The Criminal N.S.A.
SourceThe Criminal N.S.A.
By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN
Published: June 27, 2013
THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.”
It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.
This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.
The administration has defended each of the two secret programs. Let’s examine them in turn.
Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contract employee and whistle-blower, has provided evidence that the government has phone record metadata on all Verizon customers, and probably on every American, going back seven years. This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious affiliations and political activities are, and so on.
The law under which the government collected this data, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, allows the F.B.I. to obtain court orders demanding that a person or company produce “tangible things,” upon showing reasonable grounds that the things sought are “relevant” to an authorized foreign intelligence investigation. The F.B.I. does not need to demonstrate probable cause that a crime has been committed, or any connection to terrorism.
Even in the fearful time when the Patriot Act was enacted, in October 2001, lawmakers never contemplated that Section 215 would be used for phone metadata, or for mass surveillance of any sort. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and one of the architects of the Patriot Act, and a man not known as a civil libertarian, has said that “Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations.” The N.S.A.’s demand for information about every American’s phone calls isn’t “targeted” at all — it’s a dragnet. “How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?” Mr. Sensenbrenner has asked. The answer is simple: It’s not.
The government claims that under Section 215 it may seize all of our phone call information now because it might conceivably be relevant to an investigation at some later date, even if there is no particular reason to believe that any but a tiny fraction of the data collected might possibly be suspicious. That is a shockingly flimsy argument — any data might be “relevant” to an investigation eventually, if by “eventually” you mean “sometime before the end of time.” If all data is “relevant,” it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of relevance.
Let’s turn to Prism: the streamlined, electronic seizure of communications from Internet companies. In combination with what we have already learned about the N.S.A.’s access to telecommunications and Internet infrastructure, Prism is further proof that the agency is collecting vast amounts of e-mails and other messages — including communications to, from and between Americans.
The government justifies Prism under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Section 1881a of the act gave the president broad authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance. If the attorney general and the director of national intelligence certify that the purpose of the monitoring is to collect foreign intelligence information about any nonAmerican individual or entity not known to be in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can require companies to provide access to Americans’ international communications. The court does not approve the target or the facilities to be monitored, nor does it assess whether the government is doing enough to minimize the intrusion, correct for collection mistakes and protect privacy. Once the court issues a surveillance order, the government can issue top-secret directives to Internet companies like Google and Facebook to turn over calls, e-mails, video and voice chats, photos, voiceover IP calls (like Skype) and social networking information.
Like the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments Act gives the government very broad surveillance authority. And yet the Prism program appears to outstrip that authority. In particular, the government “may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States.”
The government knows that it regularly obtains Americans’ protected communications. The Washington Post reported that Prism is designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness” — as John Oliver of “The Daily Show” put it, “a coin flip plus 1 percent.” By turning a blind eye to the fact that 49-plus percent of the communications might be purely among Americans, the N.S.A. has intentionally acquired information it is not allowed to have, even under the terrifyingly broad auspices of the FISA Amendments Act.
How could vacuuming up Americans’ communications conform with this legal limitation? Well, as James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Andrea Mitchell of NBC, the N.S.A. uses the word “acquire” only when it pulls information out of its gigantic database of communications and not when it first intercepts and stores the information.
If there’s a law against torturing the English language, James Clapper is in real trouble.
The administration hides the extent of its “incidental” surveillance of Americans behind fuzzy language. When Congress reauthorized the law at the end of 2012, legislators said Americans had nothing to worry about because the surveillance could not “target” American citizens or permanent residents. Mr. Clapper offered the same assurances. Based on these statements, an ordinary citizen might think the N.S.A. cannot read Americans’ e-mails or online chats under the F.A.A. But that is a government fed misunderstanding.
A “target” under the act is a person or entity the government wants information on — not the people the government is trying to listen to. It’s actually O.K. under the act to grab Americans’ messages so long as they are communicating with the target, or anyone who is not in the United States.
Leave aside the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act for a moment, and turn to the Constitution.
The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no precedent under the Constitution for the government’s seizing such vast amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans’ communications.
The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private electronic messages that it stores with third parties.
This hairsplitting is inimical to privacy and contrary to what at least five justices ruled just last year in a case called United States v. Jones. One of the most conservative justices on the Court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that where even public information about individuals is monitored over the long term, at some point, government crosses a line and must comply with the protections of the Fourth Amendment. That principle is, if anything, even more true for Americans’ sensitive nonpublic information like phone metadata and social networking activity.
We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret, unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that make a mockery of the government’s professed concern with protecting Americans’ privacy. It’s time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal.
Jennifer Stisa Granick is the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Christopher Jon Sprigman is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
Of course the cops were not charged with any crimes. Instead the poor woman was arrested and charged with several felonies.
UVA student jailed for possession of bottled water, ice cream
The Daily Caller
A University of Virginia student spent a night and good part of the next day in jail after seven plain-clothes agents from the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control division ambushed her.
The student, 20-year-old Elizabeth Daly, made the mistake of walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream in a dark supermarket parking lot near the UVA campus, reports The Daily Progress.
The seven agents sprung aggressively into action, suspecting that the student was carrying was a 12-pack of beer. She was actually carrying a sky-blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water.
Police admit that one of the high-strung agents vaulted onto the hood of Daly’s car. She contends that one of them also drew a gun.
It’s not clear what about Daly’s appearance gave the six police officers the belief that they had probable cause to confront her en masse.
Daly, along with two roommates who were in the car, did what reasonable, unarmed people usually do when violently pounced upon by seven people. They tried to get away.
“They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform,” Daly said in a written account, according to The Daily Progress.
“I couldn’t put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were … terrified,” the student also wrote.
According to court records obtained by the Charlottesville paper, Daly “grazed” two agents with her vehicle. At this time, the records state, the unidentified passenger in the front seat of her SUV was yelling “go, go, go” and simultaneously diving into the back seat.
Once the three students managed to make it out of the parking lot, they called 911. Daly testified that her goal was to drive immediately to a police station. However, she was stopped by a vehicle with identifiable sirens and lights.
Daly had just left an annual UVA “Take Back the Night” vigil on the famous campus founded by the man who drafted the Declaration of Independence. She was eventually able to explain that she had purchased the water and junk food for a sorority benefit. She also apologized.
The seven Alcoholic Beverage Control agents were not satisfied. They charged Daly with three felonies: one count of eluding police and two counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer. In Virginia, each of these Class Six felonies carries up to five years in prison and up to $2,500 in fines.
The seven agents then had her hauled to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.
The incident occurred April 11. Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman deigned to drop the criminal charges this week.
“You don’t know all the facts until you complete the investigation,” Chapman told The Daily Progress in defense of his own actions and the actions of the Alcoholic Beverage Control agents.
It’s unclear why Chapman’s investigation took some 80 days.
The Charlottesville broadsheet also does not mention how much Daly paid her defense attorney, Francis Lawrence.
A spokeswoman for Alcoholic Beverage Control’s regional office, Carol Mawyer, refused to provide details other than saying that the bureau’s agents cunningly wear plainclothes.
“This has been an extremely trying experience,” Daly wrote in her statement. “It is something to this day I cannot understand or believe has come to this point.”
Follow Eric on Twitter and send education-related story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.
A dispensary supplies weed waste for swine
By Manuel Valdes Associated Press Fri Jun 28, 2013 9:27 PM
SNOHOMISH, Wash. -- The white van with tinted windows pulled up to the driveway with its cargo — cardboard boxes full of marijuana. And the customers eagerly awaited it, grunting and snorting.
The deal was going down for three hungry Berkshire pigs from a Washington state farm, and a German television crew was there to film it.
Part flavor experiment, part green recycling, part promotion and bolstered by the legalization of recreational marijuana in Washington state, excess pot has been fed to the hogs by their owners, pig farmer Jeremy Gross and Seattle butcher William von Schneidau, since earlier this year.
Gross and von Schneidau now sell their “pot pig” cuts at von Schneidau’s butcher shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market at a premium price — bacon is $17 a pound while chops go for $16.90 a pound.
“He’s like, ‘Let’s see what kind of flavor it gives it.’ So we ran it and it gave good flavor,” Gross said. “It’s like anything else — what you feed them is what they’re going to taste like. It’s almost like a savory alfalfa fed cow or alfalfa fed pig.”
The meat, though, won’t get people high.
While the passage of recreational marijuana inspired the experiment, Gross and von Schneidau get the marijuana excess — roots, stems, and other part of the plant that are ground up and not used for consumption — from a medical marijuana dispensary. At the butcher shop, cuts from the pot pigs are signed with a little drawing of a marijuana leaf stuck on them with a toothpick.
“It tastes like the best pork chop you’ve ever had,” said Matt McAlman, who runs Top Shelf Organic, the dispensary that is providing the pot plant waste for the pigs to eat.
Currently, the state’s draft rules say pot plant waste must be “rendered unusable” by either grinding it or mixing it with nonconsumable, recycled solid waste, such as food waste, compost, soil and paper waste. The state’s rules for medical marijuana do not say how to get rid of marijuana byproducts.
John P. McNamara, a professor at Washington State University’s Department of Animal Sciences, doesn’t find the experiment amusing.
“Of all the crazy things I’ve seen in my 37-plus years, this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said.
McNamara said in order to introduce a drug or medicine to feed that’s being given to animals that make part of the food supply, the federal government must sign off on it after extensive review. He adds that research has shown that cannabis ingested can be transferred onto tissues.
Of course regulating marijuana is better then putting people in jail who sell and use it. But not much.
Sadly if marijuana was 100 percent legal and unregulated a pound of weed would cost just as much as a head of lettuce.
Legalizing marijuana is hard. Regulating a pot industry is even harder.
By Mike Konczal, Published: June 29, 2013 at 9:00 am
It’s not every day that a former Microsoft executive holds a press conference to announce his new venture into the exciting and profitable world of drug dealing.
But that’s exactly what happened earlier this month when Jamen Shively, a former Microsoft corporate strategy manager, announced that he wants to create the equivalent of Starbucks in the newly legalized pot industry in Washington state.
All this is happening at the same time that the Washington State Liquor Control Board is looking to finalize rules on the new, legal marijuana industry. And one of the major debates right now among board members is how much they ought to prevent or encourage the kind of market consolidation in which a few firms dominate the whole industry.
As Chris Marr of the Liquor Control Board argued, “How do you prevent a Microsoft millionaire from getting this idea and deciding that — playing by the rules — they’re going to dominate the market?” And if that is the concern, what can economics inform us about how this new market should be set up?
[Chris Marr sounds like an arrogant government jerk!!!!]
To provide some background, voters in Washington state passed Initiative 502 last fall in a general ballot, creating a statewide legal market in pot. Unlike Colorado, which has passed a bill to expand its medical marijuana industry and make pot legally available to everyone, Washington is folding pot under regulations for the liquor industry. As such, the Washington Liquor Board has regulatory control over the new marijuana industry.
As with alcohol, a marijuana firm is classified as a producer, processor or retailer. The first question, therefore, is how aggressively regulators should try to check the market power of front-line sellers. As of now, if there is excess demand for licenses, which cost $1,000 each, they will be subject to lottery. Licenses can’t be traded in a secondary market, and it is possible that the regulators will cap the number of licenses per holder.
The law also requires regulation for public safety and public health. As with the tobacco industry, voters don’t want firms marketing and selling pot to underage users. And public health officials are concerned about companies marketing to “problem users” who would like to quit or reduce their usage but find themselves unable to.
If that’s the case, then perhaps having pot dealers with large market power is a good idea. Economists usually consider monopolists a problem because they produce too little of a product and charge too much for it, earning substantial profits.
[Which is why marijuana should NOT be regulated by the government]
But that could be a good thing for the pot industry. Safe profit margins mean that a firm might be less likely to compete on price for every potential consumer — and also much more likely to follow the law.
Yet people involved with the Washington law have two main responses to this. The first is that firms with market power could go outside the market and use their extensive profits and influence to exert political power.
“The idea is to prevent the retail industry from becoming so large that they have enough wealth and power to roll over anyone trying to enforce, expand or update the public-health-focused rules that are designed to protect the public’s health and safety,” says Roger Roffman, a University of Washington professor and author of the forthcoming book “Marijuana Nation.”
Second, consolidated firms may that they themselves pose threats to public health. “If a firm has market power, the profits they get from selling above market costs means that they can have a bigger marketing department,” says UCLA public policy professor Mark Kleiman. “In the real world, spending here will increase their market share by creating additional problem users. This, combined with lobbying efforts that will rival the alcohol industry in terms of avoiding taxes and adjusting the rules, is a major problem.”
A third argument comes from University of Chicago economics professor E. Glen Weyl. He argues that “long-term players who have market power have an incentive to get people addicted. A monopolist, in particular, has a big incentive to advertise to get people addicted over the long-term, as they are sure to reap all those rewards.” If a marijuana firm has a monopoly, then the financial gains of turning someone into a heavy, problem user of a product (rather than a specific brand) will all go to that firm. A market with smaller, fragmented firms with greater turnover would be a check on this dynamic.
Both Weyl and Kleiman argue that Washington should consider bolder ideas to regulate the industry. Weyl suggests some sort of mandatory turnover policy to discourage firms from turning people into problem users. Another possibility, which Kleiman considers, is to create a state-run nonprofit retail firm that has no interest in creating problem users or expanding the market. (Given that pot is still illegal at the federal level, this isn’t likely to happen).
Market consolidation is also an issue when it comes to a firm’s vertical structure. Under Washington state law, if a firm is a retailer, it can’t be a producer as well as a processor. This is meant to fragment the vertical chain of production, and it contrasts with Colorado’s system, in which dealers are required to grow 70 percent of what they sell (as that is how the medical marijuana system works).
Another related economic issue is the location of pot retailers. The law in Washington, as currently structured, requires pot retailers to be at least 1,000 feet away from a school, day-care facility, playground, teen arcade game center, recreation center, transit center or library. Though this may sound minor, in practice it means that it will be very difficult to put pot retailers in dense population spaces. Retailers might be limited to industrial or largely depopulated areas.
That could force what economists who study spatial models of economies call the agglomeration model — as when certain kinds of restaurants all cluster together to create an area people go to for certain goods. As Weyl notes, “often ethnic restaurants cluster into neighborhoods so that people can find the best places, creating ethnic neighborhoods. Do we want a ‘pot town’ to grow up in our cities? Perhaps not, but that is the logical consequence of forcing dealers away from a convenience model.”
Kleiman thinks the main issue with regard to pot retailers’ ultimate location has more to do with advertising and discretion than anything else. “An alcoholic trying to quit drinking will pass by alcohol in bars, billboards and grocery stores. That person uses up a lot of emotional energy always having to say no.” Instead of focusing on 1,000 feet within certain buildings, the bigger issue Kleiman emphasizes is whether storefronts and signs aggressively advertise their product.
It’s important to get these issues right because they interact with the three background constraints on this new market. The first is the black market, while the second is the legal medical marijuana market. For some reason, the medical marijuana market won’t be taxed, while the new legal market will be taxed around 25 percent. (The black market is, of course, not taxed at all.)
Note that if the price goes too high, or if the location restrictions prove too inconvenient, pot consumers might just stick with medical marijuana or the black market. State lawmakers are currently trying to get the medical marijuana market folded under the same regulations that the Liquor Board is creating for the legal pot market, and Mark Kleiman notes that police may need to escalate crackdowns on illegal distribution as they legalize the market.
A third constraint is the federal government, which enforces laws that still make pot illegal. If legalization is seen as a disaster, it is possible that the federal government will move to shut down the process by preempting state law. But even if it doesn’t, background laws will probably hurt the scale and efficiency of pot retailers.
As Jack Finlaw explains, since marijuana is banned at the federal level, new pot retailers “often cannot conduct their businesses through banks. They also cannot deduct business expenses from their federal taxes.” It is possible the normal interactions between businesses that allow them to thrive — things like having a legal bank account — won’t be immediately available.
Markets are constructed through laws and regulations, and the market for pot that is being created in Washington state is no exception. The regulators see how the consolidated alcohol industry is able to avoid taxation and accountability and are determined to avoid these problems in the new pot industry. Thus this market may help economists understand a crucial role of regulations that has lapsed in recent decades: the role of government in curbing the excess power of the private sector.
Mike Konczal is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, where he focuses on financial regulation, inequality and unemployment. He writes a weekly column for Wonkblog. Follow him on Twitter here.
Marijuana's march toward mainstream confounds feds
NANCY BENAC, Associated Press, By NANCY BENAC and ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press
Updated 11:21 am, Saturday, June 29, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — It took 50 years for American attitudes about marijuana to zigzag from the paranoia of "Reefer Madness" to the excesses of Woodstock back to the hard line of "Just Say No."
The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously "didn't inhale," to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.
Now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug — for medical use and just for fun.
It is a moment in America that is rife with contradictions:
—People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals more about the drug's potential dangers, particularly for young people.
—States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a federal prohibition on its use.
—Exploration of the potential medical benefit is limited by high federal hurdles to research.
Washington policymakers seem reluctant to deal with any of it.
Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor who worked for a national commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, sees the public taking a big leap from prohibition to a more laissez-faire approach without full deliberation.
"It's a remarkable story historically," he says. "But as a matter of public policy, it's a little worrisome."
More than a little worrisome to those in the anti-drug movement.
"We're on this hundred-mile-an-hour freight train to legalizing a third addictive substance," says Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama administration, lumping marijuana with tobacco and alcohol.
Legalization strategist Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, likes the direction the marijuana smoke is wafting. But knows his side has considerable work yet to do.
"I'm constantly reminding my allies that marijuana is not going to legalize itself," he says.
___
By the numbers:
Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes since California voters made the first move in 1996. Voters in Colorado and Washington state took the next step last year and approved pot for recreational use. Alaska is likely to vote on the same question in 2014, and a few other states are expected to put recreational use on the ballot in 2016.
Nearly half of adults have tried marijuana, 12 percent of them in the past year, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.
Fifty-two percent of adults favor legalizing marijuana, up 11 percentage points just since 2010, according to Pew.
Sixty percent think Washington shouldn't enforce federal laws against marijuana in states that have approved its use.
___
Where California led the charge on medical marijuana, the next chapter in this story is being written in Colorado and Washington state.
Policymakers there are grappling with all sorts of sticky issues revolving around one central question: How do you legally regulate the production, distribution, sale and use of marijuana for recreational purposes when federal law bans all of the above?
The Justice Department began reviewing the matter after last November's election. But seven months later, states still are on their own.
Both sides in the debate paid close attention when Obama said in December that "it does not make sense, from a prioritization point of view, for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that's legal."
Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who favors legalization, predicts Washington will take a hands-off approach, based on Obama's comments. But he's quick to add: "We would like to see that in writing."
The federal government already has taken a similar approach toward users in states that have approved marijuana for medical use.
It doesn't go after pot-smoking cancer patients or grandmas with glaucoma. But it also has made clear that people who are in the business of growing, selling and distributing marijuana on a large scale are subject to potential prosecution for violations of the Controlled Substances Act — even in states that have legalized medical use.
___
There's a political calculus for the president, or any other politician, in all of this.
Younger people, who tend to vote more Democratic, are more supportive of legalizing marijuana, as are people in the West, where the libertarian streak runs strong.
Despite increasing public acceptance of marijuana overall, politicians know there are complications that could come with commercializing an addictive substance. Opponents of pot are particularly worried that legalization will result in increased use by young people.
Sabet frames the conundrum for Obama: "Do you want to be the president that stops a popular cause, especially a cause that's popular within your own party? Or do you want to be the president that enables youth drug use that will have ramifications down the road?"
Marijuana legalization advocates offer politicians a rosier scenario, in which legitimate pot businesses eager to keep their operating licenses make sure not to sell to minors.
"Having a regulated system is the only way to ensure that we're not ceding control of this popular substance to the criminal market and to black marketeers," says Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group for legal pot businesses in the U.S.
___
While the federal government hunkers down, Colorado and Washington state are moving forward on their own with regulations covering everything from how plants will be grown to how many stores will be allowed.
Tim Lynch, director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, predicts "the next few years are going to be messy" as states work to bring a black-market industry into the sunshine.
California's experience with medical marijuana offers a window into potential pitfalls that can come with wider availability of pot.
Dispensaries for medical marijuana have proliferated in the state, and regulation has been lax, prompting a number of cities around the state to ban dispensaries.
In May, the California Supreme Court ruled that cities and counties can ban medical marijuana dispensaries. A few weeks later, Los Angeles voters approved a ballot measure that limits the number of pot shops in the city to 135, down from an estimated high of about 1,000.
This isn't full-scale buyer's remorse, but more a course correction before the inevitable next push for full-on legalization in the state.
___
Growing support for legalization doesn't mean everybody wants to light up: Barely one in 10 Americans used pot in the past year.
Those who do want to see marijuana legalized range from libertarians who oppose much government intervention to people who want to see an activist government aggressively regulate marijuana production and sales.
For some, money talks: Why let drug cartels rake in untaxed profits when a cut could go into government coffers?
There are other threads in the growing acceptance of pot.
People think it's not as dangerous as once believed. They worry about high school kids getting an arrest record. They see racial inequity in the way marijuana laws are enforced. They're weary of the "war on drugs."
Opponents counter with a 2012 study finding that regular use of marijuana during teen years can lead to a long-term drop in IQ, and another study indicating marijuana use can induce and exacerbate psychotic illness in susceptible people. They question the notion that regulating pot will bring in big money, saying revenue estimates are grossly exaggerated.
They reject the claim that prisons are bulging with people convicted of simple possession by citing federal statistics showing only a small percentage of federal and state inmates are behind bars for that alone.
They warn that baby boomers who draw on their own innocuous experiences with pot are overlooking the much higher potency of today's marijuana.
In 2009, concentrations of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot, averaged close to 10 percent in marijuana, compared with about 4 percent in the 1980s, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
"If marijuana legalization was about my old buddies at Berkeley smoking in People's Park once a week I don't think many of us would care that much," says Sabet, who helped to found Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a group that opposes legalization. "It's really about creating a new industry that's going to target kids and target minorities and our vulnerable populations just like our legal industries do today."
___
So how bad, or good, is pot?
J. Michael Bostwick, a psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic, set out to sort through more than 100 sometimes conflicting studies after his teenage son became addicted to pot, and turned his findings into a 22-page article for Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2012.
For all of the talk that smoking pot is no big deal, Bostwick says he determined that "it was a very big deal. There were addiction issues. There were psychosis issues.
But there was also this very large body of literature suggesting that it could potentially have very valuable pharmaceutical applications but the research was stymied" by federal barriers.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse says research is ongoing.
Dr. Nora Volkow, the institute's director, worries that legalizing pot will result in increased use of marijuana by young people, and impair their brain development.
"Think about it: Do you want a nation where your young people are stoned?" she asks.
Partisans on both sides think people in other states will keep a close eye on Colorado and Washington as they decide what happens next.
But past predictions on pot have been wildly off-base.
"Reefer Madness," the 1936 propaganda movie that pot fans turned into a cult classic in the 1970s, spins a tale of dire consequences "ending often in incurable insanity."
___
Associated Press writers Kristen Wyatt in Denver, Gene Johnson in Seattle, Lauran Neergaard in Washington and AP researcher Monika Mathur in Washington contributed to this report.
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Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nbenac and Alicia Caldwell at http://www.twitter.com/acaldwellap
Landlord challenges feds in Calif medical pot case
By GREG RISLING, Associated Press
Updated 7:10 am, Saturday, June 29, 2013
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — The feds never kicked down the door of Tony Jalali's building and raided the medical pot shops that rented space from him.
Letters were sent to him informing him that having a dispensary in his Orange County office building violated U.S. law and it could be taken from him. Once a lawsuit was filed against him by the U.S. government, Jalali booted the lone remaining clinic.
Jalali now is fighting back, challenging the efforts of federal prosecutors who are using a well-established law that allows for the seizure of property linked to criminal activity. Jalali, 59, believes he's been unfairly targeted in an ongoing crackdown on pot shops across California.
"I have not even been charged with or convicted of a crime," said Jalali, who denies ever receiving notice letters. "What the government has done is wrong and we expect a federal court to stop it."
Jalali, joined by a Virginia-based public interest law firm, argues that it's unconstitutional to take his building, estimated to be worth $1.5 million, because forfeitures must be consistent with conduct. Jalali said he had no involvement with the dispensary, Releaf Health & Wellness.
As one of more than two dozen landlords ensnared in the efforts to close California pot stores, he likely faces a tough battle. The U.S. government has seized property linked to criminal activity for nearly three decades. Forfeitures accounted for nearly $4.2 billion last fiscal year.
Renting or using a property for the purpose of distributing drugs is a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Federal prosecutors say the lawsuits are a measured approach targeting landlords who were notified that their tenants were operating illegally.
"Landlords across this district should be well aware by this time that if they continue to rent to pot stores, they will eventually be the recipient of a letter or the target of a lawsuit," said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman with the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.
While there's little debate about the government's right to seize funds from money laundering or drug cartels, Jalali and his fellow pot landlords are not accused of selling the drug. Medical pot is legal in the state, but at odds with federal law.
Some observers said landlords are caught in the middle of conflicting state and federal laws.
"I think the dispensaries are a more reasonable target than the landlords," said John Worrall, a professor of criminology at University of Texas at Dallas. "But by providing the facilities they are in fact facilitating (a crime). They are doing their best to comply with the state. It's a bit of a gray area."
Critics say the civil forfeiture process is misguided because people have to prove their innocence to keep their property. Many property owners have settled out of fear while maintaining they did nothing wrong.
"It becomes unsafe for property owners to challenge the law," said lawyer Richard Hamlin, who represented a Santa Fe Springs building owner who reached a deal with federal prosecutors. "If you lose, you have a huge loss. It's like capital punishment for the property."
About two dozen of the 30 or so cases filed in the seven-county Central District of California, which stretches from San Luis Obispo to Riverside, have been settled with landlords agreeing not to rent space to dispensaries for several years.
In about half the settlements, landlords also forked over tens of thousands of dollars, including $100,000 from an Orange County building owner who had eight dispensaries as tenants.
Jalali, a software engineer who emigrated to the U.S. from Iran in the late 1970s, said he didn't think he'd get in trouble because medical pot is legal under state law. His building houses a dentist office and several other businesses.
"Civil forfeiture is the government's weapon of choice in enforcing drug laws," said attorney Scott Bullock of the Institute for Justice, the law firm that has joined Jalali in the lawsuit.
"We think it's important for this practice to be stopped and it will continue to be abused elsewhere unless a precedent is set that says it can't be done," Bullock said.
In Oakland, the city has intervened to try and halt the closure and forfeiture of Harborside Health Center, which is billed as the nation's largest pot dispensary. City officials have said closing down the store would lead to a health and safety crisis because many of the more than 100,000 patients would turn to the street to score the drug.
Richard Tamor, an attorney representing Harborside's landlord, said federal authorities could have insisted that the clinic close, rather than take legal action to seize the building.
"When you know something is going on and it's open and notorious, instead of filing a lawsuit and spending scarce government resources, just send a letter," said Tamor, who added his client would be willing to talk with federal prosecutors to resolve her case.
The four U.S. attorneys in the state targeted dispensaries because they were violating federal law and weren't complying with state law by making huge profits. More than 600 pot shops have closed in Southern California and federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against only three dispensary operators. Jalali's former tenants were not among those who were charged.
Jalali's lawyers contend the city of Anaheim, which joined the suit, is colluding with federal prosecutors to share in the forfeiture spoils. Jalali would have to be convicted of a crime for the city to seize his building under state law, his attorneys said.
Jalali think it's hypocritical for Anaheim to crack down on dispensaries while it also benefits from the industry. The city, known as the home to Disneyland, hosts a medical marijuana expo at its convention center next week. A city official declined comment.
Feds: Doctor surgically removes meth from woman's pelvic area
By Cristina Silva Associated Press Fri Jun 28, 2013 10:57 PM
PHOENIX -- A doctor surgically removed a one-pound package of methamphetamine from a woman’s pelvic area after she allegedly tried to smuggle the drugs into Arizona from Mexico, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said Friday.
Claudia Ibarra, 31, was taken into custody this week at the Port of San Luis after federal officers suspected attempted smuggling. She crossed the border alone and on foot and is a U.S. citizen from the border city of Yuma.
Ibarra was searched at the border and then transported to a nearby medical facility where the doctor found and removed the drug package. She was stopped after exhibiting common signs of potential drug smuggling, said spokeswoman Teresa Small, who declined to elaborate.
“When they were patting her down, they realized there was something down there,” Small said.
The methamphetamine had been wrapped in black tape and a condom and inserted into Ibarra’s body, officials said. She was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations.
Officials said it is not unusual for narcotics smugglers to hide drugs inside human bodies, either by having people swallow the package or through other means. A medical official was tasked with removing the package because exposure to the methamphetamine could have killed Ibarra, officials said.
It was not known if she had an attorney or had previously been arrested on drug-smuggling charges.
Police need warrant to open package that reeks of pot, court says
By Maura Dolan
June 27, 2013, 11:38 a.m.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Police need a warrant to open a package in the mail that reeks of marijuana, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday, rejecting a prosecutor’s arguments that a search was warranted under a novel “plain smell” test.
In a ruling written by Justice Goodwin Liu, the state high court dismissed arguments by Santa Barbara County prosecutors that contraband could be searched under a theory that would extend the “plain sight” test to “plain smell.” Police are generally entitled to seize evidence that is in plain sight.
Although officers had the legal right to take the FedEx package, they should have obtained a warrant before opening it, the court said. The package contained 444 grams of marijuana, and the alleged sender was charged with selling and shipping marijuana.
“There is no dispute as to whether the police lawfully seized the package without a warrant,” Liu wrote. “Because there was no justification for an immediate search of the package once it was seized, the police had no derivative authority to search the package later at the police station without a warrant."
Police took the package from a FedEx office after an employee called to report that she smelled marijuana. Officers eventually opened the package at the police station.
Thursday’s ruling was a victory for the defendant in the case, who sought to prevent prosecutors from presenting evidence of the marijuana because he said the package was unlawfully searched. The marijuana evidence must now be suppressed.
The court did not rule on whether a “plain smell” test was ever legally appropriate because prosecutors had failed to argue the theory in the trial court. The court said they were procedurally barred from introducing the argument on appeal.
I think a better idea would be to take all the guns and explosives away from Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam would no longer be able to terrorize and murder brown skinned folks in third world countries. And of course Uncle Sam's goons in the FBI, Homeland Security, BATF, DEA and other government police forces would no longer be able to terrorize Americans on the home front.
Feds urge fireworks sellers to watch for suspicious buyers
Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY 11:10 a.m. EDT June 29, 2013
A federal task force says that fireworks sellers should keep a close eye out for suspicious people buying fireworks.
As the frenzy for fireworks peaks in the runup to Independence Day, a federal task force is warning fireworks retailers to keep watch for suspicious purchasers.
The National Explosives Task Force issued an industry advisory Thursday warning that consumer fireworks are a "common component used in improvised explosive devices." It advised retailers to look for possible signs of suspicious activity, including customers who ask about how to take apart or modify the fireworks or who seek to purchase commercial-grade fireworks.
The advisory comes in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured more than 250 on April 15. In an indictment made public Thursday, a grand jury charged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with detonating bombs made from pressure cookers, low-explosive powder and shrapnel at the marathon. The indictment says his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, purchased 48 mortars containing 8 pounds of low-explosive powder from Phantom Fireworks, a retail store in Seabrook, N.H., on Feb. 6.
This is the second time in recent years that fireworks have been used in a terror plot. Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, who confessed to a failed attempt to bomb Times Square in 2010, purchased fireworks from a Phantom store in Matamoros, Pa.
But the use of fireworks for nefarious acts has not dampened demand among consumers or prompted backlash from state or federal regulators. Last year, consumers purchased more than 185 million pounds of fireworks, according to data from the Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission.
All but four states — Delaware, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey — allow the sale of some types of fireworks or sparklers. No state has tightened restrictions on fireworks since the bombing, says Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association, a trade group based in Bethesda, Md.
Now is peak fireworks season: 90% of everyday consumer pyrotechnics is sold between April 15 to July 15, Heckman says.
"I think most Americans realize that bad things can be made out of many common materials," Heckman said.
Consumer fireworks individually do not mass detonate because they contain low levels of explosive mixed with other chemicals to make the firework colorful, says Phantom CEO Bruce Zoldan. The Boston bombers, using a technique recommended by al-Qaeda, appear to have cut open the pyrotechnics to remove the powder and put it in the pressure cooker, Zoldan said.
"It's possible to get enough powder together to do something, but there are easier ways to do that," Zoldan said.
The industry, which is tightly regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and state authorities, is willing to work on ways to prevent products from being used improperly or assist law enforcement when needed, Zoldan said.
Phantom Fireworks maintains a database of customers for marketing so the company was able to identify Tsarnaev's purchase, Zoldan said.
"I think the industry will have to gather together and come up with something that will protect the industry's interests by working hand in hand with Homeland Security," he said. "If we're selling a product that's capable of being dissected, then we as an industry will have to get together to do what's right."
The industry has taken such steps before, he said. Decades ago, the industry created and funded the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory to safety test products to prevent fireworks-related injuries, he said.
"Now we need to make a proactive effort to help monitor individuals who might come in to buy fireworks for not honorable reasons," Zoldan said. "We help Americans celebrate America's birthday. We're not going to let criminals ruin that."
These laws which are almost certainly unconstitutional are ridiculously vague and make chemicals “substantially similar” to banned substances or drugs illegal.
Case reveals feds’ fight vs. synthetic-drug makers
By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:05 PM
Federal prosecutors in Phoenix have begun a monthlong quest to convict two men of selling substances in designer drugs that were, at the time, legal.
The government claims the substances found in synthetic drugs sold as White Water Rapid Glass Cleaner and Amped Lady Bug Exuberance Powder were close enough to illegal drugs that two men violated federal law when they manufactured and sold them to businesses across the country.
A jury of 11 men and six women will decide if the chemicals in the designer drugs that Michael Rocky Lane and Clinton Joseph Strunk sold were “substantially similar” to banned substances.
The case offers some insight into how prosecutors can fight the industry without laws that specifically outlaw the ever-changing chemical compounds found in the synthetic drugs.
The prosecution relies on a 1986 federal law that outlaws substances that have a similar chemical construction to illegal drugs and that are intended to have a similar effect on people. The law, known as the “analogue act,” also requires prosecutors to prove the similar substances were meant for human consumption.
The federal statute gave prosecutors another tool to go after drug producers who monitor the government’s schedule of banned substances in an effort to stay one step ahead of the law.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Pashayan said that is exactly what Lane and Strunk were doing between early 2011 and July 2012.
“These defendants here, they monitored these schedules and they did not distribute scheduled drugs,” Pashayan said. “They did, however, distribute other illegal drugs that contained chemicals similar to those already scheduled.”
Lane and Strunk’s lawyers concede they sold the chemicals, and were successful doing it, but insist Lane was running a legal business.
“This was not back-alley sales,” Lane’s attorney, Bruce Feder, told the jury. “This was businesses everywhere selling to people who came into their shops and purchased their product. It was out there like everything else, like cookies and milk.”
The federal sting that originally led to the arrest of Lane, Strunk and a handful of others was part of a nationwide undercover operation in late July 2012 known as “Operation Logjam.”
The months-long operation was made public about two weeks after Congress passed a law targeting synthetic drugs.
The local sting occurred when federal agents posing as Hells Angels purchased 2,500 powder packets of “Eight Ballz” from one of the defendants during a meeting in late June 2012 in a Valley parking lot, according to a federal affidavit.
The investigation also relied on paid informants, undercover surveillance and agents sifting through the trash outside key locations.
The government’s frequent references to cocaine and methamphetamine, and the investigators’ decision to use informants and go through the trash of Lane’s distribution business in Tempe, near Rio Salado Parkway and McClintock Road, should not send a message to the jury about the seriousness of the crimes, the defense attorneys argued.
“Cocaine and meth, it’s got nothing to do with this case, other than to try and prejudice you,” Feder told the jury.
Each side will call experts to give their opinions about whether Lane’s products were “substantially similar” in their chemical makeup to already banned substances.
Jurors are also expected to hear testimony from smoke-shop owners, synthetic-drug salespeople and users of “bath salts” about how the drug was marketed to retailers and sold to consumers, in addition to the effects Lane’s products had on users.
Many of the witnesses are also expected to testify about how popular and profitable Lane’s products were.
Jeff Paglia, a smoke-shop owner from West Virginia who allegedly received shipments of Lane’s products, is among those expected to testify. Paglia is cooperating with federal prosecutors after he was indicted last year on drug-conspiracy and money-laundering charges.
Federal investigators describe the business Paglia’s West Virginia smoke shop as brisk, with dozens of customers lining up outside the shop and rushing in as soon as the store opened to buy bath salts. An investigator saw one customer of Paglia’s shooting up in the store’s parking lot, and another bang his head against a car steering wheel after ingesting synthetic compounds, according to court documents.
Internal Revenue Service investigators believe Paglia deposited about $3 million from drug sales into bank accounts from early 2011 through early 2012.
The prosecution’s first witness on Thursday was a 26-year-old former Arizona State University student who graduated from the school in December 2010 with a biochemistry degree, but could not find a job in the field due to a misdemeanor marijuana conviction on his record.
Colin Stratford told jurors how he met Lane and quickly went to work as a chemist who helped transform Lane’s business from a small-time operation based in Lane’s Cave Creek garage to a multimillion dollar enterprise headquartered at a Tempe business complex.
Stratford said the two had a falling out after a lab report indicated the presence of a banned stimulant in some of the substances Lane received from China. Those substances were typically mixed with numbing agents to ease the burn when inhaled, and repackaged in the vibrant containers associated with synthetic compounds, according to investigators.
When the synthetic drugs turned brown and went bad, prosecutors said, they were resold as “Baja Dirt” and “Brown Sugar.”
After Stratford saw the banned substance show up on a lab report, he said he quit working with Lane.
Within a few months, Stratford was working as an operative for the Drug Enforcement Administration, where he said he was paid $5,400 for his efforts.
Many of the prosecution’s witnesses are in the same situation as Stratford.
During his 90-minute opening remarks, Pashayan showed photos of those expected to testify, and most were White, college-aged males who said they found themselves working for or doing business with Lane.
Some moved to Arizona from other states for sales work in the lucrative industry, and others worked as out-of-state distributors, selling to smoke shops, small gas stations and liquor stores, according to prosecutors.
All were trying to cash in on the success of what prosecutors have described as legitimized drug dealing.
But, like Stratford, some of those same chemists, distributors, salespeople and smoke-shop owners have now found themselves as cooperating witnesses in the government’s efforts to rein in the industry.
“These defendants made a lot of money selling these designer-drug products that got people high,” Pashayan said. “They mislabeled their products as innocuous, everyday items to skirt the law.”
But the defense attorneys believe skirting the law, as prosecutors contend, is different from breaking the law. They asked the jurors to vote with their minds and not based on how they feel about the products the suspects have admitted to selling.
“The law doesn’t punish people that you think sell bad products,” Feder said.
I suspect the same thing is happening in Phoenix, Tucson and every major city in the USA, and probably a lot of small towns too.
Remember how our government masters lied to us and said the Social Security card would not become the national identity card???
