MassPrivateI

Google to censor bloggers who use Blogspot.

2012-02-01T08:20:00.000-05:00

Google has quietly announced changes to its Blogger free-blogging platform that will enable the blocking of content only in countries where censorship is required.
Twitter announced technology last week addressing the same topic. It said it had acquired the ability to censor tweets in the countries only where it was ordered removed, instead of on an internet-wide basis.

Twitter’s announcement via its blog sparked a huge online backlash. The microblogging service was accused of becoming a censoring agent.

You wouldn’t be surprised in future if you visit Blogspot.com other than in US country you’ll be redirected to your country specific URL in browser in fact its happening now – where Google redirecting Indian users from blogspot.com domain to blogspot.in. For e.g if you visit Googleblog.blogspot.com URL from India you’ll be taken to Googleblog.blogspot.in URL.

Why Blogspot.com blogs redirected to blogspot.in?

Blogger’s help page confirms this.

If you’re reading a blogspot.com blog in Australia blogspot servers detects your IP address and redirects you to country-code top level domain or ccTLD if supported in your country here you’ll be redirected to blogspot.au.

“Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD. “
http://techdows.com/2012/01/google-starts-redirecting-blogspot-blogs-to-country-specific-urls.html

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/google-censoring-blogger/

Ten signs of possible deception in written witness or suspects statements.

2012-02-01T07:51:00.001-05:00

Suspects and witnesses often reveal more than they intend through their choices of words. Here are ways to detect possible deception in written and oral statements.

The manager of a fast food restaurant calls the police late at night to report that an armed robber had entered the restaurant while the manager was alone in the office finishing some paperwork. The manager said the gunman had stolen the entire day's cash receipts — a little more than $4,000. The manager had reported a similar robbery at the restaurant about six months earlier. No other witnesses were present at either alleged robbery. The restaurant owner learns from police investigators that armed robbery is extremely unusual in the surrounding neighborhood. Also, the owner knows that the manager's wages have been garnished for the last year for nonpayment of child support. The owner hires you, a CFE, to investigate whether the manager is filing false police reports to cover his thefts. You begin your investigation by asking the manager to write a description of the evening's events.

DETECTING ANOMALIES

Linguistic text analysis involves studying the language, grammar and syntax a subject uses to describe an event to detect any anomalies. Experienced investigators are accustomed to studying interview subjects' nonverbal behavior, such as eye contact and hand movement. Text analysis, on the other hand, considers only the subject's verbal behavior. Because text analysis evaluates only the subject's words, investigators can apply it to written as well as oral statements. In fact, many investigators prefer to analyze suspects' written statements for signs of deception before conducting face-to-face interviews.

Text analysis is based on research originating in the 1970s. Psychologists and linguists studied the language and word choices of subjects in controlled experiments and found predictable differences between truthful and deceptive statements. Susan Adams, an instructor who taught text analysis (which she called statement analysis) at the FBI Academy for many years, described it as a two-part process ("Statement Analysis: What Do Suspects' Words Really Reveal?" FBI Law Enforcement Journal, October 1996). First, investigators determine what is typical of a truthful statement. Secondly, they look for deviations from the norm.

The link below describes deviations that suggest a subject may be withholding, altering or fabricating information.
http://www.fraud-magazine.com/article.aspx?id=4294971184

Iraq is upset over UAV surveillance drone usage, where is the outrage in the U.S.?

2012-01-31T10:01:00.003-05:00

Iraq, is outraged that the U.S. is using UAV aerial drones to spy on its citizens. U. S. authorities are doing the same thing in our country, where is the outrage?

Baghdad — A month after the last American troops left Iraq, the State Department is operating a small fleet of surveillance drones here to help protect the United States Embassy and consulates, as well as American personnel. Some senior Iraqi officials expressed outrage at the program, saying the unarmed aircraft are an affront to Iraqi sovereignty.

The program was described by the department’s diplomatic security branch in a little-noticed section of its most recent annual report and outlined in broad terms in a two-page online prospectus for companies that might bid on a contract to manage the program. It foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

American contractors say they have been told that the State Department is considering to field unarmed surveillance drones in the future in a handful of other potentially “high-threat” countries, including Indonesia and Pakistan, and in Afghanistan after the bulk of American troops leave in the next two years. State Department officials say that no decisions have been made beyond the drone operations in Iraq.

The drones are the latest example of the State Department’s efforts to take over functions in Iraq that the military used to perform. Some 5,000 private security contractors now protect the embassy’s 11,000-person staff, for example, and typically drive around in heavily armored military vehicles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/world/middleeast/iraq-is-angered-by-us-drones-patrolling-its-skies.html?scp=1&sq=iraq%20upset%20over%20uavs&st=cse

Police across the country are using private cameras to spy on citizens.

2012-01-31T07:25:00.000-05:00

The nonprofit ProjectNOLA has donated 75 high-definition cameras to homeowners in high-crime areas, on the condition that they be aimed at the street.

The nonprofit group's volunteers already monitor crime scanners, but now they can link remotely to any camera in the area and, if appropriate, send fresh footage via cell phone to detectives, sometimes "as they drive up to the crime scene for the first time," said ProjectNOLA founder Bryan Lagarde, who noted that he hopes to add more cameras in hot spots in coming months.

In the French Quarter, Gernon said the NOPD is able to remotely access video at several bars on Bourbon Street. "We call first, get permission and log into the systems," he said.

Other cities, such as Chicago and Atlanta, combine public-private systems more formally, by compiling maps of all private surveillance systems or creating integrated systems that allow police departments, under certain conditions, to view live footage from thousands of private systems. It does not appear the NOPD does that, although the department did not provide information about its agency-wide approach to seeking and using surveillance footage.

Public crime cameras can be "incredibly helpful, but mostly in combination with private cameras." said police superintendent Ronal Serpas, who basically shut down the public system because the city's tight budget couldn't support it.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/01/new_orleans_cops_relying_on_p.html

6 year old boy playing tag is accused of sexual assault!

2012-01-30T08:53:00.003-05:00

Hercules, CA – An East Bay dad claims a game of tag on the playground resulted in his 6-year-old son being accused of sexual assault – a decision he said was an overreaction by school officials.

The parent, who asked only to be identified as Oswin, said his son was accused of brushing his best friend’s leg or groin while the two were playing on the playground at Lupine Hills Elementary in Hercules two months ago.

Oswin said his child was kept in the principal’s office for two hours until he confessed. He was suspended, and a sexual battery charge was placed on his permanent school record.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/01/27/hercules-family-battles-playground-sex-assault-claim-against-6-year-old/

School backs off claim that the 6 yr. old boy playing tag committed sexual assault.

It started as schoolyard roughhousing during recess, with one boy’s hand allegedly touching the upper thigh, or perhaps the groin, of another. There were no reported witnesses, and it remains unclear if anyone complained, but the principal immediately suspended the student, placing the incident on the boy’s record as a case of “sexual assault.” The children involved were first graders — the purported assailant just 6.

“It’s really overzealous,” Levina Subrata, the accused boy’s mother (they do not share the same last name), said of the incident last month at Lupine Hills Elementary, a public school in Hercules. “They were playing tag. There’s no intent to do any sort of sexual assault.”

The school’s principal, Cynthia Taylor, did not respond to an interview request. Marin Trujillo, a spokesman for the West Contra Costa Unified School District, which includes Hercules, said officials were barred from speaking about student and personnel matters. However, he added, “We must take any allegation of assault involving a child very seriously.”

Ms. Subrata provided a copy of the suspension notice, which shows what appears to be the principal’s signature and the conclusion: “Committed or attempted to commit a sexual assault or sexual battery.”

Ms. Subrata, the Hercules mother, hired a lawyer and threatened legal action against the school district, demanding that her son be moved to a different school, that his record be expunged and that the principal be disciplined.

Legally, there’s no such thing as sexual assault for a six year-old in California.

It wasn’t until Oswin and his wife got a lawyer that the school backed off. District officials declined to discuss specifics. They did confirm that an investigation was conducted, and that the child could not be charged with sexual battery. The claim was removed from the boy’s record.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/education/boy-6-suspended-in-sexual-assault-case-at-elementary-school.html?_r=1

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/01/27/hercules-family-battles-playground-sex-assault-claim-against-6-year-old/

Making a reservation to a hotel or airlines? Private corporations are using prison slave labor to answer phones.

2012-01-30T08:19:00.001-05:00

Private corporations are using slave labor to answer phones in what they euphemistically call "vocational training."

Today, in a twisted marriage between Congress, the American prison system and large private corporations seeking to reduce costs and increase profits, slave labor has become a booming business in the United States. Generating over $2.4 billion dollars a year in revenue, and encompassing some 600,000 state, federal and local inmates, there seems to be no end in sight to this flourishing enterprise some have called the Prison Industrial Complex. Men who are in prison for non-violent offenses, that have gotten caught up in the never ending ‘War on Drugs’, mandatory minimum sentencing statues, “three strikes” laws and increasingly ending up in prison for unpaid debts, many times child support payments they are unable to make due to lack of employment, are by far and away the almost exclusive fodder for this new type of slavery. But how is this possible?

While Federal regulations stipulates that prisons and companies must “pay wages at a rate not less than that paid for similar work in the same locality’s private sector,” the statue also allows for ‘allowable wage deductions’ of up to 80% of the prisoner’s wages. These deductions are for room and board, child support, victim programs and taxes. Through other loopholes in the PIE act, public prisons and “for profit” private prisons have found ways to deduct or withhold almost all of the remaining inmate’s wages. Today, after these ‘allowable wage deductions’, inmate wages rage from .17 cents an hour on the low end, to perhaps $3-4 dollars a day on the high end.

Since room and board is usually the biggest chunk of deductions from the inmates paycheck, most of these cost savings are often passed back to the private corporations, as an incentive to bring in more projects. Private corporations are standing in line to take advantage of cheap prison labor. The bottom line is that this slave labor can make a prison’s cash flow soar, and enable corporations to take advantage of third world wages right here in the United States, without the hassle or political fallout of overseas sweat shops or the expense of transporting goods from other countries.

By law, except in Federal prisons and the State of California, the inmates are not forced to work, and can remain in their cells during the work day. The catch is, if prisoners refuse to work, the prison can take away their canteen and telephone privileges, move the inmates into solitary confinement or disciplinary housing and most importantly halt the inmate’s ‘good time credit’, that can reduce their prison sentence length by up to 40%. The choice to work for the inmates is not a difficult one given the tactics used by the different prisons, which are tantamount to profiteering through coercion and extortion; an illegal act outside prison walls, but completely legal inside.

Proponents of these prison work programs have argued that these “jobs” give inmates life work skills for after their release, a lower case of recidivism, less instances of violence inside the facilities and a method by which convicts can help pay for the cost of their own imprisonment. The Department of Justice has shown in most studies that recidivism in not effected by whether the prisoner was forced to work, and also showed an increase in the number of violent incidents and escapes, especially in “for profit” prison corporation facilities.

The jobs that these inmates do, which the prison systems call “vocational training” are usually nothing more than repetitious activities needed for mass production, call center operators or farming work, such as planting or harvesting crops. In fact, one of the fastest growing segments of the prison slave labor are call centers for companies that need reservation operators for hotels, airlines and rental car companies.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/the-booming-business-of-american-slavery/

Private corporations profit as the U.S. imprisons more people than Stalin.

2012-01-30T08:03:00.000-05:00

Six million people are under correctional supervision in the U.S.—more than were in Stalin’s gulags.

The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education.

Every day, at least fifty thousand men—a full house at Yankee Stadium—wake in solitary confinement, often in “supermax” prisons or prison wings, in which men are locked in small cells, where they see no one, cannot freely read and write, and are allowed out just once a day for an hour’s solo “exercise.” (Lock yourself in your bathroom and then imagine you have to stay there for the next ten years, and you will have some sense of the experience.) Prison rape is so endemic—more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year—that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected.

William J. Stuntz, a professor at Harvard Law School who died shortly before his masterwork, “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice,” was published, last fall, is the most forceful advocate for the view that the scandal of our prisons derives from the Enlightenment-era, “procedural” nature of American justice. He runs through the immediate causes of the incarceration epidemic: the growth of post-Rockefeller drug laws, which punished minor drug offenses with major prison time; “zero tolerance” policing, which added to the group; mandatory-sentencing laws, which prevented judges from exercising judgment.

A growing number of American prisons are now contracted out as for-profit businesses to for-profit companies. The companies are paid by the state, and their profit depends on spending as little as possible on the prisoners and the prisons. It’s hard to imagine any greater disconnect between public good and private profit: the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.

No more chilling document exists in recent American life than the 2005 annual report of the biggest of these firms, the Corrections Corporation of America. Here the company (which spends millions lobbying legislators) is obliged to caution its investors about the risk that somehow, somewhere, someone might turn off the spigot of convicted men:

"Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities. . . . The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them."
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz1kmV0sU4z

Private citizens are using GPS devices is it legal?

2012-01-30T07:44:00.000-05:00

But today, anyone with $300 can compete with Jack Bauer. Online, and soon in big-box stores, you can buy a device no bigger than a cigarette pack, attach it to a car without the driver’s knowledge and watch the vehicle’s travels — and stops — at home on your laptop.

Tens of thousands of Americans are already doing just that, with little oversight, for purposes as seemingly benign as tracking an elderly parent with dementia or a risky teenage driver, or as legally and ethically charged as spying on a spouse or an employee — or for outright criminal stalking. So many suspicious spouses are now doing their own spying, a private investigator in New Jersey said, that his infidelity business is declining.

In the absence of legislation in most states, putting a GPS device on a spouse’s car, or hiring an investigator to do so, is widely considered to be legal if the person placing it shares ownership of the car. But some privacy experts question this standard, and there is little to stop a jealous suitor, or an abusive man trying to prevent a battered woman from escaping, from doing the same.

GPS trackers are increasingly being cited in cases of criminal stalking and civil violations of privacy.

One increasing use of GPS tracking — by as many as 30,000 parents, one seller estimates — is to monitor the driving habits of teenagers; some devices even send a text message when the car goes over a certain speed.

Sales of GPS trackers to private individuals may have already surpassed more than 100,000 per year, some experts believe. The marketing is just getting started.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/us/gps-devices-are-being-used-to-track-cars-and-errant-spouses.html?_r=2&hpw

FDA panelists worked for Bayer, casting doubt on the advisory comittee.

2012-01-27T15:43:00.000-05:00

Food and Drug Administration advisers, in a recent vote, said the benefits of four popular Bayer AG birth-control pills outweigh the blood-clot risk. What the FDA didn't disclose is that three of the advisers have had ties to Bayer, serving as consultants, speakers or researchers.

Last month, an FDA advisory committee voted 15-to-11 that the benefits of the Yaz and Yasmin birth control pills outweigh the risks, and so the drugs should remain on the market, albeit with added information about the risk of blood clots. The decision followed a long-running controversy - studies by Bayer, which sells the pills, found there is no risk, while other studies say the risk is evident (see this).

Jill Hartzler Warner, an FDA official who oversees advisory committees, said the agency is "prohibited from giving the public any information contained in a financial disclosure" from committee members. When picking committees, the FDA weighs "whether a meeting would affect the financial interest" of a panelist. The agency also does "look at whether past relationships would give the appearance of being a conflict," she said.

Steven Nissen, a frequent FDA panel member and prominent Cleveland Clinic cardiologist, said that, in general, if panelists have significant financial ties to a drug maker whose product is under review, it can "bias the proceedings." He added, "Lack of disclosure undermines the credibility of the advisory committee process and undermines public trust in the fairness of the regulatory process."

Bayer said it had no role in selecting the committee, and defended the safety of its products, all four of which contain the active ingredient drospirenone. The potential conflicts of the three panel members were earlier reported in a joint article by the British medical journal BMJ and Washington Monthly.

Dr. Kessler's report contends that all three members' relationships are evidence that "the FDA advisory committee was not independent of Bayer and its recommendations and votes need to be viewed as such."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577153160177537828.html

http://www.pharmalot.com/2012/01/a-conflicted-fda-panel-bayer-birth-control-pills/

The Yaz Men: Members of FDA panel reviewing the risks of popular Bayer contraceptive had industry ties:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2012/01/the_yaz_men_members_of_fda_pan034651.php#

Does the Texas Supreme Court favor corporations over consumers?

2012-01-27T08:48:00.001-05:00

In the last 10 years, the majority of Texas Supreme Court decisions have favored corporate interests over consumers, and the panel of judges has repeatedly overstepped its authority by overturning jury verdicts and interpreting the law to benefit the rich, according to a scathing report set to be released today by consumer advocacy group Texas Watch.

“The Texas Supreme Court has marched in lock-step to consistently and overwhelmingly reward corporate defendants and the government at the expense of Texas families,” the report says.

Texas Watch says in its study, which reviewed court decisions in more than 624 cases in the past 10 years, that the trend started when Gov. Rick Perry began appointing Supreme Court justices in 2000. The report argues that data from court rulings shows that Perry’s appointees “corporatized the court.” But the court, a former justice and conservative groups disagree with the report's conclusions, arguing that a statistical analysis doesn't provide enough context.

The state's highest civil court ruled in favor of defendants — mostly corporations and government entities — in about 74 percent of the 624 consumer cases brought before the panel in the last decade, according to the report.

Alex Winslow, executive director of Texas Watch, said the high court’s nine justices, who are all Republicans, are too similar to one another. Many represented corporations in court before they became justices, and 85 percent of the time, they agreed with one another.
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-courts/texas-supreme-court/texas-watch-claims-supreme-court-favors-businesses/

Texas Watch Report:
http://www.texaswatch.org/2012/01/report-decade-long-review-shows-texas-supreme-court-is-activist-ideological/

The FBI plans to monitor social media & local traffic cameras.

2012-01-27T07:14:00.000-05:00

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has quietly released details of plans to continuously monitor the global output of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, offering a rare glimpse into an activity that the FBI and other government agencies are reluctant to discuss publicly. The plans show that the bureau believes it can use information pulled from social media sites to better respond to crises, and maybe even to foresee them.

The information comes from a document released on 19 January looking for companies who might want to build a monitoring system for the FBI. It spells out what the bureau wants from such a system and invites potential contractors to reply by 10 February.

The bureau's wish list calls for the system to be able to automatically search "publicly available" material from Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites for keywords relating to terrorism, surveillance operations, online crime and other FBI missions. Agents would be alerted if the searches produce evidence of "breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats".

Agents will have the option of displaying the tweets and other material captured by the system on a map, to which they can add layers of other data, including the locations of US embassies and military installations, details of previous terrorist attacks and the output from local traffic cameras.

The document says: "Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations."

It says the application should collect "open source" information and have the ability to:

Provide an automated search and scrape capability of social networks including Facebook and Twitter.
Allow users to create new keyword searches.

