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Category Archives: Civil Rights
Get Ready To Drone-Proof Your House
via Discovery News
Tim Faucett, who owns APlus Mobile which makes mobile computer units that manage robots and unmanned aircraft vehicles for the U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin, believes we’ll need to protect ourselves from drones, and not just the ones being piloted by the military and government.
“There are going to be private drones, there’s going to be commercial drones,” he told Co.Exist’s Zak Stone. “Everybody’s going to have access to a drone. And people are going to have good intentions with them, and people are going to have bad intentions with them.”
Don’t think Faucett is some kind paranoid conspiracy theorist — his claims are credible. Drones are being employed domestically for surveillance and law enforcement.
However, Faucett thinks we should be concerned about those with “bad intentions.” That’s why his startup Domestic Drone Countermeasures recently filed the first of nine patents for, as Stone put it, “a system that will detect and disable drones before they have the chance to film their targets.”
Faucett was hesitant to reveal too many details about the system, but he did say it would be able to identify UAVs by their electromagnetic signature, alert the system owner and “neutralize the drone’s capability to see you with its camera.”
Related articles
The Great Ammunition Myth
The government is not planning a violent putdown of civil unrest.
By Charles C. W. Cooke via National Review Online
Last year, the Social Security Administration put out a procurement request for 174,000 rounds of “.357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow point pistol ammunition,” prompting a few on the Internet to work themselves up into something of a frenzy. “It’s not outlandish,” claimed Paul Joseph Wilson, one of a team of professional paranoiacs on the Infowars website, “to suggest that the Social Security Administration is purchasing the bullets as part of preparations for civil unrest.” “Something strange is going on,” harmonized Breitbart’s William Bigelow. Even Mark Levin was concerned. “I know why the government’s arming up,” he deduced. “It’s not because there’s going to be an insurrection; it’s because our society is unraveling.”
The Social Security Administration’s purchase was by no means an anomaly. A year earlier, the unlikely pair of the Department of Agriculture (320,000 rounds) and the National Weather Service (46,000 rounds) had both put out tenders for ammunition. And slightly less odd, but still staggering, were the FBI’s professed intention to purchase up to 100 million “hollow point” rounds and the Department of Homeland Security’s concurrent request for 450 million rounds. The Department of Education got in on the weapons-supplying spree, too, purchasing “27 Remington Brand Model 870 police 12-gauge shotguns.”
The first question: “Why?” The second: “Should we be worried?”
The appeal of this story is obvious, and that some citizens keep track of such things shows an admirable vigilance. But while a healthy suspicion of government serves these United States better than critics presume, facts remain the stubborn things that they always have been, and skepticism is no virtue at all when it proves impervious to reason. Those who are vexed that the state is stocking up on ammunition — and troubled by fears that this might be a step toward D.C.’s assault on the citizens for whom it works — can relax for now. Whatever the federal government has become, it is not yet plotting violence against the people.
Nonetheless, one could reasonably ask why the Social Security Administration would need any ammunition at all. Are the elderly especially unruly these days? Jonathan L. Lasher, in the SSA’s external-relations department, explained to the Huffington Post that the ammunition is “for the 295 agents” in the outfit’s office of inspector general “who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes.” Divide the rounds by the number of agents, and you get about 590 per agent; in a given year, that’s about ten rounds a week. “Most will be expended on the firing range,” Lasher continued.
Okay. And why does the USDA need 320,000 rounds? Because it runs the Forest Service, which covers “155 national forests” and “20 national grasslands” on a total of “193 million acres of land.” As well as agents in the field, the outfit has a law-enforcement unit based in Washington, D.C., whose responsibility it is to enforce federal laws and regulations. In context, those 320,000 rounds look a lot less threatening: If the U.S. Forest Service were to distribute ammunition at the same rate as the Social Security Administration, they would have enough for just 542 agents — not bad for an organization that covers an area the size of Pakistan (or twice the size of Japan or Germany).
