Homeless in Arizona

Cleveland police officers punished for 137-bullet chase

CLEVELAND The city fired a police sergeant, demoted two other supervisors and suspended nine more Tuesday for their roles in the chase in which officers fired 137 shots and killed a fleeing driver and his passenger.

The fired officer, Sgt. Michael Donegan, briefly participated in the chase last November but pulled off, parked his patrol vehicle and failed to supervise his officers, police officials said.

"I made a determination that his conduct was so egregious that it merited termination," said Safety Director Martin Flask, who oversees police and fire.

Donegan could not immediately be reached for comment. Messages were left at a home phone listing under his name and with the union that represents police supervisors.

The dismissal can be appealed.

Of the 276 officers on duty on the evening of Nov. 29, 104 were involved in some way in the chase.

Disciplinary hearings will begin by mid-July for most of those rank-and-file patrol officers, Chief Michael McGrath said. Hearings for 13 officers who fired their weapons will be held after a county grand jury completes a criminal investigation.

Police don't know why the driver, Timothy Russell, 43, refused to stop. Russell had a criminal record including convictions for receiving stolen property and robbery. His passenger, Malissa Williams, 30, had convictions for drug-related charges and attempted abduction.

Some critics called the shootings a racially motivated execution of two black people with no evidence they were armed. Police denied any racial profiling.

Russell was shot 23 times and Williams 24 after a half-hour pursuit.

In a wide-ranging review by state agents, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said in February the chase resulted from leadership failures. "Command failed, communications failed, the system failed," DeWine said.

The state report noted that Russell was legally drunk when he became involved in the chase, and he and Williams also tested positive for cocaine. DeWine said they likely had been smoking crack. [Hey, lets forget about the 2 innocent dead people killed by the cops and demonized the people the cops were chasing]

McGrath said the episode had damaged the department's relationship with residents and must be repaired. "That means we have to work a little harder on our end," he said at a news conference. [Yea, sure. It's business as usual for all the 104 cops involved in the chase. Well, except for the one cop they fired.]

The charges against a lieutenant demoted to sergeant and a captain to lieutenant and suspensions ranging from one day to 30 days for nine sergeants included failing to supervise officers under their command or being unaware that officers were involved in the cross-city pursuit.

One of the suspended sergeants could face harsher discipline when his case goes before Flask.

The police union said the shootings were justified because the driver tried to ram an officer. [You ever hear of a police union that said what the cops did was wrong??? Police unions are hired and paid for by the COPS with the money from the cops paychecks. The police unions represent the COPS, not the people!!!]

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Cleveland police fire 1 supervisor, demote 2, discipline 9 in connection with deadly chase

CLEVELAND, Ohio — One Cleveland police sergeant was fired, two other supervisors were demoted, and nine were disciplined for their roles in a police chase and shooting on Nov. 29, authorities said today.

Sgt. Michael Donegan was fired because of "the gravity of your failure to execute your responsibilities as a sergeant of police for the city of Cleveland," said City Safety Director Martin Flask.

Flask, Mayor Frank G. Jackson and Police Chief Michael McGrath revealed the results of the administrative review for the 12 supervisors involved in the pursuit during a news conference this morning. The review did not address the use of deadly force. That review is currently being conducted by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty.

Jackson said it was "not a pleasant duty" to issue the report on the shooting, and McGrath said the incident had an impact on the police department and community.

Officials have identified 104 police officers involved in the chase. McGrath will determine which should face administrative charges related to the incident. Cleveland police fire 1 supervisor, demote 2 and discipline 9 others involved in fatal chase Cleveland police announced today that they have fired a sergeant, demoted two supervisors and disciplined nine others for their involvement in the deadly police chase on Nov. 29.

Officials said Donegan "disengaged himself" from the pursuit even though he knew there was a massive chase under way.

In April, McGrath said his office and the department's Integrity Control Section reviewed the supervisors' actions of Nov. 29 and determined that they appeared to have violated the department's mission statement, standards of conduct, several rules on vehicle pursuits and generally failed to keep the chase under control.

The supervisors are Donegan, Capt. Ulrich Zouhar, Lt. Paul Wilson, Sgt. Mathew Putnam, Sgt. Patricia Coleman, Sgt. Randolph Daley, Sgt. Jason Edens, Sgt. Brian Chetnick, Sgt. Brian Lockwood, Sgt. Mark Bickerstaff, Sgt. Matthew Gallagher and Sgt. Richard Martinez.

All have been with the department since at least 1998; Zouhar is a 28-year veteran of the force.