Lynch says that many people post to social media in the expectation that only their friends and followers are reading, which gives them "the sense of freedom to say what they want without worrying too much about recourse," says Lynch. "But these tools that mine open source data and presumably store it for a very long time, do away with that kind of privacy. I worry about the effect of that on free speech in the US".
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/01/fbi-releases-plans-to-monitor.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16738209

Link to the FBI document:
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c65777356334dab8685984fa74bfd636&tab=core&_cview=1

Mayors & police chiefs held secret meetings to coordinate responses to Occupy Wall Street

2012-01-26T07:27:00.001-05:00

WASHINGTON -- After denying that they are coordinating responses to Occupy Wall Street, the U.S. Conference of Mayors recently surveyed city administrations across the country about the movement.

In late November, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the District of Columbia mayor's office received a request to update its answers to the survey. The questions to city officials appeared to elicit profiles of Occupy activists and answers that could help show the activists as a drain on resources.

The mayor's conference asked via the emailed survey: What are the estimated Occupy-related costs? What are the major issues relating to Occupy events? Has the Occupy membership changed and if so "describe those involved in the movement how they've changed in terms of who they are and what their intentions for the demonstrations are."

In the survey, the organization also called on city administrations to share tactics. "Please describe any strategies or tactics your city is employing in responding to Occupy-related events, including an assessment of their effectiveness if possible."

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has quietly led efforts to coordinate city responses to the Occupy Wall Street movement, the records show. These documents -- which comprise emails to local D.C. officials -- appear to contradict previous statements in which mayors denied any sort of group strategy sessions.

In a Nov. 10 email, Tom Cochran, CEO and executive director for the conference, hyped a follow-up conference call led by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. Cochran wrote that the call "will enable more mayors and police chiefs from across the country to participate in the discussion, sharing information about the situation in their cities, their concerns, and the strategies that are working."

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, has obtained her own set of conference-call related documents and says the mayors' conference is an active participant in setting the stage for the camp raids. "These are sessions that were intended in assisting cities in creating the public pretext for the eviction of the encampments," Verheyden-Hilliard said. "I think they tried to play a fairly covert role in what was an extremely significant nationally coordinated effort to shut down the occupations."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/occupy-wall-street-us-conference-of-mayors_n_1232080.html

U.S. ranked 47th. in the Press Freedom Index 2011/2012:

“This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world,” Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. “Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news.

“Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them.

The United States 47th. also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests.

http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html

New whitepaper reveals DHS wants total federalization of police under new Homeland Security mission.

2012-01-25T08:04:00.003-05:00

A new white paper presented to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence carves out an ‘evolving mission’ for Homeland Security that moves away from fighting terrorism and towards growing a vast domestic intelligence apparatus that would expand integration with local/state agencies and private-public partnerships already underway via regional fusion centers.

Crafted by the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group, co-chaired by former DHS chief Michael Chertoff and composed of a who’s who of national security figures, the report outlines a total mission creep, as the title “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission” implies.
Next Steps in Evolving the Mission Pdf:
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/pubs/HS-HPSCI-hearing-011812.pdf

http://www.infowars.com/shock-docs-total-federalization-of-police-under-new-homeland-security-mission/

Click on the Public Intelligence link to view the members of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group:
http://publicintelligence.net/dhs-to-focus-on-providing-intelligence-on-domestic-threats/

How reliable is eyewitness identification?

2012-01-25T07:34:00.001-05:00

The U.S. Supreme Court had a chance last week to address a serious defect in criminal cases, improve the quality of American justice and strengthen people's faith in the court system. It did none of those things.

Instead, by an 8-1 margin, the court reaffirmed a rule that stretches back at least as far as a 1977 decision involving eyewitness identifications. According to the rule, if law enforcement officers appear to have used suggestive methods to obtain such an identification, a judge must assess its reliability before it may be introduced as evidence in a trial.

That process, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote last week in her majority opinion, helps ensure a person's constitutional right to due process of law and serves as a deterrent to police rigging witness ID conditions to get the results they want. It also is an incentive for officials to ensure accurate identifications take criminals off the streets, rather than convicting innocent individuals.

But the court's ruling last week in Perry v. New Hampshire ignored two crucial developments.

First, more than 2,000 studies into the mechanics and psychology of eyewitness identifications, all published since the court's 1977 decision, have found a wide range of variables that produce inaccurate eyewitness identifications. They include the presence of a weapon, consumption of alcohol or drugs, how long a witness watched what was happening, how long after a crime an identification is made and the race and age of an alleged perpetrator. They go well beyond suggestive conditions set up by police.

Second, despite the often-shaky reliability of eyewitness identifications and the opportunity of defense lawyers to expose flaws through cross-examination in court, juries place disproportionate faith in the ID's.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-supreme-court-needs-to-know-seeing-is-not-believing/article_6e699cfe-ebc0-5c05-8004-7f4c5030a645.html

Eyewitness Identification Has 50% Error Rate? How Do We Throw People in Prison Based on False ID?

http://www.alternet.org/story/153864/eyewitness_identification_has_50_error_rate_how_we_throw_people_in_prison_based_on_false_id/

Google announces it will track each user's identity for all it products and users can't opt out.

2012-01-25T07:21:00.001-05:00

Google will soon know far more about who you are and what you do onthe Web.

The Web giant announced Tuesday that it plans to follow theactivities of users across nearly all of its ubiquitous sites, includingYouTube, Gmail and its leading search engine.

Google has already been collecting some of this information. But for thefirst time, it is combining data across its Web sites to stitch together afuller portrait of users.

Consumers won’t be able to opt out of the changes, which take effectMarch 1. And experts say the policy shift will invite greater scrutinyfrom federal regulators of the company’s privacy and competitive practices.

Think a combined catalog of every Google search, YouTube video watched andplaces visited with Google Maps — and that’s just the beginning. Android users?You’re so far invested, the only way out is to quit.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b

Police to use red spotlight on people they suspect might commit a crime.

2012-01-24T08:06:00.000-05:00

East Orange, NJ- According to the report, police officers monitor hundreds of video feeds from across the city and opt to brand would-be criminals with a red glow if they believe they are about to engage in a crime, such as a street corner mugging.

Each unit costs about $7,200, and the police department is still figuring out how many it needs and where in town they’ll be set up, city spokesman Darryl Jeffries said.

East Orange is buying the light technology from a company called The Cordero Group, which is run by the former police director Jose Cordero. The installation company is Packetalk.

“Whereas London has talking cameras, we’re about to deploy light projecting cameras, better known as light-based intervention systems.” said William Robinson, Police Chief for East Orange. He added, “The message to criminals is, we’re observing you, the police are recording you, and the police are responding.”

Now “pre-crime” spotlights that bathe surveillance targets in a criminally-branded red color will help complete the circle of preemptive suspicion.

But that’s just one flashy feature in a rash of new high-tech solutions provided to the crime-ridden city under federal grant money. In East Orange, and probably a locale near you, too, everyone is a “pre-crime” suspect until proven innocent.

The video goes on to brag that officer squad cars also scan the license plates of every single vehicle they pass, checking them against a variety of lists– from terrorist monitor lists, to unpaid parking tickets, warrants and more. Officers can then pull over vehicles that match watch lists, even if the driver has committed no violations to draw attention from the patrol vehicle.

Further, cameras tied into police video monitor stations can also be accessed from squad cars; officers can zoom in on nearby locations to determine if a situation is underway, or if a suspect can be identified. The red light is intended to help track a would-be criminal once surveillance is already underway.

A spokesperson for the ACLU noted a worrisome climate of monitoring and spying on political groups, anti-abortion activists and more. Meanwhile, the MIAC Missouri law enforcement memo, as well as similar documents released from the Department of Homeland Security, have made clear that returning veterans and supporters of third party political candidates and many other groups are note only considered “domestic extremists,” but have been put on law enforcement watch lists as well as anti-terrorism databases. It has further been revealed that numerous non-violent political groups and grassroots campaigns have been labeled as “terrorists” labeled as “terrorists” and monitored by regional Fusion Centers.
http://www.infowars.com/red-spotlights-to-mark-precrime-suspects/

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/east_orange_to_install_spotlig.html

The Federal Gov't. keeps permanent records of every student.

2012-01-24T07:50:00.001-05:00

Since “No Child Left Behind” was passed 10 years ago, states have been required to ramp up the amount of data they collect about individual students, teachers, and schools. Personal information, including test scores, economic status, grades, and even disciplinary problems and student pregnancies, are tracked and stored in a kind of virtual “permanent record” for each student.

But parents and students have very little access to that data, according to a report released Wednesday by the Data Quality Campaign, an organization that advocates for expanded data use.

All 50 states and Washington, D.C. collect long term, individualized data on students performance, but just eight states allow parents to access their child’s permanent record. Forty allow principals to access the data and 28 provide student-level info to teachers.

Privacy experts say the problem is that states collect far more information than parents expect, and it can be shared with more than just a student’s teacher or principal.“When you have a system that’s secret from parents and you can put whatever you want into it, you can have things going in that’ll be very damaging,” says Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “When you put something into digital form, you can’t control where that’ll end up.”
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/01/19/who-should-have-access-to-student-records

Supreme Court ruled warrants are required before police can attach a GPS device to a vehicle.

2012-01-23T16:25:00.000-05:00

The Supreme Court ruled unanimouslyMonday that police must obtain a search warrant before using a GPS deviceto track criminal suspects. But the justices left for another day largerquestions about how technology has altered a person’s expectation of privacy.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the government needed a valid warrantbefore attaching a GPS device to the Jeep used by D.C. drug kingpin AntoineJones, whowas convicted in part because police tracked his movements on public roadsfor 28 days.

“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’svehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements,constitutes a ‘search’ ” under the Fourth Amendment’s protection againstunreasonable searches and seizures, Scalia wrote.

All justices agreed with the outcome of the case, which affirmed a panel ofthe U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that said evidence of Jones’ sfrequent trips to a stash house where drugs and nearly $1 million in cash werefound must be thrown out.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the decision also should have settled someof those questions instead of deciding a case about a “21st-centurysurveillance technique” by using “18th-century tort law.”

“The court’s reasoning largely disregards what is really important (the useof a GPS for the purpose of long-term tracking) and instead attaches greatsignificance to something that most would view as relatively minor (attachingto the bottom of a car a small, light object that does not interfere in any waywith the car’s operation),” Alito wrote.

Alito’s point was that it was the lengthy GPS surveillance of Jones itselfthat violated the Fourth Amendment and that “the use of longer term GPSmonitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations ofprivacy.”

“For such offenses,” he wrote, “society’s expectation has been that lawenforcement agents and others would not — and indeed, in the main, simply couldnot — secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’scar for a very long period.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-warrants-needed-in-gps-tracking/2012/01/23/gIQAx7qGLQ_story.html

Supreme Court Decision:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf

DHS is using the private company General Dynamics to monitor political dissent in the U. S.

2012-01-23T08:23:00.003-05:00

As the result of EPIC v. DHS, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, EPIC has obtained nearly thee hundred pages of documents detailing a Department of Homeland Security's surveillance program. The documents include contracts and statements of work with General Dynamics for 24/7 media and social network monitoring and periodic reports to DHS. The documents reveal that the agency is tracking media stories that "reflect adversely" on DHS or the U.S. government. One tracking report -- "Residents Voice Opposition Over Possible Plan to Bring Guantanamo Detainees to Local Prison-Standish MI" -- summarizes dissent on blogs and social networking cites, quoting commenters. EPIC sent a request for these documents in April 2004 and filed suit against the agency in December.

DHS documents:
http://epic.org/foia/epic-v-dhs-media-monitoring/EPIC-FOIA-DHS-Media-Monitoring-12-2012.pdf

DHS is funding unmanned aerial surveillance of Americans.

2012-01-23T08:09:00.003-05:00

The Department of Homeland Security says it needs a fleet of two-dozen Predator and Guardian drones to protect the homeland adequately. Designed for military use, 10 of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are already patrolling U.S. borders in the hunt for unauthorized immigrants and illegal drugs.

DHS is building its drone fleet at a rapid pace despite its continuing inability to demonstrate their purported cost-effectiveness. The unarmed Predator and Guardians (the maritime variant) cost about $20 million each. Yet DHS has little to show for its UAV spending spree other than stacks of seized marijuana and several thousand immigrants who crossed the border without visas.

Aside from a continuing funding bonanza for border security, to pursue its drone strategy DHS is also counting on the Federal Aviation Administration to continue authorizing the use of more domestic airspace by the unarmed drones. And FAA seems set to comply, having approved 35 of the 36 requests by the department’s Customs and Protection agency from 2005 to mid-2010. In congressional testimony in July 2010, the FAA said it was streamlining its authorization process for drones, including the hiring of 12 additional staff to process drone airspace requests.

While DHS is leading the way, national and local law enforcement agencies, as well as private entities, are demanding that FAA open the American skies to drone surveillance.

http://www.alternet.org/story/153735/dhs_pumping_money_into_drones_for_domestic_surveillance%2C_hunting_immigrants_and_seizing_pot/

Is The NYPD Experimenting With Drones Over The City?

A website named Gay City News posted an e-mail it says it acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. It’s purportedly from a detective in the NYPD counterterrorism division, asking the Federal Aviation Administration about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles as a law enforcement tool.

And the following is part of a recent interview with Commission Ray Kelly that raised more questions than it answered.

“In an extreme situation, you would have some means to take down a plane,” Kelly told “60 Minutes.”

Drones are already being used by law enforcement in other cities. Miami and several cities in Texas are experimenting with such aircraft. Just the mere possibility that the city could be looking into the use of drone surveillance aircraft prompted one anonymous New Yorker to post official looking NYPD warning signs all over the city.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/01/23/is-the-nypd-experimenting-with-drones-over-the-city-evidence-points-to-yes/

Army Foresees Expanded Use of Drones in U.S. Airspace

The Army issued a new directive last week to govern the growing use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or “drones” within the United States for training missions and for “domestic operations.”

Much of the Army’s UAS activity will be devoted to UAS operator training conducted at or near military facilities, the policy indicates. But beyond such training activities, the military also envisions a role for UAS in unspecified “domestic operations” in civilian airspace, according to a 2007 Memorandum of Agreement between the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates domestic air traffic.
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/01/army_drones.html

Attempt to buy allergy medication and your name will be entered into a state police database.

2012-01-23T08:05:00.000-05:00

Chicago, IL - Buying a package of allergy medicine at the corner drugstore will put you in a state police database under a new Illinois law aimed at identifying people who make methamphetamine.

Gov. Pat Quinn signed the measure into law Friday, saying a pilot project in southern Illinois has helped police tracking sales of medicines that can be used to make meth has helped police crack down.

The goal is to watch for large purchases of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, which are found in some cold, allergy and sinus medicines such as Claritin-D and certain Sudafed products.

Stores already keep the products behind the counter to guard against theft and record who buys them. Now stores will transmit those records electronically to state police. The information sent to authorities will include the customer’s name and address.

Under the new law, stores must continue blocking sales if a person tries to buy more than 7.5 grams of pseudoephedrine in 30 days - or more than a month’s supply of 24-hour Claritin-D for a single person.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/10136396-418/state-to-track-the-makings-for-meth.html

Seattle police officer drafts Bill to block the Dept. of Justice takeover of the police department.

2012-01-23T08:01:00.002-05:00

A Seattle cop who serves in the state legislature is attempting to derail a possible Department of Justice takeover of the Seattle Police Department.

Last month, the DOJ released a report that found that Seattle police frequently used excessive force during arrests, and described the department’s “system of accountability” as “broken.” As a result of the probe, the SPD could be forced to enter into an agreement with DOJ, which would mandate changes within the department under threat of a federal civil rights lawsuit.

SPD has taken issue with the DOJ’s findings and asked the DOJ to back up their report by sharing more data, but some members of the city council have endorsed moving forward with an agreement with the feds.

Now, Seattle police officer and State Rep. Mike Hope (R-44) has proposed legislation that would prevent SPD or any other law enforcement agency in the state—like the Spokane PD, also facing a DOJ probe—from adopting DOJ directives.

Hope is the sole sponsor of the legislation.

Hope’s bill would prohibit police departments across the state from adopting any use of force policies dictated by the DOJ, unless they’re explicitly required by an act of Congress, and would task the state attorney general with handling any civil rights lawsuits brought against police departments by the federal government.
http://publicola.com/2012/01/20/legislator-tries-to-block-doj-takeover-of-spd/

U.S. Justice Department officials are connected to mortgage banks.

2012-01-21T12:20:00.000-05:00

The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.

Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn't brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.

Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and several other large banks. It was meant to speed up registration and transfers of mortgages. By 2010, MERS claimed to own about half of all mortgages in the U.S. -- roughly 60 million loans.

But evidence in numerous state and federal court cases around the country has shown that MERS authorized thousands of bank employees to sign their names as MERS officials. The banks allegedly drew up fake mortgage assignments, making it appear falsely that they had standing to file foreclosures, and then had their own employees sign the documents as MERS "vice presidents" or "assistant secretaries."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/20/us-usa-holder-mortgage-idUSTRE80J0PH20120120

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/is-this-why-they-wont-prosecute-top-justice-officials-represented-big-banks.html

Is the CMI Intoxilyzer 8000 accurate in determing possible DUI's?

2012-01-20T07:53:00.001-05:00

Florida- The $8,000 study, put together in three days, was part of a broader push to save the reputation of the embattled Intoxilyzer 8000, FDLE records show. And in December, FDLE's alcohol testing guru Laura Barfield came to a Sarasota County courtroom for a hearing and presented results of the drunken employee experiment to a panel of judges, saying it proved the machines were accurate. But the study might not even be worth the $330 bar bill.

At the hearing, judges deciding the fate of the machine in Sarasota and Manatee counties seemed skeptical of even considering the study, in part because bloodwork was still at the lab and the examination was not yet finalized.

Beyond that, statistics experts say there are concerns about how the study was conducted, whether it has any scientific validity, or whether it proves what it intended to.

"That doesn't really address the problem," said Dr. John Robinson, a biostatistics consultant with expertise in health care. "It's only performed at one time, with a small group of people."

A Herald-Tribune article in October showed how flawed machines stayed in service across the state for years, unquestioned, sometimes providing impossible results about how much breath was blown into them.

Breath-test results in about 100 Manatee and Sarasota county DUI cases were thrown out as a result. A defense expert who examined one machine in Venice found the breath volume issue was skewing breath-alcohol readings.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120118/article/120119530?google_editors_picks=true

CMI, refused to reveal details of how the Intoxilyzer 8000 works — even after orders from judges telling the company to do so — so that DUI defendants could hire experts to check it out. http://www.alcoholtest.com/

The Kentucky company's long refusal to provide the device's software code, despite unpaid and mounting daily fines for contempt of court, makes me suspicious. Clearly, technicians who do not work for the company or the police should be allowed to check that complicated device's design inside and out, especially its secret software. Defendants should have a right to check for flaws the company might not reveal.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement should be really irked at CMI about that refusal to obey judges. After all, FDLE has been, in effect, the company's top sales rep in Florida.