It’s all about scale. Forty-six thousand rounds also sound like a lot for the National Weather Service. (Actually, the ammo was requested by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, which is overseen by the same department.) In reality, it’s not that much. The service has only 63 armed personnel, which brings the purchase out at around 730 rounds per officer. This, suffice it to say, does not present a great threat to the Republic. As the NRA has noted, “more than a few NRA members would use that much ammunition in a weekend shooting class or plinking session.” There are enough risks to the right to bear arms and to American liberty in general, the NRA continued, without “inventing threats.”
Related articles
- NRO: Ammunition purchases by government not a conspiracy (hotair.com)
- The Great Ammunition Myth (nationalreview.com)
- Billions And Billions of Bullets – Or Not? (statelymcdanielmanor.wordpress.com)
- Can You Debunk Something That’s Already Been Debunked? (thepatriotperspective.wordpress.com)
- Feds, media debunk Palin claim (politico.com)
- Why is Homeland Security buying so many bullets? (foxnews.com)
Barack Obama ‘has authority to use drone strikes to kill Americans on US soil’
President Barack Obama has the authority to use an unmanned drone strike to kill US citizens on American soil, his attorney general has said.
via Telegraph
Eric Holder argued that using lethal military force against an American in his home country would be legal and justified in an “extraordinary circumstance” comparable to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
“The president could conceivably have no choice but to authorise the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland,” Mr Holder said.
His statement was described as “more than frightening” by Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, who had demanded to know the Obama administration’s position on the subject.
“It is an affront the constitutional due process rights of all Americans,” said Mr Paul, a 50-year-old favourite of the anti-government Tea Party movement, who is expected to run for president in 2016.
Mr Holder wrote to Mr Paul after the senator threatened to block the appointment of John Brennan as the director of the CIA unless he received answers to a series of questions on its activities.
Mr Paul on Wednesday evening took to the floor of the Senate to launch an old-fashioned filibuster in an effort to delay a vote on the approval of Mr Brennan for CIA director. “I won’t be able to speak forever, but I’m going to speak as long as I can,” he said, before embarking on several hours of criticism of Mr Obama’s compliance with the US constitution.
Mr Obama has been sharply criticised for the secrecy surrounding his extension of America’s “targeted killing” campaign against al-Qaeda terrorist suspects using missile strikes by unmanned drones.
The secret campaign has killed an estimated 4,700 people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. A quarter are estimated to have been civilians prompting anger among human rights campaigners.
According to research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drone strikes killed between 474 and 881 civilians – including 176 children – in Pakistan between 2004 and last year.
Criticism within the US has focused on the implications for terror suspects who are also US citizens, after Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric born and educated in the US, was killed in Yemen in 2011.
The administration claims it has the legal authority to assassinate Americans provided that they are a senior al-Qaeda operative posing an imminent threat and it would be “infeasible” to capture them.
This justification emerged only last month in a leaked memo from Mr Holder’s department of justice. Mr Obama this week agreed to give Congress his full set of classified legal memos on the targeting of Americans.
Civil liberties campaigners accuse the president and his aides of awarding themselves sweeping powers to deny Americans their constitutional rights without oversight from Congress or the judiciary.
Related articles
- Eric Holder clarifies policy on drone attacks on U.S. soil (reuters.com)
- Flashback: Obama Says Waterboarding Is Torture …(But He’ll Drop a Drone Bomb On Your Head) (thegatewaypundit.com)
- Sen. Rand Paul: I’ll end filibuster once Obama says no to drone strikes in the U.S. (rawstory.com)
- America is shamed that only Rand Paul is talking about drone executions | Amy Goodman (guardian.co.uk)
Graham, McCain blast Paul filibuster
Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster didn’t thrill all of his colleagues.
via Washington Times
Almost exactly 24 hours after Mr. Paul began his information-seeking filibuster against John O. Brennan, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham took to the Senate floor to denounce his demands and say he was doing a “disservice” to the debate on drones.
“The country needs more senators who care about liberty, but if Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms. He needs to know what he’s talking about,” said Mr. McCain, Republicans’ presidential nominee in 2008 — who topped Mr. Paul’s father, former Rep. Ron Paul, in that year’s primary.