Well now the cops tell us we have nothing to fear from all this government spying if we are not criminals. Yea, sure!!!!
Around the Bay Area, you're being watched
By Josh Richman and Angela Woodall Staff writers
Posted: 06/30/2013 01:29:21 AM PDT
Across the Bay Area -- from Pittsburg [California] to San Francisco, from Tiburon to Gilroy -- you're being watched.
And it's not just the National Security Agency secretly vacuuming up your personal data. Local police agencies are increasingly adopting Big Data technologies such as automatic license-plate readers that gather information about everyone, whether they've broken the law or not.
A lot of the information ends up on the 14th floor of a federal office building in San Francisco, where a "fusion center" run by state and local law enforcement agencies combines the data with a plethora of personal information about you, from credit reports to car rentals to unlisted phone numbers to gun licenses.
"No one has
any idea of the scale of information being gathered," said Mike Katz-Lacabe, of San Leandro, who discovered this in a very personal way.
A San Leandro school board member, Katz-Lacabe said a comment he heard about license-plate readers at a city council meeting prompted him to file public-records requests that revealed not only that his Toyota Tercel's license plate had been photographed all over town, but also that it and all kinds of other information were being collated at the fusion center. "I was a little shocked," he said.
Along with many of the nation's 77 other fusion centers, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as an antiterrorism intelligence hub. And like
many of the other centers, it has morphed into a huge data center whose purpose is to solve and prevent all kinds of crimes -- from terrorist bombings to car thefts.
Authorities insist there's nothing for law-abiding people to worry about. They say they're just using the latest technology to gather and consolidate information they've used for years -- extra eyes and ears in an age of skimpy budgets and understaffed beats.
Police are also beefing up their use of video surveillance. The latest Bay Area trend allows patrol officers to view surveillance video 24/7 on their smartphones. Many Bay Area police agencies now have at least some cruisers fitted with automatic license-plate readers to scan every car they pass. This and reams of other data from 15 other counties are fed to the fusion center, where analysts search for patterns indicating suspicious activity.
Mike Sena, the Northern California fusion center's director, said his agency is simply centralizing law-enforcement information that was fragmented in the past.
"Before it would be hit or miss," he said in his office at the center, which overlooks San Francisco's Civic Center. He's quick to reject any analogies between his agency and the NSA: "We're not some big spy shop."
California's six fusion centers have been credited with tracking down men who made bomb threats to Delta Air Lines and the U.S. Embassy in Italy; foiling an attempted kidnapping in Sacramento; and helping to quickly find a suspicious tractor-trailer reportedly headed for New York's Times Square -- though the truck, when found, was deemed harmless.
But some Bay Area police collect data for more prosaic purposes.
Tiburon in 2010 installed cameras on the only two roads in and out of town so police now record the license plate of every car that enters and leaves, creating what some say is a virtual gated community.
Police Chief Michael Cronin said he had to convince the Town Council and residents that
Pittsburg Police Lt. Ron Raman uses a video camera surveillance monitoring station in Pittsburg, Calif., it wasn't unduly intrusive because it captures only plates and not images of the cars' occupants. Property crimes, he said, have decreased by about a third since the well-publicized cameras were installed.
The Piedmont City Council likes the idea: It voted June 3 to spend $679,000 to install 39 license-plate readers at 15 points around the city. And Menlo Park's police chief says he wants to do the same.
Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said the more data that's accrued and the longer it's kept, the more potential for abuse exists. "It has very limited efficacy and real potential for harm," she said.
Other "eyes" are watching you, too.
Video cameras have become commonplace in many homes and almost every business, ATM or public building. Yet many people might not realize that police across the Bay Area use their own video surveillance systems to keep tabs on public areas, too.
A consultant's recent report to the Oakland Police Department urged it to "significantly increase the camera-monitoring capabilities of the OPD in commercial areas throughout the city to provide identifications and evidence in robbery, burglary and some shooting cases. Cameras would be monitored and recorded at the Domain Awareness Center that is currently under construction."
An Oakland police spokeswoman didn't return repeated emails and phone calls seeking details about the department's camera program.
Pittsburg police officers can now watch live video from 89 cameras throughout the city on their smartphones while out on their beats. Lt. Ron Raman said the cameras essentially let officers extend their enforcement and investigative reach.
Gilroy police Capt. Jim Gillio said the city's Downtown Merchants Association paid half of the $50,000 cost for a six-camera system, of which three cameras have been installed, so emergency dispatchers can tilt, pan and zoom in if something's happening. Gillio said the system has helped spot stolen cars and once let dispatchers quickly see that a reported kidnapping actually hadn't happened.
Richmond police Capt. Mark Gagan said "no police manager would say one technology or one method is a panacea for all crimes," but his department's 42 cameras -- placed in violent areas as well as areas often fouled by quality-of-life issues such as garbage dumping, vandalism and prostitution -- help a thinly spread police force stay atop of what's going on and have led to many arrests. Retired police officers, who both "understand what suspicious or predatory behavior looks like" and know the city's geography well, monitor the live feeds 12 to 16 hours a day, he said.
Felix Hunziker, a 47-year-old architect and Richmond resident who's involved with the North & East Neighborhood Council's residents' patrol, said he's "pretty much good with it because we do have problems in our city, and the cameras are useful tools. ... They have been useful in solving crimes; they may be a deterrent, as well."
Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Pablo, Pinole, Martinez and other Bay Area cities have cameras, too, but most don't mention it on their websites. You wouldn't know about the cameras unless you specifically asked police or city officials.
San Francisco's policy prohibits police from monitoring their cameras in real time; officers review recordings only after a crime has occurred. But after the Boston Marathon bombing in April, the chief asked that the policy be modified during big events. He also asked for more cameras.
UC Berkeley researchers' 2008 analysis of San Francisco's cameras found they had no deterrent effect on violent crime, though certain property crimes -- such as pickpocketing, purse-snatching and thefts from cars -- did decrease in areas where the cameras are located.
Camera systems already in place can have software added later that will recognize people's faces or specific objects, making all that recorded footage much more searchable and potentially invasive. It's a booming business: Intelligent video surveillance and analytics software is a $13.5 billion industry projected to almost triple to $39 billion by 2020, according to a March report from Homeland Security Research, a market research firm.
Legal doctrines supporting the government's collection of information in public spaces date to the 1960s, long before police could easily record so many aspects of our lives, said Shayana Kadidal, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.
"The technology simply didn't exist to allow for the government to have a camera on every street corner and record that information forever," Kadidal said. "It doesn't matter whether they actually use it to prosecute people. ... Just knowing that the information is out there casts a huge chilling effect across society."
Josh Richman covers politics. Contact him at 510-208-6428. Follow him at Twitter.com/josh_richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.
How to live off the grid
Don’t want to be watched? It’s easy: Just don’t do anything, go anywhere or talk to anybody. But if you still want to live your life, there are several things you can do to reduce your exposure to government and law-enforcement snooping:
Ditch the smartphone. Even with the “location services” function switched off, your phone still might use local cell towers and Wi-Fi hot spots to determine its location so long as there’s a battery in it. And, of course, your carrier is logging who you call and for how long — data we now know the government collects. If you can’t stand being out of touch, buy a “burner” prepaid phone with no contract and use a prepaid calling card to pay for calls.
Get rid of your credit and debit cards. Using a credit or debit card that’s in your name is like turning on a big neon “I’M OVER HERE, AND THIS IS WHAT I’M BUYING” light above your head. Instead, use cash to buy gift cards from companies like Visa or American Express.
Ride a bike or take public transit. Driving without a license plate can lead to a ticket for driving without registration; driving with someone else’s license plate can get you arrested. So if you want to avoid all those automatic license-plate readers out there, start pedaling or hop a bus or train.
Encrypt your online communications and hide your IP address. From email to video chats, you can choose services and applications that will make it very hard — though perhaps not impossible — for anyone but the intended recipient to see, or to trace where your computer activity originates.
Protect your data. Online or on your own computer, use long, random passwords; use different passwords for every website; change your passwords often; and store those passwords in an encrypted “password safe” app. Also consider using file or disk encryption software. And to avoid malware spies, use the latest version of your operating system and firewall software while keeping your most sensitive information on devices not connected to the Internet at all.
Well maybe they should stop rubber stamping all the unconstitutional search warrants the FBI, DEA, BATF, TSA, Homeland Security and other Federal police agencies ask them to approve.
Secret-court judges upset at portrayal of ‘collaboration’ with government
By Carol D. Leonnig, Ellen Nakashima and Barton Gellman, Published: June 29 E-mail the writers
Recent leaks of classified documents have pointed to the role of a special court in enabling the government’s secret surveillance programs, but members of the court are chafing at the suggestion that they were collaborating with the executive branch.
A classified 2009 draft report by the National Security Agency’s inspector general relayed some details about the interaction between the court’s judges and the NSA, which sought approval for the Bush administration’s top-secret domestic surveillance programs. The report was described in The Washington Post on June 16 and released in full Thursday by The Post and the British newspaper the Guardian.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the former chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, took the highly unusual step Friday of voicing open frustration at the account in the report and court’s inability to explain its decisions.
“In my view, that draft report contains major omissions, and some inaccuracies, regarding the actions I took as Presiding Judge of the FISC and my interactions with Executive Branch officials,” Kollar-Kotelly said in a statement to The Post. It was her first public comment describing her work on the intelligence court.
The inspector general’s draft report is among the many documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, touching off a roiling national debate about the proper balance between the government’s reach into Americans’ lives and the effort to protect the nation in the Internet age.
The document portrays the surveillance court as “amenable” to the government’s legal theory to “re-create” authority for the Internet metadata program that had initially been authorized by President George W. Bush without court or congressional approval. The program was shut down in March 2004 when acting Attorney General James B. Comey and senior leaders at the Justice Department threatened to resign over what they felt was an illegal program.
Kollar-Kotelly disputed the NSA report’s suggestion of a fairly high level of coordination between the court and the NSA and Justice in 2004 to re-create certain authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that created the court in response to abuses of domestic surveillance in the 1960s and 1970s.
“That is incorrect,” she said. “I participated in a process of adjudication, not ‘coordination’ with the executive branch. The discussions I had with executive branch officials were in most respects typical of how I and other district court judges entertain applications for criminal wiretaps under Title III, where issues are discussed ex parte.”
The perception that the court works too closely with the government arises in large part from the tribunal’s “ex parte” nature, which means that unlike in a traditional court, there is no legal sparring between adversaries with the judge as arbiter. Instead, a Justice Department official makes the case for the government agency seeking permission to carry out surveillance inside the United States. No one speaks for the target of the surveillance or the company that is ordered to allow its networks to be tapped or to turn over its customers’ data.
Some critics say the court is a rubber stamp for government investigators because it almost never has turned down a warrant application. However, that high batting average doesn’t take into account changes the court requires in some requests and other applications that the government withdraws.
For about 30 years, the court was located on the sixth floor of the Justice Department’s headquarters, down the hall from the officials who would argue in front of it. (The court moved to the District’s federal courthouse in 2009.) “There is a collaborative process that would be unnatural in the public, criminal court setting,” said a former Justice official familiar with the court.
Kollar-Kotelly, who was the court’s chief judge from 2002 to 2006, said she could not comment further on the matter because “the underlying subjects” in the report generally remain classified by the executive branch.
Other judges on the court have confided to colleagues their frustration at the court’s portrayal, according to people familiar with their discussion.
The inspector general’s report, combined with persistent refusals by the government to declassify the opinions, have left the public in the dark about the court’s legal justifications for approving the broad surveillance programs.
“The court is a neutral party, not a collaborator or arm of the government,” said one government official close to the court. “But the information out there now leaves people wondering how and why the court endorsed these programs.”
The court historically has authorized in secret hearings classified warrants to wiretap the calls and monitor the movements of suspected criminals. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, far-reaching programs to gather Internet and telephone content and metadata were launched under presidential authority, without congressional action or approval from the surveillance court.
The Internet metadata portion of that program had to be revamped after Comey and other Justice officials threatened to resign. Metadata are information indicating facts such as an e-mail’s sender and recipient and its time and date, but not its content.
In May 2004, the NSA briefed Kollar-Kotelly on the technical aspects of that program’s collection, according to the report. She also met with the NSA director, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, on two successive Saturdays during the summer of 2004 to discuss the issue, the report said.
“It was very professional,” Hayden said in an interview. “We of course had to explain to her what it was we had been doing, what it was we wanted to do, how we would do it, what kind of safeguards we felt able to put in. We left it to her judgment whether there was proportionality in terms of was this worth doing, in the balance between security and liberty.”
He said in response to her concerns, the agency made some technical adjustments so that “the odds were greater that you’d pick up fewer protected communications of U.S. persons.”
Said Hayden: “She wasn’t in league with us. We were down there presenting what we thought was appropriate.”
On July 14, 2004, the surveillance court for the first time approved the gathering of information by the NSA, which created the equivalent of a digital vault to hold Internet metadata. Kollar-Kotelly’s order authorized the metadata program under a FISA provision known as the “pen register/trap and trace,” or PRTT.
The ruling was a secret not just to the public and most of Congress, but to all of Kollar-Kotelly’s surveillance court colleagues. Under orders from the president, none of the court’s other 10 members could be told about the Internet metadata program, which was one prong of a larger and highly classified data-gathering effort known as the President’s Surveillance Program, or PSP.
But the importance of her order — which approved the collection based on a 1986 law typically used for phone records — was hard to overstate.
“The order essentially gave NSA the same authority to collect bulk Internet metadata that it had under the PSP,” the inspector general’s report said, with some minor caveats including reducing the number of people who could access the records.
On May 24, 2006, Kollar-Kotelly signed another order, this one authorizing the bulk collection of phone metadata from U.S. phone companies, under a FISA provision known as Section 215, or the ”business records provision,” of the USA Patriot Act.
As with the PRTT order, the Justice Department and NSA “collaboratively designed the application, prepared declarations and responded to questions from court advisers,” the inspector general’s report said. “Their previous experience in drafting the PRTT order made this process more efficient.”
The court also agreed in 2007 to permit the government to collect the content of e-mails and phone calls to and from the United States when “there is probable cause to believe” that one of the parties is a member of al-Qaeda or an associated terrorist group. That program, known today as PRISM and described in documents obtained by The Washington Post, eventually was authorized by Congress.
Kollar-Kotelly could be a stern taskmaster when she thought the NSA was overstepping its bounds. In 2004, she temporarily shut down the government’s surveillance program when she learned of a key NSA failure, The Post reported in 2006. The agency was not properly walling off information gained in warrantless surveillance and may have been using the information to obtain court warrants, which was forbidden. In 2005, the problem resurfaced and she issued a strong warning to the government that it had to fix the problem or would face trouble obtaining court warrants.
Kollar-Kotelly “understood the problems that the government, particularly the Defense Department and the intelligence community, were facing in trying to keep this country safe,” said Robert L. Deitz, former NSA general counsel under Hayden.
But, he said, the court was no rubber stamp. “The judges ask searching questions,” he said. “If they don’t get the right answer, they don’t stamp things ‘reject.’ They say, ‘I’m not signing this.’ Then we go back and say, ‘Okay, we’ve got to do this the following way.’ ”
Still secret are the 2004 decision accompanying the PRTT court order and the legal opinion accompanying the 2006 business records order.
A former senior Justice Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity, said he believes the government should consider releasing declassified summaries of relevant opinions.
“I think it would help” quell the “furor” raised by the recent disclosures, he said. “In this current environment, you may have to lean forward a little more in declassifying stuff than you otherwise would. You might be able to prepare reasonable summaries that would be helpful to the American people.”
Lawmakers and civil-liberties advocates have been pushing the Obama administration for several years to declassify these opinions and other opinions from Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel that explain the legal justification for these programs.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has led an effort to review these opinions to see what, if anything, can be declassified. But Robert S. Litt, ODNI general counsel, has argued that declassification can be difficult when so much of the legal reasoning is intertwined with facts that need to remain secret lest they tip off enemies about surveillance methods.
Still, the former official explained, segregating relevant facts from classified material is routinely done in criminal proceedings under the Classified Information Procedures Act. In those cases, the government can extract the information that is relevant to the defense, the judge approves it, and it is provided to the defense.
“This is not unheard-of in the unclassified world, and some kind of summary document can be generated,” the former official said. “Maybe that’s a middle ground that can be done.”
Sari Horwitz contributed to this report.
Ex-L.A. sheriff's narcotics sergeant charged with theft in sting
By Richard Winton
July 1, 2013, 2:13 p.m.
A former L.A. County sheriff's narcotics sergeant has been charged with grand theft and embezzlement by a public official for allegedly stealing about $4,000 during a sting by his own department.
Bonnie Theodore Bryant III, 57, allegedly took the money during a July 25, 2012, sting operation conducted by the criminal internal affairs unit of his own department.
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said the 28-year department veteran was targeted in the sting. Increasingly, law enforcement agencies across the country test the integrity of their deputies and officers, especially in cases where prior accusations have been made.
Bryant is charged with one felony count each of grand theft of personal property and embezzlement by a public or private officer, said Dep. Dist. Atty. Jason Lustig. Bryant also faces a misdemeanor count of petty theft.
Bryant also allegedly stole money seized during a narcotics sting on May 15, 2012. The alleged theft, which occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store, was observed by a security guard through an external security video camera.
The guard allegedly observed Bryant place a large amount of money into a canvas bag in the trunk of his vehicle. The guard reported the alleged incident to the sheriff's department on July 5, 2012. The report triggered the sting operation.
Bryant was a narcotics task force supervisor at the times he allegedly took the money. The veteran sergeant resigned from the sheriff’s department in December 2012, the prosecutor said.
The sergeant is due in court Monday. Bryant faces up to four years and six months in state prison if convicted of all the charges.
Some L.A. pot shops shut down while others look to Garcetti for relief
By Sandy Banks
July 1, 2013, 10:25 p.m.
It was a going-out-of-business sale that only a pothead could love.
Cannabis-laced brownies, chocolate bars and peanut butter cups were half-price. Sleep-inducing indica buds sold out quickly. And discounted sativa was moving well among patients whose medical needs must have called for a buzz.
I was on hand as Tampa Wellness packed up to shut down, disappointing customers who had trickled in last weekend from as far as Palmdale to get medical marijuana from this small dispensary in a Reseda strip mall.
The closure was sudden and not by choice. A note taped to the shop's blacked-out front window Sunday made that point: "Due to recent elections regarding E, D and F, Tampa Wellness has been forced to shut its doors by the city attorney. We have appreciated the support of our clients and look forward to new beginnings."
E, D and F were competing medical marijuana measures on the Los Angeles city ballot in May. Most dispensary owners supported F, which would have allowed an unlimited number of outlets but scrutinized them more tightly.
Los Angeles voters, however, approved D — which limits the city's dispensaries to the 135 or so that were in business when the council began trying to regulate them in 2007.
The key word is trying. And failing, mostly.
That's why Los Angeles seems to have a giant green cross on every block.
And why, 17 years after Californians made marijuana legal for medical use — the city still is dealing with fly-by-night dispensaries, wishy-washy politicians and feuding law enforcement officials who don't agree on what the law is, much less how to enforce it.
And why it's hard to know whether this latest crackdown will launch another battle in a war of wills, or usher in an era of peace that benefits patients and collectives.
::
Tampa Wellness received one of 1,700 letters sent out by the city attorney last month, warning dispensary owners and their landlords that they could go to jail if they don't shut their doors.
Assistant City Atty. Asha Greenberg called it a courtesy letter, notifying businesses that opened after 2007 that "the passage of Prop D [makes] their continued operation illegal."
Another collective owner, Frank Sheftel also got a letter, even though his cozy Toluca Lake Collective (TLC) in North Hollywood has been in business since 2006.
His shop, which has a food pantry and offers hospice care, wound up in the illegal group because of a paperwork glitch, Sheftel said. "One list says I'm [approved]; another list says I'm not."
That kind of confusion has allowed what began as "compassionate care" to turn Los Angeles into a place that some city officials believe has more storefront pot dispensaries than Starbucks coffee shops.
City lawmakers avoided the issue for years as hundreds of dispensaries cropped up, many run by owners who cared less about patients than profits. While council members dithered, local prosecutors took a hard line: Any sale of marijuana to anyone was a crime.
Dispensaries fought back in court and the city backed down. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Police Department and federal Drug Enforcement Administration embarked on campaigns of their own: raiding shops, confiscating proceeds and hauling customers and employees to jail.
"We've used a tremendous amount of resources to go after the pot outlets, and look where we are," Sheftel noted. "It's all to no avail."
In fact, dispensaries have grown so accustomed to the city's stops and starts that some are ignoring the recent letters warning them to shut down.
I spent Saturday driving around the west San Fernando Valley, stopping at every green cross I saw. At a few shops, employees told me the letters have scared their landlords into forcing them to move out. But others said they planned to stick around; they have seen these letters before.
"That's the problem," Sheftel said. "The city's never done anything. They just keep sending letters."
::
Sheftel met Monday with an aide to newly sworn-in Mayor Eric Garcetti, who, according to the dispensary owner, promised to look into the oversight that's kept him off the approved list.
Sheftel thinks the new political regime — mayor, city prosecutor and district attorney — may bring the sort of balance this long-running problem needs.
I hope he's right. The stars do seem to be aligning properly:
The state Supreme Court has finally given cities permission to come up with their own regulatory routines. Los Angeles has a new crop of enlightened officials and support from an electorate that's sensitive to patients' needs, but sick of the proliferation of barely disguised drug dealing. And the state is considering legislation that would set standards for dispensaries and protect patients and legal collectives from harrassment and prosecution.
But there's more than the principle of compassionate care at stake. Medical marijuana is big business.
At more than a few dispensaries, staff members told me they planned to reinvent the business if it was forced to shut down. They will offer delivery services, buy the licenses of legitimate shops or become private clubs — whatever keeps them in the money and out of law enforcement's reach.
Even Tampa Wellness isn't giving up. "We are currently looking to reopen in a different location," its sign said, offering the shop's Twitter handle so patients can check their progress.
It's a cat-and-mouse game that doesn't seem on track to end soon.
Attorney David Welch, who has spent years representing dispensaries, may have put it best: "This is just another round in the constant soap opera that is medical marijuana in Los Angeles."
sandy.banks@latimes.com
American tyrants search Bolivian President's plane for Edward Snowden
And I thought my civil rights were violated when the jackbooted
Chandler Police thugs falsely arrested me last week. (See this
URL)
Emperor Obama really is a tyrant who thinks he is above international law and can do whatever he wants to destroy his enemies of which freedom fighter Edward Snowden is one of.
Bolivian president’s plane forced to land in Austria in hunt for Snowden
By Kathy Lally and Juan Forero, Updated: Wednesday, July 3, 8:12 AM E-mail the writers
MOSCOW — Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane, forced to land in Austria because of suspicions that American fugitive Edward Snowden was on board, was permitted to fly home Wednesday, Bolivian and European authorities said.
The search for Snowden turned into a major diplomatic fiasco, with Bolivia, Venezuela and several other Latin American countries lashing out at the United States and accusing it of having strong-armed European countries into redirecting the official Bolivian presidential plane.
Snowden, who revealed secret U.S. surveillance programs and fled to Hong Kong, then Moscow, to stay beyond American reach, was not aboard the plane, an irate David Choquehuanca, Bolivia’s foreign minister, told reporters after the Bolivian delegation landed in Vienna.
“We don’t know who invented this lie,” he said from Bolivia’s capital, La Paz.
Morales’s plane, ferrying him home from a conference in Moscow, was redirected to Vienna late Tuesday after France and Portugal refused to allow it to enter their airspace, Bolivian and Venezuelan officials said.
Authorities in Austria confirmed that the plane was searched and that Snowden, 30, was not on the flight. There was no indication that he had left Moscow, where he has been in diplomatic limbo for more than a week.
“Our airport staff have checked it over and can assure you that no one is on board who is not a Bolivian citizen,” Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger told reporters at the Vienna airport, Reuters news agency reported. He called it a “voluntary examination.” But Morales had told reporters that no Austrians had been on board.
Bolivia’s government responded angrily to the incident. Vice President Alvaro Garcia announced that the ambassadors of France and Italy and the consul for Portugal would be summoned to the Foreign Ministry in La Paz on Wednesday to explain what he called “the abuse” of redirecting Morales’s plane.
He said the representatives of those countries need to explain “these disagreeable, terrible and abusive events.”
The incident also raised the ire of governments and organizations across Latin America, which cast Morales’s troubles as a dire violation against a small country orchestrated by Washington. Even Colombia’s leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), called the rerouting of the plane “an infamy.”
Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States, which is based in Washington and is made up of governments across the Western Hemisphere, called for an explanation from the European countries that Morales’s government accused of blocking his plane’s flight path.
“Nothing justifies an action of such disrespect from the highest authorities of a country,” said Insulza, who is from Chile.
Choquehuanca said Morales’s plane was an hour from French airspace when it was told it could not enter. “Portugal has to explain to us,” he said. “France has to explain to us why they canceled” flight authorization.
The Portuguese Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that Portugal informed the Bolivians on Monday afternoon, a full day before Morales’s flight, that it would not allow the Bolivian plane to land in the country for unspecified “technical reasons” but that it would allow an overflight.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that two officials with the French Foreign Ministry said that Morales’s plane also had authorization to fly over France. They would not comment on why Bolivian officials said otherwise. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be publicly named, according to ministry policy.
The wire service, citing an unidentified official in Vienna, reported that the flight crew on Morales’s aircraft asked controllers at the Vienna airport for permission to land because the plane needed more fuel to continue its journey.
The aircraft took off from Vienna shortly before noon Wednesday, AP reported. Spain said the plane would be allowed to refuel in the Canary Islands, although a Foreign Ministry official declined to comment on a claim by Bolivia that the permission was contingent on allowing authorities to search the plane, the wire service said.
The White House, CIA and State Department all declined to comment on the situation involving the Bolivian aircraft. But the latest twist seemed to signal that U.S. authorities have been able to marshal support from European countries in what has been a feverish pursuit of the former National Security Agency contractor.
It also underscored how Snowden has settled still deeper into isolation as one country after another has rejected his appeals for asylum since his disclosure of a trove of highly secret documents.
The diverting of Morales’s plane is sure to fan anger against the United States, which is trying to play down new revelations of spying against European allies while trying to win support to corral Snowden even from countries such as Russia, Bolivia and Venezuela, which are sharply at odds with the Obama administration.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua called the incident over Austria “an attempt on Evo Morales’s life.” He said it was a sign of how far “the empire” — a reference to the United States — and its “lackeys” would go “to hunt down a young man who has only said the truth.”
Bolivia’s defense minister, Ruben Saavedra, who was on the flight, also blamed the United States, telling Bolivian media that “this proves with clarity an attitude of sabotage and plotting by the United States, pressuring European government.” He said that Italy, too, had barred Morales’s plane from its airspace.
For the United States, Bolivia clearly emerged as a possible sanctuary for Snowden, who was stuck in Russia after the United States revoked his passport before his arrival in Moscow on a flight from Hong Kong on June 23.
In an interview earlier Tuesday in Moscow on the state-financed RT news channel, Morales said he would consider asylum for Snowden. “Yes, why not?” he said. “Bolivia is there to welcome personalities who denounce — I don’t know if it’s espionage or control. But we are here.”
After living unseen in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport for a week, Snowden sent out 19 asylum requests Sunday night, according to WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization that has been advising him. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he could stay here if he stopped leaking information harmful to the United States, an odd offer that Snowden refused, a presidential spokesman said Tuesday morning.
That left a list of countries, from Austria to Venezuela, to which Snowden had sent appeals. By Tuesday evening, at least eight of them — including Ecuador and Iceland, which had been asked earlier — had said an applicant must be in the country to be considered. At least three had said no, and others had not replied.
Some countries avoided him out of friendship with the United States, others for political or economic reasons. Ecuador, which at first had appeared enthusiastic, grew less so after Vice President Biden made a call to the president. To be granted asylum, Snowden would have to count on a country to defy the United States. Of those on his list, Bolivia and Venezuela were looking like the best possibilities. Both are hostile to the United States, and the presidents of both countries have heaped praise on Snowden.
Morales, who said his government had not received a formal request for asylum, in 2008 expelled the U.S. ambassador from his country and ended anti-drug cooperation with Washington.
“Bolivia, as well as Venezuela and Ecuador,” he said, “are exposed to constant surveillance from the U.S. empire.”
Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was also in Moscow, which had convened a meeting of gas-exporting countries, and Russian media speculated that he would take Snowden to Venezuela on his official plane.
Maduro smiled at that suggestion. “We will take with us numerous agreements on investments in the oil and gas sector,” he said. He defended the former National Security Agency contractor, however, saying that Snowden had neither killed anyone nor planted a bomb and that he deserved protection. “He only told the world a large truth to prevent war,” Maduro said. “The U.S. capitalist elite are trying to control the world and are spying on friends, foes and the entire planet.”
The Obama administration on Tuesday acknowledged contacting foreign governments on Snowden’s asylum list, but a State Department spokeswoman dismissed the leaker’s claims that Washington has mounted a campaign to pressure anyone against offering him sanctuary.
“We have been in touch, as we have been for several days now, with a broad range of countries that could serve as either transit spots or final destinations,” said the spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki. “And what we’ve been communicating is, of course, what we’ve been communicating publicly — that Mr. Snowden has been accused of leaking classified information. He is somebody that we would like to see returned to the United States.”
Late Tuesday, Maduro was preparing to fly on to Belarus — without Snowden, a member of his entourage told the Interfax news agency. Nothing could be done, the official told Interfax — the Venezuelan plane was at a different airport.
After his nine days in limbo, Snowden’s situation looked desperate. Officials here have portrayed themselves as powerless in the case because Snowden is outside their jurisdiction in the transit zone and needs a passport or other document before he can travel onward, but some Russians find that disingenuous. Russian officials always find a way to do exactly what they want, they say.
And that has raised questions about what is going on behind the scenes. Pavel Felgenhauer, a longtime military analyst and observer of the KGB’s successor, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, offered this speculative scenario: Russia must be trying to see whether it can recruit Snowden.
In an interview Tuesday, Felgenhauer said that when Putin told reporters that Snowden could stay if he stopped talking about the United States, Putin was saying that Snowden had to make a choice. Putin was telling Snowden that he would be working for Russia, not for one of the newspapers publishing his leaks, Felgenhauer said.
The reason Snowden has not been seen is that border guards, who stand at the door when an international flight lands and who work for the FSB, would have hustled him off to a safe room in the airport, or even a safe house elsewhere, Felgenhauer said. Snowden probably did not use a ticket he had to Havana on June 24, the analyst said, because his minders told him the United States would force the Aeroflot flight down when it flew over U.S. territory.
“He’s cornered psychologically,” Felgenhauer said. “You bring the guy to the breaking point to see if he’s real. By now he’s probably afraid of everything, convinced he’ll be hunted down like bin Laden if he leaves here.”
As Felgenhauer put it in a Novaya Gazeta article this week, “Snowden remained in Sheremetyevo like a suitcase with a broken-off handle: a pain to carry and a shame to throw away.”
Forero reported from Bogota, Colombia. Joby Warrick in Washington contributed to this report.
Remember all the times we have been told that despite being a government entity the US Postal Service is run like a private business.
That is a big lie. In this article it certainly sounds like the the US Postal Service is a government entity that is helping the FBI, NSA, Homeland Security, CIA, DEA, BATF and other alphabet of police agencies spy on the American public.
U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
By RON NIXON
Published: July 3, 2013
WASHINGTON — Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: A handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.
“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.
“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.
As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.
Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, but that is only a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.
Together, the two programs show that snail mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail.
The mail covers program, used to monitor Mr. Pickering, is more than a century old but is still considered a powerful tool. At the request of law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered. (Actually opening the mail requires a warrant.) The information is sent to whatever law enforcement agency asked for it. Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny.
The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retroactively track mail correspondence at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping.
“In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime,” said Mark D. Rasch, the former director of the Justice Department’s computer crime unit, who worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. “Now it seems to be ‘Let’s record everyone’s mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.’ Essentially you’ve added mail covers on millions of Americans.”
Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and an author, said whether it was a postal worker taking down information or a computer taking images, the program was still an invasion of privacy.
“Basically they are doing the same thing as the other programs, collecting the information on the outside of your mail, the metadata, if you will, of names, addresses, return addresses and postmark locations, which gives the government a pretty good map of your contacts, even if they aren’t reading the contents,” he said.
But law enforcement officials said mail covers and the automatic mail tracking program are invaluable, even in an era of smartphones and e-mail.
In a criminal complaint filed June 7 in Federal District Court in Eastern Texas, the F.B.I. said a postal investigator tracing the ricin letters was able to narrow the search to Shannon Guess Richardson, an actress in New Boston, Tex., by examining information from the front and back images of 60 pieces of mail scanned immediately before and after the tainted letters sent to Mr. Obama and Mr. Bloomberg showing return addresses near her home. Ms. Richardson had originally accused her husband of mailing the letters, but investigators determined that he was at work during the time they were mailed.
In 2007, the F.B.I., the Internal Revenue Service and the local police in Charlotte, N.C., used information gleaned from the mail cover program to arrest Sallie Wamsley-Saxon and her husband, Donald, charging both with running a prostitution ring that took in $3 million over six years. Prosecutors said it was one of the largest and most successful such operations in the country. Investigators also used mail covers to help track banking activity and other businesses the couple operated under different names.
Other agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, have used mail covers to track drug smugglers and Medicare fraud.
“It’s a treasure trove of information,” said James J. Wedick, a former F.B.I. agent who spent 34 years at the agency and who said he used mail covers in a number of investigations, including one that led to the prosecution of several elected officials in California on corruption charges. “Looking at just the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who you bank with, who you communicate with — all kinds of useful information that gives investigators leads that they can then follow up on with a subpoena.”
But, he said: “It can be easily abused because it’s so easy to use and you don’t have to go through a judge to get the information. You just fill out a form.”
For mail cover requests, law enforcement agencies simply submit a letter to the Postal Service, which can grant or deny a request without judicial review. Law enforcement officials say the Postal Service rarely denies a request. In other government surveillance program, such as wiretaps, a federal judge must sign off on the requests.
The mail cover surveillance requests are granted for about 30 days, and can be extended for up to 120 days. There are two kinds of mail covers: those related to criminal activity and those requested to protect national security. The criminal activity requests average 15,000 to 20,000 per year, said law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the requests. The number of requests for antiterrorism mail covers has not been made public.
Law enforcement officials need warrants to open the mail, although President George W. Bush asserted in a signing statement in 2007 that the federal government had the authority to open mail without warrants in emergencies or foreign intelligence cases.
Court challenges to mail covers have generally failed because judges have ruled that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for information contained on the outside of a letter. Officials in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, in fact, have used the mail-cover court rulings to justify the N.S.A.’s surveillance programs, saying the electronic monitoring amounts to the same thing as a mail cover. Congress briefly conducted hearings on mail cover programs in 1976, but has not revisited the issue.
The program has led to sporadic reports of abuse. In May 2012, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, was awarded nearly $1 million by a federal judge after winning a lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for his immigration raids in Arizona, who, among other things, obtained mail covers from the Postal Service to track her mail. The judge called the investigation into Ms. Wilcox politically motivated because she had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps. The case is being appealed.
In the mid-1970s the Church Committee, a Senate panel that documented C.I.A. abuses, faulted a program created in the 1950s in New York that used mail covers to trace and sometimes open mail going to the Soviet Union from the United States.
A suit brought in 1973 by a high school student in New Jersey, whose letter to the Socialist Workers Party was traced by the F.B.I. as part of an investigation into the group, led to a rebuke from a federal judge.
Postal officials refused to discuss either mail covers or the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program.
Mr. Pickering says he suspects that the F.B.I. requested the mail cover to monitor his mail because a former associate said the bureau had called with questions about him. Last month, he filed a lawsuit against the Postal Service, the F.B.I. and other agencies, saying they were improperly withholding information.
A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Buffalo declined to comment.
Mr. Pickering said that although he was arrested two dozen times for acts of civil disobedience and convicted of a handful of misdemeanors, he was never involved in the arson attacks the Earth Liberation Front carried out. He said he became tired of focusing only on environmental activism and moved back to Buffalo to finish college, open his bookstore, Burning Books, and start a family.
“I’m no terrorist,” he said. “I’m an activist.”
Mr. Pickering has written books sympathetic to the liberation front, but he said his political views and past association should not make him the target of a federal investigation. “I’m just a guy who runs a bookstore and has a wife and a kid,” he said.
2) Sadly in these articles it sounds like the cities of Oakland and Berkeley are more concerned about shaking down people for marijuana TAXES and the power to regulate marijuana then they are about the right of the people to use medical marijuana.
I guess the good news it that should show people that government isn't run for the best interests of the people the government rules over, but for the best interests of our government masters.
Bay Area cities battle U.S. in bid to save marijuana dispensaries
July 3, 2013, 1:31 p.m.
OAKLAND -- Two Bay Area cities' battle to preserve access to medical marijuana heated up Wednesday, as Berkeley filed suit to block a federal forfeiture action against its oldest and largest dispensary, and Oakland – which filed a similar suit last year – prevailed with an important court ruling.
Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, last year moved to seize the Oakland and San Jose properties of Harborside Health Center, the country’s largest dispensary. In May, her office filed a similar action to seize the property of Berkeley Patients Group.
Both cities have stepped in to fight the federal moves, asserting that the dispensaries comply with local and state laws and offer safe access to medical cannabis for patients who might otherwise turn to the illegal market.
In Wednesday’s claim, filed on behalf of Berkeley by the Drug Policy Alliance, the city is attempting to intercede in the forfeiture action by saying it stands to lose “substantial revenue” if Berkeley Patients Group is shuttered.
The claim also asserts that the forfeiture would undermine the city’s comprehensive efforts to regulate and control medical marijuana, and that closure of the dispensary founded in 1999 would be likely to lead to more unregulated, unpermitted dispensaries and to an increase in illicit marijuana sales on city streets.
“It is time for the federal government to wake up and stop these asset forfeiture actions,” Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said in a statement. “Berkeley Patients Group has complied with the rules and caused no problems in the city. The federal government should not use its scarce resources to harass local law-abiding businesses.”
Also Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James in San Francisco agreed to place the federal forfeiture action against Harborside’s properties on hold while Oakland appeals in its effort to intercede.
James previously ruled that Oakland – which had missed a deadline to weigh in directly on the forfeiture but filed suit on separate legal grounds – did not have the right to sue. Oakland appealed that ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Cedric Chao, representing Oakland pro bono, then went back to James to request that the forfeiture action be placed on hold until the appellate court rules.
In agreeing to do so Wednesday, James said Oakland had “demonstrated that it has a stake or interest in the action" and had raised “novel legal questions” that constitute “a matter of significant public interest” for the city and its residents.
“If this court’s analysis was incorrect, the court’s dismissal will have foreclosed Oakland from protecting its interests. Thus, at the heart of Oakland’s appeal is its right to access the federal court to assert its claims – a right of paramount importance,” James wrote.
Attorneys for the federal government had argued that the stay would hinder prosecutors' ability to enforce federal drug laws, but because the U.S. attorney’s office waited six years to file the forfeiture action – knowing Harborside was operating medical cannabis dispensaries at the properties – James concluded that no harm would be caused by a further delay.