FDLE approved that breath tester and made Florida's police agencies a monopoly market for CMI. Police here are not allowed to use any of the devices made by rival companies.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110511/COLUMNIST/110519879

Does the recent purchase of a U. S. election results voting firm by Clarity Elections compromise our elections?

2012-01-19T09:45:00.001-05:00

In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world's dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA's dominant election results reporting company.

When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private corporate site controlled by SOE software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.com. http://www.soesoftware.com/

With the merger of SOE and SCYTL, that won't work (if SCYTL's voting system is used). When there are two truly independent sources of information, the public can perform its own "audit" by matching one number against the other.

These two independent sources, however, will now be merged into one single source: an Internet voting system controlled by SCYTL, with a results reporting system also controlled by SCYTL.

With SCYTL internet voting, there will be no ballots. No physical evidence. No chain of custody. No way for the public to authenticate who actually cast the votes, chain of custody, or the count.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

Why is the Federal gov't. encouraging law enforcement to criminalize photography, saying it's an indicator of terrorism?

2012-01-19T08:59:00.000-05:00

When the Los Angeles Police Department developed a Suspicious Activity Report program, the federal government encouraged local law enforcement agencies to adopt its guidelines for gathering information “that could indicate activity or intentions related to” terrorism. From the fact that terrorists might take pictures of potential infrastructure targets (“pre-operational surveillance”), it is a short slide down a slippery slope to the judgment that photography is a potential indicator of terrorism and hence private investigators and photographers are suspect when taking pictures “with no apparent aesthetic value” (words from the suspicious-activity guidelines).

Peter Bibring of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California has filed a complaint alleging violations of the First Amendment (photography as an expressive activity; freedom of the press is constitutionally guaranteed) and Fourth Amendment (unreasonable searches of persons and their cameras).

Bibring, not a stereotypical ACLU fire-breather, is sympathetic about the difficult decisions law enforcement officers must make concerning the shadowy threat of terrorism. “Points of friction,” he says equably, “are inevitable.”

As are instances of government overreaching in the name of security. Most seasoned law enforcement professionals, however, have sufficient judgment to accommodate the fact that online opportunities for the dissemination of photographs mean lots of people can plausibly claim to be photojournalists.

Furthermore, digital cameras — your cellphone probably has one — are so inexpensive and ubiquitous that photography has become a form of fidgeting: Facebook users upload 7.5 billion photos every month.

This raises reasonable suspicions not of terrorism but of narcissism, which is a national problem but not for law enforcement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/police-overreach-in-the-name-of-fighting-terrorism/2012/01/17/gIQADluG9P_story.html

Did a California Judge dismiss a juror because the juror was standing in the way of a guilty verdict?

2012-01-18T08:48:00.001-05:00

Pasadena, CA -The U.S. Supreme Court will consider the habeas claims of a woman convicted of murder only after the trial judge dismissed the lone juror standing in the way of a guilty verdict.

Tara Sheneva Williams had been the driver for two friends planning a robbery. While casing out stores one afternoon in October 1993, one member of the trio went into a liquor store alone, emptied the cash register, and shot and killed the store's owner.

As one juror who seemed inclined to acquit Williams on murder charges, against objections from other jurors, the trial court replaced him with an alternate. The alternate and his peers convicted Williams of special circumstances murder and a firearm enhancement.

On appeal in Pasadena, Calif., the 9th Circuit said that the action taken against that holdout juror violated Williams' rights.

The May 2011 decision opens by juxtaposing interviews with the jury in Williams' case against the fictional jury-room debate in "Twelve Angry Men," the 1957 Academy Award-winning film.

When the jury foreman in Williams' trial reported the holdout, the court questioned each juror at length and dismissed Juror No. 6 because it found that he was biased against the prosecution and had lied in court.

Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge Stephen Reinhardt said the decision to remove may have impermissibly stemmed from Juror No. 6's views of the merits of the case. It seems likely that the trial court did not rely on good cause to remove the juror, in violation of Williams' Sixth Amendment rights, the appellate judges added.

"The only good cause relied upon for dismissal of Juror No. 6 was 'actual bias,'" Reinhardt wrote. "The court did not find, however, that Juror No. 6 was 'biased' in any traditional sense of the term, as would have been the case if, for example, he had stated that he could not be impartial or had accepted a bribe related to the case. Nor did it find that he had 'implied bias,' such as might have resulted from Juror No. 6 having a connection to one of the parties, or being related to someone who had either committed or been a victim of some similar crime."
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/16/43073.htm

The Justice Department has ramped up its investigations into police excessive force claims.

2012-01-18T08:37:00.001-05:00

Such "pattern and practice" investigations — so-called because they seek to identify unconstitutional patterns and practices by police — are on a steep upswing, according to a review of Justice Department statistics.

Experts on race, the law and police accountability say the rise in such cases reflects, in part, a disturbing increase in cases of police abuse across the country that can't be entirely explained away by an aggressive civil-rights-minded attorney general or a change in the political winds.

There is no question that there is a problem," said Sam Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and the author of more than a dozen books on police accountability, civil rights and police oversight.

The Civil Rights Division, he said, has doubled its number of attorneys since President Obama took office, has moved to complete the few investigations that were under way, and is opening new ones with regularity

Last year alone, the division's Special Litigation Section, which oversees pattern-and-practice investigations, has released findings of investigations into seven law-enforcement agencies, including Seattle. There were none released in 2010 and two in 2009.

When he was in Seattle last month, Perez said the division had 20 ongoing pattern-and-practice investigations nationwide.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017242781_doj15m.html

ACLU files federal lawsuit against Sheriff Baca over jail abuse:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California Wednesday filed a federal civil rights lawsuit that accuses Sheriff Lee Baca of failing to stop a “pattern and practice of deputy-on-inmate violence” inside L.A. County jails.

Baca is responsible for the operation of the jails. His deputies act as guards. The suit also names three of Baca’s top commanders.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of inmates, says Baca and his commanders “are aware of the culture of deputy violence that pervades the jails but have failed to take reasonable measures to remedy the problem.” The suit says the sheriff is in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, which provide citizens reasonable protection from violence and excessive force.Baca has yet to respond to the lawsuit. In the past, he has said he is quick to fire deputies who engage in abuse, and has begun implementing reforms to prevent future abuse.
http://www.scpr.org/news/2012/01/18/30849/aclu-files-federal-lawsuit-against-sheriff-over-ja/

ACLU lawsuit cites a "sick culture of deputy-on-inmate violence" in L.A. County jails:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/abu-ghraib-los-angeles-county-jail-abuses

The NYPD is testing a new Terahertz Imaging Detection system that scans everyone on the street.

2012-01-18T08:33:00.002-05:00

The NYPD is stepping up their war against illegal guns, with a new tool that could detect weapons on someone as they walk down the street.

But is it violating your right to privacy?

Police, along with the U.S. Department of Defense, are researching new technology in a scanner placed on police vehicles that can detect concealed weapons.

“You could use it at a specific event. You could use it at a shooting-prone location,” NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told CBS 2′s Hazel Sanchez on Tuesday.

It’s called Terahertz Imaging Detection. It measures the energy radiating from a body up to 16 feet away, and can detect anything blocking it, like a gun.

Police Commissioner Kelly said the scanner would only be used in reasonably suspicious circumstances and could cut down on the number of stop-and-frisks on the street.

But the New York Civil Liberties Union is raising a red flag.

“It’s worrisome. It implicates privacy, the right to walk down the street without being subjected to a virtual pat-down by the Police Department when you’re doing nothing wrong,” the NYCLU’s Donna Lieberman said.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/01/17/nypd-testing-gun-scanning-technology/

The growing use of unmanned aerial vehicles by police in the U.S.

2012-01-17T08:29:00.000-05:00

The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to have regulations governing their use in commercial airspace by the end of this month. So far, four police agencies have been approved to use UAVs: the Mesa County Sheriff’s office in rural Colorado, Miami-Dade Police, Lane County Sheriff, Ore. and the Texas Department of Public Safety

Many law enforcement authorities consider drone surveillance technology an invaluable tool when there is limited manpower or the terrain is too remote or rugged to conduct land-based surveillance or search and rescue missions.

The new generation of civilian law enforcement UAVs can be purchased for under $50,000 apiece, just a few thousand dollars more than a fully equipped patrol car.

In 2009, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office obtained an experimental demo model Draganflyer X6 from Draganfly Innovations in Saskatoon, Canada which, according to Heather Benjamin, the sheriff’s spokesperson, was relegated to test and training flights over the county landfill for more than a year and a half because of strict FAA regulations.

Mesa County has deployed the Draganflyer X6 some 30 times for search and rescue, fugitive searches, and fatal accidents “It has only been in the last few months that our Certificate of Authorization was expanded to allow us to us the device tactically,” Benjamin said.

Since the restrictions have been loosened by the FAA on when law enforcement agencies can deploy a drone, allowing them to deploy it for tactical use without permission (although the agency must still be notified). They are expected to be loosened even further for civilian law enforcement agencies nationwide in the coming weeks.
http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2012-01-drones-on-the-home-front

Doctors cheating on medical exams is a nationwide problem.

2012-01-17T08:22:00.000-05:00

For years, doctors around the country taking an exam to become board certified in radiology have cheated by memorizing test questions, creating sophisticated banks of what are known as "recalls," a CNN investigation has found.

The recall exams are meticulously compiled by radiology residents, who write down the questions after taking the test, in radiology programs around the country, including some of the most prestigious programs in the U.S.

"It's been going on a long time, I know, but I can't give you a date," said Dr. Gary Becker, executive director of the American Board of Radiology (ABR), which oversees the exam that certifies radiologists.

The practice of sharing exam answers is so widespread and considered so serious in the medical community that the ABR has put out a strongly worded video warning residents that the use of recalls must stop.

"Questions and answers have been memorized, sometimes verbatim, and contributed to extensive archives of old ABR test material that become the prize possessions of many residency programs," Becker said in the video, which appears on the board's website.

He said "accumulating and studying from lists of questions on prior examinations constitutes unauthorized access, is inappropriate, unnecessary, intolerable and illegal."
About half of the questions on the radiology test are the same each year.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/13/health/prescription-for-cheating/index.html

Police and federal agents have access to huge quantities of private data on citizens who aren't accused of committing any crimes.

2012-01-16T09:56:00.000-05:00

Police and federal agents increasingly have access to huge quantities of commercial, banking and other private data on citizens not suspected of having committed any crimes. Examples of police abuse of data systems are plentiful and growing. For the purpose of simplicity, we can break down the different kinds of databases into two main categories: government and commercial. As you'll see, there are many ways in which government and commercial databases bleed into one another, most notably, that government agencies routinely buy access to commercial databases like Choicepoint and BlueKai. In some cases, the line between government and commercial data brokers completely evaporates, as is the case for In-Q-Tel, a branch of the CIA that invests heavily in data mining and data broker corporations.

First, let's take a look at some of the government databases. There are many different kinds of government databases, including criminal databases and non-criminal databases.

One example of a non-criminal government database in Washington state contains the license plate numbers and locations of cars picked up by the state police's "Automated License Plate Recognition" (ALPR) system. The ACLU of Washington has investigated how these systems are being used. What they have found is profoundly disturbing, and highlights what is at the heart of the problem with unchecked data gathering. ACLU of Washington's Brian Alseth estimates that police in that state are collecting location information on millions of license plates per year. He writes:

ALPRs raise serious concerns to your privacy because of the system's ability to monitor and track the movements of ALL vehicles, including those registered to people who are not suspected of any crime. Without restrictions, law enforcement agencies can and do store the data gathered by the license plate readers forever, allowing them to monitor where you have traveled and when you traveled there over an extended period of time. In fact, a key selling point for ALPR vendors is the system’s ability to track drivers. As explained by the Los Angeles Police Department Chief of Detectives, the “real value” of the ALPR “comes from the long-term investigative uses of being able to track vehicles where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing.” In other words, the cops want to data mine your driving habits.

In other words, junk into the system results in junking the system. Plenty of Americans have born the brunt of this data-system-gone-wild. But it isn't just inaccurate information that puts us at risk; the very existence of these data bases containing nearly complete dossiers on most Americans endangers us. Identity thieves and other criminals regularly steal personally identifiable and credit related information from massive corporate data brokers, putting millions of people at risk every year. There's even an entire website dedicated to monitoring these security data breaches.

Part of the problem is that the corporate data behemoths are allowed to operate with hardly any regulatory oversight from the government. That has allowed for a system in which companies like Acxiom are allowed to buy and sell unbelievably detailed information about everyone, with hardly any restrictions.
http://privacysos.org/databaseinfo

The dangers of letting private companies store your license plate data.

2012-01-16T09:48:00.002-05:00

Capitalizing on one of the fastest-growing trends in law enforcement, a private California-based company has compiled a database bulging with more than 550 million license-plate records on both innocent and criminal drivers that can be searched by police.

The technology has raised alarms among civil libertarians, who say it threatens the privacy of drivers. It’s also evidence that 21st-century technology may be evolving too quickly for the courts and public opinion to keep up. The U.S. Supreme Court is only now addressing whether investigators can secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to cars without a warrant.

A ruling in that case has yet to be handed down, but a telling exchange occurred during oral arguments. Chief Justice John Roberts asked lawyers for the government if even he and other members of the court could feasibly be tracked by GPS without a warrant. Yes, came the answer.

Meanwhile, police around the country have been affixing high-tech scanners to the exterior of their patrol cars, snapping a picture of every passing license plate and automatically comparing them to databases of outstanding warrants, stolen cars and wanted bank robbers.

The units work by sounding an in-car alert if the scanner comes across a license plate of interest to police, whereas before, patrol officers generally needed some reason to take an interest in the vehicle, like a traffic violation.

But when a license plate is scanned, the driver’s geographic location is also recorded and saved, along with the date and time, each of which amounts to a record or data point. Such data collection occurs regardless of whether the driver is a wanted criminal, and the vast majority are not.

While privacy rules restrict what police can do with their own databases, Vigilant Video, headquartered in Livermore, Calif., offers a loophole. It’s a private business not required to operate by those same rules. http://www.vigilantvideo.com/

The company sells its own brand of license-plate readers and has customers around the nation, including in Springfield, Ill.; Kings Point, N.Y.; and Orange, Conn. But Vigilant distinguished itself from competitors by going one step further and collecting hundreds of millions of scans to create what’s known as the National Vehicle Location Service.
http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/private-company-hoarding-license-plate-data-us-drivers-14379

Company hoarding license-plate data on US drivers
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=8503013

Man claims police entered his home without a warrant, then threaten to arrest him for recording them.

2012-01-13T16:37:00.001-05:00

Haverhill, MA- After receiving a neighbor’s complaint about a disturbance, Haverhill police officers knocked on Hector Nunez’s door Saturday morning to investigate.

Nunez, who had just gotten home with his wife, asked who was knocking.

“They said, ‘police,’ and I thought it was my friend joking around,” he said in a phone interview with Photography is Not a Crime Wednesday night – 12 hours after I had posted the video of his encounter with police that left some questions unanswered.

Nunez, 23, opened the door and discovered it was, in fact, three police officers who began asking questions.

“When I opened the door, they wanted to speak to my wife, but she was on the back porch smoking a cigarette,” he said. "They wanted to check on her welfare."

“I told them to go around back and talk to her.”

In other words, he was not allowing them into his home. And they did not have a warrant.

“The cop then says I’m a wise-ass and pushes me down and walks inside,” Nunez said. “I ran after him and told him, ‘you assaulted me.”

“He turns around and takes a swing at me. Then my wife comes back inside and said ‘what are you doing in my home?”

That was when Nunez ran into his bedroom and turned the camera on, which shows the officers standing outside his bedroom door, proving that they did enter his home without a warrant.
http://www.pixiq.com/article/man-gives-background-to-video-he-posted

Latest info. about Haverhill, MA police story 1/16/12:
http://www.pixiq.com/article/man-refuses-to-open-door-for-cops-while-video-recording

What's happening to our Bill of Rights? Police use roadblocks to interrogate hundreds of CA citizens.

2012-01-12T08:36:00.000-05:00

Placentia, CA – Police stopped hundreds of vehicles Tuesday night during a roadblock set up in Placentia to try to gather information about a serial killer targeting homeless men in Orange County.

A special task force of about 70 local and federal law enforcement officials set up a roadblock canvas from 6 to 10 p.m. in the 100 block of North Bradford Avenue, across the street from where 53-year-old James McGillivray was killed. He was the first victim of what police have called a "serious, dangerous serial killer."

"The idea is to stop vehicles and talk to drivers who are in the proximity to the crime scene near the first homicide in Placentia," Anaheim police Sgt. Bob Dunn said.

Drivers who were stopped were asked a series of questions, including if they were in the area or may have seen something on the day of the killing.

Dunn said the task force – made up of investigators from Placentia; Anaheim; Brea, which polices Yorba Linda; the Orange County Sheriff's Department and the FBI – will evaluate the results to determine if additional information-gathering operations will be planned near the scene of the other slayings.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/police-335111-killer-information.html

The DOJ has urged a Federal Court judge to side with the plaintiff in Baltimore police taping case.

2012-01-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has urged a federal court to side with a Howard County man in a lawsuit over his cellphone being seized by Baltimore police at the Preakness Stakes after he filmed officers making an arrest.

The federal attorneys say the lawsuit "presents constitutional questions of great moment in this digital age." They asked U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg to rule that citizens have a right to record police officers and that officers who seize and destroy recordings without a warrant or due process are violating the Fourth and 14th amendments.

In a November motion to dismiss the suit, the Police Department said the claims made by Sharp and his attorneys were moot because the department had voluntarily developed training protocols for officers and sergeants and emailed instructions to officers. It said there was "no reasonable expectation that the violations alleged by the plaintiff will reoccur."

But the Justice Department said those measures were not sufficient.

"At minimum, defendants should develop a comprehensive policy that specifically addresses individual's First Amendment right to observe and record officer conduct," attorneys wrote. "Morever, BPD should track allegations that an officer has interfered with a citizen's First Amendment right to observe and/or record the public performance of public duties."

The Maryland attorney general's office later issued an opinion advising police agencies that people have a right to record officers and that most interactions between police and the public cannot be considered private.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-ci-aclu-doj-videotaping-20120111,0,7691935.story

Google Transparency Report June 2011:

"We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests."
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/US/

Man arrested for writing on a sidewalk with chalk.

2012-01-11T09:59:00.000-05:00

The city of Orlando, FL which recently arrested and jailed one of the Occupy Orlando protesters for writing in chalk in front of City Hall.