And where Democrats praised Mr. Paul for using Senate rules properly to launch a filibuster, Mr. McCain said it was an abuse of rules that could hurt the GOP in the long run.
“What we saw yesterday is going to give ammunition to those who say the rules of the Senate are being abused,” the Arizona Republican said.
Mr. Paul said he was filibustering to get the administration to affirm it won’t kill non-combatant Americans in the U.S. — and his effort was joined by more than a dozen other senators who said they, too, supported his effort to get answers.
Mr. Graham said asking whether the president has the power to kill Americans here at home is a ludicrous question.
“I do not believe that question deserves an answer,” Mr. Graham said.
Mr. Graham and Mr. McCain led a Republican delegation that held a private dinner with President Obama on Wednesday, as Mr. Paul was holding the floor with help from other GOP colleagues.
Mr. McCain even joked about Mr. Graham’s “behavior” at the dinner.
“He was on his best manners and everyone was impressed,” Mr. McCain said.
Related articles
- McCain And Graham’s @SenRandPaul Temper Tantrum (thecampofthesaints.org)
- IT’S WAR: John McCain And Lindsey Graham Are Tearing Into Rand Paul Right Now On The Senate Floor (businessinsider.com)
- Rush to Rand: ‘You’re a hero’ (wnd.com)
- McCain, Graham blast Paul filibuster (politico.com)
- Moronic: Sen. McCain blasts Sen. Paul’s filibuster as ‘political stunt,’ ‘ridiculous’ (twitchy.com)
- Rand Paul’s Drone Filibuster Sparks GOP Civil War (tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com)
Chris Hedges: NDAA Lawsuit Update
Sierra Adamson interviews Chris Hedges at the hearing for the second court of appeals in the Hedges v Obama NDAA lawsuit. Hedges explains what has happened in the lawsuit to date, the next steps and what he sees in America’s upcoming future.
Feds Demand Dismissal of Dragnet-Surveillance Challenge
via Wired.com
Whistleblower Mark Klein provided this now-six-year-old photo of a secret room in a San Francisco AT&T switching center, which he claimed housed data-mining equipment that enables the government to spy on electronic communications.
Citing week-old Supreme Court precedent, the President Barack Obama administration told a federal judge Wednesday that it should quash a federal lawsuit accusing the government of secretly siphoning Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants.
The San Francisco federal court legal filing was in response to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White’s written question (.pdf) to the government asking what to make of the high court’s Feb. 26 decision halting a legal challenge to a once-secret warrantless surveillance project that gobbles up Americans’ electronic communications — a program that Congress eventually legalized in 2008 and again in 2012.
In that case, known as Clapper, the justices ruled 5-4 that the American Civil Liberties Union, journalists and human-rights groups that sued to nullify the FISA Amendments Act had no legal standing to sue. The justices ruled (.pdf) the plaintiffs submitted no evidence they were being targeted by that law.
The FISA Amendments Act authorizes the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the communication is outside the United States. The communications may be intercepted “to acquire foreign intelligence information.”
Related articles
- Feds Demand Dismissal of Dragnet-Surveillance Challenge (wired.com)
- It’s Official, the Fourth Amendment is Dead (usahitman.com)
- In ‘Disturbing Decision’ Supreme Court Rejects Challenge of Dragnet Surveillance of Americans (commondreams.org)
- Supreme Court Dismisses Challenge to FISA Amendments Act; EFF’s Lawsuit Over NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Remains (secretsofthefed.com)
11 Years Later, Senate Wakes Up to War on Terror’s ‘Battlefield America’
via Wired.com
Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster on Wednesday started out to block John Brennan’s CIA directorship. It became a rare Senate indictment of the war on terrorism.
Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster will inevitably fail at its immediate objective: derailing John Brennan’s nomination to run the CIA. But as it stretches into its sixth hour, it’s already accomplished something far more significant: raising political alarm over the extraordinary breadth of the legal claims that undergird the boundless, 11-plus-year “war on terrorism.”