The U.S. attorney's office could not immediately be reached Wednesday. It has consistently declined to comment on the forfeiture cases in the past.
Panel to Review Up to 50 Trial Convictions Involving a Discredited Detective
By FRANCES ROBLES
Published: July 1, 2013
A panel of former prosecutors, professors and retired judges has been appointed to review as many as 50 trial convictions involving a detective whose work may have sent innocent men to prison, Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, announced on Monday.
The review panel, which includes some of the most respected members of New York City’s legal community and several of Mr. Hynes’s closest friends, drew fire from a lawyer who represents several of those convicted.
Robert G. M. Keating, an adjunct law professor at Pace University who is chairman of the mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, will lead the panel. In his 1990 book about the Howard Beach murder case, Mr. Hynes called Mr. Keating one of his “closest friends,” who jogged three miles daily with him.
The group also includes Joseph Bellacosa, a retired member of the New York State Court of Appeals and former dean at St. John’s University School of Law. Mr. Hynes and Mr. Bellacosa are godfathers to each other’s children, and Mr. Hynes was an usher at the former judge’s wedding some 50 years ago, according to the judge’s official biography posted on a court Web site.
Another member, Patricia L. Gatling, chairwoman of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, was Mr. Hynes’s first assistant district attorney for major narcotics investigations.
“It just seems like politics as usual,” said Pierre Sussman, whose client David Ranta was exonerated in March after questions were raised about the work of Louis Scarcella, a former Brooklyn North homicide detective who investigated the case.
Brooklyn prosecutors had asked a judge to dismiss a murder charge against Mr. Ranta, a former printer who served 23 years for the killing of a rabbi shot in a botched robbery. While holding out the possibility that Mr. Ranta participated in the crime, Mr. Hynes’s Conviction Integrity Unit acknowledged that Mr. Scarcella’s work was riddled with errors.
Mr. Scarcella failed to pursue a lead of another viable suspect, let jailhouse informants out to visit their girlfriends, and is believed to have told witnesses whom to choose in a lineup, the unit’s investigation found.
The district attorney opened a review of 40 criminal cases involving 50 defendants after The New York Times found, among other things, that several of the detective’s murder cases used the same witness, a crack-addicted prostitute.
Many of Mr. Scarcella’s cases dated from Mr. Hynes’s predecessor, Elizabeth Holtzman, but his office for many years had fended off inmates’ appeals.
Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for Mr. Hynes, said prosecutors would present the panel only with cases that appear problematic, along with prosecutors’ recommendations. He acknowledged that some critics might question the panelists’ ties to Mr. Hynes, but called them “esteemed individuals with the highest integrity.”
“The district attorney bears the responsibility of making the final decision on the cases,” Mr. Schmetterer said.
Mr. Sussman, who represents several people whose cases are under review, had several objections. First, he said, only those cases selected by prosecutors will be forwarded to the panel. And the panel itself, he said, is too stacked with former prosecutors and should have included more defense and appellate lawyers.
Mr. Bellacosa said his long friendship with Mr. Hynes would not affect his decisions on the panel, and added that as a member of the state’s highest court, he spent nearly 15 years reviewing his good friend’s work.
“We have through all of the years been very direct with one another. We have been very frank to say, ‘You’re really off base here,’ ” Mr. Bellacosa said. “The task is to lend an independent examination as to the process and to give it checks and balances: ‘Does this pass the smell test?’ ”
Other panelists include: Barbara Jones, a former federal judge and prosecutor; Roderick C. Lankler, a former special prosecutor; Susan Herman, an associate professor at Pace University; Steven M. Cohen, a former chief adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo; Bruce Green, a Fordham law professor; Laura Brevetti, a former federal prosecutor and Patrolman’s Benevolent Association lawyer; William C. Thompson Sr., a former appellate judge and father of the mayoral candidate; John Walsh, a retired judge and former police prosecutor; and Telesforo (Ted) Del Valle Jr., a defense lawyer.
When you create a web page and you want to keep the information private from the world you can put a tag like this in the HTML
I suspect when Google's robots gather information for the local police, FBI, Homeland Security, TSA, DEA, BATF and other alphabet soup of Federal police forces that the robots ignore the meta tag.
Or perhaps they do honor the meta tag for the information they allow the general public to search for, but give ALL the information to the American police state.
Also I have also wondered if Google's robots index and catalog the comments put on their web pages. Browsers don't display the comments in web pages but are used to document the web pages by programmers and web masters.
I suspect Google's robots index and catalog the comments in web pages and give them to Uncle Sam's spies at the NSA and other Federal agencies.
Last I suspect that NSA or other Federal agencies now has their own robots that routinely scan the internet like Google's robots do.
I know on several of my web pages I get a daily visit or two from several IP addresses in Shady Side, Maryland (76.114.149.166 and 76.114.145.234) which I suspect is a government agency spying on me. Also I get visits from several other IP address, on a less frequent basis which I also suspect are police agencies spying on me. Maybe that Shady Grove, Maryland. I always get the names mixed up.
You can put a sign on your yard and home that says
I wonder if you could put a sign like that you your web pages that said something like
Web’s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders
By JAMES RISEN and NICK WINGFIELD
Published: June 19, 2013
WASHINGTON — When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010, he did not go to Google, Twitter or a similar Silicon Valley concern. Instead the man who was responsible for protecting the personal information of Facebook’s more than one billion users from outside attacks went to work for another giant institution that manages and analyzes large pools of data: the National Security Agency.
Spy agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts like Max Kelly.
Mr. Kelly’s move to the spy agency, which has not previously been reported, underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans.
The only difference is that the N.S.A. does it for intelligence, and Silicon Valley does it to make money.
The disclosure of the spy agency’s program called Prism, which is said to collect the e-mails and other Web activity of foreigners using major Internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook, has prompted the companies to deny that the agency has direct access to their computers, even as they acknowledge complying with secret N.S.A. court orders for specific data.
Yet technology experts and former intelligence officials say the convergence between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. and the rise of data mining — both as an industry and as a crucial intelligence tool — have created a more complex reality.
Silicon Valley has what the spy agency wants: vast amounts of private data and the most sophisticated software available to analyze it. The agency in turn is one of Silicon Valley’s largest customers for what is known as data analytics, one of the valley’s fastest-growing markets. To get their hands on the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large volumes of data, United States intelligence agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts like Mr. Kelly.
“We are all in these Big Data business models,” said Ray Wang, a technology analyst and chief executive of Constellation Research, based in San Francisco. “There are a lot of connections now because the data scientists and the folks who are building these systems have a lot of common interests.”
Although Silicon Valley has sold equipment to the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies for a generation, the interests of the two began to converge in new ways in the last few years as advances in computer storage technology drastically reduced the costs of storing enormous amounts of data — at the same time that the value of the data for use in consumer marketing began to rise. “These worlds overlap,” said Philipp S. Krüger, chief executive of Explorist, an Internet start-up in New York.
The sums the N.S.A. spends in Silicon Valley are classified, as is the agency’s total budget, which independent analysts say is $8 billion to $10 billion a year.
Despite the companies’ assertions that they cooperate with the agency only when legally compelled, current and former industry officials say the companies sometimes secretly put together teams of in-house experts to find ways to cooperate more completely with the N.S.A. and to make their customers’ information more accessible to the agency. The companies do so, the officials say, because they want to control the process themselves. They are also under subtle but powerful pressure from the N.S.A. to make access easier.
Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies.
Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011.
A Skype executive denied last year in a blog post that recent changes in the way Skype operated were made at the behest of Microsoft to make snooping easier for law enforcement. It appears, however, that Skype figured out how to cooperate with the intelligence community before Microsoft took over the company, according to documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the N.S.A. One of the documents about the Prism program made public by Mr. Snowden says Skype joined Prism on Feb. 6, 2011.
Microsoft executives are no longer willing to affirm statements, made by Skype several years ago, that Skype calls could not be wiretapped. Frank X. Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman, declined to comment.
In its recruiting in Silicon Valley, the N.S.A. sends some of its most senior officials to lure the best of the best. No less than Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the agency’s director and the chief of the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, showed up at one of the world’s largest hacker conferences in Las Vegas last summer, looking stiff in an uncharacteristic T-shirt and jeans, to give the keynote speech. His main purpose at Defcon, the conference, was to recruit hackers for his spy agency.
N.S.A. badges are often seen on the lapels of officials at other technology and information security conferences. “They’re very open about their interest in recruiting from the hacker community,” said Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.
But perhaps no one embodies the tightening relationship between the N.S.A. and the valley more than Kenneth A. Minihan.
A career Air Force intelligence officer, Mr. Minihan was the director of the N.S.A. during the Clinton administration until his retirement in the late 1990s, and then he ran the agency’s outside professional networking organization. Today he is managing director of Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm based in Washington that in part specializes in financing start-ups that offer high-tech solutions for the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies. In effect, Mr. Minihan is an advanced scout for the N.S.A. as it tries to capitalize on the latest technology to analyze and exploit the vast amounts of data flowing around the world and inside the United States.
The members of Paladin’s strategic advisory board include Richard C. Schaeffer Jr., a former N.S.A. executive. While Paladin is a private firm, the American intelligence community has its own in-house venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, financed by the Central Intelligence Agency to invest in high-tech start-ups.
Many software technology firms involved in data analytics are open about their connections to intelligence agencies. Gary King, a co-founder and chief scientist at Crimson Hexagon, a start-up in Boston, said in an interview that he had given talks at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., about his company’s social media analytics tools.
The future holds the prospect of ever greater cooperation between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. because data storage is expected to increase at an annual compound rate of 53 percent through 2016, according to the International Data Corporation.
“We reached a tipping point, where the value of having user data rose beyond the cost of storing it,” said Dan Auerbach, a technology analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an electronic privacy group in San Francisco. “Now we have an incentive to keep it forever.”
Social media sites in the meantime are growing as voluntary data mining operations on a scale that rivals or exceeds anything the government could attempt on its own. “You willingly hand over data to Facebook that you would never give voluntarily to the government,” said Bruce Schneier, a technologist and an author.
James Risen reported from Washington, and Nick Wingfield from Seattle. Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.
Remember Kyrsten Sinema
is the Arizona Senator who introduced a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.
Kyrsten Sinema
is now a US Congresswoman.
I guess the title of this article should have been "Vote for me and I will give you free stuff"
Into the mind of ... Kyrsten Sinema
The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 5, 2013 6:27 PM
The first-term congresswoman reflects on her first six months in Washington.
After six months in Congress, what’s the No. 1 thing you’ve learned about the place?
I’ve learned I can still get a lot done for Congressional District 9 even though leaders in Congress aren’t accomplishing much.
[I suspect
Kyrsten Sinema
means that she has accomplished tons of stuff while her fellow slackers have accomplished nothing. Of course if you ask me I would have said none of them have accomplished anything - well other then robbing us blind and micro-managing our lives]
In our district office, social workers help constituents solve problems every day. In our D.C. office, we help businesses access federal agencies, support local groups seeking federal grant funding, and advocate for the issues important to CD9 residents and businesses.
[Translation - vote for ME and I will give you free stuff - lots of free government pork!!!!!]
What’s the biggest difference between the Legislature and Congress?
I’ve always believed that relationships are key to solving problems.
In the Legislature, my relationships with Republicans and Democrats alike helped me serve my constituents well. In Congress, I’m working to build bipartisan relationships as well, though it’ll take a bit longer to make friends with all 537 of my colleagues!
[Kyrsten,
you didn't answer the question. It was "What’s the biggest difference between the Legislature and Congress?" - But I guess the main purpose of this article is to tell the voters that if they vote for you, you will give them free stuff, so who cares if you answer the question]
What’s the biggest frustration? The biggest satisfaction?
Unfortunately, issues that shouldn’t be partisan, like military sexual trauma and college affordability, have been stymied by political posturing in Congress. Leaders in Congress should stop playing games and get to work solving our country’s challenges.
However, our office has been able to make a tremendous difference in the lives of CD9 residents.
For example, we recently helped Glen in Phoenix, who has a brain tumor. Last month, Glen had to choose to either buy expensive medicine to treat his tumor or buy a replacement bed for his home.
We worked with local charities and the pharmaceutical company to help him get both a bed and his life-saving medication.
[Again - vote for ME and I will give you free stuff - lots of free government pork!!!!!]
As a member of the minority party, it’s hard to get a bill passed. What have you been able to accomplish?
Congress is pretty divided right now and sadly, they’re not getting much done.
I’m proud to be one of the founding members of the United Solutions Caucus. We’re a group of 38 freshmen, Democrats and Republicans, working together to solve our fiscal crisis and reduce our debt and deficit.
[Don't make me laugh Kyrsten, when it comes to taxing and spending in the Arizona legislator you were number #1. I am sure that in the US Congress you are also the #1 Congresswoman when it comes to taxing and spending. You reduce our debt??? Again don't make me laugh!!!
Kyrsten,
as the debt goes up you will probably cause it to increase more then any other Congressperson!!!!]
We’ve introduced the SAVE Act, which cuts $200 billion in wasteful spending. Earlier this year, I helped pass the Violence Against Women Act.
Are there any issues you’re working on with other Arizona members?
[Well other then that "vote for ME and I will give you free stuff" nonsense]
I’m working with Reps. Matt Salmon and Raul Grijalva on a bill to prevent the NSA from gathering innocent civilians’ private data.
[Give me a break Kyrsten,
on every election sign of your you have the fact that you are supported by the police unions on the signs. I find it hard to believe that you are trying to reduce the police state, when the police unions helped you get elected!!!]
Reps. Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatrick and I are working on legislation to help veterans get quicker and better access to VA services.
[More of the old "vote for ME and I will give you free stuff" nonsense]
You and Salmon, a Republican, have made several joint appearances. What’s the connection?
Our offices work closely together on constituent cases, and Matt and I share similar views on issues like global competitiveness, increasing foreign investment in Arizona companies, and increasing trade and exports. Plus, he’s a good guy and we get along.
What will immigration reform look like when the House is finished with it?
It’s too early to predict, but I’m committed to a bill that secures our border
[so you do support the police state - 20,000 new Border Patrol cops???],
creates a workable plan for a future flow of workers into the United States, and settles the status of “dreamers” and hard-working families living in the U.S. Compromise must be a part of any viable solution, and I hope the House is ready to get to “yes.” I certainly am!
[Kyrsten,
when a politician like you says "compromise" it means
"if you vote for my pork, I will vote for your pork".
Kyrsten with that in mind,
I suspect you know how to compromise better then any other Congressman or Senator in Washington D.C.]
The bill hires 20,000 NEW BP cops, increasing the number of cops in the Border Patrol from 20,000 to 40,000
Critics of immigration bill say pork was added
By Dan Nowicki The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 5, 2013 11:23 PM
As debate rages over the sweeping immigration-reform package passed last month by the Senate, critics of the bill are accusing its backers of adding pork-barrel giveaways to win votes, an age-old complaint about Capitol Hill lawmaking.
They’re calling a provision that benefits Alaska’s fishing industry “the Alaska Seafood Special,” singling out its aid for Las Vegas tourism, and denigrating billions in border-security enhancements in southern Arizona as pork for Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake.
One politician’s pork, however, is another’s prudent or even essential spending.
Backers of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” bill say this line of attack is an attempt to paint it as a rerun of President Barack Obama’s controversial health-care overhaul of 2010, which remains infamous in Republican circles for parochial provisions such as the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback” inserted at the behest of then-Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.
Supporters say, for example, that it is unfair to portray the bill’s $46.3 billion in border-security measures as pork because that spending relates directly to a central responsibility of the federal government.
Any backroom deal-making, they say, is minor by historical standards.
Still, the criticism has put McCain and Flake — Arizona Republicans with reputations as two of Capitol Hill’s fiercest foes of earmarks and wasteful spending — in the awkward position of defending the legislation against charges of pork. McCain and Flake were two of the Gang of Eight’s four Republican members and helped negotiate the bipartisan compromise, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already settled in the United States.
“Let’s be honest: There was some of the old-style politics,” Flake told The Arizona Republic. “I can tell you, though, I’ve been around this process, and it’s very rare that you get a bill that is this all-encompassing with so few parochial provisions like that.”
Questioned provisions
The landmark immigration bill, which the Senate passed June 27 on a 68-32 vote, picked up support last month after its proposed spending on U.S.-Mexican border security was dramatically increased.
An amendment by Republican Sens. John Hoeven of North Dakota and Bob Corker of Tennessee would add, among other things, 350 miles of pedestrian fencing to the 350 miles already in place on the border and nearly double the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents, from about 20,000 to 40,000.
The bill also orders the purchase of certain kinds of border technology and equipment, such as certain makes and models of the Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.’s Black Hawk helicopter, leaving Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano with limited flexibility to choose alternatives.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., quipped on the Senate floor that “there are federal contracting firms high-fiving at the prospect of all of the spending.”
Other parochial additions also have drawn scrutiny. Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mark Begich, D-Alaska, pressed for and received special consideration for the Alaska seafood industry. The legislation identifies fish-processing in the state as a “shortage occupation,” giving it an advantage under the bill’s proposed new W-Visa program for lesser-skilled workers.
“We might as well call this the Alaska Seafood Special,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a critic of the Alaska provision and the overall immigration bill.
In a written statement, Begich said he and Murkowski worked together “to make sure this bill protects Alaska seafood processors by ensuring a steady source of seasonal staffing in order to keep our Alaska economy strong.”
Attention also has focused on a $1.5 billion, two-year job program for unemployed 16- to 24-year-olds that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., got included in the immigration bill.
Opponents characterized it as more ill-advised spending reminiscent of Obama’s 2009 economic-stimulus package.
Flake said the Sanders program is paid for by revenue generated by the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., an immigration-reform supporter, got funding extended for national travel-promotion efforts that benefit Las Vegas.
Other items in the legislation have been linked to Gang of Eight members.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham secured more visas for the meat industry in his home state of South Carolina; and Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., made sure the cruise-ship and ski industries important to their respective home states also received special consideration under the bill’s new visa system.
In an interview, McCain said he doesn’t view the immigration bill as containing any traditional pork. Some of the provisions that have drawn criticism were attempts to fairly address bona fide needs of unique labor forces, he said.
“There may have been a little of that (parochialism and making deals for votes), but overall, they were legitimate requirements,” McCain told The Republic. “Honestly, I was not involved in any of that, because of my principles. But, for example, the Alaska one was sold to me based on the unique circumstances concerning them. Then, there were a couple of other provisions that had to do with groups of unique people.”
‘It’s not pork’
Cornyn, the Senate minority whip, decried the bill as “a litany of de facto earmarks, carve-outs and pet spending initiatives” and seemed to suggest that McCain and Flake were hypocrites for accepting $250 million to boost immigration-related prosecutions in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector in Arizona.
“There are nine Border Patrol sectors, but the Tucson Sector is the surprise beneficiary of $250 million in a special earmark in this bill,” Cornyn said on the Senate floor.
“I would just ask the simple question: Don’t all of the border sectors need increased funding for prosecutions? Well, I believe the answer is yes, and so carving out the Tucson Sector for special treatment, I believe, is entirely inappropriate. So, we see that even longtime opponents of earmarks are now co-sponsoring legislation that is filled with de facto earmarks, including one that benefits their states alone.”
McCain and Flake flatly rejected the argument that the border measures are pork for Arizona. The two have long stressed that the Tucson Sector is the nation’s busiest for undocumented immigration and covers the part of the border most in need of attention.
“It’s the federal government’s responsibility to secure the border, and these appropriations and the items that are put on the border are to fulfill that purpose,” said Flake, who while serving in the House was instrumental in enacting a moratorium on earmarks. “It’s not pork.”
Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, agreed that the Senate-passed flood of border spending, although it may be overkill, doesn’t fit the classic definitions of earmarks or pork. However, the makers of the bill’s mandated technology, such as Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar, or VADER system, clearly would come out as big winners if the bill became law, he said.
The bill would require the purchase of six VADER systems, which rely on aerial drones, at an estimated total price of $55.8 million.
“This isn’t really being done by Corker and Hoeven to benefit their constituents, per se,” Ellis said. “They’re not bringing back the bacon to Tennessee and North Dakota.”
‘It’s political cover’
But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes the bill, suggested that the border-security amendment is a different kind of payoff for senators. The Washington, D.C.-based center backs more enforcement and overall reductions in immigration.
“They were buying votes there, too, but in a different way,” Krikorian said. “This was so Corker and Hoeven and a couple of others could posture about how tough they are on border security. In other words, it’s political cover.”
Other provisions clearly were intended to win over specific senators, such as the Alaska one critics have been calling the “Crab-husker Kickback” and “the Alaska Purchase,” Krikorian said.
“When you have a 1,200-page bill, it’s going to be full of that kind of junk,” he said.
“The amnesty bill is based on these kinds of corrupt bargains. There’s really no other way to put it.”
Immigrant-rights advocates, who support the bill even though they believe its border-security elements are excessive, aren’t buying the pork criticism.
Foes of the bill, which still must pass the Republican-controlled House in some form, are trying to fuel conservative skepticism by emphasizing the legislation’s length, as Krikorian did, and claiming it is stuffed with sweetheart deals, said Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-reform organization America’s Voice.
“They’re doing everything they can to equate this bill to ‘Obamacare,’ ” Sharry said. “It’s such a tired strategy.”
Android security flaw gives NSA, CIA, Homeland Security, FBI, BATF, DEA, TSA, IRS, ICE, La Migra, ATF and a whole slew of other alphabet police agencies easy access to your phone????
Android security flaw affects 99 percent of phones, researcher says
By Hayley Tsukayama, Published: July 5 E-mail the writer
Security researchers believe they have found a major security flaw in the Google’s Android mobile operating system, which could affect up to 99 percent of Android phones now in consumers’ hands.
In results published Wednesday by the Bluebox Security research firm, chief technology officer Jeff Forristal said the flaw gave hackers a “master key” into the Android system.
Google declined to comment on the report.
The problem lies in the security verification process that has been used on the Google Play applications store since the release of Android 1.6. It could leave up to 900 million devices open to hackers. The flaw, the research firm said, is a weakness in the way that Android applications verify changes to their code. The weakness would allow hackers to “turn any legitimate application into a malicious Trojan” without flagging the attention of Google’s app store, a mobile phone or the person using an application.
The result, researchers said, would be that anyone who breaks into an app this way would have access to the data that app collects and — if an app made by the device manufacturer gets exploited — could even “take over normal functioning of a phone.”
In the post, Forristal said that Bluebox reported the security flaw to Google in February. In an interview with CIO, he said that some manufacturers have already released fixes for the problem, specifically naming the Samsung Galaxy S4.
Security is a common concern on Android phones, in part because the open nature of the system also means that it’s easy for anyone to find out how it works. Android is the OS of choice for 75 percent of the world’s smartphones, IDC reported in May. But a report released in March from the F-Secure security firm found that 79 percent of all mobile malware found in 2012 was running on Android phones.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that so many smartphone manufacturers use their own versions of the Android operating system, making it more difficult to get system updates that may include security fixes out to customers.
Related stories:
As smartphone market matures, makers race to wow consumers
‘Fragmentation’ leaves Android phones vulnerable to hackers, scammers
Majority of mobile malware on Android phones, security firm says
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Don't laugh, at the time it was considered a high-tech police state.
Lincoln’s Surveillance State
By DAVID T. Z. MINDICH
Published: July 5, 2013
COLCHESTER, Vt. — BY leaking details of the National Security Agency’s data-mining program, Edward J. Snowden revealed that the government’s surveillance efforts were far more extensive than previously understood. Many commentators have deemed the government’s activities alarming and unprecedented. The N.S.A.’s program is indeed alarming — but not, from a historical perspective, unprecedented. And history suggests that we should worry less about the surveillance itself and more about when the war in whose name the surveillance is being conducted will end.
In 1862, after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton penned a letter to the president requesting sweeping powers, which would include total control of the telegraph lines. By rerouting those lines through his office, Stanton would keep tabs on vast amounts of communication, journalistic, governmental and personal. On the back of Stanton’s letter Lincoln scribbled his approval: “The Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the matter within mentioned.”
I came across this letter in the 1990s in the Library of Congress while researching Stanton’s wartime efforts to control the press, which included censorship, intimidation and extrajudicial arrests of reporters. On the same day he received control of the telegraphs, Stanton put an assistant secretary in charge of two areas: press relations and the newly formed secret police. Stanton ultimately had dozens of newspapermen arrested on questionable charges. Within Stanton’s first month in office, a reporter for The New York Herald, who had insisted that he be given news ahead of other reporters, was arrested as a spy.
Having the telegraph lines running through Stanton’s office made his department the nexus of war information; Lincoln visited regularly to get the latest on the war. Stanton collected news from generals, telegraph operators and reporters. He had a journalist’s love of breaking the story and an autocrat’s obsession with information control. He used his power over the telegraphs to influence what journalists did or didn’t publish. In 1862, the House Judiciary Committee took up the question of “telegraphic censorship” and called for restraint on the part of the administration’s censors.
When I first read Stanton’s requests to Lincoln asking for broad powers, I accepted his information control as a necessary evil. Lincoln was fighting for a cause of the utmost importance in the face of enormous challenges. The benefits of information monitoring, censorship and extrajudicial tactics, though disturbing, were arguably worth their price.
But part of the reason this calculus was acceptable to me was that the trade-offs were not permanent. As the war ended, the emergency measures were rolled back. Information — telegraph and otherwise — began to flow freely again.
So it has been with many wars: a cycle of draconian measures followed by contraction. During the First World War, the Supreme Court found that Charles T. Schenck posed a “clear and present danger” for advocating opposition to the draft; later such speech became more permissible. During the Second World War, habeas corpus was suspended several times — most notably in Hawaii after the Pearl Harbor attack — but afterward such suspensions became rare.
This is why, if you are a critic of the N.S.A.’s surveillance program, it is imperative that the war on terror reach its culmination. In May, President Obama declared that “this war, like all wars, must end.” If history is any guide, ending the seemingly endless state of war is the first step in returning our civil liberties.
Until then, we will continue to see acts of governmental overreach that would make even Stanton blush. “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the President, if I had a personal e-mail,” Mr. Snowden told The Guardian. And unlike Stanton’s telegraph operation, which housed just a handful of telegraphers, the current national security apparatus is huge. An estimated 483,000 government contractors had top-secret security clearances in 2012. That’s a lot of Snowdens to trust with your information.
David T. Z. Mindich, a professor of media studies, journalism and digital arts at Saint Michael’s College, is the author of “Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don’t Follow the News.”
Arizona court ruling upholds DUI test for marijuana
Posted on February 14, 2013 by admin
Associated Press Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:10 PM
PHOENIX — An appeals court has issued a ruling that upholds the right of authorities to prosecute pot smokers in Arizona for driving under the influence even when there is no evidence that they are actually high.
The ruling by the Court of Appeals focuses on the chemical compounds in marijuana that show up in blood and urine tests after people smoke pot. One chemical compound causes drivers to be impaired; another is a chemical that stays in people’s systems for weeks after they’ve smoked marijuana but doesn’t affect impairment.
The court ruled that both compounds apply to Arizona law, meaning a driver doesn’t have to actually be impaired to get prosecuted for DUI. As long as there is evidence of marijuana in their system, they can get a DUI, the court said.
The ruling overturns a decision by a lower court judge who said it didn’t make sense to prosecute a person with no evidence they’re under the influence.
The lower court judge cited the proliferation of states easing their marijuana laws, but the Court of Appeals ruling issued Tuesday dismissed that by saying Arizona’s medical marijuana law is irrelevant regarding DUI.
The Legislature adopted the decades-old comprehensive DUI law to protect public safety, so a provision on prohibited substances and their resulting chemical compounds should be interpreted broadly to include inactive compounds as well as active ones, the Court of Appeals said.
The case stems from a 2010 traffic stop in Maricopa County. The motorist’s blood test revealed only a chemical compound that is found in the blood after another compound produced from ingesting marijuana breaks down.
According to testimony by a prosecution criminalist, the compound found in the man’s blood doesn’t impair the ability to drive but can remain detectable for four weeks.
The man’s lawyer argued Arizona’s DUI law bars only marijuana and “its metabolite,” so only the first derivative compound that actually impairs drivers is prohibited.
Two lower court judges agreed, with one upholding the other’s dismissal of the case against the motorist, Hrach Shilgevorkyan.
Superior Court Commissioner Myra Harris’ ruling noted that several states have decriminalized pot, and that a growing number of states, including Arizona, have legalized medical marijuana.
“Residents of these states, particularly those geographically near Arizona, are likely to travel to Arizona,” Harris said in her 2012 ruling upholding the dismissal. “It would be irrational for Arizona to prosecute a defendant for an act that might have occurred outside of Arizona several weeks earlier.”
However, the Court of Appeals sided with prosecutors who appealed, saying that allowing the testing for marijuana’s active compound would unduly restrict law enforcement.
The ruling said it serves the Legislature’s intention to have a flat ban on driving under the influence to interpret the DUI law’s reference to a prohibited substance and “its metabolite” as covering both a substance’s active and inactive compounds.
Michael Alarid III, a lawyer for Shilgevorkyan, said he’ll ask the Arizona Supreme Court to consider an appeal.
He added the testing issue is increasingly important because people legally using pot in two Western states — Washington and Colorado — that last year approved marijuana decriminalization laws could be convicted of DUI if arrested while driving in Arizona weeks later.
Feds to murder dope dealers & Mexicans with drones????
I have posted a number of articles where I made snide comments like "I wonder when the police will start using drone air strikes on American soil to murder drug dealers and blow up suspect drug houses"
Looks like that part of the American police state could be just around the corner.
Sadly the Feds may also use drones against brown skinned folks who sneak across the border too.
Here is a quote from the article:
Feds planned to arm drones
By Bob Ortega The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jul 4, 2013 12:17 AM
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security developed plans at least three years ago to mount weapons on drones operated by Customs and Border Protection — though the agency denied Wednesday that it has any current plans to use armed drones.
The plans, outlining the idea of mounting “expendables or non-lethal weapons” on CBP drones, are disclosed in a 2010 document signed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
The document was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and first posted Tuesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco non-profit focused on cyberspace free speech, privacy and consumer-rights issues.
According to the document, titled “Concept of Operations for CBP’s Predator B Unmanned Aircraft System,” the weapons would be used against “targets of interest,” described as people or vehicles carrying smugglers or undocumented migrants.
The DHS and CBP declined to answer specific questions about the document, but issued a statement Wednesday that “CBP has no plans to arm its unmanned-aircraft systems with non-lethal weapons or weapons of any kind.”
However, civil-rights advocates are concerned that Napolitano signed off on a document positing plans to place even “non-lethal” weapons on drones.
“We’ve never seen this before in any proposals to fly drones domestically,” said Jennifer Lynch, an attorney for the foundation, which first requested the documents last summer and then filed suit in October.
She said the foundation obtained the document last month.
In June, departing FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged in a Senate hearing that his agency has deployed surveillance drones, even though it hasn’t yet drafted regulations for their use.
“Weaponizing drones, even with non-lethal weapons, creates too much of a danger to the public,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C. “And it is an open question what a ‘non-lethal’ weapon is. … Something that could incapacitate a person in the middle of a desert could be hugely problematic. We think that, in the United States, drones should be used for surveillance alone, and only under strong legal protections.”
The DHS document was heavily redacted, with pages of text blacked out. None of the material released details what “expendables” or “non-lethal” weapons would be.
Currently, the CBP operates 10 drones. It plans to have 17 by 2017. The “Gang of Eight” immigration bill passed by the Senate last week calls for the CBP and its subagency, the Border Patrol, to operate drones 24 hours a day, seven days a week along the southern border. If some version of that bill passes the House, as many as 24 additional drones could be deployed.
By law, to ensure that drone operations don’t pose a safety risk to civil aviation, the Federal Aviation Administration must issue “certificates of authorization” for all unmanned- aerial-vehicle operations.
In response to a query from The Arizona Republic, the FAA issued a statement Wednesday saying that it “has not approved any certificates of authorization for law-enforcement agencies that authorize armed operations.”
The FAA hadn’t responded by deadline when asked whether it has received requests to authorize armed operations.
In February, at a drone convention in northern Virginia, the FAA official charged with regulating unmanned aircraft said that FAA rules bar using weapons on drones.
“We currently have rules in the books that deal with releasing anything from an aircraft, period. Those rules are in place, and that would prohibit weapons from being installed on a civil aircraft,” including on unmanned aircraft, the FAA’s Jim Williams said, according to the Washington Times.
Williams couldn’t be reached Tuesday or Wednesday. When asked for the regulation Williams cited, an agency spokesman gave a regulation that says: “No pilot in command of a civil aircraft may allow any object to be dropped from that aircraft in flight that creates a hazard to persons or property. However, this section does not prohibit the dropping of any object if reasonable precautions are taken to avoid injury or damage to persons or property.”
Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah and the author of a book on drone use, “Legitimate Target,” said that the Obama administration hasn’t articulated a clear policy on either domestic or overseas drone use and that neither Republicans nor Democrats in Congress have been eager to limit the executive branch in this area.
“This is the new Wild West,” he said. “They have no clear criteria, no articulation of the threat, no articulation of what constitutes a legitimate target.”
Meanwhile, flight logs of CBP drones obtained and posted Wednesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation showed that the CBP has lent its drones more than 200 times in recent years to other federal and state agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Forest Service and state law-enforcement agencies in Minnesota, North Dakota and Texas, among others.
Desplegaría EU 40 helicópteros en la frontera: WP
Revela ‘The Washington Post’ que de aprobarse la enmienda de seguridad fronteriza en la Cámara de Representantes, la industria armamentista se vería beneficiada.
Una flotilla de 40 helicópteros sería desplegada en la frontera con México si la enmienda de seguridad incluida en la iniciativa de reforma migratoria es adoptada por la Cámara de Representantes estadunidense, reveló este martes The Washington Post.
Sin embargo, las adquisiciones ordenadas bajo la misma representarán una bonanza para algunas de las mayores empresas del ramo de defensa gracias a las especificaciones contenidas en la propuesta de los senadores republicanos Bob Corker y John Hoeven.
Algunos de los beneficiarios incluyen empresas como Bell, Northrop Grumman, Sikorsky y American Eurocopter, de acuerdo con un listado de parte del equipo que el Departamento de Seguridad Interna (DHS) deberá adquirir si la enmienda es adoptada por la cámara baja.
El periódico The Washington Post recordó que la enmienda fue introducida a fin de que un mayor número de republicanos aprobara la iniciativa en el Senado, con la esperanza de mejorar sus prospectos en la Cámara de Representantes, donde enfrenta serias resistencias.
Críticos del proyecto, como el senador republicano por Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, calificaron las enmiendas como un paquete de estímulo para empresas de este ramo.
"El dinero de los contribuyentes debería mejorar la seguridad fronteriza y no ofrecer un estímulo para contratistas, por desgracia eso es lo que hace la iniciativa del Senado", dijo el legislador al diario.
La enmienda ordena la adquisición de 15 helicópteros Black Hawk fabricados por Sikorsky con un costo superior cada uno a los 17 millones de dólares, algunos de los cuales tiene tecnología digital.
El Departamento de Seguridad Interna (DHS) deberá adquirir también ocho helicópteros livianos fabricados por American Eurocopter, con un precio de tres millones de dólares cada uno, así como 17 helicópteros UH-1N fabricados por Bell.
The Washington Post enfatizó que en este caso se trata de un modelo tan viejo que la compañía no lo fabrica más.
La iniciativa también establece la adquisición de seis sistemas de radar fabricados por Northrop Grumman, cada uno de los cuales tiene un costo de 9.3 millones de dólares.
La enmienda representó una adición de 38 mil millones de dólares a los ocho millones considerados en un inicio.
El grueso de esa partida, 30 mil millones de dólares serán destinados para la contratación de más de 19 mil agentes de la patrulla fronteriza en la próxima década, que se sumarán a los 21 mil que en la actualidad están en servicio.
Aunque la enmienda permite al DHS sustituir el equipo a adquirir si así lo determina conveniente, organismos civiles de supervisión estimaron que esas especificaciones resultarán en compras directas y no resultado de un proceso de licitación.
"Los legisladores han puesto sus huellas a favor de productos específicos y eso es difícil de ignorar para una agencia", dijo el vicepresidente del grupo Taxpayers for Common Sense, Steven Ellis.
Almost always the next thing that happens is the cops steal my wallet and search it looking for an ID card which I don't carry, and in the process violating my 4th Amendment rights too.
I have not been stopped yet by a pig with one of these handheld finger printing devices but I suspect when I am, and when I refuse to voluntarily submit to finger printing, I will be physically restrained then my finger prints will be forcefully taken against my will.
I won't resist because I would rather be alive, then be murdered by some pig for thinking I have "constitutional rights"
I was falsely arrested on June 25, 2013 in Chandler and videotaped about 9 minutes of the false arrest. In the video at this
URL
http://tinyurl.com/chandlerarrest
you can Chandler piggy G Pederson telling me that I didn't have any stinking 5th Amendment rights in that case after I mentioned that in Miranda v Arizona the Supremes said that when a person takes the 5th the police must "immediately cease questioning" the person.
Valley police departments utiliizing digital fingerprinting
By Michelle Mitchell The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Jul 8, 2013 11:22 PM
A hand-held device that resembles a cellphone and taps fingerprint databases to help police officers identify people in the field is catching on with several departments in the Valley.
Officers say the devices are a valuable tool — particularly when they encounter people who aren’t carrying ID cards or who give false information.
“With these finger scanners ... you’re talking less than a minute (and) you know who you’re dealing with,” Chandler Sgt. Joe Favazzo said.
“The safety factor and the time-saving factors are just amazing.”
Not everyone is as sold on them, however, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which has voiced privacy concerns.
The devices also raise concerns about identity theft and how that personal information is stored and transferred, particularly if a person is not charged with a crime, said Alessandra Soler, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona.
The devices are not designed to store fingerprint data — although they could be modified to do that — but to transfer the information through the officer’s existing in-car computer system, said Robert Horton, spokesman for manufacturer MorphoTrak.
Police departments in Mesa, Tempe and Phoenix began a pilot program last year using the MorphoTrak scanners.
Tempe and Mesa have now expanded those pilot programs.
“We were sold on how fantastic they are,” Tempe Police Sgt. Mike Pooley said.
“It gives us a very quick response.”
Tempe had 14 scanners during the pilot and recently purchased 30 more.
Other departments have signed on, including Chandler, which bought 36 scanners; Scottsdale, which purchased 10, and Peoria, which bought five as a trial.
Chandler police skipped a smaller-scale pilot after hearing about their effectiveness from Mesa police officers through the East Valley Gang and Criminal Information Fusion Center, Favazzo said.
The cost of the scanners varies, but Valley cities paid about $1,200 to $1,800 per unit.
The devices allow officers in the field to scan a person’s fingerprints and compare them to local, state and federal databases.
The scanners will save officers time when someone does not have identification or provides false information, Favazzo said.
Without these devices, officers run variations of the name and birth date provided in an attempt to locate a driver’s license, warrant or other information about the person, Favazzo said.
If that does not work, officers will take the person to the station,
[i.e. -falsely arrest them and make them prove they are not a criminal before releasing them]
fingerprint them and wait for identity information.
“It will also let us know right away if we are dealing with a violent felon before we ever transport them,” Favazzo said.
