprawling dark web drug market known as the Silk Road was torn offline in a law enforcement operation coordinated by the FBI, whose agents arrested that black market's boss, Ross Ulbricht, in a San Francisco library. It would take two years for Ulbricht's second-in-command -- an elusive figure known as Variety Jones -- to be tracked down and arrested in Thailand. Today, a decade after the Silk Road's demise, Clark has been sentenced to join his former boss in federal prison.

In a Manhattan courtroom on Monday, Roger Thomas Clark -- also known by his online handles including Variety Jones, Cimon and Plural of Mongoose -- was sentenced to 20 years behind bars for his role in building and running Silk Road. Clark, a 62-year-old Canadian national, will now likely spend much of the rest of his life incarcerated for helping to pioneer the anonymous, cryptocurrency-based model for online illegal sales of drugs and other contraband that still persists on the dark web today. The sentence is the maximum Clark faced in accordance with the plea agreement he made with prosecutors.

Clark "misguidedly turned his belief that drugs should be legal into material assistance for a criminal enterprise," Judge Sidney Stein said in his sentencing statement. "These beliefs crossed over into patently illegal behavior." Stein added that Clark was "clear-eyed and intentional" in his work as Ulbricht's "right-hand man" in the Silk Road's operations. "The sentence must reflect the vast criminal enterprise of which he was a leader," Stein said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Disgraced Theranos co-founder Elizabeth Holmes' prison sentence has been reduced by two years, according to the Bureau of Prisons records. Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison for defrauding investors by claiming her blood-testing company provided quick and reliable results but she was found to have lied about the reliability of those tests. Holmes surrendered to the Bureau of Prisons in California on May 30 to serve out her sentence at a minimum-security all-female federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas.

Less than two months after she reported to prison, her sentence was quietly changed, with her new release date scheduled for December 29, 2032, the Bureau's site says. The Bureau has not provided additional information for why Holmes' projected release date was shortened, but its site says an inmate's good behavior, substance abuse program completion, and time credits they receive for activities and programs they've completed can result in a lessened sentence. Only last month, Theranos' former president and chief operating officer Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani's 13-year sentence was likewise reduced by two years, making his new projected release date April 11, 2034.

Holmes is serving out her remaining nine-year sentence at FPC Bryan, an all-female prison camp, where the women adhere to a strict schedule requiring them to begin work at 6 a.m. each day. Those who are considered eligible to work are assigned jobs earning between 12 cents and $1.15 an hour in roles like food service and factory employment.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: If you're printing something on actual paper, there's a good chance it's important, like a tax form or a job contract. But popular printing products and services won't promise not to read it. In fact, they won't even promise not to share it with outside marketing firms. The spread of digital file-sharing -- along with obnoxious business practices by printing manufacturers -- has pushed many U.S. households to give up at-home printers and rely on nearby printing services instead. At the same time, major printer manufacturers have adopted mobile apps and cloud-based storage, creating new opportunities to collect personal data from customers. Whether you're walking to the corner store or sending your files to the cloud, it's tough to figure out whether you're printing in private.

Ideally, printing services should avoid storing the content of your files, or at least delete daily. Print services should also communicate clearly upfront what information they're collecting and why. Some services, like the New York Public Library and PrintWithMe, do both. Others dodged our questions about what data they collect, how long they store it and whom they share it with. Some -- including Canon, FedEx and Staples -- declined to answer basic questions about their privacy practices. Wondering whether your printer app or printing service stores the content of your documents? Here's The Washington Post Help Desk's at-a-glance guide to printer privacy. Here's a summary of each company's privacy policy as it pertains to storing the content of your files:

HP: HP's privacy policy states that it does not store the content of files when using their printers or HP Smart app, providing reassurance that they do not invade privacy by snooping into print jobs.
Canon: Canon's privacy policy indicates that it can collect personal data, including files and content, which may be used for marketing purposes. However, Canon did not disclose whether they store, use, or share the content of printed documents.
FedEx: FedEx's privacy policy states that it collects user-uploaded information, including the contents of documents uploaded for printing services, leaving room for potential advertising or sharing with third parties. Although FedEx prioritizes customer privacy, it did not specify the extent of encryption or whether document content is included.
UPS: While the UPS Store, a subsidiary of UPS, can store the contents of printed documents, it does not use this information for marketing or advertising without user consent. The storage duration is undisclosed, but UPS honors customer requests for data deletion.
Staples: According to Staples' privacy policy, the company can store personal data such as copy/print materials, driver's license numbers, passport numbers, and mail contents. They may also use copy/print materials for advertising. The duration of data storage is not disclosed.
PrintWithMe: PrintWithMe, a company placing printers in shared spaces, temporarily stores printed documents with a third-party cloud provider for 24 hours. CEO Jonathan Treble assures that the data is never used for advertising.
Your local library: The New York Public Library, one of the largest library systems, does not store the contents of printed documents. Their computers only retain file names and delete them at the end of the day. However, privacy policies may vary among different libraries, so it is advisable to inquire beforehand.