The Kentucky Republican’s delaying tactic started over one rather narrow slice of that war: the Obama administration’s equivocation on whether it believes it has the legal authority to order a drone strike on an American citizen, in the United States. Paul recognized outright that he would ultimately lose his fight to block Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief and architect of much of the administration’s targeted-killing efforts.
But as his time on the Senate floor went on, Paul went much further. He called into question aspects of the war on terrorism that a typically bellicose Congress rarely questions, and most often defends, often demagogically so. More astonishingly, Paul’s filibuster became such a spectacle that he got hawkish senators to join him.
“When people talk about a ‘battlefield America’,” Paul said, around hour four, Americans should “realize they’re telling you your Bill of Rights don’t apply.” That is a consequence of the September 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force that did not bound a war against al-Qaida to specific areas of the planet. “We can’t have perpetual war. We can’t have a war with no temporal limits,” Paul said.
This is actually something of a radical proposition. When House Republicans attempted to revisit the far-reaching authorization in 2011, chief Pentagon attorney Jeh Johnson conveyed the Obama administration’s objections. Of course, many, many Republicans have been content with what the Bush administration used to call a “Long War” with no foreseeable or obvious end. And shortly before leaving office in December, Johnson himself objected to a perpetual war, but did so gingerly, and only after arguing that the government had the power to hold detainees from that war even after that war someday ends.
Related articles
Forget pat-downs! NYPD is testing handheld X-ray device to detect concealed weapons | Mail Online
VIA Mail Online
This is demonstration from the NYPD of the image that a new technology would create to help officers detect concealed weapons
The New York Police Department, with help from the Pentagon, is testing a new technology that will allow officers to detect concealed weapons using a handheld device.
The device, known as Terahertz Imaging Detection, would operate as a kind of X-ray scanner, measuring the energy radiating from a body up to 16 feet away and detecting anything blocking that radiation, such as a gun.
‘This technology has shown a great deal of promise as a way of detecting weapons without a physical search,’ Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said of the device, which is still being developed.
He said the device would only be used under ‘reasonably suspicious circumstances.’
The technology is being fine-tuned with the help of the Department of Defense counter-terrorism unit, which is interested in using the technology to help thwart terror attacks.
‘We have involved our attorneys as we go forward with this issue,’ Kelly said, acknowledging the privacy issues that will arise as a result of the technology.
The device could be mounted in a squad car, Kelly said, noting that making the technology portable was a priority of his.
Related articles
- NYPD tests technology to detect concealed weapons- California school district gets high-powered rifles (foxnews.com)
- NYPD testing device to secretly scan New Yorkers for guns… (nydailynews.com)
- NYPD testing device to secretly scan New Yorkers for guns (blacklistednews.com)
- NYPD to Receive ‘T-Ray’ Vision to Detect Concealed Firearms (israelnationalnews.com)
- NYPD to use ‘T-Ray’ to detect concealed guns (wnd.com)
Trooper to Be Terminated Over Roadside Cavity Search
No narcotics, contraband found during searches, lawsuit says
By Frank Heinz and Ken Kalthoff via NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth
Two Irving women are suing after they were subjected to a roadside cavity search by a Texas DPS Trooper, their lawyer released the video.
The female Texas trooper who performed a roadside cavity search on two Irving women will be terminated according to the Department of Public Safety.
Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger says agency director Steve McCraw has made a preliminary determination to terminate Trooper Kelly Helleson. Vinger, in a statement Wednesday, said Helleson will have the opportunity to meet with McCraw before her firing is final.
Helleson and Trooper David Ferrell in December were put on paid suspension as the case awaits review by a Dallas County grand jury.
On July 13, while driving along State Highway 161, Angel Dobbs and her niece Ashley Dobbs were stopped for littering by Farrell. In the dashcam video released by the women and their attorney, Farrell can be heard telling the women they would both be cited for littering for throwing cigarette butts out of the car.
Farrell then returned to his cruiser and, in the video, can be heard calling female Trooper Helleson to the scene to search both women whom he said were acting weird.
While waiting for Helleson to arrive, Farrell asked Angel Dobbs to step out of the vehicle and began questioning her about marijuana use. In the video, the trooper is heard telling Dobbs he smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle while asking her several times how much pot was in the car.