The Tempe Police Department recently discovered by using the mobile fingerprint scanner that a man they had encountered was wanted by the FBI, Pooley said.
“We would have ended up letting this guy go,” he said.
Police departments find that the devices save them money by not having to transport people to the station and that they act as a force multiplier by keeping officers on the street, MorphoTrak’s Horton said.
The device will scan two fingerprints and the officer will receive a response in 30 seconds to several minutes, he said.
The Phoenix Police Department, which received three scanners last year as part of a pilot program, still is evaluating whether to expand the program, Sgt. Tommy Thompson said.
“Obviously as technology advances, we want to be involved in those advances, but we want to make sure they meet our needs and they’re a useful tool,” Thompson said.
Officers say they are sensitive to privacy concerns expressed by the ACLU.
[Yea, sure. Like in my case where I am always told I don't have any stinking 5th Amendment right to refuse police questioning, which is almost always followed by an illegal search of my wallet in which the cop is hoping to find my ID]
Mesa officers are not trying to collect personal information, Sgt. Tony Landato said.
[That's 100 percent BS. That is the WHOLE purpose of the fingerprint scanners - to get person information about the person - i.e. name and date of birth so the cops can search for outstanding warrants]
“We’re not taking a census,” Landato said. “We’re just trying to ensure the accuracy of the information that we’re taking down.
“If we can do this in a way that’s quicker for the officer and quicker for the citizen, then, hey, we both win.”
The state and FBI fingerprint databases that the scanners check do not contain citizenship or immigration-status information, although that could be possible in the future if the scanners are connected to Department of Homeland Security databases, Horton said.
The state ACLU’s Soler said departments should create policies that inform people who are not under arrest that they have the right to refuse submitting their fingerprints.
[Yea, sure. Like I am always lied to by the police and told I don't have any 5th Amendment right to refuse to answer police questions]
“It’s critical that we think about these things before rolling out these new high-tech systems, and more often than not that doesn’t happen,” she said. “In this day and age when the technology so far outpaces the privacy laws, the individuals end up giving up a lot in terms of their privacy.”
The use of fingerprint scanners falls under existing Mesa Police Department policy, Landato said.
“We’re not going to fingerprint somebody unless we’ve got them under arrest or we have their consent,” he said.
[Yea, I'm am 100 percent positive that is a big lie!!!!! I was also falsely arrested by the Mesa Police who also told me I didn't have any stinking 5th Amendment rights. See
false arrest by Mesa Police and
lawsuit against Mesa Police]
Tempe police are writing a policy that would require officers to get consent from a person who is not under arrest, Pooley said.
[Yea, sure. I also sure the Tempe for false arrest]
“Right now, there’s no authority that can compel a person to put their fingers on one of these gadgets, short of them being arrested,” said Sigmund Popko, clinical professor of law at Arizona State University.
[Rubbish, what are you going to do when a cop with a gun and a badge forces you to give him your fingerprints??? Resist and be killed????]
While drivers are required to provide a license if they are pulled over, a passenger or pedestrian who is not in violation of a law would not be required to provide identification or fingerprints, said attorney John Phebus, vice chair of the criminal-justice section of the State Bar of Arizona.
[Of course the police routinely lie to these people and tell them they are required to]
“Most people don’t know you can say no,” Phebus said. “When you’re in that moment, it’s awful hard to say no.”
Reach the reporter at michelle .mitchell@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-7983.
RELATED INFO
Handheld, mobile fingerprint scanners About the scanner
What it does: The MorphoIDent handheld device scans a person’s fingerprints and transfers the information to a police officer’s phone or computer via Bluetooth or USB. It compares prints with state and federal fingerprint databases and reports a name and date of birth if a match is found.
Manufacturer: MorphoTrak, based in Alexandria, Va.
Cost: Varies, but Valley departments have paid $1,200 to $1,800 per device.
Dimensions: About 5 inches by 3 inches. Weight is about 5 ounces.
Who’s using the devices
Several Valley police departments are testing or using handheld, mobile fingerprint scanners:.
Chandler: 36 scanners, expected to be in use by August.
Glendale: 2 scanners (pilot), not yet deployed.
Tempe: 44 scanners, 14 currently in use.
Peoria: 5 scanners (pilot), purchased two months ago, not yet deployed.
Phoenix: 3 scanners (pilot), in use since the fall.
Scottsdale: 10 scanners, expected to be in use by late July.
Sadly government bureaucrats do this ALL the time and come up with silly reasons on why they don't have to obey the US and State government constitutions.
An example of that is how the BATF has made an arbitrary decision that anybody that uses medical marijuana is not allowed to purchase a gun and doesn't have any Second Amendment rights. The IRS doesn't the same thing when it arbitrarily declares you to be a tax evader and assumes you are guilty till you prove your innocence, rather then the expected "innocent till proved guilty"
At the state level the police and DMV have ruled that you give up your 5th Amendment right against self incrimination when you get a drivers license and that you MUST submit to alcohol and drug tests if stopped by the police for DUI.
The good news is on that the Arizona courts have recently ruled that is a bunch of BS.
The Laws You Can’t See
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: July 8, 2013 225 Comments
In the month since a national security contractor leaked classified documents revealing a vast sweep of Americans’ phone records by the federal government, people across the country have disagreed about the extent to which our expectation of personal privacy must yield to the demands of national security.
Under normal circumstances, this could be a healthy, informed debate on a matter of overwhelming importance — the debate President Obama said he welcomed in the days after the revelations of the surveillance programs.
But this is a debate in which almost none of us know what we’re talking about.
As Eric Lichtblau reported in The Times on Sunday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has for years been developing what is effectively a secret and unchallenged body of law on core Fourth Amendment issues, producing lengthy classified rulings based on the arguments of the federal government — the only party allowed in the courtroom. In recent years, the court, originally established by Congress to approve wiretap orders, has extended its reach to consider requests related to nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks. Its rulings, some of which approach 100 pages, have established the court as a final arbiter in these matters.
But the court is as opaque as it is powerful. Every attempt to understand the court’s rulings devolves into a fog of hypothesis and speculation.
The few public officials with knowledge of the surveillance court’s work either censor themselves as required by law, as Senator Ron Wyden has done in his valiant efforts to draw attention to the full scope of these programs, or they offer murky, even misleading statements, as the director of national intelligence, James Clapper Jr., did before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March.
As outrageous as the blanket secrecy of the surveillance court is, we are equally troubled by the complete absence of any adversarial process, the heart of our legal system. The government in 2012 made 1,789 requests to conduct electronic surveillance; the court approved 1,788 (the government withdrew the other). It is possible that not a single one of these 1,788 requests violated established law, but the public will never know because no one was allowed to make a counterargument.
When judicial secrecy is coupled with a one-sided presentation of the issues, the result is a court whose reach is expanding far beyond its original mandate and without any substantive check. This is a perversion of the American justice system, and it is not necessary.
Even before the latest revelations of government snooping, some members of Congress were trying to provide that check. In a letter to the court in February, Senator Dianne Feinstein and three others asked that any rulings with a “significant interpretation of the law” be declassified. In response, the court’s presiding judge, Reggie Walton, wrote that the court could provide only summaries of its rulings, because the full opinions contained classified information. But he balked at releasing summaries, which he feared would create “misunderstanding or confusion.” It is difficult to imagine how releasing information would make the confusion worse.
Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, recently reintroduced a bill that would require declassification. It was defeated in December. In light of the national uproar over the most recent revelations, the leadership in Congress should push to pass it and begin to shine some light on this dark corner of the judicial system.
We don’t know what we’ll find. The surveillance court may be strictly adhering to the limits of the Fourth Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court. Or not. And that’s the problem: This court has morphed into an odd hybrid that seems to exist outside the justice system, even as its power grows in ways that we can’t see.
Mesa council approves $130 million bond vote; Spring Training Museum not included
Posted: Tuesday, July 9, 2013 11:16 am | Updated: 11:20 am, Tue Jul 9, 2013.
By Eric Mungenast, Tribune
After removing one major project from the list of options, the Mesa City Council approved a motion to call for a more than $130 million bond election in November.
The bonds, totaling $130.8 million, are split into projects related to infrastructure improvements and public safety upgrades. The former encompasses $79.1 million worth of street upgrades in downtown Mesa — one project includes the addition of bike lanes along Mesa Drive between 8th Avenue and Main Street — and in areas like the Fiesta Mall and around Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.
The public safety projects, which add up to $51.7 million, listed on the ballot include the purchase of a $3.1 million helicopter for the Mesa Police Department and a $16 million communications center for the Mesa Fire Department. During a July 1 study session, Mesa fire chief Harry Beck said the second communications center would operate in tandem with the one the department currently uses and would act as a backup in case a problem arose at the current center.
If approved, some projects tied to the bond funding would receive funding for the last half of the 2013-14 fiscal year, and the funding for the final projects would conclude after the 2016-17 fiscal year.
Missing from the bond the council approved is the Arizona Spring Training Experience, Museum and Community Center operated by the Mesa Historical Museum. Formerly known as the Cactus League Experience, the center would host approximately 4,000 pieces of baseball memorabilia and had a bond figure of $17 million.
At the council’s July 8 study session, however, Mesa Historical Museum CEO Lisa Anderson requested the council remove that item from the bond list, as she said the organization had new opportunities it wants to explore.
“We’ve determined there is a tremendous potential to develop this project beyond event the scope we’ve presented to you thus far,” she said.
Voters could have a shot to vote on the issue next year, as Anderson said the organization might ask the council to put it up for a vote in 2014.
Mayor Scott Smith said it was better to wait for at least a year to compensate for what he called a short timeframe to get the project organized and tie up loose ends, and he said the delay could result in a better final product.
“I appreciate your willingness to step up and do something that’s better for Mesa in the long run because I think we’re going to have a killer project,” he said.
The council approved the motion to put the other two bond packages on the ballot with a 6-0 vote, as vice-mayor Alex Finter was absent from the meeting.
This will mark the second year in a row Mesa residents will have an opportunity to vote on at least one bond issue; in 2012, voters approved a $70 million in city bonds for projects related to parks, open space, recreational and aquatics facility improvements, as well as a $230 million bond for the Mesa Unified School District. City chief financial officer Michael Kennington wrote in an email Mesa has a general obligation bond debt of $326 million.
Contact writer: (480) 898-5647 or emungenast@evtrib.com
The 4th Amendment requires judges to have "probable cause" to issue a search warrant, but that is routinely ignored by judges who will rubber stamp a search warrant for any cop on anything.
"the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation"
Man charged in Casa Grande blast wants evidence suppressed
The Associated Press Tue Jul 9, 2013 9:52 AM
Lawyers for an Iraqi man charged with detonating a homemade explosive device outside a Social Security Administration office in Arizona are asking a judge to throw out evidence collected by investigators during searches of his home and car.
Attorneys for Abdullatif Ali Aldosary say the search warrant used by investigators wasn’t supported by probable cause to believe he damaged federal property with an explosive.
Authorities say Aldosary researched bomb-making materials and gathered chemicals before detonating an explosive outside the agency’s Casa Grande office on Nov. 30.
No one was injured in the blast.
He has pleaded not guilty to maliciously damaging federal property with explosives, being a felon in possession of a gun and ammunition and attempted interference with the administration of the federal agency.
Files of bin Laden raid stashed within CIA
Agency now can shield info on SEAL operation
Jul. 8, 2013
WASHINGTON — The top U.S. special operations commander, Adm. William McRaven, ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.
The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon’s inspector general, set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps also the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
An acknowledgment by McRaven was quietly removed from the final version of an inspector general’s report published weeks ago. A spokesman for the admiral declined to comment. The CIA, noting that the bin Laden mission was overseen by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta before he became defense secretary, said the SEALs were effectively assigned to work temporarily for the CIA, which has presidential authority to conduct covert operations.
“Documents related to the raid were handled in a manner consistent with the fact that the operation was conducted under the direction of the CIA director,” agency spokesman Preston Golson said in an emailed statement. “Records of a CIA operation such as the (bin Laden) raid, which were created during the conduct of the operation by persons acting under the authority of the CIA Director, are CIA records.”
Golson said it is “absolutely false” that records were moved to the CIA to avoid the legal requirements of the Freedom of Information Act.
Effort to protect identities
The records transfer was part of an effort by McRaven to protect the names of the personnel involved in the raid, according to the inspector general’s draft report.
But secretly moving the records allowed the Pentagon to tell The Associated Press that it couldn’t find any documents inside the Defense Department that AP had requested more than two years ago, and would represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny.
“Welcome to the shell game in place of open government,” said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private research institute at George Washington University. “Guess which shell the records are under. If you guess the right shell, we might show them to you. It’s ridiculous.”
McRaven’s directive sent the only copies of the military’s records about the raid to the CIA. The agency has special authority to prevent the release of “operational files” in ways that can’t effectively be challenged in federal court.
The Federal Records Act would not permit agencies “to purge records just on a whim,” said Dan Metcalfe, who oversaw the U.S. government’s compliance with the Freedom of Information Act as former director of the Justice Department’s Office of Information and Privacy. “I don’t think there’s an exception allowing an agency to say, ‘Well, we didn’t destroy it. We just deleted it here after transmitting it over there.’ High-level officials ought to know better.”
It was not immediately clear exactly which Defense Department records were purged and transferred, when it happened or under what authority, if any, they were sent to the CIA. No government agencies the AP contacted would discuss details of the transfer.
Follow-up to 'Zero Dark Thirty'
The AP asked for files about the mission in more than 20 separate requests, mostly submitted in May 2011 — several were sent a day after President Barack Obama announced that the world’s most wanted terrorist had been killed in a firefight.
McRaven’s unusual order would have remained secret had it not been mentioned in a single sentence on the final page in the inspector general’s draft report. That report examined whether the Obama administration gave special access to Hollywood executives planning a film, “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the raid. The draft report was obtained and posted online last month by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington.
McRaven described steps he took to protect the identities of the SEALs after the raid, directing that their names and photographs not be released.
“This effort included purging the combatant command’s systems of all records related to the operation and providing these records to another government agency,” according to the draft report. The sentence was dropped from the report’s final version.
Current and former Defense Department officials knowledgeable about McRaven’s directive and the inspector general’s report told AP the description of the order in the draft report is accurate. The reference to “another government agency” was code for the CIA, they said. These individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Latinos now less likely to report crimes to police, poll says
May 07, 2013|By Brian Bennett
WASHINGTON – Many Latinos say they are less likely than before to report crimes because local police are increasingly involved in enforcing immigration laws, leading to a sharp increase in deportations, according to a new study.
About 44% of Latinos surveyed said they were less likely now to contact police if they were victims of a crime because they fear officers will inquire about their immigration status or the status of people they know. The figure jumps to 70% among Latinos who are in the country unlawfully.
“There is fear that is really widespread,” said Nik Theodore, an associate professor of urban planning and policy at University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of the study.
The report, “Insecure Communities: Latino Perceptions of Police Involvement in Immigration Enforcement,” is based on a telephone survey of 2,004 Latinos in Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Phoenix. The results are scheduled to be released Tuesday.
The survey was sponsored by the think tank PolicyLink of Oakland and conducted by Lake Research Partners, a polling firm in Washington, D.C., between Nov. 17 and Dec. 10.
“Over the last four years or so, the extent of deportations has seeped into the community’s consciousness,” Theodore said. “Trust has been undermined and that potentially has lasting implications.”
The Obama administration deported 409,849 people in fiscal year 2012, a 40% increase from 2007.
Officials have attributed the increase in part to a fingerprint sharing program in local jails that notifies federal immigration agents when people arrested are in the country unlawfully or overstayed their visas.
Some officials have warned that the fingerprint sharing program, called Secure Communities, has deterred some crime victims from coming forward to aid police.
“This report highlights how local law enforcement's greater role in immigration enforcement has created mistrust between the Latino community and local police, making all of our communities less safe from crime," said Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.). Polis will host a panel discussion about the report on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
Colorado last week repealed a state law that had required police to report individuals suspected of being in the country illegally.
“This confirms what police experts have been saying for decades,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF, a Latino nonprofit civil rights organization based in Los Angeles. “We have to have policies that make it clear there will be a separation between local police and immigration enforcement.”
brian.bennett@latimes.com
Twitter: @bybrianbennett
I find this scary that the cops can now get doctors to slice and dice people looking for drugs inside them.
Extraen drogas del cuerpo a mujer en Arizona
por CRISTINA SILVA - 06/29/2013
The Associated Press
PHOENIX, Arizona, EE.UU. - Un médico extrajo quirúrgicamente un paquete de metanfetamina de medio kilogramo de peso de la zona pélvica de una mujer después que supuestamente trató de pasarla de México a Arizona, informó el viernes una portavoz del Servicio Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza.
Claudia Ibarra, de 31 años, fue detenida esta semana en Puerto de San Luis cuando un agente federal sospechó del extraño intento de contrabando. Ibarra, que cruzó la frontera sola a pie, es ciudadana estadounidense de la ciudad fronteriza de Yuma.
Ibarra fue sometida a un registro en la frontera y entonces trasladada a una instalación médica cercana, donde el médico detectó y le extrajo el paquete de drogas. La mujer fue detenida por mostrar señales comunes de tráfico de drogas, dijo la portavoz Teresa Small, quien declinó ofrecer más detalles.
"Cuando la estaban cateando se dieron cuenta que tenía algo ahí", dijo Small.
La metanfetamina, envuelta en un preservativo y cinta adhesiva negra, estaba insertada en el cuerpo de Ibarra, quien fue entregada a la rama de investigaciones de la Policía de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas.
Las autoridades dijeron que no es inusual que los traficantes de drogas las escondan dentro del cuerpo, ya sea tragándose el paquete o a través de otros medios. Un oficial médico fue encargado de extraerle el paquete porque si se rompía la metanfetamina podía haber matado a Ibarra.
No se sabía si Ibarra tiene un abogado o ha sido arrestado anteriormente por tráfico de drogas.
Trazan plan para asegurar la frontera
Washington, EU
por Agencia Reforma - Jul. 4, 2013 01:28 PM
La Voz
El plan para reforzar la frontera con México incluido en la reforma migratoria aprobada recientemente en el Senado de Estados Unidos especifica qué tipo de armamento y tecnología tiene que ser adquirida.
El plan incluye, por ejemplo, la compra de 6 sistemas de radar aéreo de la compañía Northrop Grumman valorados en 9.3 millones de dólares.
Además prevé la adquisición de 15 helicópteros "Black Hawk" de la empresa Sikorsky, cada uno de los cuales cuesta 17 millones de dólares.
También se contempla adquirir 8 helicópteros ligeros de la compañía American Eurocopter, cuyo precio de mercado asciende a 3 millones de dólares por pieza.
La compra de otros 17 helicópteros UH-1N de la compañía Bell, un modelo que además ya no se produce, también vienen mencionados en la reforma migratoria del Senado.
Con la excepción de casos como los descritos, la mayor parte del equipo no aparece detallado con el nombre de la empresa en cuestión, sino por su modelo genérico.
Así, por ejemplo, se plantea comprar 4 mil 595 sensores automáticos de tierra y 104 dispositivos de detección de isótopos radiactivos.
Lo que preocupa a analistas y a críticos es que no se estén respetando las reglas básicas de las licitaciones públicas, que en teoría no deberían manifestar preferencias por una marca o modelo.
Algunas voces han sugerido que los promotores del plan de blindaje fronterizo están más preocupados por beneficiar a ciertas empresas que por atajar la inmigración ilegal.
"Los fondos de los contribuyentes deberían gastarse en mejorar la seguridad fronteriza, no en ofrecer estímulos a los contratistas", dijo el republicano Tom Coburn, senador por Oklahoma.
Las expectativas de las empresas de armamento y seguridad de Estados Unidos han quedado muy dañadas en los últimos años por la retirada de las tropas de Afganistán e Irak.
Fuentes del Departamento de Seguridad consultadas por The Washington Post dijeron, por el contrario, que el plan está basado en sugerencias de la Agencia de Frontera y Aduanas realizadas en 2010.
En teoría, el Departamento de Seguridad podría escoger sus propios contratistas al margen de lo que diga la ley si así lo considera necesario, siempre que informe de ello al Congreso con 60 días de antelación.
The means the cops falsely arrested or detained 5,707 people who were not drunk.
Sure those 5,707 people deserve to be angry at being falsely arrested when they were falsely stopped for being DUI. But I suspect the 870 cops who were probably made some big overtime bucks shaking down these people could care less and were very happy with the overtime pay they earned.
Some for the politicians who control the cash registers. With a minimum fine of $2,000 for simple DUI those 367 DUI tickets will bring them a minimum of $734,000 in revenue. And that is before you throw in the extreme DUI fines which being in much more cash.
Holiday DUI enforcement efforts lead to 367 arrests
Posted: Monday, July 8, 2013 2:55 pm | Updated: 3:14 pm, Mon Jul 8, 2013.
TRIBUNE
Arizona's statewide DUI enforcement efforts resulted in 367 DUI arrests during the recent holiday. More than 870 officers participated across the state, including the East Valley.
There were 6,074 contacts made July 1-8, according to the Governor's Office of Highway Safety. The average known blood alcohol content was 0.149. There were 175 seat-belt citations given and 2,605 other citations made.
Last year there were 13,583 contacts made and 678 DUI arrests. More than 1,800 officers participated.
This Phoenix piggie, Richard Greco seems to agree with that.
He thinks he is being treated unfairly because his bosses used videos shot by HIS police camera of HIM abusing civilians against HIM.
UVA student jailed for possession of bottled water, ice cream
I think most normal people will consider the police thugs that assaulted this woman and her friends the problem.
Dope smoking pigs??? OK, Marijuana eating swines???
Source
Legalizing marijuana is hard. Regulating a pot industry is even harder.
To really f*ck things up let the government get involved.
Marijuana's march toward mainstream confounds feds
Source
Landlord challenges feds in Calif medical pot case
Source
So Feds will slice you and dice you looking for drugs???
Man the drug war is routinely causing our royal government masters to stoop to new lows.
Police need warrant to open package that reeks of pot
Source
Uncle Sam spying on people that buy fireworks??? Probably.
In the article Uncle Sam's in the FBI and Homeland Security want you to snitch on people that are buying fireworks.
Case reveals feds’ fight vs. synthetic-drug makers
Why not just make breathing illegal. That way the Feds can selectively arrest and imprison anybody they think is scum.
Around the Bay Area, you're being watched
San Francisco pigs are spying on you!!!!!
Secret-court judges upset at portrayal of ‘collaboration’ with government
Secret court angry that they are portrayed as jackbooted police thugs in judges robes????
Ex-L.A. sheriff's narcotics sergeant charged with theft in sting
Source
Some L.A. pot shops shut down while others look to Garcetti for relief
Source
Bolivian president’s plane forced to land in Austria in hunt for Snowden
Bolivian president’s plane forced to land in Austria in hunt for Snowden
U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
US Post Office is spying on you for Uncle Sam
Bay Area cities battle U.S. in bid to save marijuana dispensaries
1) Obama lied about not shaking down harmless medical marijuana users???? Yes Obama lied.
More on that Brooklyn pig who may have framed 50 people for murder!!!!
Panel to Review Up to 50 Trial Convictions Involving a Discredited Detective
Web’s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders
I suspect that Google gives ALL the data it's search engine cataloging robots find on the web to the Feds.
That tag tells the robots that Google and other search engine vendors sent out not to copy the information from that web page into it's database.
"No Trespassing"
while most cops arrogantly think they are above the law and ignore signs like that I suspect signs might have a legal basis to keep the police criminals from using evidence against you that they obtained illegally when trespassing on your property.
"Police keep out - No trespassing"
Sure the crooked cops will ignore the signs, but I wonder could the signs keep the police who from using any evidence they obtained on you web page against you or other people??? I don't know. I am just throwing out a question.
Into the mind of ... Kyrsten Sinema
Kyrsten Sinema shovels the BS???
Kyrsten Sinema shovels the BS???
Critics of immigration bill say pork was added
A government welfare program for police officers???
Think of it as a government welfare program for police departments, a welfare program for corporations in the military industrial complex and a jobs program for cops.
Android security flaw gives Homeland Security easy access to your phone????
Android security flaw gives Homeland Security easy access to your phone????
Lincoln’s Surveillance State
President Lincoln was reading our telegraphs????
President Lincoln was reading our telegraphs????
Arizona court ruling upholds DUI test for marijuana
Even thought the article is dated Feb 14, I saw this in a free magazine
I found on Mill Avenue last night called "Cannabis TimesOnline.com"
Feds planned to arm drones
Feds to murder dope dealers & Mexicans with drones????
Feds planned to arm drones
"According to the document, titled 'Concept of Operations for CBP’s Predator B Unmanned Aircraft System,' the weapons would be used against “targets of interest,” described as people or vehicles carrying smugglers or undocumented migrants"
Source
Desplegaría EU 40 helicópteros en la frontera: WP
Let's face it the "War on Drugs" is all about $$$MONEY$$$
In this case it sounds like the "War on Drugs" is a government welfare program for the corporations in the military industrial complex that supplies the police and military with the tools of the trade needed to fight the drug war. [Sorry to Country Joe and the Fish for stealing the words from their anti-war "Fixing to Die" song]
Cops have hand held fingerprinting machines to ID you
Every time I am stopped by the police and take the 5th and refuse to tell the police my name or answer their questions the cops tell me that for some reason the Fifth Amendment doesn't apply in that case and I have to answer their questions.
[They never have given me a good reason on why the 5th Amendment is null and void, other then the implied reason that they got a gun and a badge and will do what they feel like]
The Laws You Can’t See
"Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has for years been developing what is effectively a secret and unchallenged body of law on core Fourth Amendment issues, producing lengthy classified rulings based on the arguments of the federal government — the only party allowed in the courtroom."
Mesa council approves $130 million bond vote
Bend over Mesa Mayor Scott Smith wants more money!!!!
About $52 million, or 42 percent of the money will go to the police.
Man charged in Casa Grande blast wants evidence suppressed
"Probable cause" - We don't need no stinking "probable cause"
Files of bin Laden raid stashed within CIA
F*ck the Freedom of Information Act, we are with the government and will do what we feel like!!!
Latinos now less likely to report crimes to police, poll says
Source
Extraen drogas del cuerpo a mujer en Arizona
In this article the Border Patrol (ICE, or La Migra or whatever you want to call them) got a doctor to operate on a woman and remove drugs that were sown inside her.
Trazan plan para asegurar la frontera
Sadly the "war on drugs" is also a government welfare program for the corporations in the military industrial complex. In addition to being a jobs program for cops.
How do you spell revenue??? DUI tickets.
6,074 people stopped for DUI, only a lousy 367 were drunk???
From this article it sounds like the cops stopped 6,074 people whom they suspected of DUI, but a lousy 6 percent or 367 of them were actually drunk.
Phoenix police officer is sunk by own camera
Phoenix police officer Richard Greco thinks cops should be above the law???
I have always said that cops are about the law and rarely punished for crimes they commit.
Phoenix police officer is sunk by own camera
By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jul 9, 2013 10:47 PM
A Phoenix police officer lost his job this year after a suspect’s mother complained that he was physically and verbally abusive to her son during a 2011 encounter, and internal investigators searched through the officer’s own video footage to find other incidents that supported the woman’s claim.
As Phoenix Police and numerous other agencies around the Valley and the nation outfit more of their officers with cameras, there are increasing concerns that the video footage — touted as a way to help ensure officer compliance and refute false claims from suspects — can allow supervisors to go on fishing expeditions to find isolated incidents of an employee behaving badly. [I guess fired cop Richard Greco thinks police officers should not be held accountable for crimes they commit.]
Richard Greco, in an interview with a Phoenix police internal investigator, said his employers had done just that: selected less than five minutes out of hundreds of hours of video to paint an inaccurate picture of his work as a patrol officer. [Yea, that is 5 minutes too many of abusing the people you pretend to protect. The jerk should be fired]
The footage captures him cursing at suspects and witnesses, and making disparaging remarks about them to other officers, including referring to one as “retarded,” calling another a “jackass” and another a “bitch.”
“There’s more than two hundred (videos), and we’re here to talk about, like if you strung ’em all together, maybe four minutes of conversation for me over two hundred and ten videos,” Greco said of the clips with abrasive language. “So I clearly don’t use that tactic all the time.”
But Phoenix police determined that Greco used those tactics enough. When that revelation was combined with a 2008 disciplinary action Greco received for making inappropriate comments about female co-workers in the presence of other police officers, it was enough to terminate the 10-year veteran last year.
A municipal appeals board upheld Greco’s termination in a hearing last month.
The comments Greco made were disturbing because they were not isolated to a group of high-stress incidents, said Sgt. Trent Crump, a police spokesman, and he made the comments knowing his actions were being recorded.
“Treating people with dignity and respect, that is what we tell the public we will do, and when you have someone who doesn’t uphold that, we believe we can terminate them,” Crump said. “You have an officer who is standing out at crime scenes saying, he only has one tool and that is to beat someone’s ass. That is not the kind of conduct we want on Phoenix Police Department and that individual is a great liability for the department.”
Greco was among 18 Phoenix officers who volunteered to participate in a pilot program in 2011 in which each officer was outfitted with a camera manufactured by Taser. The agency has since expanded the program, using cameras from a different manufacturer, and police intend to continue outfitting more officers with cameras as resources allow.
Police in Mesa, Surprise and Peoria have also tested or launched similar officer-camera programs, along with dozens of agencies around the country.
The Fraternal Order of Police generally supports such programs, but with some reservations about how an officer’s civil rights will be protected, said James Pasco, the organization’s executive director. [Translation - the police union seems to think it's OK to use the video tapes against criminals who commit crimes, but not against police criminals who commit crimes???]
The investigation into Greco began when a woman contacted police in September 2011 to complain that Greco had mistreated her son, who answered the door with a 45-caliber handgun pointed at Greco, in a June 2011 domestic-violence call at a Phoenix apartment complex, according to police records.
Greco describes holding his gun flush against Thomas Hughes’ throat and pointing upward in case he had to fire a shot that would not injure the children in the apartment behind Hughes. Instead, Hughes dropped his weapon and was placed under arrest.
Hughes’ mother delivered a recording of her son’s arrest to Phoenix police with a letter describing how horrified she was at Greco’s action during Hughes’ arrest, including calling Hughes a “jackass” and calling another suspect a “bitch” after the suspect had asked Greco to stop calling him that.
“While the above listed incidents are not horrifying, they serve to demonstrate Officer Greco’s lack of professionalism and his contempt for citizens,” Hughes’ mother, Suzanne Smith, wrote.
The comments prompted internal investigators to conduct a review of 30 days of Greco’s camera footage where they found more inappropriate language.
Those comments ultimately led investigators to review Greco’s entire reel, culling a string of inappropriate interactions from the footage.
Some officers have raised concerns that supervisors in the department can use the cameras to target certain employees, said Will Buividas, chief negotiator for a labor group representing Phoenix officers. [Hmmm... these police video tapes are used to convict criminals, why shouldn't they be used to convict POLICE criminals of crimes.]
“I think it hinders (the expansion of the program). It certainly creates a chilling effect on the guys,” Buividas said. “People are worried that (the Professional Standards Bureau) is going to audit all of my stuff and nickel and dime me for every rude comment in a six-month timeframe.” [Sounds like a good idea if you ask me]
Crump said the cameras are out there, whether they are the cellphones of suspects, witnesses or they are worn by police, and the technology is not going anywhere, so police should learn to work as if they are always being watched. [Must be a nightmare for cops who are told they have to obey the same laws as the rest of us. That will probably ruin few cops days, telling them they have to obey the law.]
“In this particular case, we looked at the footage and saw the conduct and because of that, the PSB went back and issues were continuing to pop up,” Crump said.
Watch a video at phoenix.azcentral.com.
Arizona ruling on return of seized pot stands
Source
Arizona ruling on return of seized pot stands
By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jul 9, 2013 5:31 PM
The Arizona Supreme Court has declined to consider a high-profile lawsuit over whether police can seize medical marijuana from patients since possession of marijuana still violates federal drug laws.
The court’s Monday decision upholds an Arizona Court of Appeals ruling that required the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office to give back marijuana officers seized from a California woman who legally possessed the drug under California law. Bill Kerekes, chief civil deputy for the Yuma County Attorney’s Office, told The Arizona Republic on Tuesday his agency will petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.
The Arizona Court of Appeals in January ruled that the Yuma County Sheriff's Office must return marijuana to Valerie Okun, who had permission to use the drug for medical purposes.
Okun was stopped in 2011 at a Border Patrol checkpoint near Yuma. Authorities seized marijuana and other contraband from her car. She was cited for violating Arizona drug laws and the case was turned over to Yuma County officials. The charges were dismissed after she showed she was authorized to possess marijuana under California law.
The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act honors other states’ medical-marijuana cards and allows users to possess up to 2 1/2 ounces of the drug.
After the charges were dropped, Okun asked sheriff's officials to return her marijuana, and the Superior Court granted her request. But the Yuma County sheriff argued that he could not return the pot because doing so may violate the federal Controlled Substances Act, which makes possession, sale or use of marijuana a crime.
The appellate court affirmed the Superior Court's ruling and required the sheriff to return the marijuana to Okun, saying it was not subject to forfeiture under state law.
“Moreover, the Sheriff is immune from prosecution under the federal law for acts taken in compliance with a court order,” the three-judge panel wrote at the time.
The appellate court would not consider the state's argument that the state's medical-marijuana law is pre-empted by federal law.
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, meanwhile, is appealing a Maricopa County Superior Court’s ruling that federal drug laws do not pre-empt the state’s medical marijuana law. The Court of Appeals is expected to hear arguments on that case this year.
Montgomery, who has made fighting the medical marijuana law a signature issue, said it was “obviously difficult to assess” why the state Supreme Court thought the appellate court’s decision on the Okun case “was appropriate.”
Voters in 2010 passed the medical-marijuana measure to allow people with certain debilitating medical conditions — including chronic pain, cancer and muscle spasms — to use marijuana. They must obtain a recommendation from a physician and register with the state Department of Health Services, which oversees the program and issues identification cards to qualified patients and caregivers.
Patients are limited to purchasing 2 1/2 ounces every two weeks. About 37,600 people have permission to use medical marijuana in Arizona.
Majority of D.C. Council signs on to bill to decriminalize pot
Source
Majority of D.C. Council signs on to bill to decriminalize pot
By Tim Craig, Updated: Wednesday, July 10, 12:12 PM
A majority of D.C. Council members on Wednesday signed on to a bill to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, giving the proposal considerable momentum as the body prepares to consider the matter this fall.
Council members Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) and Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) drafted the bill, which would make possession of the drug subject to a $100 civil fine.
Six other council members signed on as co-sponsors — Democrats Anita Bonds (At large), Jim Graham (Ward 1), Jack Evans (Ward 2), Kenyan McDuffie (Ward 5), Mary M. Cheh (Ward 3) as well as Independent David Grosso (at large).
“Lets get this done and stop arresting, mostly black men, for small amounts of marijuana,” Barry said.
Wells, the chairman of the Public Safety and Judiciary Committee, said the strong support leaves him optimistic the proposal can be put up for a formal vote before Christmas.
But in a statement, Police Chief Cathy Lanier urged a “robust discussion,” calling it a “significant issue.” Lanier said she has concerns about the risks marijuana poses for children, as well as potential conflict with federal law. [Translation - The "war on drugs" and the "war on marijuana" is a jobs program for cops and the police union will be really upset if cops are force to hunt down dangerous real criminals like robbers and rapists instead of harmless pot smokers]
“It is important for the community to recognize that some of the information being used as an argument for decriminalization is flawed,” said Lanier [Translation - We don't want any dumb civilians terminating the war on marijuana which is really a jobs program for us cops], referring to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union released last month that showed the District outranked the 50 states in per-capita marijuana arrests.
The study also found that African Americans in the District were eight times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession.
Council member Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) also said she will not be supporting the proposal She questioned Barry and Wells’s argument that decriminalization will help more District residents land jobs.
“When you apply for a job, and there is a drug test, and you come up positive, you still can’t get the job,” Alexander said. “So why would we make it one step closer for people to smoke marijuana?” [Because it's cheaper to have them jobless, then to pay for putting them in prison for the victimless crime of smoking pot]
At a news conference earlier Wednesday, Wells said his legislation is designed to lessen the impact that the nation’s drug laws have on young adults who become ensnared in the criminal justice system.
“We are going to really acknowledge that the war on drugs, in particular marijuana, have worked to criminalize many of your youth and disadvantaged them from being able to get jobs,” Wells said. “Once you have a marijuana charge on your record, you can not participate in, certainly the construction boom that is happening all over the city, and it works to stigmatize people … and it disadvantages them from jobs.”
Under current law, possession of up to an ounce of marijuana in the District is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.
Wells’s bill would make possession of up to an ounce similar to a speeding ticket that does not result in a criminal record. Minors would have to attend a drug awareness class, and their parents would be notified.
Grosso plans to go a step further by introducing a bill this fall to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana in the District.
Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) are skeptical of efforts to decriminalize or legalize marijuana, fearing it could result in backlash from Congress.
But the ACLU and several marijuana advocacy groups joined Wells Wednesday to press for decriminalization.
“This bill is about human beings; it’s about people, communities, and families whose lives have been destabilized and individual lives derailed,” said Seema Sadanandan, of the ACLU.
This article has been updated.
Ex-Albuquerque cop accused in wife’s death testifies
SourceEx-Albuquerque cop accused in wife’s death testifies
Associated Press Wed Jul 10, 2013 9:56 AM
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — It’s a murder trial involving nearly a half-dozen mistresses, a botched investigation at a troubled police department and a missing pickup truck at the heart of the case.
After a month of testimony, a former Albuquerque police officer accused of killing his wife with his service weapon took the stand Tuesday morning as the defense began wrapping up a case that has become a tale of workplace romances and steamy affairs, including a love triangle at the hair salon where the victim worked. In all, four mistresses and a woman who married defendant Levi Chavez just after his wife’s death have testified about their trysts with him. Several of the women were police officers.
The case also has threatened to further tarnish the reputation of the beleaguered Albuquerque Police Department, which already is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department over a series of police shootings. The trial included allegations that officers at the scene removed and even flushed key evidence down the toilet.
Chavez, 32, is accused of shooting his wife, Tera Chavez, 26, with his department-issued gun in 2007 at their Los Lunas home and then trying to make her death look like a suicide.
Prosecutors have depicted Chavez as a philanderer whose marriage was crumbling. They said he killed his wife after she found out that he had staged the theft of his pickup valued at more than $20,000 to collect the insurance proceeds.
On Tuesday, Chavez acknowledged cheating on his wife throughout their marriage and said his wife knew about his affairs. He said they fought often, and he would often leave “until the next time.” He also testified that Tera Chavez threatened suicide “countless times,” saying things like she couldn’t live without him.
The defense said the death was a suicide by a woman unraveling over her failed marriage and relationships. Chavez’s lawyer said he could not have killed his wife in October 2007 because he was with another woman at the time.
Tera Chavez was also having an affair with an Albuquerque police officer who was married to the maid of honor in her wedding, witnesses said. They had sex in the back of a hair salon where she worked, according to testimony.
“This trial is like a mosquito in a nudist colony,” said Tom Garrity, owner of the Albuquerque-based public relations firm The Garrity Group. “Where do you begin?”
The case is nearing the end as defense attorney David Serna calls final witnesses this week.