Forget murderers and thieves. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and police Chief Paul Rooney are using their resources — and your money — to go after a 25-year-old who was brandishing a writing utensil.

One that washes away with the rain.

Just before Christmas, OPD arrested 25-year-old Timothy Osmar for "writing or painting advertising matter on streets or sidewalks"

The criminal "advertising" in question?

Slogans like "Justice Equals Liberty."

Obviously, he had to be stopped.
I was curious how many other people Orlando had ever locked up for criminal chalking.

After they researched it, the best estimate they could come up with was … none.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/views/os-scott-maxwell-occupy-politics-010812-20120107,0,2434749.column

Chargers dropped against Occupy Orlando man who was jailed for 3 weeks for writing on sidewalk.

ORLANDO, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - Occupy Orlando protester who has been in jail for several days without bond for using chalk to write on the sidewalk in front of Orlando City Hall has been released from jail after the City of Orlando decided to drop the charges.

http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/local/011112-charges-dropped-against-ocuupy-man

The DHS agency ICE has repeatedly lied to Congress and the American people.

2012-01-11T08:56:00.001-05:00

The Homeland Security agency charged with immigration enforcement has repeatedly lied to Congress, the American people and the media by drastically increasing the number of individuals that have been apprehended, deported or detained.

The shameful revelation was made this week by a nonprofit university group dedicated to researching the U.S. government. The nonpartisan New York-based data research center, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), provides detailed information about the operation of hundreds of government agencies. Immigration is one of many areas it researches
.
For the better part of the last two years TRAC has been engaged in a fierce legal battle with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over records involving the agency’s enforcement activities. After repeatedly getting stonewalled, TRAC was recently provided with some of the documents involving statistics of individuals who had been arrested, detained, charged, returned or removed from the country during a specific period.

Although ICE is still withholding much of the information, the files that have been furnished so far reveal “vast discrepancies” in many areas, according to a case-by-case analysis conducted by TRAC. The initial probe reveals that official ICE statements claimed 34 times more detentions, 24 times more deportations and almost five times more apprehensions than its own data. This certainly indicates that ICE knowingly lied to lawmakers and the press to embellish its enforcement activities.

For instance, during a one-year period that ICE claimed it detained 233,417 individuals it really only detained 6,778, according to agency’s own records. That same year, ICE said it deported 166,075 people when it really only deported 6,906 and it only apprehended 21,339 compared to claims that it had apprehended 102,034.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2012/01/ices-own-data-fails-to-back-enforcement-claims/

TX- Debate over arson findings called into question.

2012-01-11T08:53:00.000-05:00

A number of forensic scientists and others are calling for additional reviews of arson-murder cases like Martin's because evidence was analyzed by methods now called into question or proved wrong. Members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission say they don't have the jurisdiction to investigate these cases, but they have told the Texas Innocence Project to team up with the State Fire Marshal's Office to determine whether the state has incarcerated people for arson-murders based on outdated science.

"To the extent that this review goes on, it is because of the voluntary participation of these agencies who think it's the right thing to do," commission attorney Lynn Robitaille said. The commission is expected to discuss the issue in more detail at its meeting Friday.

At issue, however, is whether a comprehensive review of such cases can or will be done. Skeptics say that the assessments would require a lot of time and resources and that such extensive work may not be possible. An estimated 700 to 900 people are in Texas prisons for arson-related crimes, according to various sources. Of those, about 100 are from Tarrant and Dallas counties, state inmate records show.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/01/08/3642858/texas-debate-over-arson-science.html

Boston police department admits arresting people for recording them with a cell phone was a mistake.

2012-01-11T07:29:00.000-05:00

The Boston Police Department has at last concluded that two of its officers made a mistake when they arrested a Boston man for recording the arrest of another man with his cell phone. In a letter to cell phone cinematographer Simon Glik, superintendent Kenneth Fong of the Boston PD's Bureau of Professional Standards said that the officers had shown "unreasonable judgment" by taking Glik into custody.

Glik's battle with the Boston PD began in 2007, when he saw another man being arrested on Boston Common. After hearing a witness say, "You are hurting him, stop," Glik pulled out his cell phone to document the encounter. The police then arrested Glik for allegedly violating the state's wiretapping statute.

As Glik now describes the event on his own website (he's a lawyer), "This arrest was a vindictive attempt by some unscrupulous cops to suppress citizens’ right to record, observe and comment on police actions."

Glik was quickly released, and the charges against him were eventually dropped. Glik requested that the Boston PD then investigate the officers' actions, but the department concluded in 2008 that the officers had done nothing wrong.

That may have inspired the Boston PD to re-open Glik's original complaint, and this time they reached a different conclusion. A department spokeswoman told the Boston Globe that the officers, John Cunniffee and Peter Savalis, now "face discipline ranging from an oral reprimand to suspension."

"As far as I knew, my complaint was summarily dismissed," Glik told the Globe regarding his original complaint in 2008. "I was basically laughed out of the building. From what I understand, it takes filing a federal lawsuit in order for internal affairs to review a complaint."

Glik's attorney, David Milton, says the fact that it took the department four years to admit its mistake "shows a lack of genuine concern for investigating misconduct by the Police Department."

Milton told the Globe that Glik plans to press forward with his lawsuit against the officers, seeking financial compensation and "a public recognition that what he was doing was perfectly legal."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/boston-pd-admits-arrest-for-cell-phone-recording-was-a-mistake.ars

What you need to know about the FBI's new Biometric database.

2012-01-10T08:53:00.003-05:00

The FBI claims that their fingerprint database (IAFIS) is the "largest biometric database in the world," containing records for over a hundred million people. But that's nothing compared to the agency's plans for Next Generation Identification (NGI), a massive, billion-dollar upgrade that will hold iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos.

Ambitions for the final product are candidly spelled out in an agency report: "The FBI recognizes a need to collect as much biometric data as possible within information technology systems, and to make this information accessible to all levels of law enforcement, including International agencies." (A stack of documents related to NGI was obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights and others after a FOIA lawsuit.)

It'll be "Bigger -- Better -- Faster," the FBI brags on their Web site. Unsurprisingly, civil libertarians have concerns about the privacy ramifications of a bigger, better, faster way to track Americans using their body parts.

"NGI will expand the type and breadth of information FBI keeps on all of us," says Sunita Patel of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/153664/5_things_you_should_know_about_the_fbi%27s_massive_new_biometric_database/?page=1

New studies in Canada & Britain show people are being wrongfully convicted of the shaken baby theory.

2012-01-10T07:56:00.000-05:00

Official studies in Canada and Britain have uncovered cases in which people were wrongly convicted based on the shaken baby theory.

As a journalist for ProPublica, I've spent more than a year scrutinizing the inner workings of the nation's system of coroner and medical examiner offices responsible for probing sudden and suspicious fatalities. In the course of that research, my colleagues and I analyzed roughly two dozen instances in which people were wrongly accused of killing babies or small children.

Questionable autopsy findings played a central role in each of these cases. Some experts, like Dr. Michael Laposata, the chief pathologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, think there are more innocent people still serving time in prison. "I don't think it's a handful," Laposata told me last year. "I think it's far more."

When children die unexpectedly, the authorities often look for unnatural causes, and rightly so; in recent decades our society has become far more vigilant about detecting and prosecuting child abuse, an admirable accomplishment.

But child deaths can pose special problems for forensic pathologists. When babies and small children die, the clues can be quite subtle. Oftentimes, doctors are hunting for microscopic indicators that a child has suffered head trauma or has been asphyxiated. Such cases require a high degree of expertise.

A key concern is that forensic pathologists may confuse the symptoms of a natural ailment for a sign of abuse. That could well be what happened with baby Etzel. There are dozens of afflictions that cause bleeding and bruising and can easily be mistaken for child abuse. One of the leading textbooks on child abuse now includes two chapters on these mimics, which range from certain forms of cancer to sickle cell anemia to trauma suffered during the birthing process.

Unfortunately, many forensic pathologists aren't prepared to deal with the complexity of child death cases. According to a 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences, only a third of the coroner and medical examiner offices in the U.S. had the equipment to do a microscopic tissue analysis. The report painted a dismal portrait of the profession, citing poor funding, a lack of decent facilities and a severe shortage of qualified doctors.
http://www.propublica.org/article/a-far-cry-from-csi

McDonald's in Europe introduces a "forensic marking" spray used on suspected thieves.

2012-01-10T07:49:00.001-05:00

McDonald'srestaurants are fighting back against thieves by blasting suspected robberswith an invisible DNA spray as they attempt to flee.

Thespray, which remains on the suspect's skin for two weeks and on clothes for upto six months, has been introduced in some of the chain's busiest NSW stores,including those at Parramatta, Granville, Auburn, Lidcome, Kingsford andWollongong, reported The Daily Telegraph.

If the SelectaDNA"forensic marking" spray proves successful in apprehending bandits,McDonald's will introduce the system across all its 780 Australian outlets.

Developed in the UnitedKingdom by a police officer and a chemist, the spray has been used byMcDonald's outlets in Britain and Europe.

"Once there has beena security breach, the hi-tech spray unit will douse fleeing robbers with aninvisible, synthetic DNA solution," McDonald's Australia's chiefrestaurant support officer, Jackie McArthur, said.

"The solution isinvisible to the naked eye and unique to each location. It stays on clothingfor up to six months and on skin for up to two weeks."

Using a UVA light, policecan see the markings left by the system and link the offender back to thescene.

The spray contains asynthetic DNA strand composed of 60 variable chromosomes, said SelectaDNAdirector David Morrissey.

http://www.news.com.au/business/dna-mcspray-to-foil-thieves/story-e6frfm1i-1226239112219

Why is the DHS monitoring bloggers & journalists in the US?

2012-01-09T08:26:00.000-05:00

Freedom of speech might allow journalists to get away with a lot in America, but the Department of Homeland Security is on the ready to make sure that the government is keeping dibs on who is saying what.

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that came out of DHS headquarters in November, Washington has the written permission to retain data on users of social media and online networking platforms.

Specifically, the DHS announced the NCO and its Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) can collect personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s own definition of personal identifiable information, or PII, such data could consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.” Previously established guidelines within the administration say that data could only be collected under authorization set forth by written code, but the new provisions in the NOC’s write-up means that any reporter, whether someone along the lines of Walter Cronkite or a budding blogger, can be victimized by the agency.
http://rt.com/usa/news/homeland-security-journalists-monitoring-321/

More than 500 people were wrongly imprisoned in Denver's jails over seven years.

2012-01-09T08:24:00.000-05:00

More than 500 people were wrongly imprisoned in Denver's jailsover seven years, with some spending weeks incarcerated or pleading guilty tocrimes they did not commit before authorities realized they nabbed the wrongperson, a federal court filing shows.

Civil-rights lawyers suing the city and county of Denver assertthe documented mistaken-identity arrests "are the tip of the iceberg"and are an undercount of the true magnitude of the problem.

City officials say the documented mistakes make up a fraction ofthe more than 33,000 inmates incarcerated at the Van Cise-Simonet DetentionFacility last year. They say they strive to avoid detaining the wrong suspectsbut concede that mistakes do happen.

"The best we can do is set up processes so these get addressedimmediately, and that's what we've done," said Denver police Lt. MattMurray.

The mistaken-identity arrests are detailed in a 216-page motion filed at theU.S. District Court in Denver by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.

The wrongful arrests in Denver occurred for a variety of reasons.Often those wrongly held had the same names as criminals, but authoritiesfailed to check their dates of birth. Some were wrongly arrested because theiridentities had been stolen. In other cases, the last name matched but not thefirst or middle.

It often took days and sometimes weeks before authorities realizedthey had the wrong person.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19697991?source=pop

The Government forces people to provide ID's if they want to purchase drain cleaner etc.

2012-01-09T08:19:00.000-05:00

Chicago, IL – A new state law requires those who buy drain cleaners and other caustic substances to provide photo identification and sign a log.

The law, which took effect Sunday, requires those who seek to buy caustic or noxious substances, except for batteries, to provide government-issued photo identification that shows their name and date of birth. The cashier then must log the name and address, the date and time of the purchase, the type of product, the brand and even the net weight.

State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock) obtained passage of the new law following attacks in which drain cleaner was poured on two Chicago women, badly scarring them.

In response to a couple of incidents, lawmakers laid a double-whammy on us: Thousands of people around the state – almost all law-abiding citizens – will have their activities tracked by the government, and local merchants will have to keep the books and make them available to police or face steep fines.

There are screwdrivers, claw hammers, rodent poisons, chainsaws, and all manner of other implements that have been creatively deployed in horror films.

Shall we be compelled to present our ID and sign a logbook each time we buy one of those as well?

Non-compliance results in fines: $150 for the first offense, $500 for the second and up to $1,500 for the third and subsequent violations.

Schroeder estimated that there are “easily” 30 or more products in the store that must be reported when sold.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/01/05/new-law-requires-photo-id-to-buy-drain-cleaner/

A report from the HHS office revealed: Only 14% of medical errors are reported by hospitals.

2012-01-07T12:19:00.002-05:00

In order for a hospital to participate in the Medicare program, it must develop and maintain a Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement (QAPI) program to "track medical errors and adverse patient events, analyze their causes, and implement preventive actions and mechanisms that include feedback and learning throughout the hospital." However, a new study by the Dept. of Health & Human Services found that only a small portion of patient errors are being reported — and that hospitals don't seem to give a damn about fixing things.

According to a report from the Health & Human Services (HHS) Office of the Inspector General, hospital incident reporting systems only captured about 14% percent of "patient harm events" experienced by Medicare beneficiaries.
"Hospitals investigated those reported events that they considered most likely to lead to quality and safety improvements and made few policy or practice changes as a result of reported events," states the report. "Hospital administrators classified the remaining events (86%) as either events that staff did not perceive as reportable (61%) or as events that staff commonly report but did not report in this case (25%)."

HHS says that all the hospitals involved in the study had incident reporting systems and that the administrators at these facilities all claimed to rely heavily on these systems to identify problems.

"One in four hospital patients are harmed by medical errors and infections, which translates to about 9 million people each year," said Lisa McGiffert, Director of Consumers Union's Safe Patient Project. "Today's report confirms what many other studies have already documented. Hospitals are doing a poor job of tracking preventable infections and medical errors and making the changes necessary to keep patients safe. It's time that hospitals make patient safety a higher priority."

The Inspector General's report recommends that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provide hospitals with a standard list of medical errors that need to be tracked and reported to the agency.

And while that would be a good start, Consumers Union believes that public reporting of medical errors is crucial to making hospitals accountable.

"Hospitals should be pushed to do a better job at tracking medical harm, but public reporting is what drives change and the public should have access to this critical information," said McGiffert. "The solutions arrived at in this report take us down the tired and worn out path of secret reporting of medical harm."

In 2010, the Inspector General estimated that 15,000 Medicare patients per month experienced medical errors in a hospital that contributed to their deaths. Annually, that adds up to around 180,000 patients. That study estimated the annual cost for these events in hospital care alone at $4.4 billion.
http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-06-09-00091.asp

A Tribune analysis shows Taser use has jumped fivefold since 2008.

2012-01-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Chicago, IL- A Tribune analysis shows Taser use has jumped fivefold in the city since 2008 and suburban agencies that were surveyed were on pace to double their use, as departments equipped more officers with the devices. Chicago police were deploying Tasers at a rate of more than twice a day in 2011.

And oversight has not kept pace with the explosion in use. Departments are on their own in developing policies on when and how electroshock devices should be deployed, with no state regulation.

In Kotlinski's case, the engineer at Abbott Laboratories was removed from his SUV and pinned in the snow. He lost control of his body as an "intense burning sensation" accompanied the surreal feeling that he was floating over the ground, he said. He roared about his heart condition, then begged in a faint wheeze for someone to call 911.

"Pain. I've never felt that way in my life," Kotlinski said.

They may bring pain, but the weapons save lives by reducing the use of guns or physical combat, police say. Civil rights advocates and experts on use of force counter that some officers deploy them too eagerly, spurring lawsuits and fomenting distrust of officers. The potential lethality of the weapons remains under debate, but critics point to hundreds of deaths that have followed their use as proof that electroshock devices should be seen as deadly weapons.

Like almost all states, Illinois does not track the weapons' use by local police, and departments have been left to monitor and govern electroshock devices with a patchwork of policies. In Chicago, the leap in the number of police carrying Tasers coincided with the scaling back of post-shock investigations by the Independent Police Review Authority.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-taser-use-increases-20120101,0,3298710.story

Federal judge gives an Arkansas car passenger $1 after he was tasered by cops, even though he committed no crime.

2012-01-06T08:35:00.003-05:00

A passenger who walked away from a traffic stop in Barling, Arkansas was tasered and beaten by local police. Though the force used was excessive, a federal judge ruled on December 27 that Derrol Dee Kirby III should only get $1 for his pain and suffering.

Prior to a 2010 US Supreme Court ruling (view case), some courts argued that passengers were not seized and that they could "walk away" from a traffic stop because they were not under arrest. In this case, Kirby was riding in a vehicle that allegedly ran a stop sign and had no license tags on November 8, 2005. Kirby's girlfriend, Danielle Ingram, had been driving the car and was arrested because she had what appeared to be methamphetamine in her purse. Police performed field sobriety tests and a breathalyzer test on Kirby, even though he was not driving. He was found to have a blood alcohol content of 0.04 -- under the legal limit. His mother was called to the scene so that she could take Kirby home.

About forty minutes had elapsed during which police agreed Kirby had been cooperative. He was not under arrest and the four officers had no reason to fear for their safety. Nonetheless, they asked Kirby to consent to a pat-down search; he declined. When Kirby's mother arrived, he began walking to her. One officer ordered him to "comply or be tased." Kirby kept on walking and was hit by a taser, causing him to fall face first onto the pavement. A federal judge found this excessive.
Court Ruling: http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2011/us-tased.pdf

EPIC wants public disclosure of Google's relationship with the NSA.

2012-01-05T08:13:00.000-05:00

EPIC filed the opening brief in EPIC v. NSA, No. 11-5233, challenging the National Security Agency’s response to EPIC's Freedom of Information Act request. EPIC is seeking information about the widely publicized cybersecurity agreement between the NSA and Google that followed the January 2010 China hack. The NSA claimed it "could neither confirm nor deny" the existence of any information about its relations with Google. After the attack, Google's implemented encryption technology for Gmail by default, a privacy safeguard EPIC and technical experts had urged in 2009. For more information, see EPIC v. NSA: Google / NSA Relationship
.
http://epic.org/2012/01/epic-urges-appeals-court-to-sh.html

EPIC opening brief:
http://epic.org/privacy/nsa/foia/EPIC-v-NSA-OB-FINAL.pdf

Seattle suing attorney over request for dash cam videos.

2012-01-05T07:30:00.001-05:00

As an attorney investigating claims made by clients that they had been abused by Seattle police officers, James Egan did what any good lawyer would do.