After Helleson arrived, she can be seen in the dashcam video putting on blue latex gloves to conduct a search of both women. According to the lawsuit, when Angel Dobbs asked about the gloves, Helleson “told her not to worry about that.”
In the lawsuit, Dobbs said the trooper conducted the cavity search on the roadside, illuminated by the police car’s headlights, in full view of any passing motorists.
“This has been an eye-opening experience for me. I’ve never been pulled over, never searched like this. I was totally violated over there a few minutes ago… this is so embarrassing to me,” Angel Dobbs said on the video.
“I’ve never been so humiliated or so violated or felt so molested in my entire life,” Angel Dobbs told NBC 5.
MORE . . .
Related articles
- Trooper to Be Terminated Over Roadside Cavity Search [W/ VIDEO] (secretsofthefed.com)
- Female Texas trooper in body search faces firing (star-telegram.com)
- Possible Termination For Trooper In Body Cavity Search (dfw.cbslocal.com)
- Texas set to ‘terminate’ trooper following roadside cavity searches (usnews.nbcnews.com)
- The State Trooper Who Performed a Roadside Cavity Search on Irving Women Has Been Fired (blogs.dallasobserver.com)
- Second trooper suspended for roadside cavity search in Texas (sott.net)
Fear and Oath-ing in D.C.
Fear and Oath-ing in D.C. – YouTube.
“Is terror going to raise a white flag?” Exactly. Somebody in our government must define victory in this (undeclared) war on an ideology. What does victory look like? How will we know when we are victorious? Without a definition of victory, this (undeclared) war will continue ad infinitum – an ongoing, never ending justification to infringe on more and more of our rights. Something is seriously wrong.
MIB
Man With 4th Amendment Written on Chest Wins Trial Over Airport Arrest
via Wired.com
Government photo of Aaron Tobey being held at Richmond International Airport on December 30, 2010
A Virginia man who wrote an abbreviated version of the Fourth Amendment on his body and stripped to his shorts at an airport security screening area won a trial Friday in his lawsuit seeking $250,000 in damages for being detained on a disorderly conduct charge.
Aaron Tobey claimed in a civil rights lawsuit(.pdf) that in 2010 he was handcuffed and held for about 90 minutes by the Transportation Security Administration at the Richmond International Airport after he began removing his clothing to display on his chest a magic-marker protest of airport security measures.
“Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated,” his chest and gut read.
In sending the case to trial, unless there’s a settlement, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 and reversed a lower court judge and invoked Benjamin Franklin in the process. According to the opinion by Judge Roger Gregory:
Here, Mr. Tobey engaged in a silent, peaceful protest using the text of our Constitution—he was well within the ambit of First Amendment protections. And while it is tempting to hold that First Amendment rights should acquiesce to national security in this instance, our Forefather Benjamin Franklin warned against such a temptation by opining that those ‘who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ We take heed of his warning and are therefore unwilling to relinquish our First Amendment protections—even in an airport.
MORE . . .
Related articles
- Politics & NWO – Re: Man With 4th Amendment Written on Chest Wins Trial (disclose.tv)
- Man With 4th Amendment Written on Chest Wins Trial Over Airport Arrest (consciouslifenews.com)
- 4th & 1st Amendments Upheld In TSA Case To The Tune Of $250K (charlesoliverblog.wordpress.com)
- An update on Aaron Tobey’s TSA lawsuit – he won today! (dailypaul.com)
- IN THE LATEST TSA NEWS: Man With 4th Amendment Written on Chest Wins Trial Over Airport Arrest. “A… (pjmedia.com)
The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy
A secret audio recording of a stop-and-frisk in action sheds unprecedented light on a practice that has put the city’s young people of color in the NYPD’s crosshairs.
via The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy – YouTube.
NYPD cop secretly records evidence of a ticket and arrest quota system …. A must see
Uploaded on Nov 16, 2010
NYPD officer Adrian Schoolcraft secretly records NYPD top brass giving orders that tickets must be written and arrest must be made or there will be hell to pay. He goes on to say that orders were given to harass people so vigorously that they will not even want to step foot outside in fear of being arrested or ticketed.