Serna, who has long represented clients in high-profile New Mexico homicide cases, was able to persuade the judge to bar statements Tera Chavez made about her husband and his “cop buddies” staging the theft of Levi Chavez’s 2004 Ford F-250 truck as part of an insurance scam.
Now Serna is working to show how his client was a victim of a larger effort to paint him as a monster.
“There has been a persistent anti-Levi Chavez campaign by the media from the beginning,” Serna told The Associated Press.
A key to Serna’s defense strategy has been to discredit former Valencia County Sheriff’s Detective Aaron Jones, one of the first investigators on the scene who concluded that the death “looked staged.” Serna has portrayed Jones as a conspiracy theorist unable to hold steady law enforcement jobs in California and New Mexico as he kept stumbling upon “nefarious activities” involving crooked police that were never borne out.
Jones was taken off the investigation into Tera Chavez’s killing after calling his supervisors derogatory names.
He was also in the middle of one of the trial’s more colorful moments when he testified that he believed Chavez was pretending to cry over his wife’s death during interviews, which he saw as a clue Chavez might have been involved.
“If there is no snot, believe him not,” he testified in a comment that drew immediate comparisons with attorney Johnnie Cochran’s theatrics during the O.J. Simpson trial.
But Chavez and his lawyer suffered an apparent setback last week when a crime scene expert testifying in his defense failed to pull off a demonstration of how the officer’s wife might have been able to kill herself with his gun.
There was a bullet in the gun’s chamber when it was found next to Tera Chavez’s body, leading prosecutors to argue that she could not have shot herself and then released the magazine.
Larry McCann, the expert, suggested that Tera Chavez held the gun upside down and used her thumb to pull the trigger. But McCann tried a few times to show jurors that he could pull the trigger and press the gun’s magazine release in one continuous motion, but it didn’t work.
“I can’t get it to work today,” he said.
The failed demonstration drew gasps, smiles and whispers from members of Tera Chavez’s family.
The investigation also has been criticized since an Albuquerque officer, on scene to help Levi Chavez cope with his wife’s death, cut out a piece of a bloody mattress and had the piece destroyed. Another officer used a toilet and flushed it before investigators had a chance to examine what might have been blood floating inside.
In other testimony, a digital forensic investigator with the Los Lunas Police Department told the jury that an Internet search from November 2006 on “how to kill someone” was found on Levi Chavez’s computer.
The testimony from Levi Chavez’s former mistresses included other bizarre details. One mistress provided an alibi. Another, who was called to counter the alibi, said that while she was carrying on the affair, she got her hair done by Tera Chavez at a Los Lunas salon. Another mistress said she and Levi Chavez had sex in a house he once shared with his wife just a few weeks she was found dead.
“I think people are more focused on all the drama than the positions of both sides arguing their cases,” Garrity said. “Jurors will have a hard time not to be caught up in that drama.”
"federal financial aid ... represents more than 80 percent of the revenue for the parent Apollo Group"
While University of Phoenix founder John Sperling is a good guy for donating millions to help legalize marijuana he certainly isn't a Libertarian when it comes to receiving corporate welfare from the Federal government if 80 percent of his income comes from Federal aid.
University of Phoenix keeps accreditation
By Ronald J. Hansen The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 10, 2013 4:52 PM
The University of Phoenix and a sister school had their accreditation extended another 10 years on Wednesday, though each was sanctioned over conditions that must improve over the next two years to avoid falling out of compliance.
The Higher Learning Commission, a Chicago-based nonprofit regional accrediting agency, granted the conditional approval that ensures students at the for-profit schools can continue to qualify for federal financial aid, which represents more than 80 percent of the revenue for the parent Apollo Group.
The HLC also reaffirmed its accreditation for Western International University, another holding of the Apollo Group. The University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit school, and others in its industry have faced withering scrutiny in recent years over concerns that students are often saddled with high debt and poor job prospects.
Reflecting those concerns, the HLC tied the accreditation for both schools to several areas where they must demonstrate improvement in the next two years. Among the concerns, the universities must show sufficient independence from Apollo. Also, they must improve assessments of whether students are learning class goals and show more robust scholarship among faculty and doctoral students.
Apollo welcomed the accreditation, which was one problem weighing down its stock price in recent months.
“This is probably something that investors can see and now check the box and put aside,” said Mark Brenner, chief of staff to the CEO of the Phoenix-based Apollo Group.
“To be reaffirmed for 10 years, which is the maximum, speaks for itself,” said Ryan Rauzon, a spokesman for the company. He characterized the latest periodic review by the HLC as especially thorough, something that should give students confidence in the future of the school.
Even so, the conditional nature could be used by competitors to continue chipping away at the Phoenix-based company’s bottom line.
“We expect the sanction to have some adverse effect on enrollments as competitors will be likely to bring the matter to the attention of prospective students,” said Trace A. Urdan, a senior analyst who tracks the company for Wells Fargo Securities. “However, the effect should be somewhat less damaging than if the university had been placed on probation. We are confident that the university will be able to take measures to demonstrate independence and would expect it to attempt to appeal to the HLC to consider the matter sooner than December 2014.”
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Apollo acknowledged the sanction against the University of Phoenix “could adversely impact our business.”
Urdan said the more pressing concern for Apollo is its dwindling enrollment and growing competition from other schools that are often more affordable.
Apollo’s stock closed Wednesday at $17.89 per share, up 34 cents and was rising in early after-hour trading. Over the past year, the stock has fallen more than 50 percent.
I looked at the find print on the signs and notices they were put up by the lobbyists of the Phoenix Police Union and the Phoenix Fire Department Union.
While I don't like Sal DiCiccio, he has been a vocal opponent of the government pork the city of Phoenix shovels to Phoenix police officers and Phoenix firemen and I agree with him on that.
I suspect the Phoenix Police Unions and the Phoenix Fire Unions are attempting to use these lies to run Sal DiCiccio out of office because he doesn't support government pork for cops and firemen.
I have had two problems with Sal DiCiccio. First, years ago I asked him to remove me from his junk email list which he sends out weekly and some times almost daily propaganda why he is a wonderful guy and should be reelected. He is still sending me this junk email despite my request to be removed from his list.
Second it appears that Sal DiCiccio is using tax dollars from the city of Phoenix to send out this re-election propaganda I asked him for all the names on his email list. He refused to give me the email addresses.
‘Lobbyists Support Sal DiCiccio’ signs pop up in Phoenix, Ahwatukee
By Dustin Gardiner PHX Beat Wed Jul 10, 2013 5:11 PM
Dozens of campaign signs have sprung up on street corners in central Phoenix and Ahwatukee in the last week touting an unusual message: “Lobbyists Support Sal DiCiccio” and “Developers Support Sal DiCiccio.”
As one might assume, DiCicccio isn’t the one behind the signs.
An independent-expenditure group, Phoenix Truth and Safety, paid for the signs. The group is funded by public-safety unions throughout the state. They hope to oust DiCiccio in the Aug. 27 primary election.
It’s the latest jab in a bitter feud between DiCiccio and the fire unions. The two have been at war over DiCiccio’s criticism of employee pensions and overall compensation.
“The signs are accurate,” said David Leibowitz, a PR consultant working with the group. “Campaign-finance reports make that abundantly clear ... and yet he holds himself as some paragon of virtue.”
DiCiccio said while he has accepted donations from lobbyists, businesses and developers, his opponent, Karlene Keogh Parks, is accepting contributions from unions. He said the unions are trying to block his efforts to make reforms.
“I think people see through this,” DiCiccio said. “It’s all part of the union control of City Hall.”
Follow us on Twitter @phxbeat.
I don't like Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio, but he is rather vocal about stopping government pork for Phoenix Police Officers and Phoenix Firemen and I agree with him on that.
Posted on July 10, 2013 4:30 pm by Laurie Roberts
Firefighters take low road in campaign to oust Sal DiCiccio
A Maricopa County judge on Monday tossed out a lawsuit accusing Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio of all manner of campaign-finance violations.
Superior Court Judge Mark Brain took a dim view of the lawsuit, saying in an earlier hearing that he’s “completely unconvinced” that DiCiccio did anything wrong. This week, he suggested that the lawsuit’s filing had more to do with the pursuit of politics than the pursuit of justice.
“You want me to declare it that he’s doing something illegally so you can wave it around like a bloody flag in the news. Don’t ya?” Brain said to the attorney who filed the lawsuit.
Actually, the plaintiffs in the case – three residents who just happen to oppose DiCiccio’s re-election – didn’t need a judge to declare DiCiccio a crook.
The fightfighters did it for them, sending out two hit pieces this week that make the guy sound like a public menace.
“PHOENIX COUNCILMAN DICICCIO ACCUSED OF SWEEPING CAMPAIGN FINANCE VIOLATIONS,” screams one, which is made to look like a headline from the front-page of The Arizona Republic. (The headline didn’t run in the newspaper though it did run on a azcentral.com blog. As did another headline: Judge tosses campaign-violations lawsuit against Phoenix Councilman DiCiccio.)
“SAL DICCICIO IS IN TROUBLE,” says the second mailer. “He could face 22 felony charges and nearly $750,000 in fines.”
Thus far, the only ones accusing DiCiccio are the people whose lawsuit was thrown out of court this week. In addition to their lawsuit, they’ve filed complaints with the secretary of state, Maricopa County attorney and Phoenix city clerk.
None of the complaints has resulted in any action as yet. A spokesman for Secretary of State Ken Bennett told me the office is still reviewing the complaint.
But hey, don’t let that get in the way of the good hit piece.
Credit the group that funded these mailers with one good thing, at least. Unlike the Campaign for Better Neighborhoods, which refuses to disclose who is putting up the dough for its anti-DiCiccio campaign, this group is following campaign-finance laws.
The mailers come courtesy of Phoenix Truth and Safety, funded by Arizona’s Fire Fighters, a political committee that is comprised of firefighters and public safety workers across Arizona. The group’s address is the Professional Firefighters of Arizona.
It’s no surprise that the firefighters would come after DiCiccio. He’s long taken aim at the city’s public employee unions, questioning employee pay and benefits and the unions’ power at city hall. A campaign aimed at unseating him is fair.
But these mailers? Not so much.
I think that the current .08 legal limit is far too low, and that if we are going to have DUI laws that the legal limit should be raised back to the .15 it was when the crime of DUI or DWI was first invented in the early 1900's.
As a Libertarian I don't think that it should be illegal to drive drunk or stoned period. But that instead people should be held financially accountable for any damages they cause while driving drunk or stoned.
Rosenstein: Should the legal BAC level be .05?
Why the NTSB recommendation is a bad idea
Posted: Thursday, July 11, 2013 8:24 am
Guest Commentary by Craig Rosenstein
Last month, the National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB) recommended that all 50 States adopt a cutoff of .05 Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) as the maximum percentage of blood alcohol that a person could have in their system and legally drive.
Although spurned by good intentions, this lower figure is both unattainable and will likely increase the danger of drunk drivers on the street. That is probably why the usually staunch supporters of increased punishments for convicted impaired drivers, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), have been noticeably quiet and unsupportive of this proposal.
Most people will agree that it is a bad idea to drink any amount of alcohol and get behind the wheel.
[Most people??? I disagree with that!!!]
The best way to avoid coming close to the current legal threshold of .08 BAC is to abstain from any consumption of alcohol before driving.
However, alcohol is by far one of the most studied substances on the planet. The current data suggests that people begin to be impaired to operate a motor vehicle by alcohol when their BAC reaches a .08 percent.
[Again I disagree that people are impaired at .08. A 100 pound woman hits .08 after one lousy beer]
There are not any peer-reviewed studies that support that impairment begins at levels lower than that.
Lowering the cutoff to .05 would, in essence, make it criminal to drive with a non-impairing level of alcohol in one’s system.
[Just like Arizona's draconian drug laws make it illegal to drive with any microscopic trace of marijuana in you body. A condition that can exist for as long as a month after smoking a marijuana cigarette]
What makes the NTSB proposal more questionable is that it doesn’t take into account the practical effects that this would have on law enforcement. If officers were forced to investigate cases with lower BAC’s and effectuate arrests in cases where they had probable cause to believe that an individual had a BAC as low as .05, it would require the officer to spend time booking and processing that person.
Most DUI investigations take between 1-3 hours, during which the arresting officer is no longer available to patrol and investigate crime.
[Sounds like the DUI laws are a jobs program for cops???]
Imagine the scenario where an officer stops a non-impaired driver with a BAC of a .06 and while spending hours arresting and processing the non-impaired driver, other actually impaired drivers with BAC’s significantly higher than the current legal limit of .08 are on the roadway and potentially dangerous.
By focusing on the non-problematic individuals with BAC’s between .05 and .08, the limited resources available for enforcement are misappropriated and can actually make the streets less safe.
As a result, despite the good intentions of the NTSB to make recommendations that could limit tragedies on the roadways, this particular proposal in practicality would focus on the wrong people and could cause more problems than it would solve.
Meanwhile, there may be a more dangerous situation happening our roads: An increasing amount of people who are using their smart phones and driving, sometimes reffered to as Driving while InTEXTicated. Arizona has the toughest DUI laws in the country, but there is no education about the dangers of texting while driving, or Driving While InTEXTicated, which can be more dangerous that driving at a .05 BAC level.
A study by Car and Driver found that when driver texts while driving, their reaction time will decrease by 35 percent, while a legally drunk driver’s reaction time is decreased by only 12 percent. When a driver is texting while driving, they are visually, manually and cognitively impaired; while driving drunk, a driver is only cognitively impaired.
Car and Driver rigged a car with a red light that alerted a driver when to brake while sober, drunk, texting and while reading an Email and the test concluded that texting and driving had a slower reaction time and a higher risk for being involved in an accident than driving at a .08 BAC level.
Craig J. Rosenstein is a founding partner of Rosenstein Law Group, PLLC, located in Scottsdale. He can be reached at scottsdale-duilawyer.com.
Lawmakers say administration’s lack of candor on surveillance weakens oversight
These are the typical lies and double talk that come out of Congress and other elected officials at all levels of government from the US Congress down to city level governments.
They passed these unconstitutional laws which have turned America into a police state. And now they want to deny responsibility for the harm the laws have caused by blaming it on the people they gave the power to enforce the unconstitutional police state laws.
Lawmakers say administration’s lack of candor on surveillance weakens oversight
By Peter Wallsten, Published: July 10
Lawmakers tasked with overseeing national security policy say a pattern of misleading testimony by senior Obama administration officials has weakened Congress’s ability to rein in government surveillance.
Members of Congress say officials have either denied the existence of a broad program that collects data on millions of Americans or, more commonly, made statements that left some lawmakers with the impression that the government was conducting only narrow, targeted surveillance operations.
The most recent example came on March 12, when James R. Clapper, director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the government was not collecting information about millions of Americans. He later acknowledged that the statement was “erroneous” and apologized, citing a misunderstanding.
On three occasions since 2009, top Justice Department officials said the government’s ability to collect business records in terrorism cases is generally similar to that of law enforcement officials during a grand jury investigation. That comparison, some lawmakers now say, signaled to them that data was being gathered on a case-by-case basis, rather than the records of millions of Americans’ daily communications being vacuumed up in bulk.
In addition, two Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee say that even in top-secret briefings, officials “significantly exaggerated” the effectiveness of at least one program that collected data on Americans’ e-mail usage.
The administration’s claims are being reexamined in light of disclosures by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, reported by The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, of broad government surveillance of Americans’ Internet and phone use authorized under secret interpretations of law.
At least two Republican lawmakers have called for the removal of Clapper, who denied the widespread surveillance of Americans while under questioning by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and issued his apology after the surveillance programs became public two months later.
A letter to Clapper sent two weeks ago from 26 senators from both parties complained about a series of statements from senior officials that “had the effect of misleading the public” and that will “undermine trust in government more broadly.”
Some Democrats and civil libertarians have expressed disappointment in what they say is a pattern of excessive secrecy from President Obama. He had pledged to run a more transparent administration than his predecessor, George W. Bush, who signed off on the NSA’s controversial warrantless wiretapping program and, with the authorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, launched the bulk data-collection program that has continued.
“The national security state has grown so that any administration is now not upfront with Congress,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee. “It’s an imbalance that’s grown in our government, and one that we have to cleanse.”
Administration officials say they have been as transparent as they could be in disclosing information about sensitive classified programs. All House and Senate members were invited to two classified briefings in 2010 and 2011 at which the programs were discussed, officials said.
Defenders of the surveillance programs in Congress, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence panel, have said the programs were fully explained. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) pointed to “many, many meetings” where surveillance was discussed and said members had “every opportunity to be aware of these programs.”
But some lawmakers say they feel that many of the administration’s public statements — often couched in terms that offered assurances of the government’s respect for civil liberties and privacy — seemed designed to mislead Americans and avoid congressional scrutiny.
[Look Mr. Congressman or Congresswoman in the case of Kyrsten Sinema, you passed these laws, now you should take responsibility for them being abused. Don't blame your henchmen for abusing the laws you passed for them. You ARE the problem Mr. Congressman, now accept responsibility for the mess you created]
Wyden said that a number of administration statements have made it “impossible for the public or Congress to have a genuinely informed debate” about government surveillance.
[Again Mr. Congressman you passed these laws, and YOU are the problem. Don't blame your henchmen for abusing the laws that passed]
The Oregon senator, whose membership on the Senate Intelligence Committee gives him access to the classified court rulings authorizing broad surveillance, has tried in recent years to force a public discussion of what he has called “secret law.”
“These statements gave the public a false impression of how these authorities were actually being interpreted,” Wyden said. “The disclosures of the last few weeks have made it clear that a secret body of law authorizing secret surveillance overseen by a largely secret court has infringed on Americans’ civil liberties and privacy rights without offering the public the ability to judge for themselves whether these broad powers are appropriate or necessary.”
At the time that Justice Department officials appeared at public hearings in 2009 and 2011, the White House was pushing Congress to reauthorize provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including Section 215, which allows for the collection of “business records” and has since drawn attention as the justification for the bulk surveillance of phone records.
Two top Justice Department officials — Todd M. Hinnen and David S. Kris — told lawmakers in separate appearances that the government’s authority in national security cases was “roughly analogous” to that available to FBI agents investigating crimes using grand jury subpoenas. Both officials cited data showing the number of surveillance orders that had been issued under the law, and both offered a caution, as Hinnen said in 2009, that, “as many members are aware,” a portion of the orders “were used to support important and highly sensitive intelligence collections.” Both invited lawmakers to learn more in classified sessions.
Hinnen, now a lawyer in private practice, said in an interview that the analogy was a direct reference to a provision in the business records law that says the government can collect information only if that data “can be obtained with a subpoena . . . issued by a court of the United States in aid of a grand jury investigation.”
Senior lawmakers have also cited the grand jury analogy, including Feinstein, who said in 2011 that the law “provides the government the same authority in national security investigations to obtain physical records that exist in an ordinary criminal case through a grand jury subpoena.”
Brian Fallon, a Justice Department spokesman, on Wednesday stood by the officials’ testimony. “The statute itself describes the program in this way,” he said.
Still, some lawmakers now say the testimony offered no clear indication that all Americans were subject to surveillance under the administration’s broad standard.
“I don’t know if it was an outright lie, but it was certainly misleading to what was going on,” said Nadler, who was chairman of the committee that heard from Hinnen in 2009.
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), a key author of the Patriot Act who presided over a 2011 House hearing where Hinnen appeared, wrote this month to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that the Justice Department’s description “left the committee with the impression that the administration was using the business records provision sparingly and for specific materials.”
In an interview, Sensenbrenner, former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he had thought that he and his colleagues had created a sufficiently narrow standard for seeking information. The provision allows the government to collect only data that is “relevant” to an authorized terrorism investigation. Some lawmakers, warning of government abuse, tried unsuccessfully in 2005 to tighten the standard.
The relevancy requirement “was intended to be limiting,” Sensenbrenner said. “Instead, what we’re hearing now is that ‘relevant’ was expanding.” Sensenbrenner called it a “stretch of the English language” for the administration to consider millions of Americans’ phone records to be “relevant.”
Sensenbrenner, who had access to multiple classified briefings as a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he does not typically attend such sessions. He called the practice of classified briefings a “rope-a-dope operation” in which lawmakers are given information and then forbidden from speaking out about it. Members are not permitted to discuss information disclosed in classified briefings.
“It’s the same old game they use to suck members in,” he said.
Referring to public testimony from officials, Sensenbrenner added: “How can we do good oversight if we don’t get truthful and non-misleading testimony?”
The allegation of misleading statements even during classified sessions comes from Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Their concerns arose from closed-door discussions in 2011 regarding a top-secret program that was collecting data about Americans’ e-mail usage.
The existence of the e-mail surveillance program, which was shut down in 2011, was first disclosed publicly late last month in The Post and the Guardian. After that disclosure, Wyden and Udall took the unusual step of releasing a statement describing classified interactions with intelligence officials. The senators said they had been “quite familiar” with the program and had devoted much of their time in 2011 to questioning officials about it.
Lawmakers say administration’s lack of candor on surveillance weakens oversight
“Intelligence officials have noted that the bulk email records program was discussed with both Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” Wyden and Udall said. “In our judgment it is also important to note that intelligence agencies made statements to both Congress and the court that significantly exaggerated this program’s effectiveness.”
The senators said that their experience demonstrated that intelligence agencies’ assessments “are not always accurate.” The senators added that their exchanges with officials about the e-mail program “led us to be skeptical of claims about the value of the bulk phone records collection program in particular,” a reference to administration arguments that the ongoing surveillance efforts have been crucial in thwarting terror plots.
“We believe that the broader lesson here is that even though intelligence officials may be well-intentioned, assertions from intelligence agencies about the value and effectiveness of particular programs should not simply be accepted at face value by policymakers or oversight bodies any more than statements about the usefulness of other government programs should be taken at face value when they are made by other government officials,” the senators added.
Wyden’s March question to Clapper was part of a broader effort on the senator’s part to use carefully worded public statements and questions to draw attention to the existence of classified programs — and the administration’s lack of transparency — without revealing secret information in the process.
Clapper’s statement prompted some lawmakers to allege what Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) called a “double standard” in which a top official could deliver false testimony without fear of penalty.
“If the administration has a policy to lie to Congress about classified materials in unclassified hearings, then you have to ask yourself what value the hearings have and whether or not anyone else is doing it,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.).
Some are calling for a major overhaul of the current oversight system, including the intelligence committees and the surveillance court, which were created in the late 1970s amid growing concern about U.S. spy practices following Watergate, the Vietnam War and revelations about CIA efforts to overthrow foreign governments.
Congress “tried to make agencies which have to operate in secret accountable nevertheless to the law,” said former vice president Walter F. Mondale, who as a senator was a member of the Church Committee, which led the efforts to overhaul the system.
Now, Mondale said, “that system has totally collapsed.” He said Clapper’s willingness to mislead the public during Senate testimony “is what happens when there’s no accountability. . . . What is the consequence of fibbing to the American people?”
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
80 percent of the revenue of the University of Phoenix comes from government welfare programs
Wow! 80 percent of the revenue of the University of Phoenix comes from government welfare programs.
Phoenix Police Union spreading lies about Sal DiCiccio???
Phoenix Firemen Union spreading lies about Sal DiCiccio???
This Monday, before this article came out I noticed campaign signs up that said Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio was owned by lobbyists.
Firefighters take low road in campaign to oust Sal DiCiccio
It's not about public safety, it's about pork for the firemen and cops!!!!!
Rosenstein: Should the legal BAC level be .05?
While I don't agree with all of this article it seems to point out the DUI laws are a jobs program for cops. That is in addition to the DUI laws being mostly about raising revenue for state, county and city governments, with almost nothing to do with safety. Just like those photo radar bandits.
More lies and double talk from Congress.
Congress blames nameless bureaucrats for police state laws Congress passed
More lies and double talk from Congress.
Yahoo seeks to reveal its fight against NSA Prism requests
Source
Exclusive: Yahoo seeks to reveal its fight against NSA Prism requests
By Brandon Bailey
bbailey@mercurynews.com
Posted: 07/11/2013 06:10:53 AM PDT
SUNNYVALE -- In a rare legal move, Yahoo (YHOO) is asking a secretive U.S. surveillance court to let the public see its arguments in a 2008 case that played an important role in persuading tech companies to cooperate with a controversial government data-gathering effort.
Releasing those files would demonstrate that Yahoo "objected strenuously" to government demands for customers' information and would also help the public understand how surveillance programs are approved under federal law, the company argued in a filing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court this
Yahoo's argument against the data-gathering was rejected in a 2008 ruling that gave the government powerful leverage to persuade other tech companies to comply with similar information demands, according to legal experts. But under federal law, the court's ruling and the arguments by Yahoo and other parties have been treated as classified information. Until last month, Yahoo was not even allowed to say it was a party in the case.
If Yahoo succeeds in unsealing some of the court files, legal experts say, it would be a historic development and an important step toward illuminating the arguments behind the controversial Internet surveillance program known as Prism, which was revealed last month by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, along with other government data-gathering efforts.
"This is the first time we've seen one of these companies making this broad an argument in favor of transparency in the FISA court," said Alex Abdo, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who works on national security issues. FISA is the acronym for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created the surveillance court to review and approve secret government data-gathering efforts.
Only a handful of the court's opinions have ever been unsealed, Abdo said, although civil liberties groups have pressed for more disclosure.
"Revealing what went on in the court is critical to having a democracy," said Jennifer Stisa Granick, a civil liberties expert at Stanford law school's Center for Internet and Society.
In light of news reports that the surveillance court has issued broad opinions on constitutional issues in secret, Granick added, "If Yahoo is successful in revealing what the court did and why, then we will know more about the laws our government is purportedly operating under, which sadly we don't currently know."
Yahoo's move is the latest effort by some of Silicon Valley's leading Internet companies to convince the public that the companies didn't just invite the government to peruse customer files or give authorities broad access to users' email, Internet chats and other online activities.
Google (GOOG) and Microsoft have also challenged secrecy rules by filing lawsuits seeking permission to reveal, in broad numbers, how many requests for information they have received under national security programs.
While the companies may be legitimately concerned about customers' privacy, they also have a strong commercial incentive, Granick noted.
"Obviously, Yahoo wants this information released because it wants users to feel that it's trustworthy," she said. "If Yahoo can show that it fought strenuously and really did its best to try to protect its users, that may make people feel more comfortable about Yahoo having their data."
Experts say the 2008 case sent a strong message to other tech companies that might have wanted to resist government data requests.
"When you get presented with an order you don't think is constitutional and the government says, 'We have this secret court opinion that it is constitutional,' then you are pretty much stuck," said Mark Rumold, an attorney who has worked on surveillance court issues for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Yahoo was prohibited from discussing its appeal until last month, when The New York Times reported that unnamed sources said Yahoo had unsuccessfully fought the data requests on constitutional grounds.
After that news report, Yahoo persuaded the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which rejected its appeal five years ago, to declassify the fact that Yahoo was the company in that case. Yahoo's attorney, Marc Zwillinger, confirmed his involvement in the case this week.
While the court found the government's effort was constitutional, Zwillinger wrote in a blog post, "I think there are better ways to protect the rights of U.S. persons who may be affected by this surveillance. If more of the court's analysis, and the parties' briefs, are made available, the public and Congress can make a more informed decision as to whether this is the program they want to have in place."
Contact Brandon Bailey at 408-920-5022; follow him at Twitter.com/BrandonBailey.
A $7.4 million government welfare program for cops???
A $7.4 million government welfare program for cops???Well OK, the government doesn't want us to know they created a $7.4 million government welfare program for cops, so they are calling them "school resource officers", which is a big word for under worked and over paid cops that baby sit high school kids.
If you ask me an armed police officer is certainly NOT needed in every high school to keep kids from cussing and smoking pot. This is nothing more then a program to create cushy do nothing jobs for overpaid and under worked cops.
State to give schools $8.4 mil for safety
By Melissa Leu The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 12, 2013 12:36 AM
The Arizona Department of Education will disperse about $8.4 million for schools to pay for school-resource officers, security upgrades and emergency planning, after receiving approval Thursday from a legislative oversight committee.
Most of the money, about $7.4 million, will pay for the salaries and benefits of 95 school-resource officers for 102 schools, including Mesa Public Schools and Paradise Valley Unified School District.
Some schools are expected to share school-resource officers, armed police officers who provide security and law-related education to students and staff.
Schools receiving funds were previously chosen through a competitive grant-application process two years ago. The Education Department’s school-safety program grants are approved for three years but reviewed on an annual basis.
The San Carlos Unified School District, which was approved for two school-resource officers in the previous year, was the only district not renewed for the coming school year.
Education Department officials said it was because the district could not hire a qualified officer. Officials from the district, located in southeastern Arizona, could not be immediately reached for comment.
About $911,600 is earmarked for security hardware, such as doors, locks and gates, and $100,000 for an emergency-readiness pilot program, which will allow schools to create and implement a comprehensive crisis plan.
The pilot program is also expected to pay for emergency-management software that allows information, such as contacts and floor plans, to be accessible online, and training for teachers and administrators on emergency management.
Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, who chaired the committee, questioned the department’s recommendation to not increase the number of school-resource officers, despite increased funding from the Legislature.
Jean Ajamie, director of school safety and prevention at the Education Department, said the department did not recommend adding school-resource officers for next school year because funding for those positions would not be guaranteed in the following year.
In March, all school districts will have to reapply for the three-year grant.
Other school districts not in the program may also apply then.
“There’s a great deal of training that goes into bringing folks up to speed, both officers and school administrators,” Ajamie said. “A one-year (position) would not allow for that to occur.”
The Education Department’s school-safety program has been historically funded by a combination of Proposition 301 funds, which are based on sales taxes, and state general funds. In 2010, lawmakers eliminated funding altogether because of the economic recession.
In the legislative session that adjourned last month, lawmakers restored some of that funding and appropriated $3.6 million to bolster the program, but they earmarked some of those funds specifically for security hardware and an emergency-readiness pilot program.
Funding for security hardware will be rolled out to the schools that currently qualify for school-resource officers, but the Education Department will have to create a new competitive grant process to determine the three school districts that will qualify for the pilot.
The committee expects to take up the issue of increasing administrative expenses at another meeting in the next month, Yee said.
Smoking marijuana while Black????
SourceSmoking marijuana while Black????
Let's face it, its about MONEY, not protecting us from criminals!!!!!
"Part of the problem is that when police are seeking out or receiving federal drug war money, they report on arrest numbers, including marijuana arrests. This creates a powerful incentive for police to aggressively go after people like Alfredo with small amounts of marijuana-it's an easy way to get a lot of arrests."
This is an email I got from the ACLU
Dear *******,
Never stand on the corner by yourself-that's Alfredo Carrasquillo's first rule about life in the city. But it wasn't enough to avoid getting stopped by the police just for going about his daily life. And when the police found a five-dollar bag of marijuana on him, that meant three days in jail and a guilty plea.
As Alfredo put it, "I'm Black regardless. I can't escape it. And let's be honest. It's not just about smoking. It's also about race." Our new report on the War on Drugs backs him up: even though whites and blacks use marijuana at comparable rates, black people are almost four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.
Part of the problem is that when police are seeking out or receiving federal drug war money, they report on arrest numbers, including marijuana arrests. This creates a powerful incentive for police to aggressively go after people like Alfredo with small amounts of marijuana-it's an easy way to get a lot of arrests. Our new report has already been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, ABC News, and The Guardian-bringing attention to how billions of our tax dollars are funding this wasteful, racially biased numbers game. Now we need to capitalize on this moment so that we can put an end to this injustice.
Urge Attorney General Eric Holder not to reward police for making racially biased, wasteful arrests. Sign the petition to stop including marijuana possession arrests in the performance metrics for state and local police receiving federal money.
Our report reveals some staggering numbers that confirm the failure of the War on Drugs: in just one year, over $3.6 billion in tax dollars were spent to enforce marijuana laws; in a decade, over 8 million people were arrested, without making us any safer.
In a recent speech, President Obama's drug czar aptly said, "we can't arrest our way out of the drug problem." Yet the funding structure of the War on Drugs incentivizes police to take exactly this approach, wreaking havoc on the people who are targeted by pushing them into the criminal justice system.
If the Obama administration is serious about not trying to arrest our way out of this problem, there are steps they can take to ensure that federal dollars are not incentivizing racially biased, wasteful arrests.
Sign the petition urging Attorney General Eric Holder to stop including marijuana possession arrests in the performance metrics for state and local police receiving federal money.
Our criminal justice system should use our resources wisely to keep communities safe and treat people fairly, regardless of the color of their skin. After 40 years of the failed War on Drugs, we're finally at a tipping point. A majority of Americans agree that it's not worth the terrible costs. We can end the War on Drugs, starting now.
Thank you for taking action,
Anthony for the ACLU Action team
Medical marijuana comes to Mesa
Source
Medical marijuana comes to Mesa
By Gary Nelson The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 12, 2013 10:36 AM
Nearly three years after Arizona voters narrowly approved the concept, medical marijuana has come to Mesa.
Giving Tree Wellness Center opened in late June at 938 E. Juanita Ave., just the sort of industrial-park setting that the City Council envisioned two years ago when it approved zoning restrictions for such businesses.
It is Giving Tree’s second facility in the Valley; the other is in north Phoenix.
Both are under the medical direction of Dr. Gina Berman, an emergency-room physician who believes traditional Western medicine can go only so far in helping some patients.
“I see a lot of patients ... who have had organs removed or they have chronic pain, they’re on patches and ... they’re on all these different things and they’re not getting any better and they’re going down the rabbit hole of narcotics,” Berman said. “So I thought it would be interesting to try to open people’s eyes to other alternative therapies.”
She was especially interested in acupuncture and acupressure massage.
“I thought it would be nice to have a whole center where patients could come and really try out those other modalities,” Berman said. But one problem with that is chronically ill patients may not have the money to experiment with therapies that may or may not help them.
Berman said approval of Proposition 203 in November 2010 opened her eyes to the possibility that a medical-marijuana facility could financially support those other services.
Finding a location in Mesa was tough, however.
Early plans for a site near Country Club Drive and Baseline Road fell through, as did Berman’s first choice in the industrial park just east of Horne Street and south of U.S. 60.
The lobby looks like any medical office. Patients must pass a security check before they’re allowed into the locked dispensary, where they can inspect and smell samples displayed in petri dishes.
There’s a microscope so customers can look at the marijuana plant’s tiny “trichomes,” the appendages that contain the active ingredients. Blowups of microscopic marijuana photos adorn the walls, looking in some cases like impressionist paintings.
The dispensary has some vacant rooms that Berman hopes will someday accommodate a yoga studio, a naturopathic physician and other forms of therapy.
Paul Morris, a Mesa resident who manages the facility, said about 50 patients came through during its first week. Morris said he got interested in the business because several family members have suffered chronic illnesses, including an uncle whose doctor told him to use marijuana for cancer-induced nausea.
“I’m kind of sympathetic to the cause,” Morris said.
Patients must have state-issued cards before they can patronize a medical-marijuana shop. The limit is 21/2 ounces every two weeks. Berman said the most common purchase is a bag containing an eighth of an ounce, about a quarter- or half-cup in volume.
It’s not a cheap alternative, medicine-wise. Giving Tree’s website lists five strains of marijuana, ranging from $390 to $430 an ounce. The drug must be grown in Arizona because transportation across state lines violates federal law.
The material in her shop is tested for contaminants and strength, Berman said. The same would apply to any marijuana donated to the store for free distribution, although Berman said no such donations have come in.
When asked directly whether as a physician she is convinced marijuana is a valid treatment for some conditions, Berman said, “I am.”
“I can’t see how anybody who’s looked at the research and the evidence can say otherwise,” she added. “I’m not saying it’s a panacea. And I’m not saying it’s the best thing for everything. That’s ridiculous.”
But, she said, the mostly middle-aged patients who come to her center deserve an opportunity to find a treatment that works.
“They are ill people,” she said. “They’re not potheads that are looking to have fun. The people that come in here really do have medical issues. ... You can’t treat the patients automatically like they’re criminals. They’re trying to make their lives better.”
She said marijuana must be treated as carefully as anything else people consume.
“Everything you put in your body can have a downside,” she said. “Caffeine, sugar, alcohol, tobacco, fat, high-fructose corn syrup. You name it, if you put it in your body you need to know what its effects are and what the bad things are about it. And then moderation is the key.”
Patients, she said, will be responsible for making sure they don’t violate the law after they use marijuana.
“I know there’s a lot of concern about people smoking and driving,” Berman said. But she said the same level of concern should apply to people who drive after drinking, or when they’re tired or on medication.
Berman said she’d eventually like to move to a more visible location, something she thinks is possible as Mesa gets used to medical-marijuana facilities and as zoning laws evolve.
“I think it’s wise to take it slow and then we can open things up as people become more comfortable,” Berman said.
RELATED INFO
Other applications
Several other entities are planning to open medical-marijuana dispensaries or cultivation sites in Mesa. According to city records they are:
- Health for Life, which plans to open either a dispensary-only facility at 7447 E. Southern Ave. or a dispensary/cultivation site at 7343 S. 89th Place.
- Monarch Wellness, cultivation only, 2832 N. Omaha St.
- Soothing Options, dispensary and cultivation, 3321 N. Reseda Circle.
- Unity Healing Group, cultivation only, 4722 E. Ivy St.
- Kind Meds, dispensary only, 2152 S. Vineyard St.
A word about the brownies
Dr. Gina Berman, who operates Mesa’s first medical-marijuana facility, isn’t a big fan of the “edibles” produced by the industry.
She sells such items, but is worried that some of them, such as marijuana-infused brownies, could be mistaken for Grandma’s home cooking.
Indeed, the brownies’ cellophane wrappers contain no hint on the front side that they’re stoked with drugs. That wording appears in small print on the back.
“Who’s to tell this apart from a regular brownie?” Berman asked.
So whenever someone buys a food item, Giving Tree Wellness Center hands out a printed warning.
“Our greatest concern is that a medicated food item might get into the hands of a child,” the warning says, asking that the item be safeguarded like any other medication.
As a further layer of security, Berman sells small safelike lock boxes where people can store their brownies, which come from a state-inspected kitchen in Bisbee.
The brownies come in various strengths, indicated by color coding on the label.
If an adult ate one by mistake, Berman said, the most likely effect is that the person would fall asleep.
— Gary Nelson
Sure recreational marijuana is only legal in two states, but things are getting better all the time.
Best Marijuana Strains: Tangelo Kush (CRAFT Collective Berkeley)
Best Marijuana Strains: Tangelo Kush (CRAFT Collective Berkeley)
Posted on July 10, 2013 at 3:09 pm by David
“These THC levels are too damn high!” complain many new medical cannabis patients in California. And they’re right.
Weed bred solely for maximum stoniness – as measured by its levels of active ingredient, delta-9-THC – is too strong for occasional users. One of the chief benefits of a legal, regulated marketplace is lower-THC strains that smell, taste and feel better than maximum potency cannabis.
CRAFT Collective in Berkeley’s Tangelo Kush is the perfect example of this next wave of legal weed. Keeping with new East Bay delivery service’s “clean, elite, organic” motto – our sample of greenhouse-grown Tangelo Kush looked divine and smelled incredible, yet its medium-strength effects were akin to three glasses of wine. Think: chatty, and relaxed – as opposed to crawling up the wall.