He filed public records request with the Seattle Police Department, asking them to release several dash cam videos that likely would prove his clients’ claim were right.

Instead of handing him the videos, Seattle police slapped him with a lawsuit, accusing him of prying into the private lives of police officers by making his valid requests.

The city attorney wants a court to decide. He says the Washington privacy act says the videos can't be made public until final disposition of related litigation.

In other words not until the officers can no longer be sued for what they did in the video and that's three years under the statute of limitations.

http://www.king5.com/news/Seattle-suing-attorney-over-dash-cam-videos-136707268.html

Seattle Court Filing:
http://www.abajournal.com/files/COMPLAINT_FOR_DECLARATORY_AND_INJUNCTIVE_RELIEF_FINAL.pdf

Lawsuit claims the Johnson & Johnson Co. issued a "phantom or stealth recall" of tainted Children's Tylenol.

2012-01-04T09:13:00.002-05:00

Philadelphia - In a scorching complaint that cites internal company memos, parents say their child died because Johnson & Johnson issued a "phantom or stealth recall" of tainted Children's Tylenol, buying up the drugs from stores on the sly without issuing a recall, "so the general public, ignorant of the dangers, would continue buying and administering these brand name drugs to their children."

Daniel and Katy Moore say their 2-year-old son River died of liver failure in July 2010, the day after he took Children's Tylenol.

They sued Johnson & Johnson, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Costco and a long list of others in the chain of supply and distribution, and third-party contractors who allegedly bought up the over-the-counter drugs in the "phantom recall."

River's parents claim Johnson & Johnson and its McNeil subsidiary hired contractors to secretly go into stores that stocked the tainted products, buy up all the products and not mention the recall to anyone.

"This clandestine phantom/stealth recall was done without notification to the customers or the retailers to avoid the public shame, the financial impact and regulatory ramifications of a formal recall," the complaint states.

It continues: "the purpose of the phantom/stealth recall is evidenced in an internal email in which a McNeil executive said, 'We are just trying to prevent a recall and a lot of expended dollars.'

"In another email, a McNeil executive described the success of the phantom/stealth recall by saying, 'This was a major win for us as it limits the press that will be seen.'

"J&J and McNeil directed their third-party contractors, including Inmar Inc., WIS International, and CSCS, not to discuss their purchases as being a recall of the product.

"Indeed, J&J's specific instructions to the contractors hired to perform the phantom recall indicated that they were to 'quickly enter each store, find ALL of the Motrin product described, make the purchase transaction, secure the receipt, and leave ... THERE MUST BE NO MENTION OF THIS BEING A RECALL OF THE PRODUCT!
'http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/04/42739.htm

Court Filing: http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/04/Tylenol.pdf

EFF claims the new AOL Messenger scans all private IMs and stores them.

2012-01-04T08:48:00.002-05:00

From The Electronic Frontier Foundation:

"The new preview version of AOL Instant Messenger raised privacy concerns for us when it was first introduced, first because it started storing more logs of communications and second, because it apparently scanned all private IMs for URLs and pre-fetched any URLs found in them. We met with AOL to discuss how these features work and why the company should take greater care with your data, and we’re happy to say that AOL is promising to make some important changes as a result, especially in response to our second concern.

However, we still recommend that AIM users do not switch to the new version, as it introduces important privacy-unfriendly features. Unfortunately, AOL's moves are in keeping with a general trend toward more pervasive cloud-based services in which your personal chat data is centrally stored in plain text and an easy target for law enforcement and criminals. This shift toward central logging is troubling in many situations, including in chat.

When you first sign into the new AIM, a flag is permanently set on your account to begin storing all of your conversations on AOL’s servers for up to two months, and perhaps indefinitely. AOL's intent is to make it easy to see the same messaging history even if you sign in from a different device, but the danger is that your private conversations are now available to, for instance, law enforcement agents with a warrant or a national security letter, or to criminals in the event of a data breach. In the case of government access AOL might not even be required (or allowed) to inform you that your private communications are no longer private. Because this concern will arise whenever your data is stored with cloud services or other kinds of third-party servers, EFF has long argued that whenever possible, no logs are good logs."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/effs-raises-concerns-about-new-aol-instant-messenger-0

The FBI did not need a warrant to secretly install a GPS tracking device.

2012-01-03T08:14:00.000-05:00

ST. Louis, MI - The FBI did not need a warrant to secretly install a GPS tracking device on a St. Louis City Treasurer's Office employee accused of not showing up for work, a federal judge ruled.

Fred Robinson, 69, is accused of stealing more than $250,000 of public money from the Paideia Academy charter school to start a day-care business, and of taking as much as $175,000 from his job in Treasurer Larry Williams' office, where he was allegedly a no-show.

Robinson was indicted in September on one count of wire fraud and seven counts of federal program theft.

Robinson's lawyer argued that the GPS results should not be allowed for several reasons, including the agents' failure to get a warrant and violations of his Constitutional rights.

But U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce disagreed, finding that appellate courts have found use of the tracking devices legal, even though the U.S. Supreme Court is still deciding the issue.

"The 8th Circuit held that the agents did not need a warrant prior to installing and using the GPS tracker device," Noce wrote. "The court explained, 'when police have reasonable suspicion that a particular vehicle is transporting drugs, a warrant is not required when, while the vehicle is parked in a public place, they install a non-invasive GPS tracking device on it for a reasonable period of time.' Because installation of the GPS tracker device was non-invasive and because the agents installed the device when the truck was parked in public, installation of the GPS tracker device was not a search."

The FBI, GPS Court Ruling:
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/03/FBIRuling.pdf

Many of the justices were skeptical of the government’s position, saying the United States could evolve into a surveillance state if the Supreme Court sides with the government.

Justice Stephen Breyer told Dreeben, “If you win this case, there is nothing to prevent the police or government from monitoring 24 hours a day every citizen of the United States.”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/warrantless-gps-monitoring/

Hacking voting machines - HBO special "Hacking Democracy."

2012-01-03T07:49:00.001-05:00

How the Federal government is tracking your children.

2011-12-30T10:30:00.001-05:00

Would it bother you to know that the federal Centers for Disease Control had been shown your daughter’s health records to see how she responded to an STD/teen-pregnancy-prevention program? How about if the federal Department of Education and Department of Labor scrutinized your son’s academic performance to see if he should be “encouraged” to leave high school early to learn a trade? Would you think the government was intruding on your territory as a parent?

Under regulations the Obama Department of Education released this month, these scenarios could become reality. The department has taken a giant step toward creating a de facto national student database that will track students by their personal information from preschool through career. Although current federal law prohibits this, the department decided to ignore Congress and, in effect, rewrite the law. Student privacy and parental authority will suffer.

The administration wants this data to include much more than name, address and test scores. According to the National Data Collection Model, the government should collect information on health-care history, family income and family voting status. In its view, public schools offer a golden opportunity to mine reams of data from a captive audience.

The department’s eagerness to get control of all this information is almost palpable. But current federal law prohibits a nationwide student database and strictly limits disclosure of a student’s personal information. So the department has determined that it can overcome the legal obstacles by simply bypassing Congress and essentially rewriting the federal privacy statute.

Last April, the department proposed regulations that would allow it and other agencies to share a student’s personal information with practically any government agency or even private company, as long as the disclosure could be said to support an evaluation of an “education program,” broadly defined. That’s how the CDC might end up with your daughter’s health records or the Department of Labor with your son’s test scores.

And you’d have no right to object — in fact, you’d probably never even know about the disclosure.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_the_feds_are_tracking_your_kid_xC6wecT8ZidCAzfqegB6hL

28 Signs That U.S. Public Schools Are Rapidly Being Turned Into Indoctrination Centers:

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/28-signs-that-u-s-public-schools-are-rapidly-being-turned-into-indoctrination-centers-and-prison-camps

A federal appeals court has given telecommunications companies immunity for helping the government spy on you.

2011-12-30T09:30:00.000-05:00

San Francisco, CA —A federal appeals court has ruled as constitutional a law giving telecommunications companies legal immunity for helping the government with its email and telephone eavesdropping program.

Thursday's unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision regarding the 2008 law.

The appeal concerned a case that consolidated 33 different lawsuits filed against various telecom companies, including AT&T, Sprint Nextel, Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. on behalf of these companies' customers.

The court noted comments made by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding the legal immunity's role in helping the government gather intelligence.

"It emphasized that electronic intelligence gathering depends in great part on cooperation from private companies ... and that if litigation were allowed to proceed against persons allegedly assisting in such activities, `the private sector might be unwilling to cooperate with lawful government requests in the future,'" Judge M. Margaret McKeown said.

“By passing the retroactive immunity for the telecoms’ complicity in the warrantless wiretapping program, Congress abdicated its duty to the American people,” EFF senior staff attorney Kurt Opsahl said. “It is disappointing that today’s decision endorsed the rights of telecommunications companies over those over their customers.”

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/12/30/court_oks_immunity_for_telecoms_in_wiretap_case/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/dragnet-surveillance-case/

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/12/29/42649.htm

Court Opinion: https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/20111229_9C_Jewel_Opinion.pdf

TX- Recent DNA exonerations have revealed troubling gaps in the criminal justice system.

2011-12-29T09:35:00.001-05:00

TX- Since Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins took office in 2007, incidents of wrongfully convicted men being released from Texas prisons have become almost commonplace.

The sheer number of DNA exonerations — and the efforts to uncover how the courts failed so miserably — have revealed troubling gaps in the criminal justice system: Eyewitnesses are more fallible than jurors might think; forensic evidence isn't always reliable or interpreted correctly; the way police run lineups can lead to wrongful convictions. The trouble is, those problems may just as easily plague cases in which no DNA exists. Modern science has shown the justice system the tip of the iceberg, but how many innocent men and women are suffering in prison and likely to stay there because they have no evidence to test? Where do law enforcement and innocence advocates, faced with sorting out the guilty and innocent, go from here?

In 1998, Duke's stepdaughter insisted that she lied when she told her aunt that he touched her inappropriately. Dallas criminal defense attorney Robert Udashen took Duke's case and filed a writ of habeas corpus claiming his innocence based on her changing her story. Though the director of the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center testified that the recantation was credible and no medical evidence of sexual abuse existed, both the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his conviction: Duke remained behind bars.

A decade later, Watkins took office and instituted an open file policy, making it easier for defense attorneys to obtain evidence from prosecutors. Udashen requested a review of Duke's case, and last March he caught a huge break. Prosecution files revealed that the girl's maternal grandmother, who died in 2006, had given a statement saying she believed the child was lying and that her aunt coerced her accusation. The statement, made before Duke's trial and previously unknown to Duke's defense attorneys, corroborated the recantation.

"That's really the only thing that changed," Udashen says, but it was enough for a new hearing in front of Judge Hawk, who declared Duke "actually innocent," meaning that with the new evidence, no reasonable jury would have found Duke guilty.

"The DNA exonerations have sensitized everybody to the fact that there are a lot of innocent people in prison," says Gary Udashen. The brothers' firm has represented 11 exonerees. They buck the Dallas County trend in that most of their cases have not been rooted in DNA evidence, and they were successful with several exonerations even before Watkins took office.

Nationwide, there have been more than 800 exonerations since 1989, a majority of which are non-DNA cases. Since DNA evidence was stored indefinitely in Dallas County and Watkins has been actively pursuing DNA cases, Dallas, with a sweeping majority of DNA-based cases, is out of step with the nation.
http://www.dallasobserver.com/2011-12-29/news/beyond-dna-difficult-tests-for-the-justice-system/

Change your Facebook setting now to avoid letting people hijack your account.

2011-12-28T08:32:00.000-05:00

Facebook finally provided a way to keep any random jerk in the café from hijacking your account. But you have to go out of your way to enable this protection, and you might have to wait. Still: Jump on this.

Facebook has at long last offered an option to use the encrypted "HTTPS" protocol, a feature it will begin rolling out today but won't finish for a "few weeks." You should check now if it's available, and sign up as soon as it is enabled for your account. The performance overhead is minor—zippy Gmail, for example, uses HTTPS for everything—and it's an important step to keep your Facebook account safe from being hijacked on an open or poorly secured wireless network.

By default, Facebook sends your access credentials in the clear, with no encryption whatsoever. Switching to HTTPS is important because a browser extension called Firesheep has made it especially easy for anyone sharing your open wireless network—at cafe or conference, for example—to sniff your credentials and freely access your account. One blogger sitting in a random New York Starbucks was able to steal 20-40 Facebook identities in half an hour. HTTPS solves this longstanding problem by encrypting your login cookies and other data; in fact the inventor of Firesheep made the software to encourage companies like Facebook to finally lock down their systems.

You can sign up for Facebook HTTPS by going to Account Settings and then selecting "Account Security," third from the bottom. Then click under "Secure Browsing" — if it's there. Facebook says everyone should have this by the end of the day, but in the meantime you might be missing the relevant option toggle.
http://gawker.com/5744229/the-facebook-setting-you-should-change-as-quickly-as-possible

Elected officials in questionable alliances with gangs in an effort to secure votes.

2011-12-28T08:27:00.001-05:00

Chicago, IL- A few months before last February’s citywide elections, Hal Baskin’s phone started ringing. And ringing. Most of the callers were candidates for Chicago City Council, seeking the kind of help Baskin was uniquely qualified to provide.

Baskin isn’t a slick campaign strategist. He’s a former gang leader and, for several decades, a community activist who now operates a neighborhood center that aims to keep kids off the streets. Baskin has deep contacts inside the South Side’s complex network of politicians, community organizations, and street gangs. as he recalls, the inquiring candidates wanted to know: “Who do I need to be talking to so I can get the gangs on board?”

Baskin—who was himself a candidate in the 16th Ward aldermanic race, which he would lose—was happy to oblige. In all, he says, he helped broker meetings between roughly 30 politicians (ten sitting aldermen and 20 candidates for City Council) and at least six gang representatives. That claim is backed up by two other community activists, Harold Davis Jr. and Kublai K. M. Toure, who worked with Baskin to arrange the meetings, and a third participant, also a community activist, who requested anonymity. The gang representatives were former chiefs who had walked away from day-to-day thug life, but they were still respected on the streets and wielded enough influence to mobilize active gang members.

The gang representatives were interested in electing aldermen sympathetic to their interests and those of their impoverished wards. As for the politicians, says Baskin, their interests essentially boiled down to getting elected or reelected. “All of the political hopefuls were aware of who they were meeting with,” he says. “They didn’t care. All they wanted to do was get the support.”
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-An-Unholy-Alliance/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc

Ten Illinois legislators who logged the most recorded requests for transfers of prisoners—and the gang members they've helped:
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-Prisoner-Shuffle/

Wrongful incarcerations totaled 1,480 in the last five years, a Times report finds.

2011-12-28T08:15:00.000-05:00

CA- Hundreds of people have been wrongly imprisoned inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department jails in recent years, with some spending weeks behind bars before authorities realized those arrested were mistaken for wanted criminals, a Times investigation has found.

The wrongful incarcerations occurred more than 1,480 times in the last five years. They were the result of a variety of factors, including officials' overlooking fingerprint evidence and working off incomplete records.

The errors are so common that in some years people were jailed because of mistaken identity an average of once a day.

Many of those wrongly held inside the county's lockups had the same names as criminals or had their identities stolen — problems that took days or weeks for authorities to sort out.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wrong-id-20111225,0,7157038.story

Full Report: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jails-sg,0,4834651.storygallery

Sheriff Lee Baca to create task force to address wrongful jailings:
The L.A. County sheriff's move comes in response to a Los Angeles Times investigation that found that wrongful incarcerations occurred more than 1,480 times in the last five years.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wrong-id-jails-20111228,0,3640104.story

Amazon may begin spying on Kindle users.

2011-12-28T08:08:00.000-05:00

We don't need to tell you how big an issue tracking software is. What we do need to tell you about is a new patent from Amazon that lays out its plan to track and predict your movements via mobile devices.

Made public last week, the patent describes a system that allows mobile devices — read Kindles, or a future Amazon phone — to track the geographical position of users, and then use that information to predict their likely next steps. The intention is then to use that information to better target ads, coupons, or other messages, that could appear either on the mobile device itself, or on big screens or other displays on the person's route.

Though the patent's not clear what data it would use to do all this, it could obviously use GPS, cell tower triangulation, or, to make it work with all Kindles, even wifi connections to spot location. That same data can then be used to estimate speed and direction of travel in order to predict future movements. The patent also describes how the predicted location would be used to take bids from third parties that want to send marketing messages. That's not a new concept in itself, but tied in with geographical targeting and digital snooping, it makes for a potent combination.
http://gawker.com/5868327/will-amazon-soon-spy-on-you-through-your-kindle?tag=privacy

Retailers are watching you shop, how long before authorities are linked to the feeds?

2011-12-27T08:32:00.002-05:00

To get a better understanding of their customers in real time, mall operators are monitoring shoppers’ behavior with devices that track mobile-phone signals, while retailers including Montblanc, T-Mobile, and Family Dollar Stores are finding new uses for old tools such as in-store security cameras. The goal is to divine which variables affect a purchase, then act with Web-like nimbleness to deploy more salespeople, alter displays, or put out red blouses instead of blue. Until recently, “stores have been a black hole,” says Alexei Agratchev, chief executive officer of consultancy RetailNext. “People were convinced something was true and spending tens of millions based on that” without evidence to back it up.

Agratchev says RetailNext was founded in 2007 to change that. It helps retailers build systems to better understand customer behavior. In most cases, the company relies on the video from a store’s existing security camera system. That feed is run through RetailNext’s software, which analyzes the video and correlates it with sales data. The software can also integrate data from hardware such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips and motion sensors to track how often a brand of cereal is picked up or how many customers turn left when they enter a store. The company now has 40 retailer clients, including American Apparel and Family Dollar, and another 20 are testing the systems. RetailNext’s data sometimes refutes conventional wisdom. For instance, many food manufacturers pay a premium for their products to be displayed at the end of an aisle. But customers pay greater attention to products placed in the center of an aisle, according to RetailNext’s analysis.

Luxury retailer Montblanc began testing RetailNext’s video analytics at a store in Miami six months ago. Employees have used it to generate maps showing which parts of the store are best-trafficked and to decide where to place in-store decorations, salespeople, and merchandise. Rodrigo Fajardo, Montblanc’s brand manager in Miami, says RetailNext’s analysis helps his team make decisions faster. “We aren’t taking six months to make a change,” he says. “We analyze one week, and the next week we are making the changes.” He says the software has helped boost sales 20 percent and that Montblanc plans to expand its use to a dozen locations.