The police are nothing more than an organized crime syndicate which has fooled us into believing they are here to protect us. When was the last time you seen a cop save somebody or help you for that matter? You can’t even look at a cop without him giving you a dirty look and finding you suspicious of a crime, that’s if your not a young pretty girl or boy for that matter.
via NYPD cop secretly records evidence of a ticket and arrest quota system …. A must see – YouTube.
Related articles
- Queens District Attorney: ‘No Crime to Throw Whistle-Blower Cop in Psych Ward’
- NYPD Cops Caught Hunting Citizens During Thanksgiving Holiday (informationliberation.com)
- Ex-NYPD Cop Reveals How Not to Get a Ticket – Yahoo! (coralvillecourier.typepad.com)
Officers Blow Whistle On The Truth About Being A NY COP
Via Truth Squad TV
NYPD Blues from Kelly Anderson on Vimeo.
Related articles
- Kind NY Cop, Larry DePrimo, Helps Homeless Man And Goes Viral On The Net | THE JEENYUS CORNER (jeenyuscorner.com)
- NYPD Officer on the Rights of the Public to Film Cops (sgtreport.com)
- Queens District Attorney: ‘No Crime to Throw Whistle-Blower Cop in Psych Ward’ (aftermathnews.wordpress.com)
- There ARE Good Cops Out There: This Police Detective Wants More Cop Watch (sgtreport.com)
5 Gmail lessons from David Petraeus affair
via POLITICO.com
It’s become the email equivalent of separating church and state: work email is for official communications while private accounts are for personal — and sometimes inappropriate — messaging.
But as the scandal that has enveloped former CIA director David Petraeus and Gen. John Allen has shown, Gmail and other Web-based email services are not completely safe zones.
The FBI probe into Petraeus — which led to his resignation last Friday — serves as a reminder that even the most private emails sent on commercial online services among people using pseudonyms can be discovered and thrown into the harsh light of scrutiny.
Here are Gmail lessons to be learned from the Petraeus affair:
1. It’s not anonymous.
Petraeus and his biographer Paula Broadwell apparently took steps to protect their communication, such as using pseudonyms to set up an online service account and in communicating with each other. But FBI investigators were able to figure out some information about the account from looking at emails sent from the account to another party. Reportedly this is what led authorities investigating threatening emails to Tampa socialite Jill Kelley from Broadwell.
“Who you are saying it to and where you are saying it from has the least protection under the law,” said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the ACLU. “A warrant is needed to find out what you are saying.”
Internet service providers and most websites keep complete records of the Internet Protocol addresses of those who use their services for 18 months, and then slightly blurred records of IP addresses after 18 months. Investigators can obtain that information under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act as long as they have reasonable grounds to believe that it is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation — less than the probable cause needed to secure a warrant. In the Petraeus case, the FBI reportedly got the necessary court clearances.
The only way that people can use pseudonymous webmail accounts safely is via an anonymizing service like Tor, said Peter Eckersley, technology projects director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Tor is installed on a computer and reroutes website visits, instant messages and other communications to other Tor users so it is not possible to identify a single computer, sort of like hiding in a crowd.
2. Government requests for access are increasing and Google and other services play ball.
Google reported Tuesday that law enforcement and courts in the United States made nearly 8,000 requests for user information in the first half of 2012 from all of Google’s products — including Gmail, search, Google Docs, etc. The number of requests from the American law enforcement alone jumped 26 percent from the previous six months, when 6,321 requests were made.
Government officials wanted information on 16,281 accounts, Google said, and Google complied roughly 90 percent of the time.
The report shows governments around the world not only wanted more data for law enforcement purposes but also increased requests to Google to remove content.. “Government surveillance is on the rise,” Dorothy Chou, a senior policy analyst at Google, wrote in a blog post announcing the report.