You don’t get the name Tangelo Kush without some citrus in your background. The West Coast strain is a cross of Colorado-native Chemdog and Burmese Kush – which is a citrus-ey cross of OG Kush and some original Burmese Kush. Breeders selected for citrus notes at each stage and it worked. Packaged in CRAFT’s classy, tinted glass jars – this sample stunk up the whole house. An intense, fruity, sour tangelo aroma rode on the back of a funky, dank, indica undernote. The nugs alone could be used in aromatherapy.
These flower tops were big, picked at the perfect time, cured and manicured professionally and packaged with care. The medium-density, resinous nugs had Tangelo’s characteristic light-green leaves and long, neon orange pistils. Grinding released even more citrus-funk, and the taste would be a delight even if there were no mental effects.
At 16.3 percent THC, CRAFT’s Tangelo was about half as strong as maximum-strength bud. The strain’s .3 percent CBD, as well as 1.6 percent CBN further mellow THC’s effects. This 60-40 sativa-indica should neither cause elevated pulse or anxiety like some full sativas, nor the drowsiness of a full indica. Patients are using Tangelo Kush to treat anxiety, depression and stimulate appetite.
If you listen to the police propaganda it is impossible for cops to commit crimes. Well at least that's what they want us serfs they rule over to think.
Phoenix officer pleads guilty to forgery
By Cecilia Chan and JJ Hensley The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Jul 12, 2013 9:16 PM
A former Phoenix police officer pleaded guilty to forgery on Friday after filing a false insurance claim on a pickup truck he said was stolen, officials said.
Jerry Schuiteboer, 38, pleaded guilty to two Class 4 felony counts, according to Jerry Cobb, spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
Under the terms of his plea agreement, Schuiteboer will serve 90 days in jail with no work release or furlough and pay restitution of $10,444 to the insurance company before or at his sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 27, Cobb said. Any probation will likely be determined at his sentencing, he said.
The Phoenix Police Department set a termination hearing on Friday but Schuiteboer resigned and did not attend, police spokesman Trent Crump said.
“We are extremely disappointed in the conduct he chose to engage in, and it certainly is not in keeping with the high standards of the Phoenix Police Department,” Crump said.
Schuiteboer’s attorney, David Michael Cantor, did not return a call for comment Friday.
Schuiteboer damaged and abandoned his pickup in the desert and collected more than $14,000 in an insurance settlement, according to court documents.
Schuiteboer claimed he found his 12-year-old Ford pickup was missing after he left a Glendale hardware store in January 2011, according to court records.
Buckeye police found the truck nearly two weeks later in the desert, stripped of valuables and with damage on its steering column as if it had been stolen, according to the records.
Schuiteboer claimed the truck was worth about $16,000 and received an insurance payment of more than $14,000, according to the records.
Investigators got information about Schuiteboer’s phone calls, and confirmed that he was making calls in the Buckeye area and not at the Glendale store on the afternoon he said his truck was stolen.
Investigators then obtained a search warrant for Schuiteboer’s Peoria home, where they discovered a number of items matching the descriptions of those the Phoenix officer had reported stolen, including a flashlight, a CD player and a police jacket.
It was not clear on Friday whether Schuiteboer’s guilty plea will prompt city prosecutors to disclose that information in drunken-driving cases in Phoenix that he handled.
Prosecutors had previously refused to reveal information in court about the criminal investigation against Schuiteboer, which legal experts said could affect DUI cases he handled.
According to DUI lawyers, not disclosing information about Schuiteboer prevents defense attorneys from challenging the officer’s truthfulness.
Defense attorneys contacted in June estimated there were as many as 40 active cases in Phoenix Municipal Court and an additional 10 in Maricopa County Superior Court where Schuiteboer stopped or arrested the suspect or collected evidence as a certified phlebotomist.
Schuiteboer was not being called as a prosecution witness in any cases in Municipal Court, city spokeswoman Toni Maccarone said.
In this article the cops used the lame excuse of riding a bike without a light to stop and search this guy for marijuana.
If you read the newspapers this isn't something new the cops are doing. They are always stopping people for trivial traffic violations and using that as a lame excuse to search them for drugs and guns.
Judge: Nighttime bicycle riding in Phoenix requires light, even on sidewalk
Posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 9:15 pm | Updated: 9:15 pm, Fri Jul 12, 2013.
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
Those headlights for bicycles? They're not just for riding in the street, according to the Arizona Court of Appeals.
The judges on Thursday took the unusual foray into the area of bicycle law to settle the question of whether police had the right to stop and question Brian Baggett.
He admitted there was no working front light on his two-wheeler, just a taped-on flashlight that wasn't turned on. But his attorney argued that didn't matter, as his client was riding on the sidewalk.
Not true, said appellate Judge Andrew Gould.
The judge said that lighting requirement makes no mention of where the bike is being ridden. And that, Gould said, made the traffic stop by Phoenix police perfectly legal.
Anyway, the judge said, Baggett was at the very least violating a Phoenix city ordinance, similar to many other communities, which makes it illegal to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk. So if police didn't stop Baggett for the lack of a headlight, they could have stopped and cited him anyway.
The fight is over more than that citation.
According to court records, police were on an early morning patrol of an area known for high crime activity. The officers say Baggett riding a bicycle without a light.
State law spells out that any bicycle ridden at night "shall have a lamp on the front that emits a white light visible from a distance of at least 500 feet.'' That gave them a legal reason to stop Baggett.
Officers then patted Baggett down for weapons, including removing his backpack and placing it on the hood of the patrol car. One officer said he smelled marijuana, leading to a search that revealed several baggies of the drug and a digital scale -- and to Baggett's arrest.
Baggett argued the stop was illegal, making what was found legally unusable in court. He argued that lighting requirement applies only on roadways.
Gould disagreed.
"The plain language of a statute is the most reliable indicator of the statute's meaning,'' the judge wrote for the unanimous court. And in this case, Gould said, there is nothing in the wording of the law that limits the need for a headline to bikes on roadways.
By contrast, the judge said, the Legislature has applied other bicycle laws solely to streets. For example, one law limits the speed of bicyclists but only "on a roadway.''
Anyway, Gould wrote, accepting Baggett's interpretation would defeat the purpose of the lighting requirement which is to prevent collisions between cars, bicycles and pedestrians due to poor lighting.
"It is unlikely this purpose would be served by allowing bicyclists to ride on public sidewalks at night without a light,'' he wrote.
Best Marijuana Strains: Tangelo Kush
I never thought I would see an article like this in a major American newspapers.
Phoenix officer pleads guilty to forgery
Huh?????
No bike light leads to arrest of pot smoker
I have often joked and said they should make it illegal for us to breath. That way the cops will have a lame excuse to stop and arrest anyone they suspect is a criminal.
More on medical marijuana thievery by Yuma police
Source
Court rules medical marijuna can be returned to patients when taken by police
Posted: Friday, July 12, 2013 4:15 pm
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services | 3 comments
Medical marijuana patients whose drugs are taken by police are entitled to get it back, the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled.
In a brief order, the justices rejected arguments by prosecutors that the drug is strictly regulated by the federal government, leaving police legally powerless to turn marijuana over to anyone else. They gave no reason for their ruling.
The order most immediately affects Valerie Okun, whose drugs were taken from her nearly two years ago on Interstate 8 near Yuma. While she was never prosecuted -- she has a valid medical marijuana card from California -- sheriff's deputies refused to return the drugs.
But Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told Capitol Media Services on Tuesday he's still not ready to hand over the marijuana. He hopes to get the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
If he succeeds, that could affect more than the immediate question of when police have to return marijuana taken from medical cardholders.
It presents an opportunity for the nation's high court to look at the obvious conflict between laws in places like Arizona where at least some individuals can buy and have marijuana, and federal statutes which consider possession by anyone other than authorized researchers a felony. And that could pave the way for Supreme Court to finally rule whether states have an inherent right to enact their own marijuana laws.
Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, said federal court intervention is necessary.
"I find it a bit frustrating that Arizona's marching ahead with facilitating and implementing the availability of marijuana, a controlled substance, in conflict with federal law,'' said Polk who chairs the Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys' Advisory Council. She said a court needs to "deal with the issue of federal preemption head-on.''
Okun initially was stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint. Officers searched her vehicle after a dog alerted on it, finding marijuana and hashish.
The Border Patrol turned the matter over to county officials. But charges against her were dropped because she is enrolled in California's Medical Marijuana Program; Arizona's Medical Marijuana Act recognizes cards issued in other states.
Okun then asked the court to return the three-fourths of an ounce of marijuana that was seized. While the judge agreed, Ralph Ogden, who was the sheriff at that time, did not.
Attorneys for the sheriff said Arizona law requires any marijuana seized in connection with a drug offense be forfeited to the state. They also said the sheriff would be violating federal laws by giving the drug to someone else.
But in a ruling earlier this year, the state Court of Appeals said the sheriff's lawyers are missing a key point: Okun had a right under Arizona law to possess the drug in the first place, a point which county attorneys concede.
It was that ruling the Arizona Supreme Court refused to disturb.
"I think it's an unfortunate situation,'' Wilmot said, acknowledging the Supreme Court only reviews a small percentage of cases. "They didn't feel that this one was important enough as it is in our eyes.''
The sheriff said he believes the ruling should not stand, which is why he wants to seek U.S. Supreme Court review.
"It has to do with the courts telling me to commit a crime,'' he said. "As far as I'm concerned, that's not how we do business.''
The issue, the sheriff said, is that conflict between state and federal law.
"I understand the fact that the Arizona court could give me, basically, immunity if I did return this stuff,'' Wilmot said. "But the bottom line is, they can't give me immunity from the federal government for prosecuting me for doing this because it is a federal law violation.''
That argument did not fly at the Court of Appeals where Diane Johnsen, writing for the judges, rejected Wilmot's contention he and his deputies could wind up in trouble with federal prosecutors.
"The sheriff is immune from prosecution under federal law for acts taken in compliance with a court order," she wrote.
But Polk said Johnsen's conclusion was wrong.
"A court cannot unilaterally confer immunity from criminal prosecution, or from criminal acts, upon a party,'' she said.
This is not the only case making its way through the state's legal system testing the conflicts between state and federal law. Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is mounting a direct challenge to the legality of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act because of the conflicts with federal statutes.
The Arizona law allows those with a doctor's recommendation to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks from a state-licensed dispensary. Montgomery contends county officials cannot cooperate because they would be aiding in the violation of the federal prohibition.
A trial judge rejected Montgomery's arguments, with that case now awaiting a hearing before the state Court of Appeals.
Department of Corrections business is profitable
Most people don't know it, but slavery is still legal in the United States when it is used as punishment for crimes. Read the 13th Amendment which says:Thirteenth AmendmentAnd of course with that in mind many government entities love to arrest people for any lame excuse of a crime and use them as slaves to make big bucks for their government entities. Many times these government rulers will farm out their slaves (i.e. convicted criminals) to special interest groups which helped them get elected to give the special interest groups cheap labor.Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
I am told that using slave labor is much more common in the South where they have a long sordid history of abusing Blacks, but I don't have any news articles or evidence to back that up.
The last time I checked prison pay rates, the state of Arizona was paying it's inmates from 5 to 50 cents an hour for their slave labor. The figures in this article are a little bit higher. I suspect that is because the state of Arizona is renting their slaves (i.e. convicted criminals) to private businesses.
Department of Corrections business is profitable
By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 12, 2013 11:55 PM
Arizona has used inmate work crews since 1908, when inmates built the Florence prison.
Today, Arizona Correctional Industries, which is part of the state Department of Corrections, is projected to make a $2.8 million profit on roughly $40 million in sales for the fiscal year that ended June 30.
By the early 1900s, ACI had become financially self-sufficient. It does not receive state general-fund dollars.
Profits are plowed back into the business to fund more work opportunities for inmates, said Bill Lamoreaux, a corrections spokesman.
About 2,000 inmates have jobs in 36 ACI programs, including the most recently developed wild-horse ranch in Florence.
Arizona Correctional Industries owns 16 of the programs, and it has labor contracts with businesses such as Hickman’s Egg Ranch, Love Marketing and Fiesta Canning. One of its best-known products is vehicle license plates.
Inmates working for ACI-owned businesses can earn 40 to 80 cents an hour. Inmates working under a contract through ACI start at $2 an hour.
The wages first must be used to pay court-ordered restitution. Inmates can then use their earnings to buy products at the inmate store. [Yea, they make 40 to 80 cents an hour which is 6 to 11 percent of the US minimum wage of $7.25/hr and are charged rip off prices far above the consumer market price for the goods they buy]
“When they are released, they also can walk away with some money to start life over again,” Lamoreaux said. [Big stinking deal, working 40 hours a week for 10 years at the 40 to 80 cents an hour will only allow you to save between $,8320 and $16,640 which is BEFORE all the charges the prison shakes the inmates down for]
Those who have ACI jobs are in minimum or medium custody.
Some of the products made by inmates, such as barbecue grills, benches and bike racks, are available to purchase through the company’s website, aci.az.gov.
Other programs within ACI include:
A bakery that supplies breads, buns, cookies and cakes for all prisons within the state Department of Corrections as well as some private prisons and county jails.
A print shop that makes envelopes, form letters, calendars and postcards.
A business-card company that has at least 80 major customers, including government agencies, the Arizona House of Representatives and the city of Goodyear.
A ranch that manages a small cow operation and grows vegetables. The farm has about 450 acres where hay is grown and sold to the public.
Spread of DNA databases sparks ethical concerns
When fingerprints first started to be used in court cases many legal experts said that using them was a violation of the 5th Amendment which says you can't be forced to testify against yourself.If you ask me forcing a person to submit to a DNA test is also a violation of the 5th Amendment. But don't count on the Supreme Court agreeing with my Libertarian views anytime soon.
Fifth AmendmentSourceNo person shall ... be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself
Spread of DNA databases sparks ethical concerns
JILL LAWLESS July 12, 2013 SocietyUnited States
LONDON (AP) — You can ditch your computer and leave your cellphone at home, but you can't escape your DNA.
It belongs uniquely to you — and, increasingly, to the authorities.
Countries around the world are collecting genetic material from millions of citizens in the name of fighting crime and terrorism — and, according to critics, heading into uncharted ethical terrain.
Leaders include the United States — where the Supreme Court recently backed the collection of DNA swabs from suspects on arrest — and Britain, where police held samples of almost 7 million people, more than 10 percent of the population, until a court-ordered about-face saw the incineration of a chunk of the database.The expanding trove of DNA in official hands has alarmed privacy campaigners, and some scientists. Recent leaks about U.S. surveillance programs by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden have made people realize their online information and electronic communications may not be as secure as they thought. Could the same be true of the information we hold within our genes? DNA samples that can help solve robberies and murders could also, in theory, be used to track down our relatives, scan us for susceptibility to disease, or monitor our movements.
Earlier this year Yaniv Erlich, who runs a lab at MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, published a paper in the journal Science describing how he was able to identify individuals, and their families, from anonymous DNA data in a research project. All it took was a computer algorithm, a genetic genealogy website and searches of publicly available Internet records.
"It was a very weird feeling — a 'wow' feeling," Erlich told The Associated Press. "I had to take a walk outside just to think about this process."
Erlich says DNA databases have enormous positive power, both for fighting crime and in scientific research. But, he said, "our work shows there are privacy limitations."
Few would disagree about the power of DNA to catch criminals — and to clear the innocent. Hundreds of wrongly convicted people around the world have been freed thanks to DNA tests. A recent AP investigation found that at least 24 men in the United States convicted of or charged with murder or rape based on bite marks on the flesh of victims have been exonerated since 2000, thanks to DNA evidence.
Ethical qualms have done little to stop the growth of genetic databases around the world.
The international police agency Interpol listed 54 nations with national police DNA databases in 2009, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany and China. Brazil and India have since announced plans to join the club, and the United Arab Emirates intends to build the world's first database of an entire national population.
The biggest database is in the United States — the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, which holds information on more than 11 million people suspected of or convicted of crimes.
It is set to grow following a May Supreme Court ruling that upheld the right of police forces to take DNA swabs without a warrant from people who are arrested, not just those who are convicted. (Policies on DNA collection vary by state; more than half of the states and the federal government currently take DNA swabs after arrests.)
The court's justices were divided about implications for individuals' rights. Justice Anthony Kennedy, for the five-judge majority, called the taking of DNA a legitimate and reasonable police booking procedure akin to fingerprinting.
But dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia argued that it marked a major change in police powers. "Because of today's decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason," he said.
A similar note of caution has been struck by Alec Jeffreys, the British geneticist whose 1984 discovery of DNA fingerprinting revolutionized criminal investigations. He has warned that "mission creep" could see authorities use DNA to accumulate information on people's racial origins, medical history and psychological profile.
Erlich agreed that scenario was possible, if not likely.
"If it's not regulated and the police can do whatever they want ... they can use your DNA to infer things about your health, your ancestry, whether your kids are your kids," he said.
Police forces have already tracked down criminals through the DNA of their innocent relatives, a practice that is both a goldmine for investigators and, according to skeptics, an ethical minefield. Charles Tumosa, a clinical assistant professor in forensic studies at the University of Baltimore who is wary of the potential for genetic surveillance, says relatives of suspects could be identified through DNA and leaned on for information about their family members.
"There's got to be a debate," said Tumosa. "Nobody has talked this out.
"At what point do you say, enough is enough? Do we want to have a society where 5 percent of the crime is unsolved, or do we want to have a society where 100 percent of the crime is solved" but privacy is compromised. "What's the trade-off?"
And yet familial DNA searches have helped solve terrible crimes. In Kansas in 2005, police identified Dennis Rader as a serial killer known as "BTK" through his daughter's DNA obtained, without her knowledge, from a pap smear in her medical records.
Investigators in Massachusetts say advances in DNA technology may finally establish beyond doubt the perpetrator of the 1960s Boston Strangler slayings. They plan to exhume the body of longtime suspect Albert DeSalvo — who confessed to the crimes but was never convicted — after DNA from one of the crime scenes produced a familial match with him.
Both supporters and critics of DNA databases point to Britain, where until recently, police could take the DNA of anyone 10 or older arrested for even the most minor offense — and keep it forever, even if the suspect was later acquitted or released without charge.
Police say the database has helped solve thousands of crimes, including murders and rapes. On the other side of the coin are hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including children, who feel shamed and tainted by inclusion on a database of criminal suspects — a status some legal experts say undermines the presumption of innocence.
"A lot of British people were very shocked to find themselves or their children ending up on the database for minor alleged offenses such as throwing a snowball at a car," said Helen Wallace, director of the privacy group GeneWatch, which campaigns for restrictions on collection of DNA and other personal information.
After a long legal battle — waged in part by a youth who was arrested at 11 on suspicion of attempted robbery and had his DNA retained despite being acquitted — the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2008 that Britain's "blanket and indiscriminate" storage of DNA violated the right to a private life.
The U.K. was forced to trim its huge database. Under a law passed last year known as the Protection of Freedoms Act, the government is destroying the DNA profiles — strings of numbers derived from DNA samples that are used to identify individuals — of a million people who were arrested for minor offenses but not convicted. People acquitted of serious crimes have their DNA profiles kept for up to five years.
Britain also has incinerated more than 6 million physical DNA samples — mostly swabs of saliva — taken from suspects. Samples, which could previously be kept indefinitely, must now be destroyed after six months.
Destroying the samples is seen as key to limiting DNA databases to crime-fighting rather than snooping, because it means stored DNA cannot be used to trace relatives or susceptibility to disease.
The U.K. government says the curbs have restored a sense of proportion to Britain's database, but some aspects of the country's genetic monitoring remain murky.
The U.K. DNA ethics watchdog has expressed concerns about a secret counterterrorism database, which, according to the Metropolitan Police Authority, contains "DNA obtained through searches, crime scenes and arrests in relation to counterterrorism" — including samples from people stopped and questioned at ports and borders, even if they are not arrested.
The Home Office, which oversees police and the DNA database, said there was a "robust regulatory framework" for the counterterrorism database. But it would not disclose how large it is, who has access to it or whether the information is shared with other countries.
Some authorities on DNA say fears of genetic intrusion are misplaced.
Chris Asplen, a former assistant U.S. attorney who now heads the Global Alliance for Rapid DNA Testing, argues that DNA is not dramatically different from other information the authorities already hold about millions of people, such as fingerprints, social security numbers or automobile registrations.
But he does see avenues for abuse.
"There is an argument to be made that because that biological sample exists, the government could go back and do other things with it that are not authorized by the law," he said. "It's a constant tension between government and people, particularly when technology is applied."
___
Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless
Legal pot prompts a question: What about hash?
By George Johnson
Associated Press
Posted: 07/14/2013 07:10:58 AM PDT
SEATTLE (AP) -- Jim Andersen has a 40-year history with hashish, the concentrated cannabis sometimes referred to as the cognac of the marijuana world.
When he served in the Air Force in Southeast Asia, he said he smuggled it home in his boots. When he was in grad school in California, he made it with a centrifuge in a lab after hours.
So when Washington was on the verge of legalizing the sale of taxed pot last fall, Andersen decided to move back to his home state and turn his hobby into a full-time, legitimate paycheck -- a business that would supply state-licensed, recreational marijuana stores with high-quality hash oil.
"Every major culture that has marijuana associated with it has hash associated with it as well," said Andersen, whose company, XTracted, already has two Seattle locations serving medical marijuana dispensaries. He said his business would help prevent such pot extracts from ending up on the black market.
Substance abuse experts are concerned that such increasingly popular, extremely potent and potentially dangerous pot extracts will be sold and that state regulators' interpretation of the recreational marijuana law will allow people to buy vastly more hash than they need for personal use.
That, they fear, will increase the chances that some of it will end up in the black market out of state.
"It's a concern not just for our kids, but for kids in neighboring states as well," said Derek Franklin,
president of Washington Association for Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention.
The legal-weed law, passed by voters last fall, allows adults over 21 to possess up to an ounce of dried pot, 16 ounces of pot-infused solids such as brownies, or 72 ounces of infused liquids such as soda. When the state-licensed stores open sometime early next year, that's how much people will be allowed to buy.
The law precluded the sale of pure hash and hash oil, but didn't specifically address concentrated marijuana sales. That's led to a conversation about hash's place in the new legal-pot world.
The regulators at Washington's Liquor Control Board, who are charged with overseeing the creation of the new legal pot industry, issued draft rules this month saying hash and hash oil can be used in "marijuana-infused products" -- even if the product that's being infused is just a drop of olive oil or glycerin, for example.
In effect, the stores can get around the ban on hash- or hash-oil sales by simply adding a minuscule amount of some other substance to what is otherwise nearly pure THC, the primary high-inducing compound in cannabis.
Hash oils can sell for $40, $60 or more per gram, depending on quality -- meaning more tax revenue for the state. If such extracts are considered a "marijuana-infused product," people would be allowed to buy up to 16 ounces of oils in solid form, or 72 ounces in liquid form. Such transactions could run tens of thousands of dollars.
"When we set the 72-ounce limit, we were thinking about marijuana juice or tea, not a high-potency extract like that," said Alison Holcomb, the Seattle lawyer who primarily drafted Washington's law."
Holcomb said it will be up to state lawmakers to adopt new ceilings on marijuana concentrate sales early next year -- before the state-licensed stores open for business. The Legislature could also tweak the law to allow for sales of pure hash and hash oil -- something hash makers would like to see.
They say if they have to adulterate their product with even a drop of olive oil or glycerin, customers might instead turn to medical dispensaries or the black market.
In Colorado, which also legalized recreational pot last fall, stores will be allowed to sell hash and hash oils.
"Our goal is to replace marijuana prohibition with a system in which marijuana is regulated and taxed similarly to alcohol," said Mason Tvert, who led Colorado's legalization campaign. "Some marijuana consumers choose to use more potent forms of marijuana, just as some alcohol consumers prefer a martini or glass of scotch over a beer."
The term "hash" covers a variety of marijuana preparations, but is generally the compression or concentration of cannabis resin rich in THC.
The preparations can involve anything from the simple shaking of the resin off the plant and pressing it into bricks to the use of stainless steel, closed-loop extraction systems that cost tens of thousands of dollars, use butane or carbon dioxide as a solvent and turn out oil that is more than 90 percent THC.
Drug-abuse prevention advocates argue the proliferation of extracts has also coincided with a dramatic rise in marijuana-related emergency room visits, often for severe panic attacks. According federal figures, there was a 62 percent jump in marijuana-related emergency room visits nationally from 2004 to 2011 -- from 281,000 to 455,000.
There have also been explosions as home chemists try to make hash with sometimes dangerous solvents.
Hash oils, which are already sold at medical marijuana dispensaries around the country, can be taken by medicine droppers in liquid form, or by vaporization in the solid forms known as shatter, glass, budder or wax. By means of a metal wand, users place a "dab" about the size of a grain of rice on a glowing-hot metal stem of a pipe and inhale the resulting cloud, which delivers a powerful, nearly instantaneous high.
Andersen said many users prefer it because it gives a "cleaner" high: No plant material is burned, and people know right away what the effect is -- rather than waiting an hour or more for a pot-laced brownie or other edible to kick in.
"Dabbing" has become ever more popular over the past decade; a festival in Denver this weekend (7/13-14) was devoted to it. Ralph Morgan, owner of OrganaLabs in Denver, with two medical marijuana dispensaries, said hash and other concentrates now make up nearly one-third of his business.
"This is the way the industry is going," he said.
------
Follow Johnson on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle
Kristen Wyatt contributed from Denver and can be reached at https://twitter.com/APkristenwyatt
Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to hunt down??? You know like robbers, rapists and murders???? Not harmless pot smokers!!!!
This isn't the first time South Side rapper Lil Reese has been arrested for victimless crimes. The cops are trying to demonize him for a major crime wave of victimless crimes including sleeping in a vehicle, driving without insurance, and not signaling.
Jesus, don't these pigs have any real criminals to hunt down??? The kind that hurt people like robbers and rapists, not harmless pot smokers!!!!
Lil Reese arrested on pot charge: 'I got a little weed. So what?'
By Rosemary Regina Sobol Tribune reporter
2:01 p.m. CDT, July 14, 2013
South Side rapper Lil Reese was arrested yesterday in the Englewood neighborhood and charged with violating his bail bond and possession of cannabis, police said.
Lil Reese, 20, whose birth name is Tavares Taylor, was arrested on a sidewalk in the 6400 block of South Eggleston Avenue at 6:40 p.m. Saturday, police said. Taylor, of the 5100 block of South Wabash Avenue in the city's Washington Park neighborhood, was found with about $24 worth of cannabis, or four grams, police said.
In a hearing before Criminal Court Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr., Taylor was ordered held in lieu of $10,000 bail.
Police on patrol for ongoing gang conflicts in the area on Eggleston Avenue saw Taylor standing on the sidewalk with numerous other males, which police knew as known gang members, according to a police report.
As officers approached Taylor, he looked in their direction and immediately turned and began walking down a gangway. As police neared the group, they saw Taylor remove a plastic sandwich bag from his left pocket that contained crushed green plant material and spotted him looking around on the ground in the gangway, the report said.
He was searched and the cannabis was found along with $2,090 cash. When officers asked where the money came from he said: "It's mine, I got a little weed. So what?" the report said. He continued: "There's serious crime out there. This ain't a big deal. I'm gangster," the report said.
Taylor has risen to prominence in recent years as a pillar of Chicago's "drill" rap scene. He is part of local rapper Chief Keef's Glory Boyz Entertainment clique and has a deal with Def Jam Recordings, a label whose clients include Rihanna and Ludacris.
Taylor has had other run-ins with the law, including an April 28 arrest on a warrant in the 4400 block of South Wells Street after a police officer on patrol saw him sleeping in a vehicle, according to Cook County court documents.
The warrant issued in Champaign County was connected to charges of criminal trespass to a residence with persons present, mob action and battery that allegedly took place in February 2012, according to the Champaign County Circuit Clerk's website and Cook County court documents. Taylor pleaded guilty to burglary charges in May 2010 and received two years of probation, according to Cook County court documents.
Additionally, he was stopped April 13 in the 6600 block of South Wentworth Avenue in Chicago and charged with driving without insurance, no driver's license and not signaling, according to court documents.
Taylor sparked outrage in October, 2012 after video footage purportedly of him beating a young woman went viral. The grainy video taken with a camera phone reportedly shows rapper Lil Reese attacking the unidentified woman. It was posted on various hip-hop websites and angered thousands on Twitter. The video, which lasts a little more than a minute, shows a man entering a residence and arguing with a young woman. The two then get into a physical altercation.
Lil Reese acknowledged the video on his Twitter account before suggesting the incident occurred "years ago."
rsobol@tribune.com
We should have a 1st Amendment right to war people of this type of government crime.
Same goes for when the police are shaking people down for other victimless crimes
which we disagree with such as "drug war" crimes, gambling and prostitution.
We should have a First Amendment right to warn people of these abuses of police power.
Is flashing your car’s headlights protected by the First Amendment?
National Constitution Center
Amy E. Feldman
Missouri resident Michael Elli wanted to let others on the road know to slow down because they were about to drive into a speed trap, so he did what many kindhearted souls do: He flashed his headlights as a warning.
Police didn’t take at all kindly to warnings of this 21st century Paul Revere. They flashed him a ticket of his very own for obstruction of justice. Prosecutors eventually dropped the case, but Mr. Elli has now filed a class action lawsuit against the city because he says that the city retaliates against drivers who exercise their right to free speech–and that the government is trying to prevent it because it doesn’t like the message.
Under the law, obstruction of justice is generally defined as an attempt to interfere with the administration of the courts, the judicial system or law enforcement officers.
So if a person is aware of a confidential, ongoing investigation and tells the subject of the pending investigation, he or she may be guilty of obstruction of justice.
[If you ask me THAT sounds like another government violation of our First Amendment rights. We should be able to freely tell other people what our government masters are doing]
A former Key West bank officer pleaded guilty this past May to a charge that she received a grand jury subpoena, was told that it is a federal crime to disclose a federal grand jury subpoena received by a financial institution, but notified the subjects of the investigation. She faces up to five years in prison for the violation.
But the line between obstructing justice by advising others of an ongoing investigation and an individual’s right to free speech can be very murky.
[I don't think so. We should have the same free speech right to tell people about what the government is doing as we have to tell people about other things.]
This issue has popped up in several states where the police conducting a speed trap have not taken kindly to those who warn the oncoming speed demons. Courts in Florida, Utah, and Tennessee have all examined the question of whether the act is obstruction of justice or a form of protected speech and have found that it’s protected speech, and that the (headlight) flasher cannot be prosecuted.
But when motorists who had been prosecuted but later had their charges dropped then tried to sue the police for money for the wrongful prosecution, they have been far less successful.
[And sadly I think the courts are corrupt in this area. When the police or the government violates our rights we should be able to sue them and win. Something that rarely happens in the GOVERNMENTS courts]
A father and son in Florida who tried to sue the state of Florida in a class action lawsuit on behalf of all drivers given a ticket lost their lawsuit because the state government had rewritten its policy in the interim to train officers not to write such tickets.
So it’s no surprise that the charges against Mr. Elli were tossed; winning a lawsuit against the city for filing them in the first place may be more revolutionary.
Amy E. Feldman is the legal education consultant to the National Constitution Center. She is the general counsel of The Judge Group, Inc., a leading global professional services based in Philadelphia.
In the article the protests are people who want to make the world a better place to live and doing it by protesting. They are not criminals who will cause the downfall of Western civilization as the police seem to make them out to be.
Of course part of the problem is the cops love this stuff, because it creates high paying jobs for themselves.
While I have a lot of disagreements with the Occupy Phoenix and Occupy Wall Street protesters I certainly support their right to protest 100 percent. And I actually agree with some of their gripes.
And last but not least as H. L. Mencken said:
Legal pot prompts a question: What about hash?
If you want to f*** something up, let the government regulate it.
Lil Reese arrested on pot charge: 'I got a little weed. So what?'
A $10,000 bond for possessing a stinking one seventh of an ounce of pot!!!! That's a lousy 4 grams. That's insane. Of course the "war on drugs" is also insane.
Is flashing your car’s headlights protected by the First Amendment?
I certainly think the First Amendment applies to warning people of government or police
activities that we disagree with.
Our corrupt government masters routinely use speed traps to shake us down
for money.
Phoenix & Tempe Police uses Federal money to spy on protesters
In this article you could change the names from the Phoenix and Tempe Police to the KGB and Gestapo, and change the location from Phoenix Arizona to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union and the article would fit in just perfect to how things used to be in those two countries.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Source
Inside the Phoenix PD's Use of Federal Anti-Terrorism Resources to Track Valley Protesters
By Monica Alonzo Thursday, Jun 20 2013
It's mid-October 2011, and Occupy Phoenix protesters sit in a city park, some with their arms locked, most chanting: "We are the 99 percent!"
They are part of a movement gaining momentum across the United States whose mission is to denounce corporate greed. Their civil disobedience also is intended to deride a government influenced by the same wealthy corporations it bails out of financial crises.
About 1,000 people from across the Valley gather on October 15 at Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown Phoenix. The throng stays in the civic space until it closes early in the evening and cops usher people out. Several hundred protesters aren't ready to call it a night, though, and move to Margaret T. Hance Park.
Night falls, and this park closes, too.
A smaller number of protesters remain sitting on the lawn into early morning, October 16, even as police warn them to leave or face arrest for violating a city loitering ordinance. Several in the crowd shout that they are peacefully protesting as uniformed officers arrive en masse.
The confrontation with police is unnecessary.
Protest organizers had sought a permit to remain in the park through the night. Former state Senator Alfredo Gutierrez had put his political weight behind negotiating a deal between city officials and organizers.
There were reports that Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon would show up to support the rally, but neither he nor the permit materialize.
Instead, a menacing wall of officers wearing dark uniforms and gas masks and carrying protective shields close in on protesters. They grab those who refuse to stand up by their wrists, necks, and arms and drag them away.
City cops arrest 45 people, including Gutierrez, who served in the Arizona Senate for 12 years.
Phoenix Police Department officials who ordered officers to don riot gear and haul off those loitering in the park after hours claim they simply were maintaining law and order.
But their officers did more than make sporadic arrests to control various Occupy-related protests across the Valley, according to a report recently co-published by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy.
DBA Press describes itself as an online publication reporting on private- and public-sector corruption, while the CMD states that it's an investigative-reporting group that "exposes corporate spin and government propaganda."
Freelance reporter and DBA Press publisher Beau Hodai's in-depth report "Dissent or Terror" details how law enforcement officials used the resources of the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, its Terrorism Liaison officers, and an intelligence analyst to track and report on the movements of individuals affiliated, or believed to be affiliated, with the Occupy Phoenix movement.
And, the author reports, this information — obtained using these taxpayer-funded resources — promptly was shared with those whom Occupy organized to protest. Police officials passed along details to downtown Phoenix bank executives and the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that joins corporate executives and lobbyists with lawmakers to produce conservative "model" laws. For instance, ALEC created the framework for Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the state's draconian anti-immigrant law.
The PPD devoted significant time and resources to the probe, despite its officials noting that there was paltry participation in the local Occupy movement compared to movements in other U.S. cities.
"It's part of a surveillance state that's crept up on us, but is larger than people realize," Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, tells New Times. "We've seen this kind of monitoring . . . of political-protest activity . . . for decades."
Boghosian says the difference is that the Internet and social media have made it easier for local and federal law enforcement "to gather information on, and track with more sophistication, the activities of politically active individuals in the United States."
A behind-the-scenes look at the government's probing of Valley Occupy activists and protesters was a prelude to what has been referred to in recent weeks as "Orwellian" government tactics on several fronts.
Most recently, national outrage was sparked by revelations in the Washington Post and in London's Guardian newspaper that the National Security Agency and the FBI have collected personal data from nine major U.S. Internet firms — including Facebook, Google, and Apple — and from millions of records from major U.S. cell phone carriers.
The NSA debacle follows others, including the IRS' treatment of conservative Tea Party groups during the 2012 election. The Associated Press reported that about 75 groups were targeted inappropriately for additional reviews to ensure they weren't violating their tax-exempt statuses.
Another instance of government intrusion came on May 13, when the AP reported that the Department of Justice secretly obtained two months' worth of "telephone records of reporters and editors" that listed "outgoing calls for work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington, and Hartford [Connecticut], and for the main number of the AP in the U.S. House of Representatives press gallery."
The feds also gathered the phone records and tracked the movements of a Fox News reporter while he was developing leads on stories.
In Phoenix, Occupy organizers say they, too, were targets of undue government scrutiny doled out strategically and intentionally by police to hamper their ability to protest.
Cops call it intelligence gathering. Organizers call it spying and infiltration.
"It's like killing an ant with a shotgun," says Diane D'Angelo, an Occupy Phoenix member and spokeswoman. "It's absurd . . . to investigate protesters [who] care about people getting their homes foreclosed on. When you're treating people occupying Cesar Chavez Plaza with the same kind of rigorous attention as someone who's a member of al-Qaeda, that's pretty scary!"
To be sure, some Occupy-related events across the country, including in Oakland and in New York, saw episodes of violent clashes between cops and protesters. Most arrests, however, resulted in loitering or urban-camping charges.
Like police agencies across the country, the PPD devoted the resources of the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center to track members of the Occupy movement. Such information centers also are known as "fusion centers" because they pull together various law enforcement agencies.
In Arizona, the center touts itself as monitoring "all hazards" and potential terror threats. It's comprised of 25 law enforcement agencies, also including the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the Tempe and Mesa police departments, and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.
The details of journalist Hodai's report were gleaned from thousands of pages of public records he obtained from local, state, and federal agencies. They reveal that as organizers met to plan protests and advance the Occupy movement in metro Phoenix, city police officials sent an undercover officer to pose as a Mexican eager to support the cause.
The Phoenix cop attended public group meetings but also spent time with organizers in the park and on other occasions to gather details about protests and report them to superiors.
At the same time, an analyst with the PPD's Homeland Defense Bureau, part of the fusion center, monitored Occupy protesters' Facebook and Twitter accounts or used advanced technologies, such as facial recognition, to identify members of the movement.
The Occupy movement in Phoenix never burgeoned as it did in other American cities, but the PPD cautiously and vigorously tracked it as though it were a huge threat.
Although initial demonstrations attracted sizable crowds, subsequent rallies drew 50 or fewer protesters. On some days, attendance was so low that it prompted "mockery within the ranks" of the police department, Hodai reports.A Phoenix police detective working as a terrorism liaison officer for the Arizona Counter Terrorism Intelligence Center sent a law enforcement brief on trends his colleagues in other states had observed at Occupy events.
The police sergeant who received the detective's brief on December 28, 2011, commented sarcastically that the national report failed to "mention the four people we have demonstrating at Chavez Plaza."
Other police records show that daily monitoring of social-media accounts linked to members or sympathizers of the Occupy cause revealed "concern and frustration [among organizers] over the consistently low level of community involvement in the movement," according to city records obtained by Hodai.
Even so, his report notes, the PPD spent $245,200 "directly related to the policing of Occupy Phoenix during the first three days of the movement's existence."
The resources of the counter-terrorism center, well-funded by federal dollars, were spent to keep track of various Occupiers. Hodai noted that Phoenix received more than $1 million in grant money from the Department of Homeland Security in September 2010 to fund, in part, an intelligence analyst.