T-Mobile employs similar technology from San Francisco’s 3VR, a maker of security systems. Two years ago, 3VR executives realized that its cameras could be used to gather consumer data, according to the company’s CEO, Al Shipp. He says T-Mobile, in Bellevue, Wash., uses 3VR’s technology in some of its retail stores to track how people move around, how long they stand in front of displays, and which phones they pick up and for how long. T-Mobile declined to comment. Now 3VR is testing facial-recognition software that can identify shoppers’ gender and approximate age. The software would give retailers a better handle on customer demographics and help them tailor promotions, Shipp says. “You’ll have the ability someday to measure every metric imaginable. We’re scratching the surface.”

Shopping centers using FootPath post signs near entrances and mall maps informing shoppers that their mobile phones are being tracked and to turn off their phones if they don’t want to be monitored.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/big-brother-is-watching-you-shop-12152011.html

Alarming study reveals our school children are being Tazered and pepper sprayed.

2011-12-27T08:22:00.001-05:00

There is something truly disturbing about a society that seeks to control the behavior of schoolchildren through fear and violence, a tactic that harkens back to an era of paddle-bruised behinds and ruler-slapped wrists. Yet, some American school districts are pushing the boundaries of corporal punishment even further with the use of Tasers against unruly schoolchildren.

The deployment of Tasers against “problem” students coincides with the introduction of police officers on school campuses, also known as School Resource Officers (SROs). According to the Los Angeles Times, as of 2009, the number of SROs carrying Tasers was well over 4,000.

A joint investigation carried out by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch found that students with disabilities “are subjected to violent discipline at disproportionately high rates.” Students with disabilities made up 19 percent of the nearly 250,000 public school students subjected to “violent” and “degrading” punishment in the 2006-2007 school year, despite being just 14 percent of the student population. Autistic students in particular, were “likely to be punished for behaviors common to their condition, stemming from difficulties with appropriate social behavior.”

Cruel punishments were also disproportionately dished out to black students, who during that same school year made up 35.6 percent of abused students but only 17.1 percent of the nationwide student population.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/153536/madness%3A_even_school_children_are_being_pepper-sprayed_and_shocked_with_tasers_/?page=entire

South Carolina- DNA points to another suspect so why is the prosecution still charging Billy Wayne Cope with murder?

2011-12-26T08:08:00.001-05:00

Columbia, SC- A life sentence given in a York County murder case before the S.C. Supreme Court has attracted the attention of veteran ex-prosecutors and national legal experts, who say it is a classic case of an innocent man being sentenced to life in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.

The case of the State vs. Billy Wayne Cope involves a surprise DNA match, a possible false confession and questions about whether police and prosecutors overreached.

“Whatever the Supreme Court decides to do, we will be teaching this case for the rest of my career,” said University of South Carolina Law School legal ethics professor Greg Adams.

Last month, Adams devoted an entire legal ethics class before some 50 second- and third-year law students to the case. Cope, now 48, in 2004 was convicted of murder and criminal sexual conduct in the strangling death of his daughter Amanda, 12.

In February, Cope’s case will be a centerpiece of a two-day national conference at USC on ethical questions surrounding prosecutors in wrongful-conviction cases, Adams said.

For 20 months, the case has been before the S.C. Supreme Court. It has not yet decided whether to grant a hearing for a new trial.

A major issue stems from DNA found in saliva and semen on Amanda’s body. It was a perfect match but not for Cope.

Instead, the DNA matched that of James Sanders, now 52, an ex-con, sex predator and burglar later charged with breaking into four houses in Cope’s neighborhood and assaulting women just after Amanda was murdered. Police didn’t learn that DNA results linked Sanders but not Cope to Amanda until nine months after Cope had been charged.
http://www.thesunnews.com/2011/12/17/2555242/disputed-dna-murder-case-in-limbo.html

Seattle- A recently released report on officer-involved shootings says SPD culture must change.

2011-12-26T08:03:00.000-05:00

SEATTLE - A recently-released report on officer involved shootings in Seattle recommends many of the same changes now set forth by federal investigators.

Rebecca Roe, a former senior deputy prosecutor for King County, authored the Citizen's Report.

Roe's 2010 report found that five of the six Seattle Police Department officer involved shootings were justified, but it also calls for additional training for officers dealing with confrontations. The report highlights areas where Roe believes officers need additional training on how to "disengage peacefully from situations where their authority has been legitimately challenged."

"If you approach somebody who is not doing anything wrong and you want to talk to them but they don't want to talk to you, they don't have to talk to you," Roe said.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/New-report--136052748.html?tab=video&c=y

Firearms Review Board Citizens Observer Report 2010:
http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/~CFS/CF_311849.pdf

The CIA's watchdog has no problem with it's relationship with the NYPD.

2011-12-26T07:57:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON - The CIA said Friday its internal watchdog found nothing wrong with the spy agency's close partnership with the New York Police Department.

The agency's inspector general concluded that no laws were broken and there was "no evidence that any part of the agency's support to the NYPD constituted 'domestic spying'," CIA spokesperson Preston Golson said.

The inspector general decided to do a preliminary investigation after a series of stories by The Associated Press revealed how after the 9/11 attacks the CIA helped the NYPD build domestic intelligence programs that were used to spy on Muslims. A CIA officer also directed intelligence collection and reviewed reports, according to former NYPD officials involved.

The revelations troubled some members of Congress and even prompted the U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper, to remark that it did not look good for the CIA to be involved in any city police department. Thirty-four lawmakers have asked for the Justice Department to investigate but so far that request has gone nowhere.
http://www.officer.com/news/10576864/cia-watchdog-has-no-problem-with-nypd-partnership

The Pentagon influenced TV analysts so the public would support Iraq/Afghanistan wars.

2011-12-26T07:44:00.002-05:00

In January 2009, the inspector general’s office issued a report that said it had found no wrongdoing in the program. But soon after, the inspector general’s office retracted the entire report, saying it was so riddled with inaccuracies and flaws that none of its conclusions could be relied upon. In late 2009, the inspector general’s office began a new inquiry.

The results of the new inquiry, first reported by The Washington Times, confirm that the Pentagon under Donald H. Rumsfeld made a concerted effort starting in 2002 to reach out to network military analysts to build and sustain public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The inquiry found that from 2002 to 2008, Mr. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon organized 147 events for 74 military analysts. These included 22 meetings at the Pentagon, 114 conference calls with generals and senior Pentagon officials and 11 Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Twenty of the events, according to a 35-page report of the inquiry’s findings, involved Mr. Rumsfeld or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or both.

One retired officer, the report said, recalled Mr. Rumsfeld telling him: “You guys influence a wide range of people. We’d like to be sure you have the facts.”

The inspector general’s investigation grappled with the question of whether the outreach constituted an earnest effort to inform the public or an improper campaign of news media manipulation.

One military analyst described the talking points as “bullet points given for a political purpose.” Another military analyst, the report said, told investigators that the outreach program’s intent “was to move everyone’s mouth on TV as a sock puppet.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/us/pentagon-finds-no-fault-in-its-ties-to-tv-analysts.html?_r=1&hp

Inaccurate background checks can have devastating consequences.

2011-12-19T08:32:00.002-05:00

The business of background checks is booming. Employers spend at least $2 billion a year to look into the pasts of their prospective employees. They want to make sure they're not hiring a thief, or worse.

But it is a system weakened by the conversion to digital files and compromised by the welter of private companies that profit by amassing public records and selling them to employers. These flaws have devastating consequences.

It is a system in which the most sensitive information from people's pasts is bought and sold as a commodity.

A system in which computers scrape the public files of court systems around the country to retrieve personal data. But a system in which what they retrieve isn't checked for errors that would be obvious to human eyes.

A system that can damage reputations and, in a time of precious few job opportunities, rob honest workers of a chance at a new start.

Those are the results of an investigation by The Associated Press that included a review of thousands of pages of court filings and interviews with dozens of court officials, data providers, lawyers, victims and regulators.

"It's an entirely new frontier," says Leonard Bennett, a Virginia lawyer who has represented hundreds of plaintiffs alleging they were the victims of inaccurate background checks. "They're making it up as they go along."

Two decades ago, if a county wanted to update someone's criminal record, a clerk had to put a piece of paper in a file. And if you wanted to read about someone's criminal past, you had to walk into a courthouse and thumb through it. Today, half the courts in the United States put criminal records on their public websites.

Digitization was supposed to make criminal records easier to access and easier to update. To protect privacy, laws were passed requiring courts to redact some information, such as birth dates and Social Security numbers, before they put records online. But digitization perpetuates errors.

"There's very little human judgment," says Sharon Dietrich, an attorney with Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, a law firm focused on poorer clients. Dietrich represents victims of inaccurate background checks. "They don't seem to have much incentive to get it right."

Dietrich says her firm fields about twice as many complaints about inaccurate background checks as it did five years ago.

The mix-ups can start with a mistake entered into the logs of a law enforcement agency or a court file. The biggest culprits, though, are companies that compile databases using public information.

In some instances, their automated formulas misinterpret the information provided them. Other times, records wind up assigned to the wrong people with a common name.

Another common problem: When a government agency erases a criminal conviction after a designated period of good behavior, many of the commercial databases don't perform the updates required to purge offenses that have been wiped out from public record.

It hasn't helped that dozens of databases are now run by mom-and-pop businesses with limited resources to monitor the accuracy of the records.http://www.telegram.com/article/20111216/NEWS/111219555/1116

A new study says nearly 1 in 3 Americans will be arrested before they reach 23 years old.

2011-12-19T07:58:00.001-05:00

Nearly one in three people will be arrested by the time they are 23, a study to be published today in Pediatrics found.

"Arrest is a pretty common experience," says Robert Brame, a criminologist at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and principal author of the study.

The new data show a sharp increase from a previous study that stunned the American public when it was published 44 years ago by criminologist Ron Christensen. That study found 22% of youth would be arrested by age 23. The latest study finds 30.2% of young people will be arrested by age 23.

Criminologist Alfred Blumstein says the increase in arrests for young people in the latest study is unsurprising given several decades of tough crime policies.

The new study is an analysis of data collected between 1997 and 2008 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The annual surveys conducted over 11 years asked children, teens and young adults between the ages of 8 and 23 whether they had ever been arrested by police or taken into custody for illegal or delinquent offenses.

The question excluded only minor traffic offenses, so youth could have included arrests for a wide variety of offenses such as truancy, vandalism, underage drinking, shoplifting, robbery, assault and murder — any encounter with police perceived as an arrest, Brame says. Some of the incidents perceived and reported by the young people as arrests may not have resulted in criminal charges, he says.

“This estimate provides a real sense that the proportion of people who have criminal history records is sizable and perhaps much larger than most people would expect,” said Shawn Bushway, a criminologist at the State University at Albany and a co-author of the study, which appears in Monday’s issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The study analyzed data collected as part of the federal government’s National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The 7,335 participants were nationally representative and ranged in age from 12 to 16 when they were enrolled in the survey in 1996. The first interviews were conducted in 1997. Follow-up interviews have been carried out annually since then.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth:
http://www.bls.gov/nls/

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-12-19/youth-arrests-increase/52055700/1?loc=interstitialskip

The lack of autopsies being performed in hospitals allow them to hide possible malpractice.

2011-12-19T07:43:00.000-05:00

A half-century ago, an autopsy would have been routine. autopsies, sometimes called the ultimate medical audit, were an integral part of American health care, performed on roughly half of all patients who died in hospitals. Today, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show, they are conducted on about 5 percent of such patients.

Sudden unexpected deaths do not trigger postmortem reviews. Hospitals are not required to offer or perform autopsies. Insurers don’t pay for them. Some facilities and doctors shy away from them, fearing they may reveal malpractice. The downward trend is well-known — it’s been studied for years.

What has not been appreciated, pathologists and public health officials say, are the far-reaching consequences for U.S. health care of minuscule autopsy rates.

Diagnostic errors, which studies show are common, go undiscovered, allowing physicians to practice on other patients with a false sense of security. Opportunities are lost to learn about the effectiveness of medical treatments and the progression of diseases. Inaccurate information winds up on death certificates, undermining the reliability of crucial health statistics.

For the last year, ProPublica, PBS “Frontline” and NPR have probed America’s deeply flawed system of death investigation, focusing primarily on forensic autopsies, which are conducted by coroners’ offices and medical examiners when there is suspicion of an unnatural death. State laws vary, but the preponderance of deaths that occur in hospitals are considered natural. When deaths are unexplained, unobserved or within 24 hours of admission, hospitals may be required to report them to local coroners or medical examiners, but such agencies rarely take hospital cases.

Hospital physicians, with consent from patients’ next of kin, may order a clinical autopsy to explore the disease process in the body and determine the cause of death. That was the norm 50 years ago, when the value of the autopsy was considered self-evident.

“Much of what we know about medicine comes from the autopsy,” said Dr. Stephen Cina, chairman of the forensic pathology committee for the College of American Pathologists. “You really can’t say for sure what went on or didn’t go on without the autopsy as a quality assurance tool.”

“I know new hospitals are being built these days without a place to do an autopsy,” said Dr. Dean Havlik, the Mesa County, Colo., coroner, who estimated that the overall hospital autopsy rate in his area is less than 1 percent.

Hospitals have powerful financial incentives to avoid autopsies. An autopsy costs about $1,275, according to a survey of hospitals in eight states. But Medicare and private insurers don’t pay for them directly, typically limiting reimbursement to procedures used to diagnose and treat the living. Medicare bundles payments for autopsies into overall payments to hospitals for quality assurance, increasing the incentive to skip them, said Dr. John Sinard, director of autopsy service for the Yale University School of Medicine.

“The hospital is going to get the money whether they do the autopsy or not, so the autopsy just becomes an expense,” Sinard said.
http://www.propublica.org/article/without-autopsies-hospitals-bury-their-mistakes

AT&T and Sprint claim their customers agreed to be tracked by Carrier IQ.

2011-12-19T07:34:00.001-05:00

More than two weeks ago, security researcher Trevor Eckhart posted a video about Carrier IQ, an obscure software installed on approximately 150 million smartphones. The 17-minute video sparked a firestorm not only because it alleged the software logged numerous details about users' activities, but also because it did so without their knowledge.

But this week, two wireless carriers that use Carrier IQ's software said customers should not have been surprised that some of their activities were being tracked. In letters to Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who asked them to explain how they used the software, AT&T and Sprint said Carrier IQ's capabilities were clearly outlined in their privacy policies.

AT&T gives "clear notice" to customers that "we collect network, performance and usage information from our network and customer devices, and we use that information to maintain and improve our network and their wireless experience," wrote Timothy McKone, AT&T's executive vice president for federal relations.

"Sprint believes customers expect service providers and network operators to take reasonable technological steps to maintain the performance of their networks and device functionality in order to effectively deliver call and data services to users," wrote Vonya McCann, senior vice president for government affairs at Sprint. "Sprint's privacy policy contains notice of the information we collect."

According to reports, Sprint says it is disabling Carrier IQ software on its devices.

Samsung and HTC, which also wrote letters to Franken, said they install Carrier IQ software on their devices at the behest of mobile carriers and do not receive data collected by the software. Franken gave T-Mobile and Motorola until Dec. 20 to explain their usage of Carrier IQ's software.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/17/att-sprint-carrier-iq-customers-agreed_n_1155040.html

Are deaf people receiving a fair trial in our justice system?

2011-12-19T07:31:00.001-05:00

On August 4, 1981, Felix Garcia accompanied his brother Frank, his sister Tina, and her boyfriend, Ray Stanley, to a pawnshop. Frank had a ring he wanted to hock. He said he didn't have his ID and asked Felix to sign the pawn ticket. The ring, it turned out, belonged to a man who'd been murdered the day before at a motel. Six days later police, having traced the ticket, arrested Felix at Tina and Ray's house.

Felix now says that he didn't understand the officer who read him his Miranda rights. In any case, he insisted he knew nothing about the crime, and he refused to sign a statement for the police. Michelle and her mother both later testified that Felix was with them at the time of the killing, eating pizza and watching videos at the mother's home. But Frank—who knew the victim and had left fingerprints at the scene—cut a deal with the state to avoid the death penalty. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and armed robbery and fingered Felix as the killer. Tina—who married Ray shortly after the arrest—also agreed to testify against her younger brother. It wasn't until nearly a quarter century later that Frank would confess that Felix had had nothing to do with the crime.

At Felix's trial, in 1983, an expert declared that the defendant had a 70-decibel hearing loss, which is considered severe deafness. Through most of the proceedings, he had cotton in his ears to stop the pus. Felix was given a hearing aid, which he said didn't work, and a loudspeaker, which amplified noise but didn't help him understand what people were saying. He tried to read lips, but the prosecutor often faced away from him, and he had no clear view of the witness box. In other words, he was largely clueless as to what was going on.

"Deaf people have a hard time when they are thrown into the criminal-justice system," says MacKay Vernon, a psychologist and authority on the deaf who is familiar with the details of Felix's situation. "The courts—judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers—just don't understand what they're up against. Turning up the sound system doesn't mean the defendant better understands what's going on. He just hears more noise. In the case of Felix, sign language interpreters wouldn't be much help because at the time of the trial he couldn't understand signs. And anyhow, sign language interpreters can't keep up with the speech in courts. Moreover, deaf people often don't have the vocabulary to understand. Their ability to read can lag far behind hearing people."

The first motion, arguing that Felix's constitutional rights were violated because of his inability to understand trial testimony, was quickly shot down. In Florida, as in many states, defendants have only two years from the time of their direct appeal to file such motions. The deadline for Felix had passed some 12 years earlier.

Traditionally, the federal courts have provided recourse for constitutional claims that have timed out in state courts. But the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, championed by Bill Clinton and passed with broad bipartisan support in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, imposed time limits on such cases. "These statutes of limitations are just killers," says Steve Bright, senior counsel at the Southern Center for Human Rights, noting that the law cuts off appeals even in capital cases.

Laura Rovner, a former attorney for the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) who now runs the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law, says Felix could well have had his conviction overturned were it not for that missed deadline. Under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, any entity receiving federal money needs to have an effective communication system in place for the deaf or hard of hearing. "It is hard to think of a situation where that is more critical than where somebody is being tried for a serious crime," Rovner says.

The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) strengthened that requirement, demanding that the criminal-justice system take "appropriate steps" to make sure a disabled person can communicate as effectively as anyone else. This might require "appropriate auxiliary aids and services," such as a setup akin to closed captioning or an oral interpreter to facilitate lip reading.

In fact, criminal justice agencies "frequently do not honor the letter and spirit of the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act," says Howard Rosenblum, who heads the NAD. "The challenge has been to actually litigate against every law enforcement agency, lawyer, court, and prison that violate the requirements." The Justice Department could enforce the requirements, he adds, but to a large degree has failed to do so. (The DOJ asked me to submit written questions for this story but did not respond to them by press time.)
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/deaf-prisoners-felix-garcia

The Dept. of Justice report says the Seattle police department used excessive force.