3. You’re not in cyberspace.
A person’s physical location when sending an email can often be pinpointed from the email they send. Email metadata contains IP addresses of the computers and servers they come in contact with, as well as the unique number associated with the device that sent the emails. Sometimes, the traceable IP of the sender’s device is visible in a sent email — email services such as Yahoo and others reveal information about the sending computer, while messages sent from Gmail’s Web interface do not reveal the information about the sending computer, privacy experts say. Even if it isn’t visible, investigators can obtain it with the use of a subpoena or court order, and determine other accounts accessed from the same location.
MORE . . .
Related articles
- 5 Gmail lessons from Petraeus affair (politico.com)
- How metadata brought down CIA boss David Petraeus (newscientist.com)
- Gmail Location Data Led FBI to Uncover Top Spy’s Affair (wired.com)
- How CIA Director David Petraeus’s Affair Was Traced Through Email (and How to Keep It From Happening to You) (lifehacker.com)
- David Petraeus scandal: The silliness of using Gmail for your affair (telegraph.co.uk)
The Carlos Miller Case: Jury Says ‘Not Guilty’
by Tim Lynch via PoliceMisconduct.net
Carlos Miller was arrested for filming the police. Resisting the pressure to accept a “deal,” he risked more prison time simply by insisting on his right to a jury trial. According to Miller, the prosecutor told the jury that Miller did not behave like a “real journalist” because a “real journalist” would have obeyed all police requests and orders. Miller’s attorney responded to that argument with the following:
“In this country, when you’re a journalist, your job is to investigate.
Not to be led by your hand where the police want you to see, so they can hide what they don’t want you to see.
No, when you’re a journalist, a real journalist, it’s your job to go find the truth. As long as you are acting within the law as Mr. Miller was, you have the right to demand and say, ‘no, I’m not moving, I have the right to be here. This is a public sidewalk, I have the right to be here.’
He did his job. He has the right to do his job the way he sees fit. It’s not up to these prosecutors to tell anybody, much less an independent journalist, how to do their job. It’s not up to the police officers, it’s not up to a judge or the president.
In this country, journalists do their job the way they see fit.
What’s he describing is Cuba. What he’s describing is a communist country. The government says you can’t be here because I say you can’t be here.
And it’s infuriating to me that a prosecutor would try to get up here and try to convince you that just because a police officer says something, that he has to bow his head and walk away.
That is a disgrace to the Constitution of this country.”
Congratulations to Miller and his attorneys. More info, including video from the trial, click here.
Related articles
- Jury Says Journalist Arrested While Videotaping Police Is Not Guilty (libertycrier.com)
- *** Not Guilty *** (photographyisnotacrime.com)
- Texas woman charged with felony for posting police officer’s photo on Facebook (rt.com)
Texas NDAA Nullification Bill Includes Criminal Charges for Federal Agents
by Michael Boldin via Tenth Amendment Center Blog
At the close of 2011, Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for the year 2012. In it are what some constitutional experts consider to be some of the greatest constitutional violations in American history. At issue are sections 1021 and 1022 which, in essence, create a new power for the federal government to “indefinitely detain” – without due process – any person. Indefinitely. That’s little different than kidnapping.
In response, there’s been a bit of a firestorm from people across the political spectrum. Local communities in Colorado sent out the first warning shots, passing resolutions and ordinances rejecting such power earlier this year. Then, at the close of the 2012 state legislative session, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed House Bill 1160, making that state the first to paw a law not only rejecting the federal act, but fully banning any state agency from cooperating with the feds on it.
Currently, more than 15 local communities have done the same. Michigan is also considering a bill that is similar to Virginia’s. And today, Texas State Representative Lyle Larson introduced House Bill 149 (HB149), the Texas Liberty Preservation Act. This might be the strongest anti-NDAA bill introduced yet.
It states, in part:
Sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (Pub. L. No. 112-81) violate portions of federal law, the United States Constitution, and the Texas Constitution and, as such, are invalid and illegal in this state.
It also, like Virginia’s law, requires full noncompliance with the federal act:
It is the policy of this state to refuse to provide material support for or to participate in any way with the implementation within this state of Sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (Pub. L. No. 112-81). Any act to enforce or attempt to enforce those laws is in violation of this subchapter.