Brenda Dowhan, the civilian analyst hired by the PPD, and her counterpart in the Tempe Police Department commented in one e-mail exchange about how pleased they were that their "interference" helped foil a plot by activists to use a piece of vacant land in Tempe for urban gardening.
Dowhan wrote: "Every site I've been on, they know we're watching them."
But cops were doing more than "watching" — they were tracking.
Monitoring protesters isn't exactly what the feds had in mind as they poured as much as $1.4 billion since 2003 into creating and expanding 70 fusion centers across the United States.
In fact, a bipartisan probe in 2012 by a U.S. Senate subcommittee was critical of fusion centers for wasting money, getting used in ways that weren't strengthening counter-terrorism efforts, and stepping on Americans' freedoms.
The subcommittee investigation found the intelligence coming from the centers was "oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties and . . . occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism."
The bottom line is that the October 2012 subcommittee findings severely question the value of the feds' investment in the fusion centers.
Democratic U.S. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of that Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which analyzes waste in government, said in the 2012 document that "fusion centers may provide valuable services in fields other than terrorism, such as contributions to traditional criminal investigations, public safety, or disaster response and recovery efforts." Nevertheless, he recommended that Congress "clarify the purpose of fusion centers and link their funding to their performance."
Republican U.S. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a ranking member of the subcommittee who initiated the investigation of fusion centers, said: "Congress has a duty to the American people to ensure . . . it is getting value for the millions of taxpayer dollars invested in fusion centers."
Perhaps Phoenix terrorism liaison officers and analysts also were keeping tabs on actual terrorism threats, but they certainly were absorbed by Occupy Phoenix.
Silent Witness, a nonprofit organization that solicits crime tips, passed along to the PPD an anonymous online tip it received on November 18 about an "Occupy nut" from the Phoenix area.
The unnamed tipster wrote that the woman appeared to be involved with a violent organization.
"I'm aware no crime has technically been committed," the tipster continued, claiming the young woman had outstanding arrest warrants, was paranoid, and knew of specific plans for a violent revolt involving bombs. "[But] I've got an actual crime for you . . . illegal possession/use of marijuana. I've seen her smoking it on camera."
The individual, who had encountered the woman he called Amber only online, pledged to get police a photo of her smoking pot.
Police didn't wait for the photo of her smoking pot. They set out to identify the woman from an earlier photo provided by the tipster of her sitting in front of a computer.
"We have a Facebook photo and tried to do facial recognition, but she was wearing glasses," Dowhan wrote to police officials after sending the photo for analysis to another police agency within the counter-terrorism center.
It appears the photo was sent to a Facial Recognition Unit operated by the county Sheriff's Office, which can compare biometric data from photographs, such as those found on Facebook, to photos in a huge database — and not just pictures of people who have had brushes with the law.
Aside from 4.7 million mug shots from Arizona jails, 12,000 photos in the state's sex-offender database, and 2 million others listed in federal jails, the database includes about 18 million Arizona driver's license photos.
Hodai reports that there were "multiple instances" of police taking photos from Facebook and then using facial-recognition software to attempt to identify people believed to be Occupy members. He says it's important to note that the invasive technology was employed to investigate protesters as though police had probable cause to believe they had committed crimes.
Going to such extremes seems unwarranted. But Phoenix police spokesman Trent Crump tells New Times that the department would have been criticized as "negligent" had it not checked out a such alleged threats and somebody "actually carried out some kind of violent behavior."
When the PPD encounters "any behavior or statements" that allude to a possible threat, Crump says, it must follow up.
Documents show, however, that police tracked and dug into the backgrounds of individuals previously identified as members of Occupy Phoenix, even in the absence of any threat.
On December 14, 2011, at least five members of the PPD's executive staff, including Central City Precinct Commander Louis Tovar, received an e-mail regarding "Phoenix Occupiers" from a man identifying himself as David Mullin.
Mullin wrote: "Dear Sir or Madam, Please consider leaving the Occupy movement alone. They speak for me, and I suspect a large portion of American[s] who are upset with corporate greed and the ability to purchase politicians and their votes. We are going to take back America for its citizens, and it would probably be better for your careers not to get in the way."
He signed off with a simple "thanks."
Tovar noted to his colleagues that he had received similar e-mails from others and that he was merely giving investigators a heads-up.
It was enough for Assistant Phoenix Police Chief Tracy Montgomery to take Mullin's note as a possible threat, if only to her job security. Responding to members of the department's executive staff, Montgomery wrote: "Interesting e-mail threatening our careers. Anyone know the name?"
Montgomery's question prompted a subordinate commander to order that a lieutenant "check it out," and the e-mail ended up with Detective C.J. Wren of the city's Homeland Defense Bureau (part of the state counter-terrorism unit) and with analyst Brenda Dowhan.
The following day, Wren sent an e-mail to his lieutenant letting him know that "we figured out exactly where this guy got the names and e-mails to send that message." He identified the e-mailer as a former Glendale resident who lived in Las Vegas.
The e-mail addresses of the PPD commanders Mullin had messaged were posted on a website called Occupy the Signal, and viewers were asked to write to the city's top cops.
"Will work on it some more when I get back," wrote Wren, who had to head out for another assignment.
Hodai notes in his report that it's not a "violation of Arizona law for constituents to write their public servants with their concerns" and that "encouraging open communication is not an act of terrorism."
Records show that Dowhan and Wren "devoted the better part of two days [to] discovering the identity and whereabouts of the e-mail author," according to Hodai's report, which said: "The purpose or conclusion of this investigation into . . . Mullin . . . is not clear."
On another occasion, two Occupy members posted plans on Facebook to travel to Flagstaff for Christmas 2011, and terrorism analyst Dowhan dutifully reported it to a Flagstaff terrorism official.
"I have notified the [official] there that they are coming and that we have no reason to believe that their visit is anything but peaceful," she wrote to her supervisors.
Her monitoring continued, and when the two individuals changed their travel dates, she again contacted Flagstaff law enforcement to report their updated plans.
Why would law enforcement here or in Flagstaff be so interested in the comings and goings of apparently "peaceful" citizens who only have exercised a constitutional right?
Because, Crump says, their past activities made Flagstaff authorities want to know about their presence in preparation for "any response deemed necessary."
But, Hodai tells New Times, "There is no predicate [for] criminal activity," continuing that police monitored not only people arrested or cited during Occupy protests but those who were just issued warnings.
"How much of a threat could these people possibly be that you need to give their information to a terrorism liaison [officer] or analyst, when [your] beat cop didn't even feel it was important enough to arrest them for whatever infraction?" he says.
Crump counters that there was no overreach, that "safeguards" exist in government to limit abuse of power.
He further justifies the official invasions of privacy by stating, "The public expects a great deal from us."
Government tracking of activists hardly was unique to Phoenix, as events nationally have trumpeted over the past couple of months. And groups targeted have not been limited to those on the political left.
Right-wing Tea Party organizations have sued the IRS after their tax-exempt statuses, or applications for them, were singled out because of key words in their names — "tea party" and "patriot."
Although IRS officials apologized in May, and none of the tax-exempt statuses was revoked, the controversy is ongoing. Conservative think tank American Center for Law and Justice filed a federal lawsuit on May 29 against the IRS on behalf of several Tea Party organizations, including the Greater Phoenix Tea Party.
The complaint states that the agency violated groups' constitutional rights by subjecting them to "burdensome inquiries and scrutiny . . . based solely upon Plaintiffs' political viewpoints, or Defendants' assumption of Plaintiffs' viewpoints, based on their organizational names."
But anyone with a cell phone or Internet access could have been caught up in PRISM, a U.S. government intelligence program launched in 2008. The program was exposed after the Guardian published leaked information about the NSA's intel program, including a top-secret court order demanding that Verizon Business Network Services turn over details of phone calls made between April 25 and July 19, 2013.
Intelligence officials later confirmed that the program probably included all U.S. cell phone carriers.
Details are still emerging, with CNN reporting that government officials now insist that the program is directed at "foreign targets located outside the United States" and that data mined as part of the program gets reviewed by the Obama administration, Congress, and judges.
Other acts of government intrusion include the feds' collection of phone records from the AP as part of a probe into who leaked details of a CIA operation in Yemen that thwarted a plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airplane on the anniversary of the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Open Channel, an investigative NBC news blog, reported on May 20 that the Justice Department's secret subpoena for AP phone records included the seizure of logs for five reporters' cell phones and three reporters' home phones, as well as for two fax lines.
David Schulz, chief lawyer for the AP, said the subpoenas also covered the records for 21 phone lines in five AP offices — including one for a dead phone line at an office in Washington shut down six years ago. The phone lines at four other offices — where 100 reporters worked — also were covered by the subpoenas, the blog reported.
The AP also is considering legal action against the Justice Department.
A Fox News reporter came under scrutiny by the Justice Department in 2011 as it investigated an unrelated 2009 leak of classified and sensitive information related to North Korea.
The details of federal agents' snooping into the activities of reporter James Rosen first were reported on May 19 by the Washington Post, exposing the depth of government surveillance.
Rosen had written in June 2009, two years before the investigation, about "U.S. intelligence officials [warning] President Barack Obama and other senior American officials that North Korea intends to respond to the looming passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution — condemning the communist country for its recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests — with another nuclear test."
The Post reported that federal agents used security-badge-access records to track the reporter's State Department visits, traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report, and obtained a search warrant for his personal e-mails.
Congressman Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who chairs the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, criticized the Justice Department's tendency to zealously investigate leaks to the media.
During a June 2 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, Rogers said the Justice Department went too far when it cast such a wide net for AP reporters' phone records.
He said he knows, as a former FBI agent, how "incredibly important" keeping classified information secret is to national security.
"However, I think that dragnet that they threw out over those AP reporters was more than an overreach [and] a little bit dangerous when you talk about First Amendment protections for a free press."
Excessive scrutiny of average residents' exercising their constitutional rights to gather and protest also is dangerous, civil libertarians insist.
"We are very concerned . . . about this use of police resources against folks where there was no indication of any criminal activity, no reasonable suspicion of criminal activity," says Dan Pachoda, legal director of the Arizona office of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Clearly, it was a political decision . . . based on ideology that led [Phoenix police] to this increased focus on these groups. The police didn't like what they were saying."
Phoenix police and other law enforcement agencies shared details about pending protests with the very corporate entities that Occupy organizers planned to demonstrate against.
In his report, Beau Hodai documents how a Phoenix terrorism liaison officer, a police officer hired by the right-wing ALEC group, a terrorism analyst, an undercover police officer posing as an Occupy supporter, and others coordinated with ALEC officials before its convention in Scottsdale.
He notes that one meeting coincided with updating a "face sheet" with photos of 24 people. The sheet was titled "Persons of Interest to the ALEC Conference," and stated, beneath the title: "Committed Assault on Police Officers."
Attorney Heidi Boghosian, who wrote Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power and Public Resistance, says such cozy relationships and data monitoring "create a chilling effect on the exercise of free speech."
It amounts to the criminalizing of free speech, she says.
PPD spokesman Trent Crump says the department shares information with any group, regardless of ideology, expecting a large gathering. The goal, he insists, is to maintain public safety at the event.
Aside from analysts and terrorism liaison officers mining social-media networks, PPD leaders decided to embed undercover cops within the ranks of Occupy organizers.
A clean-cut man with slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair who appeared to be in his 50s introduced himself to activists in early 2011 while they were gathered at Conspire, a now-closed coffee shop and vegan cafe, Hodai's report states.
Although certain activists believed all along that he was a cop, the man claimed to be a homeless Mexican with ties to anarchists in that country. Public records show that after getting chummy with those attending Occupy gatherings, the man, who indeed turned out to be a cop, would report back any information about the group's future plans to his supervisors.
Hodai and Occupy activists question what suspicion of criminal activity existed to prompt Phoenix police to "infiltrate" meetings where protests and demonstrations were being planned.
Crump told Hodai that police don't have to even "anticipate that there's going to be criminal activity" to gather intelligence. It's a routine exercise, he contended.
Hodai highlights in his report that dispatching undercover cops and mining social-media accounts weren't the only ways PPD officials obtained information about the Occupy movement here. They also asked private citizens to help out.
Cindy Dach, owner of MADE Art Boutique on Roosevelt Row and co-owner of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, got caught up in the controversy over the department's activities when she sent an e-mail to cops in 2011 informing them about an upcoming Occupy meeting.
Dach tells New Times that she did not intend to share information with police to hamper protesters' efforts.
"There were huge safety concerns," she says. "People forget that, at the time, sidewalks were not yet expanded, and police were working with a lot of residents and business owners to keep [First Fridays] a safe event."
First Friday is a monthly art walk through downtown Phoenix's Roosevelt Row, a revitalized urban area with restaurants, galleries, and boutiques.
Dach's e-mail to police let them know that activists planned to meet later on October 7. It wasn't until Hodai requested thousands of documents and e-mails from the PPD that Dach's message to cops came to light.
It drew mixed reaction from Occupy members, some calling for a boycott of her businesses.
Her public apology was posted on Facebook and OccupyPhx.org:
"I am truly sorry. It was never my intention to provide an intelligence-gathering tip to local police or [to] attempt to disrupt free speech." She added that, after reading Hodai's report, she "realized how naive I was in this situation."
Calling what transpired a sobering lesson, she said she didn't know her information would be "used instead to gather information about an Occupy meeting."
For D'Angelo, the PPD's information-gathering campaign against Occupy members "reinforces the notion that they were being treated like terrorists or criminals."
Although she had served on the city's Human Rights Committee, had been a spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Transportation, and knew members of the state fusion center, her Facebook page and social-media accounts were monitored by police.
Detective Wren, Phoenix's terror liaison officer, told a colleague in an e-mail that he was gathering information from D'Angelo's social-media accounts, but he asked the officer not to mention anything to her about him "trolling" her Facebook page because he and D'Angelo were longtime friends.
"What amazes me is the tone-deafness of the Phoenix Police Department and city officials about why we were protesting," D'Angelo says. "They were assuming criminality and that Occupy was just a bunch of dirty hippies. That just wasn't the case."
One of the "dirty hippies," it turned out, was former Arizona Senator Gutierrez, also a past gubernatorial candidate, who was among those carried away by police in the early hours of October 16 for overstaying their welcome at a city park.
Boghosian says such action often "placates the public into thinking law enforcement is dealing with national-security threats." The reality, she says, is that the PPD was investigating "domestic activism" when it should have been "pursuing real criminal activity."
The local ACLU defended those arrested, and in nearly all cases, got the charges against them dismissed.
"At best, it's a bad use of police resources," ACLU lawyer Pachoda says, "because there was no indication that people were planning crimes, committing crimes, or meeting for any other purpose than [constitutionally protected] political protest."
Cops & firemen want to boot Sal DiCiccio out of office???
Sadly it seems like the police and firemen unions dominate the city of Phoenix elections.This editorial is about how the unions for the Phoenix Police and Phoenix Firemen are trying to boot Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio out of office because he is anti-union and against government pork for the cops and firemen.
While the firemen and cops claim to want "better government", to them "better government" is a code word for higher pay and more pork for cops and firemen that work for the city of Phoenix.
Elections official targets sneaky anti-DiCiccio group
Posted on July 15, 2013 5:17 pm by Laurie Roberts
Elections official targets sneaky anti-DiCiccio group
Strike a blow for eradicating the sneakiness from Arizona’s elections … OK, some of the sneakiness.
The Secretary of State’s Office says it believes a mysterious group called Campaign for Better Neighborhoods is violating an array of campaign-finance laws in its quest to get rid of Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio.
State Elections Director Amy Chan is asking the Attorney General’s Office to enforce the law, which could mean a hefty fine and more importantly – a peek behind the blackout curtains, to see who is behind this anonymous drive to defeat DiCiccio.
Just don’t hold your breath that it’ll happen before voters go to the polls next month.
The Campaign for Better Neighborhoods is the latest in a series of black-ops groups hoping to convince voters to do their bidding – without, of course, telling voters whose bidding it is that they’re being asked to do.
Arizona campaign-finance laws sport several gaping loopholes which allow these shadow groups to shovel cash into campaigns while keeping their identities, and thus their motivations, secret.
In 2010, the Committee for Fairness and Justice ran ads attacking Republican Tom Horne. Later, we found out the Committee for Justice and Fairness was really the Democratic Attorneys General Association.
In 2011, Phoenix Citizens United and Educate Phoenix teamed up to defeat Wes Gullett in the Phoenix mayoral campaign while Arizona Citizens United took aim at Greg Stanton.
In 2012, Americans for Responsible Leadership bankrolled the campaign to torpedo Proposition 121, the “top two” primary initiative, and provided a hefty wad of cash to defeat Prop. 204, the education sales tax.
This year brings us the Campaign for Better Neighborhoods and its anonymous effort to oust DiCiccio.
CBN incorporated in March, one day after Karlene Keogh Parks filed to challenge DiCiccio in the Aug. 27 election. Parks is an ally of Mayor Greg Stanton, who stomachs DiCiccio about as well as you would a frosty mug of battery acid.
The non profit was formed by three Democratic operatives and bills itself as “a grass-roots, issue-advocacy organization that is focused on policy issues that matter to working families.”
Mostly, it seems focused on getting DiCiccio out of city hall.
It set up a website and has so far sent out five hit pieces focused largely on his vote to give City Manager David Cavazos a 33 percent pay raise.
Given that Cavazos’ pay raise was approved last fall and on an 8-1 vote, one would think that the Campaign for Better Neighborhoods would have started before this spring and extended beyond DiCiccio’s neighborhood.
That is, if the group is really advocating issues and not the defeat of the councilman who regularly rails against employee unions and the city’s food tax.
In her letter, Chan says there is “reasonable cause” to believe that CBN is attempting to affect the outcome of the election and thus must file as a political committee and disclose the source of its funding. It’ll be up to the AG’s Office whether to take action.
“Each of the examples of the literature issued by CBN, from the mailers to its website, saldliar.com, make a general public communication referring to a clearly identified candidate that in context has no reasonable meaning other than to advocate for the defeat of the candidate,” she wrote.
DiCiccio’s attorney, Timothy La Sota, lauded the finding.
“This group has engaged in some just disgusting lies about Councilman DiCiccio and while it’s their First Amendment right to say what they want, they have to tell the public who’s funding this disgraceful campaign,” he said.
CBN’s attorney, Jim Barton, says the group is simply encouraging citizens to contact DiCiccio, not to throw him out of office.
“This is very clearly an application of grassroots lobbying that the Supreme Court has described in the Wisconsin Right to Life case,” he told me.
Grassroots lobbying that just happens to coincide with the election.
That hasn’t focused on any of the other seven council members who voted for Cavazos’ pay raise.
Grassroots lobbying on a website that prominently notes that DiCiccio is up for re-election and offers this: “Maybe the time has come for Sal to climb into his snazzy BMW and go back to his day job – as a real estate developer, destroying neighborhoods with plans to put up more strip malls.”
Sure, that sounds like an issue.
One that the AG’s office should take up and hit hard, an example of what can happen before the various sneaks and scallywags get to work on next year’s statewide elections.
I don’t care what these groups say. But we should know who’s doing the talking.
(Column published July 16, 2013, The Arizona Republic.)
Coalition sues to halt electronic surveillance
SourceCoalition sues to halt electronic surveillance
Associated Press Tue Jul 16, 2013 11:10 AM
Rights activists, church leaders and drug and gun rights advocates found common ground and filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the federal government to halt a vast National Security Agency electronic surveillance program.
The lawsuit was filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents the unusually broad coalition of plaintiffs, and seeks an injunction against the NSA, Justice Department, FBI and directors of the agencies.
Filed in federal court in San Francisco, it challenges what the plaintiffs describe as an “illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet electronic surveillance.”
The suit came after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details about NSA surveillance programs earlier this year.
NSA public affairs deferred comment on the lawsuit to the Justice Department. A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the lawsuit, the coalition demands that the federal government return and destroy any telephone communications information in its possession. It also wants a jury trial on the allegations contained in the suit.
The plaintiffs include the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, the Council on American Islamic Relations Foundation, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, Students for Sensible Drug Policy and others.
The federal government has “indiscriminately obtained, and stored the telephone communications information of millions of ordinary Americans as part of the Associational Tracking Program,” the lawsuit states.
Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a similar lawsuit in federal court in New York asking the government to stop the phone tracking program.
Sinema collects $1.6 million a year in bribes, no campaign contributions
Let's face it government isn't about being a public servant, it's extracting cold hard cash from the people you rule over. Campaign contributions in exchange for government pork. While officially they are called "campaign contributions" most of us call them for what they are - "bribes".
Kyrsten Sinema job as a Congressman or Congresswoman gets paid a nice $174,000 a year. Something only most of the people she rules over can only dream about.
But if her current rate of campaign contributions, something the rest of us call bribes, continues she will be pulling in $1.6 million a year, almost 10 times the amount of her cushy $174,000 salary.
Last for those of you who don't keep up with the news, Kyrsten Sinema is the Arizona Senator who tried to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana in an attempt to flush Arizona's medical marijuana laws down the toilet.
Sinema a leader in campaign donations
By Rebekah L. Sanders The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jul 16, 2013 10:50 PM
U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., in her first year in Congress has vaulted to the top echelon of fundraisers nationwide, according to campaign-finance reports released this week.
Sinema, whose district includes parts of Phoenix and Tempe, raked in nearly $400,000 from April through June [for a year that would be $1.6 million], with major money coming from labor unions, Arizona State University employees and Democratic leadership groups. Her total surpassed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and roughly 90 percent of other House members, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Sinema ended the second quarter with $550,000 on hand.
The numbers show how important fundraising has become for incumbents like Sinema, especially those who represent competitive districts, said Bruce Merrill, a longtime political scientist and professor emeritus at Arizona State University.
Sinema’s fellow Democrats in hot seats for 2014 — Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick of northern Arizona and Rep. Ron Barber of southern Arizona — raised significant amounts as well: about $300,000 each.
Kirkpatrick ended the quarter with $452,000 on hand, while Barber kept $330,000 in the bank.
“Whether it’s right or wrong, raising money is one of the principle components of American electoral politics,” Merrill said. “It’s kind of like a poker game: Do you have the ante to sit at the table and play?”
Sinema, Kirkpatrick and Barber, whose districts are closely split between Republican and Democratic voters, are likely to face tough re-election campaigns. Lining their war chests this early could deter potential challengers and prepare them for battle. The incumbents each spent more than $2 million in their 2012 campaigns.
Incumbents in safe Arizona districts raised smaller amounts:
Rep. Matt Salmon, a Republican from Mesa, hauled in $165,000 and kept $243,000 on hand.
Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican from Fountain Hills, raised $163,000 and was left with $123,000.
Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican from Prescott, took in $79,000 and had $83,000 in the bank.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat, and Rep. Ed Pastor, a Phoenix Democrat, each hauled in $65,000. Pastor had $1.3 million on hand compared with Grijalva’s $58,000.
The least successful fundraiser of Arizona’s delegation was Rep. Trent Franks, a Glendale Republican, who took in $25,000, even after putting out a plea for donations last month following furor over his comments regarding the incidence of pregnancy from rape.
The plea seems not to have made a ripple among pro-life activists. After his comments, only two donations came in from donors who were not corporations or from Washington political and legal firms. At the end of the quarter, he had less than $10,000 in the bank.
Only two candidates seeking to run for Congress next year spent the quarter fundraising seriously. Both are Republicans hoping to unseat Sinema in her brand-new Phoenix district.
Wendy Rogers, a retired Air Force pilot who lost last year’s Republican primary, raised $128,000 and had $206,000 on hand. Andrew Walter, a former ASU quarterback and first-time politician, pulled in $113,000 and was left with $122,000 in the bank.
Reports for Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake were not yet available.
Reach the reporter at 602-444-8096.
Remember they expect us to obey the law to the letter even if it is too complex to understand, and they frequently severally punish us for minor violations of their laws.
But when THEY break the law it's not big deal. And of course there are not penalties for when THEY break the law.
Bill on elections, HOAs is targeted
By Mary Jo Pitzl The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jul 16, 2013 10:50 PM
Lawmakers combined unrelated topics in a bill last month, violating the state Constitution in two ways, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The suit takes aim at Senate Bill 1454, which passed in the legislative session’s closing rush. The legislation tacked on a number of changes to homeowners-association procedures to a bill dealing with numerous election-related measures.
Combining different topics in a bill — a tactic known as logrolling — violates the Constitution’s single-subject rule, argued attorney Tim Hogan of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest. He filed the suit in Maricopa County Superior Court on behalf of two men active in homeowners associations.
The bill’s second constitutional misstep is its title, which does not accurately capture the topics addressed in the bill, the suit states. The title refers to elections and does not address homeowners-association changes.
While the bill should not be dealing with the two topics, its title nonetheless should at least accurately reflect its contents, Hogan said.
The lack of a proper title made it impossible for the plaintiffs, who opposed the homeowners-association provisions, to track the legislation, the suit states. It asks the court to block the bill from becoming law as scheduled on Sept. 13.
Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, [She is one of the tyrants that has been trying to fl] sponsored the underlying bill, which, among other things, required cities to conform their election dates to the state elections calendar. It also prevented candidates running with public financing from using corporate logos or trademarks that the candidate uses in his or her business life. The provision stemmed from Yee’s complaint last year against one of her opponents who used his business logo on campaign materials.
Hours before the Legislature adjourned for the year, Rep. Michelle Ugenti, R-Scottsdale, amended the bill to include a long list of rules for homeowners associations. It was a way to salvage her legislation, which had stalled. It passed with strong majorities in both chambers.
“Somebody wanted to make Rep. Ugenti happy,” Hogan said.
Ugenti did not return a call seeking comment.
Hogan said SB 1454 is a textbook example of what happens when the Legislature moves too fast on long, complicated legislation. The Ugenti amendments were more than 65 pages long, the suit states.
He said if lawmakers want to make changes to laws governing elections and homeowners associations, they should do so in separate bills.
From this article it sure sounds like it is more important to the members of the Phoenix City Council to get the police vote and pay the 3,000+ Phoenix cops big bucks to bust harmless pot smokers, then it is to pay the 5 guys who make $12/hr to fix fire hydrants and keep homes from burning down.
East Valley-area family loses home; faulty fire hydrant partially to blame?
Posted: Monday, July 15, 2013 8:01 am | Updated: 8:42 am, Mon Jul 15, 2013.
By Katie Conner, ABC15.com
An Ahwatukee family says a broken fire hydrant prevented fire crews from saving their home.
The Bergmans' home caught fire around 3 a.m. on June 24.
Kimberly Bergman says when firefighters arrived, they tried to use the fire hydrant directly across from their home, but it was broken.
According to Bergman, by the time firefighters hooked up to fire hydrants down the street, flames had completely engulfed her home and spread to their neighbor's. Both homes were destroyed by the fire.
The Bergman family has lived in their home for 20 years.
“All these years, it never occurred to us that the fire hydrant across from our house would be broken,” Bergman said.
She says even though they lost their home, she’s lucky to be alive.
“To have as large of a fire as we did, and the way it spread, we’re all just very very lucky,” Bergman said.
The City of Phoenix Water Department is responsible for checking fire hydrants. According to Bergman, the hydrant in front of their home was deemed broken by the city six months prior to the fire.
“I was horrified and angry by the time I got outside and realized that the hydrant was broken and my home was burning down,” Bergman said.
She says she and her family have received an outpouring of support and help from the community.
They are currently living in a rental home but plan to rebuild next year.
Smoke weed? That's fine with God, pastors say
Jun. 14, 2013
Clergy says war on drugs is immoral
The Rev. Edwin Sanders says churches should help heal the sick, feed the hungry, and set prisoners free.
Even if they smoke pot.
Sanders, pastor of Metropolitan Interdenominational Church in Nashville, is part of a group of clergy who want to end the war on drugs by decriminalizing drug use. They met this week in Nashville at American Baptist College.
Sanders said the so-called war on drugs has failed for two reasons. First, he said, addiction to drugs is a disease, not a crime.
“You don’t criminalize and incarcerate people who have a disease,” Sanders said. “You treat and care for them.”
Second, Sanders said, the laws on drug use aren’t enforced fairly. A report from the ACLU of Tennessee released Thursday showed that black Tennesseans are arrested on marijuana possession charges four times as often as whites. About 45 percent of those arrested for marijuana-related crimes are black, even though they make up about 17 percent of the state’s population.
The war on drugs has led to mass incarceration of young black men, said the Rev. Forrest Harris, president of American Baptist College.
“The war on drugs is a moral injustice,” he said.
Ethan Nadelmann of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates decriminalizing drug use, was one of the guest speakers at the conference, which ended Friday.
He said pastors and many other Americans, especially in the South, believe drugs are inherently evil. That’s why jailing people for using them sounds so appealing.
“Deep down, we believe that putting these drugs in our bodies is a sin,” he said.
Punishing people for alleged sins didn’t work during Prohibition, Nadelmann said, and it doesn’t work now.
A growing number of Americans seem to agree with Nadelmann. A Pew Research Center Poll released in April found that 52 percent of Americans polled supported legalizing pot. That’s up from 41 percent in a similar poll in 2010.
Nadelmann said 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, allow medical marijuana, and at least another dozen states no longer consider possession of small amounts of marijuana a crime.
The Rev. Enoch Fuzz of Corinthian Baptist Church in Nashville, who was not at the conference, was skeptical about legalizing drugs. Instead, he would like to see more money spent on treatment. He would also like the police to focus on major drug dealers and less on the people who use drugs.
“We need to keep it criminal and increase our efforts to catch the big-time dealers, who are making all the money,” he said.
Clergy at the conference said the consequences of a drug arrest can last long after a person gets out of jail.
Many drug convictions are felonies, and those with felony convictions have a harder time finding jobs or housing, lose their voting rights, and sometimes are disqualified from getting financial aid if they want to go to college.
A new proposal in the Senate would bar felons from getting food stamps, said the Rev. Derrick Boykin, associate for African-American leadership outreach at Bread for the World, an anti-hunger organization.
Boykin said Bread for the World doesn’t have a position on decriminalizing drugs. But he argues that there’s a link between the war on drugs and hunger.
When parents go to jail for possessing drugs, family members are left to fend for themselves. They lose the parent’s income, so not as much money comes in to pay for essentials like food or housing.
Cutting off food stamps because of a felony conviction would hurt families, he said — “they won’t be able to put food on the table.”
This week’s meetings were sponsored by American Baptist, the Drug Policy Alliance, and the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference, a San Francisco-based network of progressive African-American churches.
The Proctor Conference has also published Bible studies based on a book called “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, which criticizes the war on drugs because of the racial disparities in those jailed for drug arrests.
For many of the three dozen or so participants at the conference, the topic of drug arrests had a personal side. Members of their churches have been jailed for drug offenses as young men and those arrests have haunted those men for years.
The Rev. John Jackson from Trinity United Church of Christ in Gary, Ind., who is a former Chicago police officer turned pastor, said there has to be a better alternative to jail time for drug use.
“God does not care if you smoke weed,” he said. “God is not that petty.”
Contact Bob Smietana at 615-259-8228 or bsmietana@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter @bobsmietana.
June 15, 2013
PRISM a small part of more intrusive snooping effort
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- In the months and early years after 9 /11, FBI agents began showing up at Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers.
Around the world, government spies and eavesdroppers were tracking the email and Internet addresses used by suspected terrorists. Often, those trails led to the world's largest software company and, at the time, largest email provider.
The agents wanted email archives, account information, practically everything, and quickly. Engineers compiled the data, sometimes by hand, and delivered it to the government.
Often, there was no easy way to tell if the information belonged to foreigners or Americans. So much data was changing hands that one former Microsoft employee recalls that the engineers were anxious about whether the company should cooperate or not.
Inside Microsoft, some called it "Hoovering" -- not after the vacuum cleaner, but after J. Edgar Hoover, the first FBI director, who gathered dirt on countless Americans.
This frenetic, manual process was the forerunner to PRISM, the recently revealed highly classified National Security Agency program that seizes records from Internet companies. As laws changed and technology improved, the government and industry moved toward a streamlined, electronic process, which required less time from the companies and provided the government data in a more standard format.
The revelation of PRISM this month by The Washington Post and The Guardian newspapers has touched off the latest round in a decade-long debate over what limits to impose on government eavesdropping, which the Obama administration says is essential to keep the nation safe.
However, interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while PRISM has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort.
Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber-optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.
Whether by clever choice or coincidence, PRISM appears to do what its name suggests. Like a triangular piece of glass, PRISM takes large beams of data and helps the government find discrete, manageable strands of information.
The fact that it is productive is not surprising; documents show it is one of the major sources for what ends up in the president's daily briefing. PRISM makes sense of the cacophony of the Internet's raw feed. It provides the government with names, addresses, conversation histories and entire archives of email inboxes.
Many of the people interviewed for this report insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss a classified, continuing effort. Those interviews, however, along with public statements and the few public documents available, show there are two vital components to PRISM's success.
The first is how the government works closely with the companies that keep people perpetually connected to each other and the world. That storyline has attracted the most attention so far.
The second -- and far murkier one -- is how PRISM fits into a larger U.S. wiretapping program in place for years.
After 9/11, the 'Terrorist Surveillance Program' begins
Deep in the oceans, hundreds of cables carry much of the world's phone and Internet traffic. Since at least the early 1970s, the NSA has been tapping foreign cables. It doesn't need permission. That's its job.
However, Internet data doesn't care about borders. Send an email from Pakistan to Afghanistan and it might pass through a mail server in the United States, the same computer that handles messages to and from Americans. The NSA is prohibited from spying on Americans or anyone inside the United States. That's the FBI's job -- and it requires a warrant.
Despite that prohibition, shortly after the Sept. 11 al-Qaida terrorist attack, President George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to plug into the fiber-optic cables that enter and leave the United States, knowing it would give the government unprecedented, warrantless access to Americans' private conversations.
Tapping into those cables allows the NSA access to monitor emails, telephone calls, video chats, websites, bank transactions and more. It takes powerful computers to decrypt, store and analyze all this information, but the information is all there, zipping by at the speed of light.
"You have to assume everything is being collected," said Bruce Schneier, who has been studying and writing about cryptography and computer security for two decades.
The New York Times disclosed the existence of this effort in 2005. In 2006, former AT&T technician Mark Klein revealed that the company had allowed the NSA to install a computer at its San Francisco switching center, a key hub for fiber-optic cables.
What followed was the most significant debate over domestic surveillance since the 1975 Church Committee, a special Senate committee led by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, reined in the CIA and FBI for spying on Americans.
Unlike the recent debate over PRISM, however, there were no visual aids, no easy-to-follow charts explaining that the government was sweeping up millions of emails and listening to phone calls of people accused of no wrongdoing.
The Bush administration called it the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and said it was keeping the United States safe.
"This program has produced intelligence for us that has been very valuable in the global war on terror, both in terms of saving lives and breaking up plots directed at the United States," Vice President Dick Cheney said at the time.
The government has said it minimizes all conversations and emails involving Americans. Exactly what that means remains classified, but former U.S. officials familiar with the process say it allows the government to keep the information as long as it is labeled as belonging to an American and stored in a special, restricted part of a computer.
That means Americans' personal emails can live in government computers, but analysts can't access, read or listen to them unless the emails become relevant to a national security investigation.
The government doesn't automatically delete the data, officials said, because an email or phone conversation that seems innocuous today might be significant a year from now.
What's unclear to the public is how long the government keeps the data. That is significant because the United States someday will have a new enemy. Two decades from now, the government could have a trove of American emails and phone records it can tap to investigative whatever Congress declares a threat to national security.
The Bush administration shut down its warrantless wiretapping program in 2007 but endorsed a new law, the Protect America Act, which allowed the wiretapping to continue with changes: The NSA generally would have to explain its techniques and targets to a secret court in Washington, but individual warrants would not be required.
Congress approved it, with then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in the midst of a campaign for president, voting against it.
"This administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide," Obama said in a speech two days before that vote. "I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom."
US-98XN, or PRISM, takes over warrantless-wiretapping effort
When the Protect America Act made warrantless wiretapping legal, lawyers and executives at major technology companies knew what was about to happen.
One expert in national-security law, who is directly familiar with how Internet companies dealt with the government during that period, recalls conversations in which technology officials worried aloud that the government would trample on Americans' constitutional right against unlawful searches, and that the companies would be called on to help.
The logistics were about to get daunting, too.
For years, the companies had been handling requests from the FBI. Now, Congress had given the NSA the authority to take information without warrants. Although the companies didn't know it, the passage of the Protect America Act gave birth to a top-secret NSA program, officially called US-98XN.
It was known as PRISM.
Although many details are still unknown, it worked like this:
Every year, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence spell out in a classified document how the government plans to gather intelligence on foreigners overseas.
By law, the certification can be broad. The government isn't required to identify specific targets or places.
A federal judge, in a secret order, approves the plan.
With that, the government can issue "directives" to Internet companies to turn over information.
While the court provides the government with broad authority to seize records, the directives themselves typically are specific, said one former associate general counsel at a major Internet company. They identify a specific target or groups of targets. Other company officials recall similar experiences.
All adamantly denied turning over the kind of broad swaths of data that many people believed when the PRISM documents were first released.
"We only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers," Microsoft said in a statement.
Facebook said it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for data from all government agencies in the second half of 2012. The social media company said fewer than 19,000 users were targeted.
How many of those were related to national security is unclear, and likely classified. The numbers suggest each request typically related to one or two people, not a vast range of users.
Tech company officials were unaware there was a program named PRISM. Even former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials who were on the job when the program went live and were aware of its capabilities said this past week that they didn't know what it was called.
What the NSA called PRISM, the companies knew as a streamlined system that automated and simplified the "Hoovering" from years earlier, the former assistant general counsel said. The companies, he said, wanted to reduce their workload. The government wanted the data in a structured, consistent format that was easy to search.
Any company in the communications business can expect a visit, said Mike Janke, CEO of Silent Circle, a company that advertises software for secure, encrypted conversations. The government is eager to find easy ways around security.
"They do this every two to three years," said Janke, who said government agents have approached his company but left empty-handed because his computer servers store little information. "They ask for the moon."
That often creates tension between the government and a technology industry with a reputation for having a civil-libertarian bent. Companies occasionally argue to limit what the government takes. Yahoo even went to court -- and lost -- in a classified ruling in 2008, The New York Times reported Friday.
"The notion that Yahoo gives any federal agency vast or unfettered access to our users' records is categorically false," Ron Bell, the company's general counsel, said recently.
Under PRISM, the delivery process varied by company.
Google, for instance, says it makes secure file transfers. Others use contractors or have set up stand-alone systems. Some have set up user interfaces that make it easier for the government, according to a security expert familiar with the process.
Every company involved denied the most sensational assertion in the PRISM documents: that the NSA pulled data "directly from the servers" of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL and more.
Technology experts and a former government official say that phrasing, taken from a PowerPoint slide describing the program, was likely meant to differentiate PRISM's neatly organized, company-provided data from the unstructured information snatched out of the Internet's major pipelines.
In slides made public by the newspapers, NSA analysts were encouraged to use data coming from PRISM and from the fiber-optic cables.
PRISM, as its name suggests, helps narrow and focus the stream. If eavesdroppers spot a suspicious email among the torrent of data pouring into the United States, analysts can use information from Internet companies to pinpoint the user.