2011-12-17T09:29:00.003-05:00

The Seattle Police Department has broken its trust with the community by using excessive force, charged federal investigators who called for more training and better supervision.
The conclusions were reached after more than eight months of investigation into the department's use of force, Assistant Atty. Gen. Thomas E. Perez of the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division told reporters Friday at a Seattle news conference.

"We found that the systems of accountability are broken. Accountability is at the heart of constitutional policing," Perez said, adding that the Justice Department would work with local officials to improve training and supervision. "The trust between the Seattle Police Department and the people of Seattle is broken and must be repaired."

While insistent in calling for change, including a court monitor to check on progress, federal officials stopped short of finding that the police had engaged in discriminatory policing, and were gracious to the department, which has been under community fire after several cases of violence against minorities. U.S. Atty. Jenny A. Durkan cited the city's cooperation with the investigation and willingness to make changes as reasons to be optimistic.

"We take the allegations very seriously," Mayor Mike McGinn said in a telephone interview, adding that the city was looking forward to working with Justice officials. "I and Police Chief John Diaz are committed to the best police force possible, open and transparent. We will continue to work building trust with community."

The Justice Department is investigating about 20 police departments across the country, Perez said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-justice-seattle-20111217,0,7302236.story

Dept. of Justice Report on the Seattle police department: http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/spd_findletter_12-16-11.pdf

UK- Police include Occupy movement on ‘terror’ list, how long before the US follows suit?

2011-12-16T09:17:00.003-05:00

The city of London police have sparked controversy by producing a brief in which the Occupy London movement is listed under domestic terrorism/extremism threats to City businesses.

The document was given to protesters at their “Bank of Ideas” base on Sun Street – a former site of financial corporation UBS. City police have stepped up an effort to quell the movement since they occupied the building on 18 November, with the document stating: “It is likely that activists aspire to identify other locations to occupy, especially those they identify with capitalism.

“Intelligence suggests that urban explorers are holding a discussion at the Sun Street squat. This may lead to an increase in urban exploration activity at abandoned or high profile sites in the capital.” The Occupy movement is listed alongside threats posed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), Al Qaeda and Belarusian terrorists.

“Just the words themselves are enough to deceive the public opinion and this is what we see at the moment,” Occupy spokesman Spyro Van Leemnen told Yahoo! News. “We are clearly nothing to do with extremists or terrorists, we are a peaceful group and we do use direct action to raise our point but definitely not terrorism.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/police-include-occupy-movement-on-%E2%80%98terror%E2%80%99-list.html

ACLU report- Protecting privacy from aerial drones.

2011-12-16T08:33:00.002-05:00

The federal government has held up the domestic use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) out of concern for the safety of U.S. airspace. The use of UAVs have been mostly limited to the U.S.-Mexico border and in war-zones outside the country.

But pressure is going on the FAA to make it easier for law enforcement agencies to gain permission to use UAVs. “Proposed legislation would require the FAA to grant permits more quickly and allow broader use of the technology by 2015,” the ACLU report states. “Meanwhile, amid the mounting pressure, the FAA is planning to create a more permissive approval system for commercial UAV operations, which have been severely restricted until now.”

There are hundreds of different models of UAVs, from large fixed-wing aircraft to a tiny drone called the Nano Hummingbird. The drones employ a wide range of surveillance technology as well, including high-power zoom lenses, infrared and ultraviolet imaging, see-through imaging and video analytics. Some drones are also large enough to be fitted with weapons.

“Our privacy laws are not strong enough to ensure that the new technology will be used responsibly and consistently with democratic values,” warns the ACLU report. “We need a system of rules to ensure that we can enjoy the benefits of this technology without bringing us a large step closer to a ‘surveillance society’ in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded and scrutinized by the authorities.”
https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/protectingprivacyfromaerialsurveillance.pdf

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/15/police-departments-could-soon-have-easier-access-to-airborne-drones-report/

Genealogy websites remove deceased individuals SSN #'s from their listings.

2011-12-16T08:29:00.000-05:00

Washington, DC - The world's largest commercial genealogy website this week removed the Social Security numbers of recently deceased individuals, two weeks after lawmakers urged the site, Ancestry.com, to stop enabling ID thieves by posting the sensitive information.

A spokeswoman for the Provo, Utah, company said that "there was some sensitivity" about the company policy of releasing the numbers. That led to a "purposeful decision" to not post the numbers for those who have died in the last 10 years, spokeswoman Heather Erickson said.

An employee with a second website, Genealogybank.com, said that the Naples, Fla., company also has decided to stop posting Social Security numbers.

The moves come six weeks after a Scripps Howard News Service investigation showed how people obtain and use the deceased's Social Security numbers -- which are freely released by the government -- to commit identity fraud, including submitting false tax returns and collecting refunds.

The lawmakers are continuing to press Social Security to limit the information it releases. The agency has said it cannot act until Congress changes the law, and a spokesman did not return a request for comment for this article.
http://scrippsnews.com/content/genealogy-sites-remove-social-security-numbers-deceased

Justice dept. finds widespread use of excessive force by Seattle police.

2011-12-16T08:03:00.000-05:00

A federal civil-rights investigation into the Seattle Police Department has found routine and widespread use of excessive force by officers, and city and police officials were told at a stormy Thursday night meeting that they must fix the problems or face a federal lawsuit, according to two sources.

The meeting, attended by Mayor Mike McGinn, Police Chief John Diaz, members of his command staff and others, ended in raised voices and bitter accusations by city and police officials, upset at the Justice Department's findings, the sources said. One source said the language in the agency's report, to be officially released Friday, is "astoundingly critical" of the department.

The sources confirmed the city will get a chance to work with the Justice Department to address the issues, or it will face a federal lawsuit that could result in fines, penalties and even the appointment of an outside special master to oversee the Police Department.

The Justice Department's most recently announced findings, released Thursday and detailing widespread racial profiling by the Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff's Office, took more than three years. See article below...

Department of Justice letter to the Seattle police department November 2012: http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/268702-doj-letter-to-spd

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017026414_doj16m.html

Probe Finds Arizona Sheriff Violated Civil Rights.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice released the results of a three-year investigation in which authorities conclude that Arpaio and his deputies are the ones who have been breaking the law.

According to investigators, Arpaio's office was found to routinely discriminate against Latinos and retaliate against its critics, in violation of both the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act. Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, says his investigation also uncovered widespread racial profiling.

"Our expert found that Latino drivers were four to nine times more likely to be stopped than similarly situated non-Latino drivers," Perez says, adding that they were often stopped for no good cause. "This expert concluded that this case involved the most egregious racial profiling in the United States that he had ever personally observed in the course of his work."

Federal investigators made two more critical findings regarding the Maricopa County sheriff's office. The first is an illegal pattern of retaliation that they say comes straight from the top of the department.

Justice Department findings Maricopa County, AZ:
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/274910-justice-department-findings-in-its-investigation.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/us/arizona-sheriffs-office-unfairly-targeted-latinos-justice-department-says.html

DHS and an American-Israeli anti terror think tank are accused of spying on environmental protestors.

2011-12-15T08:36:00.004-05:00

HARRISBURG, PA - The Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition sufficiently pleaded First Amendment violations in its lawsuit against an American-Israeli anti-terror think tank that contracted with Pennsylvania's Office of Homeland Security to keep tabs on environmentalists' protests against natural gas drillers, a federal judge ruled.

     U.S. District Judge William Caldwell denied qualified immunity to defendant James Powers Jr., the former director of Pennsylvania's Office of Homeland Security, who allegedly approved the contract.But Caldwell dismissed the Coalition's request for an injunction prohibiting the defendant Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITTR) from acting as a state agent to surveil groups engaging in peaceful First Amendment conduct in Pennsylvania.

     The alleged contract has been canceled and the requested injunction is therefore "overreaching," the judge found in an 18-page opinion filed Monday.

     According to the Coalition's September 2010 lawsuit, the group was swept up "in a prolonged and secret campaign of domestic surveillance" after Powers gave the green light to a $125,000 contract for the Institute to "regularly surveil and report on potential terrorist threats against ... Pennsylvania's critical infrastructure."

     That surveillance was published in the form of tri-weekly "Pennsylvania Intelligence Bulletins" which "were routinely transmitted to Marcellus gas drilling 'stakeholders'" and to law-enforcement agencies to keep them abreast of "plaintiff's campaign against their unregulated drilling plans," according to the complaint.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/12/14/42225.htm

Court Filing: http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/12/14/Fracking.pdf

Could being Facebook "friends" overturn a conviction?

2011-12-15T08:31:00.001-05:00

Blogging lawyers and tweeting jurors already are under scrutiny as social media invades the country’s courtrooms.

Now, a Wilmington woman found guilty of battering a child wants her conviction overturned partly because members of her alleged victim’s family are Facebook “friends” with her judge’s children. They could take their argument to a Joliet courtroom Wednesday.

Kelly A. Klein and her attorney, Steven Becker, argue in court filings that Will County Judge Daniel Rozak should have recused himself before presiding over Klein’s bench trial and finding her guilty in June. They’ve filled her case file with printouts of his son’s and daughters’ Facebook pages, and they claim the relationship between the Rozaks and the Basham Family goes deeper than a simple social-media connection.

“It is now apparent that the Facebook friendships between the Rozaks and the Bashams are only the tip of the iceberg,” Becker wrote.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/9422311-417/facebook-friends-of-will-county-judges-children-at-issue-in-new-trial-bid.html?intcmp=emailheadlines

The FBI might have access to every keystroke on your smartphone.

2011-12-15T08:14:00.002-05:00

Criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield has an interesting commentary on revelations that the FBI may be availing itself of some of Carrier IQ’s “features” that its customers may be deploying:

… this doesn’t mean they already have their hands on your text messages, or even that there’s any cooperation on the part of Carrier IQ. Indeed, there may be a passel of issues surrounding any effort to gain access to every keystroke you ever tapped on your smartphone, though it would appear that since it’s in the hands of a third party, no Fourth Amendment right attaches. On the other hand, since no one knew this was happening, and it came as a huge, and scandalous surprise to the public, a court should be hard pressed to conclude that it passes scrutiny under Katz’s reasonable expectation of privacy test.

But now you do know. And so does the FBI. And as long as you continue to tap, tap, tap on that cute little qwerky keyboard, you can’t deny you took the risk of exposure to the government by Carrier IQ.

We’re inundated with the magic of technology, making our world easier, faster and perpetually more fabulous. Those who adore technology gush over every shiny new toy. And to a large extent, the toys are great fun and occasionally useful. But nobody wants to be serious about the perils. And there is no shortage of perils.

My deep understanding of all things technical precludes me from discussing the potential of evils that could stem from this rootkit. I don’t even know what a rootkit is. But I know too well that the government will have no qualms about using it to their advantage if they can get their hands on it.

So enjoy those new, shiny toys. Tap to your heart’s content. Hang in the clouds. Eventually, we’ll find out whether you had some unexpected company with you, and by the time it reaches a circuit court and a decision is made about how unreasonable you were to expect that your private, personal communications and messages would remain private, it will be too late to worry about it. By then, you will be informed that everyone knows that there’s no privacy in the technological, digital, shiny toy world. But by then, it will be too late to worry about it.
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2011/12/13/the-fbi-reads-the-internet-too.aspx

Newly released emails show a disturbing relationship between American Traffic Solutions and police.

2011-12-14T08:41:00.001-05:00

The distinction between employees for a private photo enforcement firm and taxpayer-funded public servants blurred in the city of Lynnwood, Washington. Emails between city officials and American Traffic Solutions (ATS) suggest a cozy relationship developed where both sides were willing to perform the duties of the other in terms of marketing and public relations.

Lynnwood Police Sergeant Wayne "Kawika" Davis, for example, used official government resources and time to come up with a marketing plan to sell for the privately held firm at a conference held at the Tulalip Resort Casino in June.

"Ray, I really believe this is a great venue for ATS exposure," Davis wrote in a May 19 email to ATS project manager Ray Pedrosa. "I have some ideas that really could market ATS in WA, ID, OR and Canada. I know you are already in some of these areas; however, there is a lot more business to be had. Is there someone in marketing that you might turn me on to?

ATS was equally generous in inviting municipal employees from across the country to attend a complimentary seminar in Arizona discussing "tips and tricks for speaking with the media" regarding red light cameras and "when to panic, when to relax" regarding efforts in the state legislature to restrict automated ticketing. Airfare, lodging and wages during such events is considered official business and paid by taxpayers. ATS picked up the rest of the tab, for which municipal employees expressed gratitude.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/36/3663.asp
ATS emails: http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2011/wa-atsemail.pdf

Carrier IQ claims it wants to be transparent about its monitoring of smart phones.

2011-12-14T08:16:00.002-05:00

As the company prepares to answer the questions put to it by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, it’s hoping to set the record straight, once and for all, by publishing a definitive report (embedded below) on the functionality of its software, including an in-depth analysis of the video that inspired the allegations against it.

In an exclusive interview with AllThingsD, Carrier IQ CEO Larry Lenhart, and Andrew Coward, the company’s VP of marketing, discuss that report, why its software isn’t opt-in, and how it handles law enforcement requests.

This following statements reads like an incredible tale of fiction:

The document you’re releasing today says that a bug in your software may have caused some SMS messages to be unintentionally collected. Can you talk about this a bit? Should we worry?

Coward: As we went and did a deep dive into our technology to prove to consumers that there is nothing untoward in it, we found a bug. We found that if an SMS was sent simultaneously while a user is on the phone, the SMS would be captured by our software. Obviously, this is something that doesn’t happen very often, but we discovered that it could happen, and we caught it. Now, that information was never used. It wasn’t decoded. It sat on a server in encoded format, and no one could really get to it.

Lenhart: We didn’t even know the data was being captured. The actual information is in nonreadable format. And our customers didn’t know it was there. So it was never looked at. Over the past few weeks, we worked with our customers to resolve the issue.
http://allthingsd.com/20111213/carrier-iq-gets-transparent-about-its-mobile-monitoring/

Three of the four major cellular providers — AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint — have said they use the company’s software in line with their own privacy policies. A Verizon spokesman said the program is not on any of the company’s mobile devices. Apple has said it would remove Carrier IQ from iPhones in a future software update.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/feds-probing-carrier-iq/2011/12/14/gIQA9nCEuO_story.html

"In-Q-Tel: A New Partnership
Between the CIA and the Private Sector":

Readers should check out the link to the CIA which details Carrier IQ's relationship with them:

Why was In-Q-Tel Created?

The Agency’s leadership recognized that the CIA did not, and could not, compete for IT innovation and talent with the same speed and agility that those in the commercial marketplace, whose businesses are driven by "Internet time" and profit, could. The CIA’s mission was intelligence collection and analysis, not IT innovation. The leadership also understood that, in order to extend its reach and access a broad network of IT innovators, the Agency had to step outside of itself and appear not just as a buyer of IT but also as a seller. The CIA had to offer Silicon Valley something of value, a business model that the Valley understood; a model that provides those who joined hands with In-Q-Tel the opportunity to commercialize their innovations. In addition, In-Q-Tel’s partner companies would also gain another valuable asset, access to a set of very difficult CIA problems that could become market drivers. Once the Agency’s leadership crossed these critical decision points, the path that led to In-Q-Tel’s formation was clear.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/additional-publications/in-q-tel/index.html

New survey suggests more than 20,000 innocent people are behind bars in the US.

2011-12-14T07:59:00.001-05:00

Before we talk about how many people may be behind bars for crimes they did not commit, we must acknowledge that it's nearly impossible to know—only broad estimates are possible. There are several key reasons, experts say, why a number is so hard to ascertain. Because the sprawling criminal justice system is a patchwork of federal, state, county, and municipal courts, prisons, and jails—each with its own system (or lack thereof) of record-keeping and data-reporting—we don't even know how many people are convicted, let alone wrongfully convicted, of crimes in the United States. "We don’t even have a denominator," says University of Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett. "But the wrongful convictions we do know about suggest that there's a big problem."

Extrapolating from the 281 known DNA exonerations in the US since the late 1980s, a conservative estimate is that 1 percent of the US prison population, approximately 20,000 people, are falsely convicted.

Moreover, a tiny amount of total criminal cases actually go to trial. Nineteen out of twenty, or 95 percent, of convictions in the US are by plea bargain—and so we know little about them. They "generate virtually no records that can be retrieved," writes Gross: "no trial transcripts, no appeals, frequently no court hearings of any sort, in many cases no description of the investigation at all beyond a single police report, which (if it could be found) might include little factual information of any value."
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/innocent-people-us-prisons

FBI claims Carrier IQ files are being used for "law enforcement purposes."

2011-12-13T08:11:00.001-05:00

A recent FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for "manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ" was met with a telling denial. In it, the FBI stated it did have responsive documents - but they were exempt under a provision that covers materials that, if disclosed, might reasonably interfere with an ongoing investigation. The FBI tells the public we have documents detailing our work with Carrier IQ, but we're not going to tell you about it.

Carrier IQ came under fire after a security researcher demonstrated that the previously little-known company had software installed on a variety of phones on a variety of networks that could track user locations, keystrokes, encrypted Internet traffic and more, some of which was or could be sent back to either the cell phone owner's service provider or Carrier IQ's own servers.

What is still unclear is whether the FBI used Carrier IQ's software in its own investigations, whether it is currently investigating Carrier IQ, or whether it is some combination of both - not unlikely given the recent uproar over the practice coupled with the U.S. intelligence communities reliance on third-party vendors. The response would seem to indicate at least the former, since the request was specifically for documents related directly to accessing and analyzing Carrier IQ data.
http://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2011/dec/12/fbi-carrier-iq-files-used-law-enforcement-purposes/

http://gizmodo.com/5867427/the-fbi-is-using-carrier-iq-information

Should ICE be allowed to police itself?

2011-12-13T08:01:00.001-05:00

Immigrants in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are among the country’s most vulnerable detainees. Many speak little English, and fear retribution if they report sexual or physical abuse.

But a proposed rule released in January by the Department of Justice excluded them from the expanded federal protections against sexual abuse or harassment of prisoners under PREA, passed unanimously in 2003.

The proposed rule shocked civil liberties and immigrant rights advocates, said Joanne Lin, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But can ICE effectively police its far-flung facilities—many of which are operated by private companies or local law enforcement?

The problem was recognized by the 2009 report produced by the commission appointed to formulate national standards for the law. After five years of study, the commission called for a zero-tolerance policy for sex and sexual assault, limitations on cross-gender pat-downs and greater protections for juveniles in detention, among others.

Recommendations included special protections for ICE detainees, such as measures to assure they were separated from the general population in jails, to offer them access to counseling and to provide better access to outside groups for reporting.

“Because immigration detainees are confined by the agency with the power to deport them, officers have an astounding degree of leverage,” the commissioners wrote. “The fear of deportation cannot be overstated and also functions to silence many individuals who are sexually abused.”