But, the Texas legislation takes it a step further, codifying into State law criminal penalties for violation of the act by even federal agents:
A person who is an official, agent, or employee of the United States or an employee of a corporation providing services to the United States commits an offense if the person enforces or attempts to enforce a statute, a rule or regulation, an order, or any law of the United States in violation of this subchapter.
An offense under Subsection
(a) is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by confinement for a term not to exceed one year, a fine of not more than $10,000, or both the confinement and the fine.
This coming legislative session, Texas won’t be alone in its efforts. Sources close to the Tenth Amendment Center tell us to expect at least 10 other states considering the same. And potentially dozens of counties and cities can be expected to move along these lines as well.
MORE . . .
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US Supreme Court to Weigh the Infallibility of Drug Detector Canines
by Garret Ean via FreeConcord.org
An article in the Washington Post that has been widely syndicated discusses how the collection of evidence by the use of drug detector dogs will be considered by the united states supreme court. Two cases are pending on the docket, both from Florida, which question the effectiveness as well as the constitutionality of canines for drug detection use. The article cites studies from the University of California at Davis in which 18 police canine teams were sent through a facility and tasked with finding hidden drugs. Though there were no drugs in the facility, 17 of the teams reported alerts. Barry Cooper, former police officer and producer of the Never Get Busted educational film series has discussed his own manipulation of police canines while he was working as one of the most successful narcotics interdiction detectives. Anyone who has owned a dog knows that their life revolves around serving their pack leader. There are no objective standards or testing done of the animals to demonstrate their effectiveness. In a 2005 case, former supreme court judge David Souter stated that the infallible dog “is a creation of legal fiction”.
Last year, the Florida supreme court had thrown out a case from 2006 which featured questionable probable cause for a search after a police dog sniffed and acted playfully. Judge Barbara Pariente wrote:
Courts often accept the mythic dog with an almost superstitious faith…The myth so completely has dominated the judicial psyche in those cases that the courts either assume the reliability of the sniff or address the question cursorily; the dog is the clear and consistent winner.
Franky, the chocolate lab, appears shocked. He was horrified to have recently discovered that his jovial excitement at the prospect of playing with his favorite ball was used as evidence to arrest amateur gardeners.
The reliability of drug detector dogs will always be tainted by the bias of the canine’s handler. Drug interdiction officers often become personally interested in finding larger quantities of drugs. Though the dog is a simple animal, its social awareness is in some ways more attuned than that of a human. It detects the subtle body language of its handler, and its desire to please them is the likely cause of most false alerts. Bearing this in mind, it would make more sense to have the drug detector dogs handled by individuals who are not personally invested in the drug war and who seek recognition among their peers for how much contraband they can confiscate. Previous supreme court cases have held that officers do not even need reasonable suspicion of illegal drug possession to initiate a drug dog sniffing of a vehicle during a traffic stop. Thus, the dogs are used without any accountability metric aside from that officers wanted to use them.
Grants and requests for canine unit funding by police continue to be popular despite their expense and unproven track record. There should be no surprise there, as many people would jump at the chance to be employed to play with a cute animal and occasionally give it cars and purses to sniff.
Related articles
- Will Supreme Court turn up its nose at dog sniffs? (news.yahoo.com)
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Facebook Covers for Obama on Benghazi, Suspends SEALs Page
Add Facebook to the cadre of media that are helping President Obama cover up his responsibility for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
The Special Operations Speaks PAC last week posted an image comparing SEALs’ loyalty when Obama needed them to how two SEALs were ignored by the White House during the firefight at the U.S. mission on September 11. The meme was shared by more than 30,000 and seen by hundreds of thousands of people.
Over the weekend, Facebook apparently panicked, pulled the image and gave SOS a warning that it was in violation of Facebook policy.
Larry Ward, president of Political Media Inc., which maintains the SEALs page, told Breitbart that he copied the Facebook warning and reposted the original image with the warning as a caption.
As a result, Facebook suspended SOS for 24 hours.
And yes, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is said to be an Obama supporter.
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