With PRISM, the government gets a user's entire email inbox. Every email, including contacts with American citizens, becomes government property.
Once the NSA has an inbox, it can search its huge archives for information about everyone with whom the target communicated. All those people can be investigated, too.
That's one example of how emails belonging to Americans can become swept up in the hunt.
In that way, PRISM helps justify specific, potentially personal searches. However, it's the broader operation on the Internet fiber-optic cables that actually captures the data, experts say.
"I'm much more frightened and concerned about real-time monitoring on the Internet backbone," said Wolf Ruzicka, CEO of EastBanc Technologies, a Washington software company. "I cannot think of anything, outside of a face-to-face conversation, that they could not have access to."
One unanswered question, according to a former technology executive at one of the companies involved, is if the government can use the data from PRISM to work backward.
For example, not every company archives instant message conversations, chat room exchanges or videoconferences. However, if PRISM provided general details, known as metadata, about when a user began chatting, could the government "rewind" its copy of the global Internet stream, find the conversation and replay it in full?
That would take enormous computing, storage and code-breaking power. It's possible that the NSA could use supercomputers to decrypt some transmissions, but it's unlikely it would have the ability to do that in volume. In other words, it would help to know what messages to zero in on.
Whether the government has that power and whether it uses PRISM this way or not remains a closely guarded secret.
After decrying Bush for PRISM, President Obama keeps it going
A few months after Obama took office in 2009, the surveillance debate reignited in Congress because the NSA had crossed the line. Eavesdroppers, it turned out, had been using their warrantless wiretap authority to intercept far more emails and phone calls of Americans than they were supposed to.
Obama, no longer opposed to the wiretapping, made unspecified changes to the process. The government said the problems were fixed.
"I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs," Obama said recently. "My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards."
Years after decrying Bush for it, Obama said Americans did have to make tough choices in the name of safety.
"You can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," the president said.
Obama's administration, echoing his predecessor's, credited the surveillance with disrupting several as yet unspecified terrorist attacks. Leading figures from the Bush administration who endured criticism during Obama's candidacy have applauded the president for keeping the surveillance intact.
Jason Weinstein, who recently left the Justice Department as head of its cybercrime and intellectual property section, said it's no surprise Obama continued the eavesdropping.
"You can't expect a president to not use a legal tool that Congress has given him to protect the country," he said. "So, Congress has given him the tool. The president's using it. And the courts are saying 'The way you're using it is OK.' That's checks and balances at work."
Schneier, the author and security expert, said it doesn't really matter how PRISM works, technically. Just assume the government collects everything, he said.
He said it doesn't matter what the government and the companies say, either. It's spycraft, after all.
"Everyone is playing word games," he said. "No one is telling the truth."
Experts deride bite marks as unreliable in court
2:39 p.m. EDT June 16, 2013
At least 24 men convicted or charged with murder or rape based on bite marks on the flesh of victims have been exonerated since 2000, many after spending more than a decade in prison. Now a judge's ruling later this month in New York could help end the practice for good.
A small, mostly ungoverned group of dentists carry out bite mark analysis and their findings are often key evidence in prosecutions, even though there is no scientific proof that teeth can be matched definitively to a bite into human skin.
DNA has outstripped the usefulness of bite mark analysis in many cases: The FBI doesn't use it and the American Dental Association does not recognize it.
"Bite mark evidence is the poster child of unreliable forensic science," said Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at the New York-based Innocence Project, which helps wrongfully convicted inmates win freedom through DNA testing.
Supporters of the method, which involves comparing the teeth of possible suspects to bite mark patterns on victims, argue it has helped convict child murderers and other notorious criminals, including serial killer Ted Bundy. They say problems that have arisen are not about the method, but about the qualifications of those testifying, who can earn as much as $5,000 a case.
"The problem lies in the analyst or the bias," said Dr. Frank Wright, a forensic dentist in Cincinnati. "So if the analyst is … not properly trained or introduces bias into their exam, sure, it's going to be polluted, just like any other scientific investigation. It doesn't mean bite mark evidence is bad."
The Associated Press reviewed decades of court records, archives, news reports and filings by the Innocence Project in order to compile the most comprehensive count to date of those exonerated after being convicted or charged based on bite mark evidence. Two dozen forensic scientists and other experts were interviewed, including some who had never before spoken to a reporter about their work.
The AP analysis found that at least two dozen men had been exonerated since 2000, mostly as a result of DNA testing. Many had spent years in prison, including on death row, and one man was behind bars for more than 23 years. The count included at least six men arrested on bite mark evidence who were freed as they awaited trial.
Two court cases this month are helping to bring the debate over the issue to a head. One involves a 63-year-old California man who is serving a life term for killing his wife, even though the forensic dentist who testified against him has reversed his opinion.
In the second, a New York City judge overseeing a murder case is expected to decide whether bite mark analysis can be admitted as evidence, a ruling critics say could kick it out of courtrooms for good.
Some notable cases of faulty bite mark analysis include:
— Two men convicted of raping and killing two 3-year-old girls in separate Mississippi crimes in 1992 and 1995. Marks on their bodies were later determined to have come from crawfish and insects.
— A New Mexico man imprisoned in the 1989 rape and murder of his stepdaughter, who was found with a possible bite mark on her neck and sperm on her body. It was later determined that the stepfather had a medical condition that prevented him from producing sperm.
— Ray Krone, the so-called "Snaggletooth Killer," who was convicted in 1992 and again in 1996 after winning a new trial in the murder of a Phoenix bartender found naked and stabbed in the men's restroom of the bar where she worked. Krone spent 10 years in prison, three on death row.
Raymond Rawson, a Las Vegas forensic dentist, testified at both trials that bite marks on the bartender could only have come from Krone, evidence that proved critical in convicting him. At his second trial, three top forensic dentists testified for the defense that Krone couldn't have made the bite mark, but the jury didn't give their findings much weight and again found him guilty.
In 2002, DNA testing matched a different man, and Krone was released.
Rawson, like a handful of other forensic dentists implicated in faulty testimony connected to high-profile exonerations, remains on the American Board of Forensic Odontology, the only entity that certifies and oversees bite mark analysts. Now retired, he didn't return messages left at a number listed for him in Las Vegas.
Rawson has never publicly acknowledged making a mistake, nor has he apologized to Krone, who described sitting helplessly in court listening to the dentist identify him as the killer.
"You're dumbfounded," Krone said in a telephone interview from his home in Newport, Tenn. "There's one person that knows for sure and that was me. And he's so pompously, so arrogantly and so confidently stating that, beyond a shadow of doubt, he's positive it was my teeth. It was so ridiculous."
The history of bite mark analysis began in 1954 with a piece of cheese in small-town Texas. A dentist testified that a bite mark in the cheese, left behind in a grocery store that had been robbed, matched the teeth of a drunken man found with 13 stolen silver dollars. The man was convicted.
The first court case involving a bite mark on a person didn't come until two decades later, in 1974, also in Texas. Two dentists testified that a man's teeth matched a bite mark on a murder victim. Although the defense attorney fought the admissibility of the evidence, a court ruled that it should be allowed because it had been used in 1954.
Bite mark analysis hit the big time at Bundy's 1979 Florida trial.
bitemarks2
Forensic odontologist Dr. Richard Souviron pointing to a blown-up photograph of accused murderer Theodore Bundy's teeth during Bundy's 1979 murder trial in Miami, Fla.(Photo: AP Photo)
On the night Bundy went on a killing spree that left two young women dead and three others seriously wounded, he savagely bit one of the murder victims, Lisa Levy. A Florida forensic dentist, Dr. Richard Souviron, testified at Bundy's murder trial that his unusual, mangled teeth were a match.
Bundy was found guilty and executed. The bite marks were considered the key piece of physical evidence against him.
That nationally televised case and dozens more in the 1980s and 1990s made bite mark evidence look like infallible, cutting-edge science, and courtrooms accepted it with little debate.
Then came DNA testing. Beginning in the early 2000s, new evidence set free men serving prison time or awaiting the death penalty largely because of bite mark testimony that later proved faulty.
At the core of critics' arguments is that science hasn't shown it's possible to match a bite mark to a single person's teeth or even that human skin can accurately record a bite mark.
Fabricant, of the Innocence Project, said what's most troubling about bite mark evidence is how powerful it can be for jurors.
"It's very inflammatory," he said. "What could be more grotesque than biting someone amid a murder or a rape hard enough to leave an injury? It's highly prejudicial, and its probative value is completely unknown."
Fabricant and other defense attorneys are fighting to get bite mark analysis thrown out of courtrooms, most recently focusing their efforts on the New York City case.
It involves the death of 33-year-old Kristine Yitref, whose beaten and strangled body was found wrapped in garbage bags under a bed in a hotel near Times Square in 2007. A forensic dentist concluded a mark on her body matched the teeth of Clarence Brian Dean, a 41-year-old fugitive sex offender from Alabama, who is awaiting trial on a murder charge.
Dean told police he killed Yitref in self-defense, saying she and another man attacked him in a robbery attempt after he agreed to pay her for sex; no other man was found.
Dean's defense attorneys have challenged the prosecution's effort to admit the bite mark evidence, and a judge is expected to issue a ruling as early as mid-June — a pivotal step critics hope could eventually help lead to a ban on such evidence.
A dayslong hearing last year over the scientific validity of bite marks went to the heart of the debate.
"The issue is not that bite mark analysis is invalid, but that bite mark examiners are not properly vetted," Dr. David Senn, of San Antonio, testified at the hearing.
Another case gaining attention is that of William Joseph Richards, convicted in 1997 of killing his wife, Pam, in San Bernardino, Calif., and sentenced to life in prison.
Pam Richards had been strangled and beaten with rocks, her skull crushed by a cinder block, and her body left lying in the dirt in front of their home, naked from the waist down.
Dr. Norman Sperber, a well-respected forensic dentist, testified that a crescent-shaped wound on her body corresponded with an extremely rare abnormality in William Richards' teeth.
But at a 2009 hearing seeking Richards' freedom, Sperber recanted his testimony, saying that it was scientifically inaccurate, that he no longer was sure the wound was a bite mark, and that even if it was, Richards could not have made it.
Shortly after that, a judge tossed out Richards' conviction and declared him innocent. The prosecution appealed and the case went all the way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled in December that Richards had failed to prove his innocence, even though the bite mark evidence had been discredited. In a 4-3 decision, the court said forensic evidence, even if later recanted, can be deemed false only in very narrow circumstances and Richards did not meet that high bar.
Since April 27, Richards' attorneys have been on what they dubbed a two-month "innocence march" from San Diego to the state capital, Sacramento, to deliver a request for clemency to Gov. Jerry Brown and raise awareness about wrongful convictions. They are expected to arrive later this month.
The American Board of Forensic Odontology recently got a request from Richards' attorneys, who are affiliated with the Innocence Project, for a written opinion on the shoddy bite mark evidence used against him. The board declined.
Only about 100 forensic dentists are certified by the odontology board, and just a fraction are actively analyzing and comparing bite marks. Certification requires no proficiency tests. The board requires a dentist to have been the lead investigator and to have testified in one current bite mark case and to analyze six past cases on file — a system criticized by defense attorneys because it requires testimony before certification.
Testifying can earn a forensic dentist $1,500 to $5,000 per case, though most testify in only a few a year. The consequences for being wrong are almost nonexistent. Many lawsuits against forensic dentists employed by counties and medical examiner's offices have been thrown out because as government officials, they're largely immune from liability.
Only one member of the American Board of Forensic Odontology has ever been suspended, none has ever been decertified, and some dentists still on the board have been involved in some of the most high-profile and egregious exonerations on record.
Even Dr. Michael West, whose testimony is considered pivotal in the wrongful convictions or imprisonment of at least four men, was not thrown off the board. West was suspended and ended up stepping down.
Among his cases were the separate rapes and murders of the two 3-year-old girls in Mississippi, where West testified that two men later exonerated by DNA evidence were responsible for what he said were bite marks on their bodies. The marks later turned out to be from crawfish and insects, and a different man's DNA matched both cases.
“People love to have a black-and-white, and it's not black and white. I thought it was extremely accurate, but other cases have proven it's not.”
— Dr. Michael West
West now says DNA has made bite mark analysis almost obsolete.
"People love to have a black-and-white, and it's not black and white," said West, of Hattiesburg, Miss., where he has a dental practice but no longer works on bite mark cases. "I thought it was extremely accurate, but other cases have proven it's not."
Levon Brooks, convicted of killing one of the girls, spent 16 years in prison. The other, Kennedy Brewer, was behind bars for 13 years, many of them on death row.
West defended his testimony, saying he never testified that Brooks and Brewer were the killers, only that they bit the children, and that he's not responsible for juries who found them guilty.
Other dentists involved in exonerations have been allowed to remain on the board as long as they don't handle more bite mark cases, said Wright, the Cincinnati forensic dentist.
"The ABFO has had some internal issues as far as not really policing our own," he said.
Wright and other forensic dentists have been working to develop guidelines to help avert problems of the past while retaining bite mark analysis in the courtroom.
Their efforts include a flow chart to help forensic dentists determine whether bite mark analysis is even appropriate for a given case. Wright also is working on developing a proficiency test that would be required for recertification every five years.
An internal debate over the future of the practice was laid bare at a conference in Washington in February, when scores of dentists — many specializing in bite mark analysis — attended days of lectures and panel discussions. The field's harshest critics also were there, leading to heated discussions about the method's limitations and strengths.
Dr. Gregory Golden, a forensic dentist and president of the odontology board, acknowledged that flawed testimony has led to the "ruination of several innocent people's lives" but said the field was entering a "new era" of accountability.
Souviron, who testified against Bundy in 1979 and is one of the founding fathers of bite mark analysis in the U.S., argued there's a "real need for bite marks in our criminal justice system."
In an interview with the AP, Souviron compared the testimony of well-trained bite mark analysts to medical examiners testifying about a suspected cause of death.
"If someone's got an unusual set of teeth, like the Bundy case, from the standpoint of throwing it out of court, that's ridiculous," he said. "Every science that I know of has bad individuals. Our science isn't bad. It's the individuals who are the problem."
Many forensic dentists have helped the Innocence Project win exonerations in bite mark cases gone wrong by re-examining evidence and testifying for the wrongfully convicted.
But a once-cooperative relationship has turned adversarial ever since the Innocence Project began trying to get bite mark evidence thrown entirely out of courtrooms, while at the same time using it to help win exonerations.
"They turn a blind eye to the good side of bite mark analysis," Golden told the AP.
One example is a case Wright worked on in 1998. He analyzed the bite marks of the only three people who were in an Ohio home when 17-day-old Legacy Fawcett was found dead in her crib. Of the three, two sets of teeth could not have made the bite marks, Wright testified; only the teeth of the mother's boyfriend could have. The boyfriend was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and served eight years in prison.
Without the bite mark, Wright said, the wrong person might have been convicted or the man responsible could have gone free, or both.
"Bite mark evidence can be too important not to be useful," Wright said. "You can't just throw it away."
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Tempe, Swiss cops swap spots on reality TV
By Aaron Granillo
Originally published: May 28, 2013 - 12:10 pm
TEMPE, Ariz. -- Two Tempe police officers will soon be stars on the Swiss reality TV show, "Job Swap."
Officers Dennison Dawson and Jess Dever-Jakusz found out on Monday they were chosen to represent Tempe police for five days in Switzerland.
"We didn't even know where we were going, because that's part of the show," said Dawson. "We still don't know much. They're not informing us step-by-step, so that's part of the show I guess, the surprise factor."
On Tuesday, a Swiss film crew documented the two leaving from police headquarters. Officers played bagpipes as a motorcade escorted the future reality TV stars to the airport.
Dever-Jakusz said she's never been to Europe. Dawson has never left the country.
"Coming from Arizona, being a native I got that thin blood," said Dawson. "I got to get used to that cold weather, but for something like this I'll freeze a little bit. It's a great opportunity."
Two officers from Switzerland will fly into Sky Harbor Monday night and shadow Tempe police for the rest of the week.
Aaron Granillo, News Editor
NSA: The finder and keeper of countless US secrets
Associated PressBy KIMBERLY DOZIER | Associated Press – Sun, Jun 9, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — An email, a telephone call or even the murmur of a conversation captured by the vibration of a window — they're all part of the data that can be swept up by the sophisticated machinery of the National Security Agency.
Its job is to use the world's most cutting edge supercomputers and arguably the largest database storage sites to crunch and sift through immense amounts of data. The information analyzed might be stolen from a foreign official's laptop by a CIA officer overseas, intercepted by a Navy spy plane flying off the Chinese coast, or, as Americans found out this past week, gathered from U.S. phone records.
Code-breakers at the Fort Meade, Md.-based NSA use software to search for keywords in the emails or patterns in the phone numbers that might link known terrorist targets with possible new suspects. They farm out that information to the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies and to law enforcement, depending on who has the right to access which type of information, acting as gatekeeper, and they say, guardian of the nation's civil liberties as well as its security.
The super-secret agency is under the spotlight after last week's revelations of two surveillance programs. One involves the sweeping collection of hundreds of millions of phone records of U.S. customers. The second collects the audio, video, email, photographic and Internet search usage of foreign nationals overseas — and probably some Americans in the process — who use major Internet companies such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo.
NSA was founded in 1952. Only years later was the NSA publicly acknowledged, which explains its nickname, "No Such Agency."
According to its website, NSA is not allowed to spy on Americans. It is supposed to use its formidable technology to "gather information that America's adversaries wish to keep secret," and to "protect America's vital national security information and systems from theft or damage by others," as well as enabling "network warfare, a military operation," that includes offensive cyberoperations against U.S. adversaries.
The agency also includes the Central Security Service, the military arm of code-breakers who work jointly with the agency. The two services have their headquarters on a compound that's technically part of Fort Meade, though it's slightly set apart from the 5,000-acre Army base.
Visible from a main highway, the tightly guarded compound requires the highest of clearances to enter and is equipped with electronic means to ward off an attack by hackers.
Other NSA facilities in Georgia, Texas, Colorado and Hawaii duplicate much of the headquarters' brain and computer power in case a terrorist attack takes out the main location, though each one focuses on a different part of the globe.
A new million-square-foot storage facility in Salt Lake City will give the agency untold additional capacity to store the massive amounts of data it collects, as well as adding to its analytical capability.
"NSA is the elephant of the U.S. intelligence community, the biggest organization by far with the most capability and (literally) the most memory," said former senior CIA official Bruce Riedel, who now runs the Brookings Intelligence Project.
NSA's experts include mathematicians and cryptologists, a term that means everything from breaking codes to learning and translating multiple foreign languages. There also are computer hackers who engage in offensive attacks like the one the U.S. and Israel are widely believed to have been part of, planting the Stuxnet virus into Iranian nuclear hardware, damaging Iran's nuclear development program in 2010.
Then there are "siginters," the signals intelligence experts who go to war zones to help U.S. troops break through encrypted enemy communications or work with a CIA station chief abroad, helping tap into a foreign country's phone or computer lines.
"More times than we can count, we've made history, without history even knowing we were there," reads a quote on the NSA's Web page by the current director, Gen. Keith Alexander.
NSA workers are notoriously secretive. They're known for keeping their families in the dark about what they do, including their hunt for terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. NSA code-breakers were an essential part of the team that tracked down bin Laden at a compound in Pakistan in 2011.
Their mission tracking al-Qaida and related terrorist groups continues, with NSA analysts and operators sent out to every conflict zone and overseas U.S. post, in addition to surveillance and analysis conducted at headquarters outside Washington.
The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said in a statement Saturday that the NSA's programs do not target U.S. citizens. But last week's revelations show that the NSA is allowed to gather U.S. phone calls and emails and to sift through them for information leading to terrorist suspects, as long as a judge signs off. Lawmakers are questioning the scope of the information gathered, and how long and how much of it is kept.
"Does that data all have to be held by the government?" asked Sen. Angus King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
King, a Maine independent, was briefed on the program this past week, but would not discuss how long the government holds on to the phone records. "I don't think there is evidence of abuse, but I think the program can be changed to be structured with less levels of intrusion on the privacy of Americans," he said.
While NSA has deferred any public comment to Clapper, it offered an internal article written by director of compliance John DeLong, who's is in charge of making sure NSA protects Americans' privacy.
DeLong writes that privacy protections are being written into the technology that sifts the information, "which allows us to augment — not wholly replace — human safeguards." The NSA also uses "technology to record and review our activities. ... Sometimes, where appropriate, we even embed legal and policy guidance directly into our IT architecture."
What that means is that the data sifting is mostly done not by humans, but by computers, following complicated algorithms telling them what to look for and who has a right to see it.
"Through software, you can search for key words and key phrases linking a communication to a particular group or individual that would fire it off to individual agencies that have interest in it," just like Amazon or Google scans millions of emails and purchases to track consumer preferences, explained Ronald Marks, a former CIA official and author of "Spying in America in the Post 9/11 World."
Detailed algorithms try to determine whether something is U.S. citizen-related or not. "It shows analysts, 'we've got a US citizen here, so we've got to be careful with it,'" he said.
Another way counterterrorist officials try to protect U.S. citizens is through centers where operators from the military, CIA, NSA, FBI, Treasury and others sit side by side. When one comes across information that his or her agency is not supposed to access, it's turned over to someone in the center who's authorized to see it.
But the process isn't perfect, and sometimes what should be private information reaches agencies not authorized to see it.
"When information gets sent to the CIA that shouldn't, it gets destroyed, and a note sent back to NSA saying, 'You shouldn't have sent that,'" Marks said. "Mistakes get made, but my own experience on the inside of it is, they tend to be really careful about it."
Analysts need that level of detail because they are no longer looking for large networks, but small cells or individuals that carry out "lone wolf" attacks, as the Boston Marathon bombing is thought to have been.
"If we are going to fight a war or low intensity conflict that has gone down to the level of individual attacks by cells one or two people, if you are looking for total risk management, this is the kind of thing you're going to have to do," Marks said.
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Follow Dozier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier
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Online:
NSA: http://www.nsa.gov/
License plate cameras track millions of Americans
By Craig Timberg, Wednesday, July 17, 7:00 AM
The spread of cheap, powerful cameras capable of reading license plates has allowed police to build databases on the movements of millions of Americans over months or even years, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report released Wednesday.
The license-plate readers, which police typically mount along major roadways or on the backs of cruisers, can identify vehicles almost instantly and compare them against “hot lists” of cars that have been stolen or involved in crimes.
Do they have your photo?
In 26 states, police often can find out who you are based on your facial image, even if you've never been arrested for any crime.
Users of the enterprise cloud software giant will add the ability for sales teams to coach, motivate, and reward their fellow workers.
But the systems collect records on every license plate they encounter — whether or not they are on hot lists — meaning time and location data are gathered in databases that can be searched by police. Some departments purge information after a few weeks, some after a few months and some never, said the report, which warns that such data could be abused by authorities, and chill freedom of speech and association.
“Using them to develop vast troves of information on where Americans travel is not an appropriate use,” said Catherine Crump, a staff attorney at the ACLU and one of the authors of the report, “You are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans’ Movements.”
The use of license-plate readers is common in the Washington area, where concerns about terrorism have fueled major investments in the equipment, with much of the money coming from federal grants. Agreements among departments and jurisdictions allow sharing of the location information, with data typically retained for at least a year.
Such details, say police and law enforcement experts, can help investigators reconstruct suspects’ movements before and after armed robberies, auto thefts and other crimes. Departments typically require that information be used only for law enforcement purposes and require audits designed to detect abuse.
“We’d like to be able to keep the data as long as possible, because it does provide a rich and enduring data set for investigations down the line,” said David J. Roberts, senior program manager for the Technology Center of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
But the ACLU argues that data collection by most police departments is unnecessarily broad. In an analysis of data collected in Maryland, the report found that license-plate readers recorded the locations of vehicle plates 85 million times in 2012.
Based on a partial-year analysis of that data, the ACLU found that about one in 500 plates registered hits. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it said, the alleged offenses were minor, involving lapsed registrations or failures to comply with the state’s emission-control program.
For each million plates read in Maryland, 47 were associated with serious crimes, such as a stolen vehicle or a wanted person, the report said. Statistics collected by the ACLU in several other jurisdictions around the country also found hit rates far below 1 percent of license plates read.
Maryland officials have defended their program, which collects data from departments across the state in a fusion center, which shares intelligence among federal, state and local agencies. In a recent three-month period, state officials said, license-plate readers contributed to 860 serious traffic citations and the apprehension of 180 people for crimes including stolen autos or license plates.
The center deletes the data one year after they are collected, in what officials said was a compromise between investigative needs and privacy rights.
“We don’t want to retain more information . . . than is necessary,” said Harvey Eisenberg, an assistant U.S. attorney who oversees Maryland’s Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council. “You strike the balance, because people are legitimately concerned.”
The license-plate readers are also widely used in Northern Virginia and the District, which has them mounted on many of the major roadways entering and exiting the city. A D.C. police spokeswoman did not immediately comment on the ACLU report.
Private companies also are using license-plate-reading technology to build databases, typically to help in repossessing cars.
License plate readers: A useful tool for police comes with privacy concerns
By Allison Klein and Josh White, Published: November 19, 2011 E-mail the writers
An armed robber burst into a Northeast Washington market, scuffled with the cashier, and then shot him and the clerk’s father, who also owned the store. The killer sped off in a silver Pontiac, but a witness was able to write down the license plate number.
Police figured out the name of the suspect very quickly. But locating and arresting him took a little-known investigative tool: a vast system that tracks the comings and goings of anyone driving around the District.
License plate reader cameras — separate from those used for surveillance and detection of red-light running and speeding — are set up by local law enforcement to track movements of individuals on watch lists.
Scores of cameras across the city capture 1,800 images a minute and download the information into a rapidly expanding archive that can pinpoint people’s movements all over town.
Police entered the suspect’s license plate number into that database and learned that the Pontiac was on a street in Southeast. Police soon arrested Christian Taylor, who had been staying at a friend’s home, and charged him with two counts of first-degree murder. His trial is set for January.
More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.
With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.
“It never stops,” said Capt. Kevin Reardon, who runs Arlington County’s plate reader program. “It just gobbles up tag information. One of the big questions is, what do we do with the information?”
Police departments are grappling with how long to store the information and how to balance privacy concerns against the value the data provide to investigators. The data are kept for three years in the District, two years in Alexandria, a year in Prince George’s County and a Maryland state database, and about a month in many other suburban areas.
“That’s quite a large database of innocent people’s comings and goings,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union’s technology and liberty program. “The government has no business collecting that kind of information on people without a warrant.”
But police say the tag readers can give them a critical jump on a child abductor, information about when a vehicle left — or entered — a crime scene, and the ability to quickly identify a suspected terrorist’s vehicle as it speeds down the highway, perhaps to an intended target.
Having the technology during the Washington area sniper shootings in 2002 might have stopped the attacks sooner, detectives said, because police could have checked whether any particular car was showing up at each of the shooting sites.
“It’s a perfect example of how they’d be useful,” said Lt. T.J. Rogers, who is responsible for the 26 tag readers maintained by the Fairfax County police. “We see a lot of potential in it.”
The plate readers are different from red-light or speed cameras, which issue traffic tickets and are tools for deterrence and enforcement. The readers are an investigative tool, capturing a picture of every license plate that passes by and instantly analyzing them against a database filled with cars wanted by police.
License plate reader cameras — separate from those used for surveillance and detection of red-light running and speeding — are set up by local law enforcement to track movements of individuals on watch lists.
Police can also plug any license plate number into the database and, as long as it passed a camera, determine where that vehicle has been and when. Detectives also can enter a be-on-the-lookout into the database, and the moment that license plate passes a detector, they get an alert.
It’s that precision and the growing ubiquity of the technology that has libertarians worried. In Northern Virginia recently, a man reported his wife missing, prompting police to enter her plate number into the system.
They got a hit at an apartment complex, and when they got there, officers spotted her car and a note on her windshield that said, in essence, “Don’t tow, I’m visiting apartment 3C.” Officers knocked on the door of that apartment, and she came out of the bedroom. They advised her to call her husband.
A new tool in the arsenal
Even though they are relatively new, the tag readers, which cost about $20,000 each, are now as widely used as other high-tech tools police employ to prevent and solve crimes, including surveillance cameras, gunshot recognition sensors and mobile fingerprint scanners.
License plate readers can capture numbers across four lanes of traffic on cars zooming up to 150 mph.
“The new technology makes our job a lot easier and the bad guys’ job a lot harder,” said D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier.
The technology first was used by the postal service to sort letters. Units consist of two cameras — one that snaps digital photographs and another that uses an optical infrared sensor to decipher the numbers and letters. The camera captures a color image of the vehicle while the sensor “reads” the license plate and transfers the data to a computer.
When stored over time, the collected data can be used instantaneously or can help with complex analysis, such as whether a car appears to have been followed by another car or if cars are traveling in a convoy.
Police also have begun using them as a tool to prevent crime. By positioning them in nightclub parking lots, for example, police can collect information about who is there. If members of rival gangs appear at a club, police can send patrol cars there to squelch any flare-ups before they turn violent. After a crime, police can gather a list of potential witnesses in seconds.
“It’s such a valuable tool, it’s hard not to jump on it and explore all the things it can do for law enforcement,” said Kevin Davis, assistant chief of police in Prince George’s County.
The readers have been used across the country for several years, but the program is far more sophisticated in the Washington region. The District has 73 readers; 38 of them sit stationary and the rest are attached to police cars. D.C. officials say every police car will have one some day.
The District’s license plate cameras gather more than a million data points a month, and officers make an average of an arrest a day directly from the plate readers, said Tom Wilkins, executive director of the D.C. police department’s intelligence fusion division, which oversees the plate reader program. Between June and September, police found 51 stolen cars using the technology.
Police do not publicly disclose the locations of the readers. And while D.C. law requires that the footage on crime surveillance cameras be deleted after 10 days unless there’s an investigative reason to keep it, there are no laws governing how or when Washington area police can use the tag reader technology. The only rule is that it be used for law enforcement purposes.
License plate reader cameras — separate from those used for surveillance and detection of red-light running and speeding — are set up by local law enforcement to track movements of individuals on watch lists.
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License plate reader cameras — separate from those used for surveillance and detection of red-light running and speeding — are set up by local law enforcement to track movements of individuals on watch lists.
“That’s typical with any emerging technology,” Wilkins said. “Even though it’s a tool we’ve had for five years, as it becomes more apparent and widely used and more relied upon, people will begin to scrutinize it.”
Legal concerns
Such scrutiny is happening now at the U.S. Supreme Court with a related technology: GPS surveillance. At issue is whether police can track an individual vehicle with an attached GPS device.
Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who has been closely watching the Supreme Court case, said the license plate technology probably would pass constitutional muster because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on public streets.
But, Kerr said, the technology’s silent expansion has allowed the government to know things it couldn’t possibly know before and that the use of such massive amounts of data needs safeguards.
“It’s big brother, and the question is, is it big brother we want, or big brother that we don’t want?” Kerr said. “This technology could be used for good and it could be used for bad. I think we need a conversation about whether and how this technology is used. Who gets the information and when? How long before the information is deleted? All those questions need scrutiny.”
Should someone access the database for something other than a criminal investigation, they could track people doing legal but private things. Having a comprehensive database could mean government access to information about who attended a political event, visited a medical clinic, or went to Alcoholics Anonymous or Planned Parenthood.
Maryland and Virginia police departments are expanding their tag reader programs and by the end of the year expect to have every major entry and exit point to the District covered.
“We’re putting fixed sites up in the capital area,” said Sgt. Julio Valcarcel, who runs the Maryland State Police’s program, which now has 19 mobile units and one fixed unit along a major highway, capturing roughly 27 million reads per year. “Several sites are going online over the winter.”
Some jurisdictions store the information in a large networked database; others retain it only in the memory of each individual reader’s computer, then delete it after several weeks as new data overwrite it.
A George Mason University study last year found that 37 percent of large police agencies in the United States now use license plate reader technology and that a significant number of other agencies planned to have it by the end of 2011. But the survey found that fewer than 30 percent of the agencies using the tool had researched any legal implications.
There also has been scant legal precedent. In Takoma Park, police have two tag readers that they have been using for two years. Police Chief Ronald A. Ricucci said he was amazed at how quickly the units could find stolen cars. When his department first got them, he looked around at other departments to see what kind of rules and regulations they had.
“There wasn’t much,” Ricucci said. “A lot of people were using them and didn’t have policies on them yet.”
License plate reader cameras — separate from those used for surveillance and detection of red-light running and speeding — are set up by local law enforcement to track movements of individuals on watch lists.
License plate reader cameras — separate from those used for surveillance and detection of red-light running and speeding — are set up by local law enforcement to track movements of individuals on watch lists.
Finding stolen cars faster
The technology first came to the Washington region in 2004 as a pilot program. During an early test, members of the Washington Area Vehicle Enforcement Unit recovered eight cars, found 12 stolen license plates and made three arrests in a single shift. Prince George’s police bought several units to help combat the county’s crippling car theft and carjacking problem. It worked.
“We recover cars very quickly now. In previous times that was not the case,” said Prince George’s Capt. Edward Davey, who is in charge of the county’s program. “Before, they’d be dumped on the side of the road somewhere for a while.”
Now Prince George’s has 45 units and is likely to get more soon.
“The more we use them, the more we realize there’s a whole lot more on the investigative end of them,” Davey said. “We are starting to evolve. Investigators are starting to realize how to use them.”
Arlington police cars equipped with the readers regularly drive through the parking garage at the Pentagon City mall looking for stolen cars, checking hundreds of them in a matter of minutes as they cruise up and down the aisles. In Prince William County, where there are 12 mobile readers, the units have been used to locate missing people and recover stolen cars.
Unlike in the District, in most suburban jurisdictions, the units are only attached to police cars on patrol, and there aren’t enough of them to create a comprehensive net.
Virginia State Police have 42 units for the entire state, most of them focused on Northern Virginia, Richmond and the Tidewater area, and as of now have no fixed locations. There is also no central database, so each unit collects information on its own and compares it against a daily download of wanted vehicles from the FBI and the state.
But the state police are looking into fixed locations that could capture as many as 100 times more vehicles, 24 hours a day, with the potential to blanket the interstates.
“Now, we’re not getting everything — we’re fishing,” said Sgt. Robert Alessi, a 23-year veteran who runs the state police’s program. “Fixed cameras will help us use a net instead of one fishing pole with one line in the water waiting to get a nibble.”
Beyond the technology’s ability to track suspects and non-criminals alike, it has expanded beyond police work. Tax collectors in Arlington bought their own units and use the readers to help collect money owed to the county. Chesterfield County, in Virginia, uses a reader it purchased to collect millions of dollars in delinquent car taxes each year, comparing the cars on the road against the tax rolls.
Police across the region say that they are careful with the information and that they are entrusted with many pieces of sensitive information about citizens, including arrest records and Social Security numbers.
“If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re not driving a stolen car, you’re not committing a crime,” Alessi said, “then you don’t have anything to worry about.”
But I am sure the folks in the US Senate and US Congress who passed the law could care less. Mainly because the intent is to get the votes of the local cops who will earn most of the $5.5 million in overtime pay.
Feds raise Phoenix’s terrorist risk, boost funds to $5.5M
By Jacob Green Special to The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 17, 2013 1:53 PM
The Department of Homeland Security gave Phoenix a $5.5 million grant after the federal agency bumped up the city’s terrorist-risk assessment from 18 to 15.
Homeland Security ranks 25 high-risk urban areas every fiscal year based on several factors, including population, border crossings, key infrastructure and assessments made by the FBI.
The rankings correlate with the amount of federal dollars allocated through the Urban Area Security Initiative, which helps cities in preventing, responding to and recovering from potential terrorist attacks and other emergencies.
[What rubbish!!!! If it's like most of the other "terrorist" programs most of the arrests will be for victimless drug war crimes and under one percent of the arrests will be for terrorist crimes]
“While we would like to say we don’t have high risk, it’s more important to be realistic,” Phoenix Councilman Daniel Valenzuela said. “It’s important that our ranking accurately reflects the security risk in our area.”
[Again what rubbish!!!! The probablilty of terrorists attacking Phoenix is about as high as the probability of it snowing on a 115°F day in July!!!]
Valenzuela, along with Mayor Greg Stanton, Emergency Management coordinator Scott Krushak and other city officials, traveled to Washington, D.C., this year to meet with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to push for the increase in Phoenix’s ranking.
[I suspect that trip was on behalf of not the taxpayers, but the employees of the Phoenix Police who are looking forward to this money as overtime pay]
“We felt that we were not ranked where we needed to be ranked,” Valenzuela said. “Some people may say it’s bad because there’s some potential risk, but at least now we are getting the necessary funding.”
[Again, what BS - This loot will probably be mostly given out to the cops as overtime pay, used to arrest people for victimless drug war crimes, not terrorists]
Phoenix received $1.5 million more this year than in 2012.
Valenzuela said the potential dangers that validate a jump in the rankings include the city’s proximity to Mexico’s border, the size of its population and the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the largest nuclear-powered electrical-generating facility in the country, which he said is a particularly sensitive target.
[Again, what BS - This loot will probably be mostly given out to the cops as overtime pay, used to arrest people for victimless drug war crimes, not terrorists]
“If something were to happen there, it would be felt throughout Arizona,” he said.
Stanton said he has been lobbying Washington for several years to increase the ranking for Phoenix.
[Mayor Stanton demanding our fair share of Federal pork for the Phoenix Police Union]
“We had not been receiving our appropriate share of the grant money based on where we were ranked,” he said.
Phoenix has not become exposed to any new risks, Stanton said.
“Nothing has changed to make us a riskier place. We just wanted better acknowledgment of where we should have been ranked all along,” he said.
Krushak said Congress has been “shrinking” federal grant money provided through Homeland Security, and so an increase in Phoenix’s ranking was necessary to secure limited funds.
A City Council report by Krushak, Fire Chief Bob Khan and Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia said the city will spread the money across departments to purchase equipment, set up terrorism and other emergency-response programs and “to implement target-hardening measures to protect critical infrastructure.”
Previous
articles
on Medical Marijuana and the evil Drug War.
More
articles
on Medical Marijuana and the evil Drug War.
Lawmakers violated the state Constitution in two ways
More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters.
Fix fire hydrants or bust post smokers
What's more important? Paying some cop $25+/hr to bust harmless pot smokers, or paying some maintenance man $12/hr to fix busted fire hydrants???
Smoke weed? That's fine with God, pastors say
Source
PRISM a small part of more intrusive snooping effort
Source
Experts deride bite marks as unreliable in court
Using bite marks to convict people of crimes is junk science???
Ray Krone was framed for murder by the Phoenix Police based on bite marks. Ray Krone was the 100th person freed when DNA testing proved he didn't do it.
A Taxpayer financed Swiss Vacation for Tempe cops????
Source
NSA: The finder and keeper of countless US secrets
Source
License plate cameras track millions of Americans
Source
License plate readers: A useful tool for police comes with privacy concerns
Source
A $5.5 million jobs program for cops???
If this grant to stop terrorism is run like most of the other programs to stop terrorists, less then one percent of the arrests will be for terrorist crimes. In those other programs most of the arrests were for victimless drug war crimes, followed by victimless gun crimes, with actual terrorist crimes being close to one half of one percent of the arrests.