ICE’s new standards, originally slated to be enacted in 2010, have been delayed several times. Just Detention International, a Washington-based advocacy group that works to halt sexual abuse in custody, said the most recent public draft of the standards falls short of what is needed to keep detainees safe.

Among the shortcomings highlighted by Just Detention: they do not detail how a detainee can report abuse; they don’t provide confidential support services for victims; and they don’t provide for outside audits.
http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2011-12-can-ice-police-itself

Collection agencies resort to throwing American's in jail for unpaid debt.

2011-12-13T07:54:00.002-05:00

Collection agencies are resorting to some unusually harsh tactics to force people to pay their unpaid debt, some of whom aren't aware that lawsuits have been filed against them by creditors.

Here's how it happens: A company will often sell off its debt to a collection agency, generally called a creditor. That creditor files a lawsuit against the debtor requiring a court appearance. A notice to appear in court is supposed to be given to the debtor. If they fail to show up, a warrant is issued for their arrest.

Beverly Yang, a legal aid attorney with Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance, says most debtors don't know their rights.

In fact, she says, some judges don't even know debtors' rights, which could result in the debtor being intimidated into a pay agreement.

"I've seen this even when I'm standing in the court room as the legal aid attorney," Yang says. "The judge will ask if they can pay, how about $150 a month. How about $75 a month? How come you can't even pay $50 a month? Did you apply for a job last week?"

The Federal Trade Commission received more than 140,000 complaints related to debt collection in 2010. That's nearly 25,000 more than the previous year.

Yang says some creditors are eager to use harsh tactics. "Whatever the creditors or the creditors' attorneys can do to leverage some kind of payment, it will help their profits enormously because they have, literally, millions of these."

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan thinks more can be done. It's illegal in Illinois for people to be sent to jail because they're in debt. But Madigan thinks some creditors are abusing the law.

"You wouldn't be in that predicament if you didn't have debt," Madigan says. "But for being in debt, you wouldn't be in prison. And that essentially equates to being thrown in jail, debtors' prison."http://www.npr.org/2011/12/12/143274773/unpaid-bills-land-some-debtors-behind-bars

ProPublica found that whites are almost four times as likely as minorities to be pardoned.

2011-12-12T08:54:00.002-05:00

If the government wants to correct racial disparity in presidential pardons, it will require a hard look at the standards used to judge applicants and whether there is implicit bias in the way decisions are made, a wide range of experts told ProPublica.

In an in-depth investigation of the presidential pardons process, published this week, ProPublica found that white applicants were nearly four times as likely to succeed as minorities, even when factors such as the type of crime and sentence were considered.
Pro Publica study: http://www.propublica.org/series/presidential-pardons

The Justice Department has said it is reviewing ProPublica’s statistical analysis on race and other factors in the pardons process, including a finding that applicants with letters of congressional support are three times as likely to be pardoned as those without.

Jack Glaser, a University of California, Berkeley, expert on discrimination who reviewed ProPublica's analysis, said the process invites “way too much discretion.”

“To the extent that they allow their staff to be making judgments into somebody’s attitude — that’s an entry point for bias,” Glaser said. “It’s not that it’s a reflection of racial biases, because there are also cultural attitudes. White people understand white people better. They may not understand the outlooks of minority people as well.”
http://www.propublica.org/article/racial-disparity-in-presidential-pardons-what-can-be-done

A convicted man was in jail when he was accused of an armed robbery.

2011-12-12T08:32:00.001-05:00

Texas- Sentenced to life in prison in November for armed robbery, LaDondrell Montgomery insisted he was not the shadowy figure on surveillance video. He swore the eyewitness identifying him were flat wrong.

If only the 36-year-old habitual offender had an alibi. If only he could remember exactly where he was that day of the robbery.

A week after jurors sentenced Montgomery, his attorney was researching the felon's lengthy rap sheet. In that file was a report that had details about a 2009 arrest and an iron-clad alibi: He was in jail. Released from custody about nine hours after the December 13, 2009 crime, Montgomery was actually innocent.

State District Judge Mark Kent Ellis shook his head as he berated Ray and prosecutors for the oversight."It boggles the mind that neither side knew about this during trial," Ellis said Thursday. "Both sides in this case were spectacularly incompetent."

The judge personally apologized to Montgomery, who stood at the bench in an orange jail uniform.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Convicted-man-was-in-jail-when-crime-occurred-2391025.php

The first known arrests of U.S. citizens by police using a Predator drone occurred in North Dakota.

2011-12-12T08:26:00.000-05:00

North Dakota- Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.

The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country's northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,324348.story

Gamma International videos show how to hack WiFi, Skype and email.

2011-12-09T08:42:00.001-05:00

What better way to sell your wares than to produce a marketing video showing exactly how your product works? Even if that product is spyware, marketed to oppressive regimes.

WikiLeaks, as part of its Spy Files trove of documents, released on Thursday a series of videos from Gamma International, a UK-based firm that markets the Finfisher spyware. The video shows how the company’s product can be used to sniff WiFi networks from a hotel lobby, hack computers and cell phones, or intercept Skype communications and siphon encryption passwords.
Gamma International videos: http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/list/releasedate/2011-12-08.html#

Additionally, Gamma, which was found to have marketed its tools to Hosni Mubarak’s regime before Egyptian protestors toppled him, asserts in one of its videos that it has the ability to send a “fake iTunes update” to targets to infect their computers with the company’s surveillance software – though Apple has reportedly fixed the bug it exploited.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/spy-firm-videos/

Anatomy of a bad confession Parts 1 & 2

2011-12-09T07:43:00.001-05:00

WORCESTER, MA. — The world has always had its ways of extracting confessions. The rack, the screw, dunking — a method applied to suspected witches in Salem — the old, recently revived art of waterboarding and the simple rubber hose that gave menace to “the third degree” in the black and white heyday of police detectives have all proven their worth in winning confessions. It was only in 1936 that the common practices of hanging suspects out of windows, hitting them with hoses, and plunging their heads under water were effectively outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nowadays, police departments mainly rely upon psychological tools to extract confessions. If these methods seem less brutal in comparison, they can be even more effective, as a growing number of scientifically proven false confessions have demonstrated.

Ms. Truong's lawyer, Edward P. Ryan Jr. of Fitchburg, said he was appalled by the tactics of the detectives in the case.

“In 35 years, I have never seen a more brutal interrogation. Brutal in the sense that the emotional torture inflicted on this girl was shocking,” Mr. Ryan said. “I was fairly confident from the moment that I watched that video that this confession was false, that she only told them what they forced her to say.”

In her ruling throwing out the confession, Superior Court Judge Janet Kenton-Walker found that Miss Truong's statements to the detectives were not made voluntarily, and investigators did not offer her a “genuine opportunity,” as required by law, to consult with a parent, interested adult or lawyer about her right to remain silent before she spoke with police.

“When, as here, there exists a combination of trickery and implied promises, together with Nga's young age, lack of experience and sophistication, her emotional state, as well as the aggressive nature of the interrogation, the totality of the circumstances suggests a situation potentially coercive to the point of making an innocent person confess to a crime,” the judge wrote.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20111208/NEWS/112089614/1116

Anatomy of a bad confession-Excerpt 1

To view all the videos click on the link at the bottom.

Anatomy of a bad confession: Part 1
http://www.wbur.org/2011/12/07/worcester-coerced-confession-i

Anatomy of a bad confession: Part 2
http://www.wbur.org/2011/12/08/worcester-coerced-confession-ii

Anatomy of a bad confession:Videos
http://www.wbur.org/2011/12/07/coerced-confession-videos

Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson is being investigated for allegedly hiding evidence that might have exonerated the defendant.

2011-12-08T08:18:00.001-05:00

TX- Combining tenacity with legal creativity, lawyers for Michael Morton are doing something that has never been attempted in the nation's 280 previous DNA exoneration cases: They're investigating the prosecutor who sent Morton away for a murder he did not commit.

Armed with court-given power not typically available to defense lawyers, Morton's legal team has pried open investigative files and forced former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson to answer questions under oath and against his will.

The team has also combed court records and interviewed current and former county officials to flesh out allegations that Anderson hid evidence that could have spared Morton from serving almost 25 years in prison for the murder of his wife, Christine.

And now we know where all this effort is headed.

On Dec. 19, Morton's lawyers will provide a written report of their findings to District Judge Sid Harle, who took over Morton's case in August.

They'll discuss the report in open court with Morton likely to be in attendance.

And they'll conclude by asking Harle to take action against Anderson, though what type of action is something Morton's lawyers are keeping to themselves for the moment.

A hint, however, can be found in the transcript of an Oct. 3 hearing that took place in Harle's chambers. Morton lawyer Barry Scheck told Harle that they would return to his court if they found indications of misconduct by Morton's prosecutors.

"I do think that that might trigger other investigations," Scheck told the judge.

Bennett Gershman, a law professor at Pace University in White Plains, N.Y., and the author of several books on prosecutorial ethics, said several states have created innocence commissions to examine wrongful convictions in hopes of avoiding future mistakes.

But Gershman said he has heard of no similar post-exoneration investigations led by defense lawyers that seek to assign blame for a wrongful conviction.
http://www.statesman.com/news/williamson/morton-lawyers-put-prosecution-on-defense-2017000.html

Pepper spray inventor Kamran Loghan questions police "use of force" regarding non- combatants.

2011-12-07T09:02:00.001-05:00

Will the government start reading your texts & emails?

2011-12-07T08:20:00.001-05:00

Cherie Anderson runs a travel company in southern California, and she’s convinced the federal government is reading her emails. But she’s all right with that. “I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind,” she says. “I figure I'm probably boring them to death.”

It's likely Anderson is not alone in her concerns that the government may be monitoring what Americans say, write, and read. And now there may be even more to worry about: a newly revealed security research project called PRODIGAL -- the Proactive Discovery of Insider Threats Using Graph Analysis and Learning -- which has been built to scan IMs, texts and emails . . . and can read approximately a quarter billion of them a day.

“Every time someone logs on or off, sends an email or text, touches a file or plugs in a USB key, these records are collected within the organization,” David Bader, a professor at the Georgia Tech School of Computational Science and Engineering and a principal investigator on the project, told FoxNews.com.

PRODIGAL scans those records for behavior -- emails to unusual recipients, certain words cropping up, files transferred from unexpected servers -- that changes over time as an employee "goes rogue." The system was developed at Georgia Tech in conjunction with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army's secretive research arm that works on everything from flying cars to robotic exoskeletons.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/12/03/could-us-government-start-reading-your-emails/

Mitchell Katz lawsuit against former private investigator's in California begins,

2011-12-06T09:12:00.001-05:00

San Fransico, CA - A man claims his estranged wife hired a private investigator to ply him with drinks and get him arrested and charged with a "dirty DUI," and that a sheriff's deputy was in on it.

Mitchell Katz claims Alicia Spenger wanted to make him look bad in divorce custody proceedings.He claims that Spenger hired private eye Christopher Butler, who suggested they set Katz up for a "dirty DUI," during which co-conspirators would get Katz drunk and Butler would tip off the law when Katz tried to drive away.

Katz says that a few months later "John," aka Marino, emailed him and apologized for his role in the set-up. He claims the email stated: "'The first thing I want to do is apologize to you for my part of the set up. As you can see, I never wanted to be involved in Butler's shady activities and that is why I put an end to them and also let the DOJ [United States Department of Justice] know what was done to you and others. I hope you can forgive me and understand that ultimately I was the good guy in this.' ..." (Brackets in complaint.)
Court Filing: http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/12/05/Drinker.pdf

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/12/05/41934.htm

The consequences of militarizing our police force and how it affects every American.

2011-12-06T08:00:00.001-05:00

America's police departments have been moving toward more aggressive, force-first, militaristic tactics and their accompanying mindset for 30 years. It's just that, with the exception of protests at the occasional free trade or World Bank summit, the tactics haven't generally been used on mostly white, mostly college-educated kids armed with cellphone cameras and a media platform.

Police militarization is now an ingrained part of American culture. SWAT teams are featured in countless cop reality shows, and wrong-door raids are the subject of "The Simpsons" bits and search engine commercials. Tough-on-crime sheriffs now sport tanks and hardware more equipped for battle in a war zone than policing city streets. Seemingly benign agencies such as state alcohol control boards and the federal Department of Education can now enforce laws and regulations not with fines and clipboards, but with volatile raids by paramilitary police teams.

Part of the trend can be attributed to the broader tough-on-crime and drug war policies pushed by politicians of both parties since at least the early 1980s, but part of the problem also lies with America's political culture. Public officials' decisions today to use force and the amount of force are as governed by political factors as by an honest assessment of the threat a suspect or group may pose. Over the years, both liberals and conservatives have periodically raised alarms over the government's increasing willingness to use disproportionately aggressive force. And over the years, both sides have tended to hush up when the force is applied by political allies, directed at political opponents, or is used to enforce the sorts of laws they favor.

SWAT teams are even sent to enforce regulatory law now. In Hartford, Conn., a SWAT team recently raided a bar on the premise of suspected underage drinking. The same happened at a fraternity at Washington State.

Often, these inspections are merely a way for police to perform a full-on drug raid without the hassle of obtaining a search warrant. Tactical units in Orlando recently raided a series of black-owned barbershops under the premise of an occupational licensing inspection. Once inside, they then scoured the businesses, customers and employees for illicit drugs, mostly coming up empty. There have been similar incidents at bars, with police departments sending SWAT teams on drug raids under the cover of a regulatory alcohol inspection, and once again getting around the need for a search warrant.

The city of Atlanta recently agreed to a $1 million settlement with customers and employees of the Atlanta Eagle nightclub. The gay club is alleged to have been the site of open sex acts and drug sales, but the raid -- in which customers were detained on the floor at gunpoint -- was officially for a mere booze inspection. The police never bothered to get a warrant.

In 2007, a federal SWAT team raided the studio of an Atlanta DJ suspected of violating copyright law. And in June, the Department of Education's Office of Inspector General sent its SWAT team into the home of Kenneth Wright in Stockton, Calif., rousing him and his three young daughters from their beds at gunpoint. Initial reports indicated the raid was because Wright's estranged wife had defaulted on her student loans. The Department of Education issued a press release stating that the investigation was related to embezzlement and fraud -- though why embezzlement and fraud necessitate a SWAT team isn't clear, not to mention that the woman hadn't lived at the house that was raided for more than a year. Ignoring these details, however, still leaves the question of why the Department of Education needs a SWAT team in the first place.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/police-militarization-use-of-force-swat-raids_b_1123848.html

Dartmouth College has started a new website which allows users to determine if a digital picture has been altered.

2011-12-06T07:52:00.001-05:00

Dr. Farid and Eric Kee, a Ph.D. student in computer science at Dartmouth, are proposing a software tool for measuring how much fashion and beauty photos have been altered, a 1-to-5 scale that distinguishes the infinitesimal from the fantastic. Their research is being published this week in a scholarly journal, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Their work is intended as a technological step to address concerns about the prevalence of highly idealized and digitally edited images in advertising and fashion magazines. Such images, research suggests, contribute to eating disorders and anxiety about body types, especially among young women.

The Dartmouth research, said Seth Matlins, a former talent agent and marketing executive, could be “hugely important” as a tool for objectively measuring the degree to which photos have been altered. He and his wife, Eva Matlins, the founders of a women’s online magazine, Off Our Chests, are trying to gain support for legislation in America. Their proposal, the Self-Esteem Act, would require photos that have been “meaningfully changed” to be labeled.
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/Hany_Farid/Research/Entries/2011/6/4_Photo_Retouching.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/technology/software-to-rate-how-drastically-photos-are-retouched.html?_r=2

Are witnesses memories of crimes accurate?

2011-12-05T08:37:00.001-05:00

This month, the Supreme Court heard its first oral arguments in more than three decades that question the validity of using witness testimony, in a case involving a New Hampshire man convicted of theft, accused by a woman who saw him from a distance in the dead of night.

And in August the New Jersey Supreme Court set new rules to cope with failings in witness accounts, during an appeal by a man picked from a photo lineup, and convicted of manslaughter and weapons possession in a 2003 fatal shooting.

Rather than the centerpiece of prosecution, witness testimony should be viewed more like trace evidence, scientists say, with the same fragility and vulnerability to contamination.

Why is a witness’s account so often unreliable? Partly because the brain does not have a knack for retaining many specifics and is highly susceptible to suggestion. “Memory is weak in eyewitness situations because it’s overloaded,” said Barbara Tversky, a psychology professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York. “An event happens so fast, and when the police question you, you probably weren’t concentrating on the details they’re asking about.”

Even the process of police questioning and prepping for trial can crystallize a person’s own faulty reconstruction. In 2000, Dr. Tversky published a series of experiments conducted at Stanford University in the journal Cognitive Psychology. In one, volunteers read profiles of fictitious roommates with both charming and annoying habits; they were then asked to write either a letter of recommendation or letter making a case for a replacement.

When later asked to repeat the original description, the volunteers’ recollections were skewed by the type of letter they had written. Their minds had shed qualities that didn’t match the first draft of their own recall and had embellished those that did.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/health/the-certainty-of-memory-has-its-day-in-court.html?_r=2&ref=science

A flaw in "Skype" could expose your location, identity and the content you're downloading.

2011-12-05T08:07:00.001-05:00

Researchers have found a flaw in Skype, the popular Voice-over-Internet-Protocol service which allows users to make video phone calls and internet chat with their computers. The vulnerability can expose your location, identity and the content you're downloading. Microsoft, which owns Skype, says they are working on the problem.

The issue was uncovered earlier this year by a team of researchers from Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly), MPI-SWS in Germany and INRIA in France and included Keith Ross, Stevens Le Blond, Chao Zhang, Arnaud Legout, and Walid Dabbous. The team presented the research in Berlin recently at the Internet Measurement Conference 2011 in a paper titled "I know where you are and what you are sharing."

The researchers found several properties of Skype that can track not only users' locations over time, but also their peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing activity, according to a summary of the findings on the NYU-Poly web site. Earlier this year, a German researcher found a cross-site scripting flaw in Skype that could allow someone to change an account password without the user's consent.

"Even when a user blocks callers or connects from behind a Network Address Translation (NAT) — a common type of firewall — it does not prevent the privacy risk," according to a release from NYU-Poly.

The research team tracked the Skype accounts of about 20 volunteers as well as 10,000 random users over a two-week period and found that callers using VoIP systems can obtain the IP address of another user when establishing a call with that person. The caller can then use commercial geo-IP mapping services to determine the other user's location and Internet Service Provider (ISP).

The user can also initiate a Skype call, block some packets and quickly terminate the call to obtain an unsuspecting person's IP address without alerting them with ringing or pop-up windows. Users do not need to be on a contact list, and it can be done even when a user explicitly configures Skype to block calls from non-contacts.
http://www.csoonline.com/article/695631/skype-flaw-reveals-users-location-file-downloading-habits