In April, the results of an internal review showed more than 30 percent of patrol officers violated at least one policy during November's high-speed chase, either failing to follow a supervisor order to terminate the chase or by driving unsafely. About 13 percent of supervisors violated a policy.

The review, which included interviews with as many as 115 patrol officers, supervisors and dispatchers, sought to determine whether police followed the department's policies and procedures governing the pursuit of suspects, when more than a third of Cleveland police personnel on duty the night of Nov. 29 played a role in chasing Timothy Russell and his passenger, Malissa Williams.

The chase, which began downtown after officers believed someone had fired a gun from Russell's 1979 Chevrolet Malibu SS, zigzagged through Cleveland for about a half hour and ended in a middle-school parking lot in East Cleveland. During the pursuit, officers believed the gunfire had continued and, at one point, they reported that the car had rammed a police cruiser.

Cleveland police chase and shooting

Thirteen Cleveland officers fired 137 bullets at the suspects. One officer fired so many rounds, he had to reload his weapon at least once, according to a lawyer representing the officers.

However, when the bodies were removed from the car, police found no gun or shell casings in the vehicle.

The findings of the administrative review in April also did not address the use of deadly force, because that issue is at the heart of an open criminal investigation.

McGinty is expected to present a grand jury with evidence collected during a state criminal probe headed up by Attorney General Mike DeWine.

Plain Dealer reporters John Caniglia and Michael Sangiacomo contributed to this report.

Go NSA - N S A

Want to score some good dope - Contact the US Embassy in Baghdad

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Lawmakers probe State Dept. over prostitutes, drugs

By Oren Dorell USA Today Wed Jun 12, 2013 8:55 AM

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are looking into allegations that the State Department squelched investigations into criminal behavior by employees, including an ambassador who allegedly propositioned prostitutes in a Belgian city park.

Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on Tuesday sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking for a briefing about the allegations detailed in recent news reports.

“The notion that any or all of these cases would not be investigated thoroughly by the Department is unacceptable,” Royce said in the letter.

Royce said he instructed his staff to investigate. At least one other committee is also investigating, according to a senior congressional staffer who was not authorized to speak on the record.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday the allegations are based on a memo that was written “without the benefit of reviewing any case files, (and) included a number of unsubstantiated accusations.”

“The notion that we would not vigorously pursue criminal misconduct is not only preposterous, it’s inaccurate,” Psaki said.

The allegations were revealed after Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator at State’s Office of the Inspector General, complained to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., that senior State Department officials interfered with investigations she was involved in, and then caused a report about the interference to be watered down.

Dallas Lawyer Damon Mathias, who represents Fedenisn, said Fedenisn hired him after two diplomatic security agents spoke in a threatening manner to her teenage children at her home in a Virginia suburb of Washington. The agents arrived at the home to talk to Fedenisn about documents Fedenisn had given to Cruz and demanded to speak to their mom immediately, Mathias said.

Fedenisn had turned to Cruz after she learned that an investigative report she helped write before she retired in December lacked many investigative details when it was published in February, Mathias said.

Her claim is that agents from State’s Diplomatic Security and other divisions engaged in very questionable and possibly criminal conduct; the Inspector General has been hampered in performing its oversight role; “and the findings they wanted to put in the report end up being left out,” Mathias said. “So you have a cover-up of the cover-up.”

When Fedenisn and her lawyers met with lawyers for the Office of the Inspector General, the government lawyers demanded she hand over the documents or they would refer the matter to the Department of Justice and Fedenisn would face criminal prosecution, Mathias said.

“They made it clear that they would go after her criminally,” he said. “We refused to turn over the documents” and Fedenisn is now seeking whistleblower protection, he said.

According to CBS News, which obtained copies of the documents Fedenisn provided to Cruz, they include a memo by the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General that cites eight investigations that were “influenced, manipulated, or simply called off” during the tenure of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The cases include an allegation that a State Department security official in Beirut sexually assaulted foreign employees working as embassy guards, that criminal gangs sold drugs to diplomatic security personnel at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and that members of Clinton’s security detail hired prostitutes while on official trips overseas, CBS reported.

Fedenisn told CBS those investigations were called off under pressure from senior State Department officials.

In another case, an investigation was called off into allegations that a U.S. ambassador was suspected of soliciting prostitutes in a park in Brussels, CBS reported.

The New York Post identified that ambassador as Howard Gutman, a bundler who raised $500,000 for President Obama’s 2008 campaign. Gutman on Tuesday issued a statement calling the allegations “baseless.”

“To watch the four years I have proudly served in Belgium smeared is devastating,” Gutman said. “I live on a beautiful park in Brussels that you walk through to get to many locations and at no point have I ever engaged in any improper activity.”

Another allegation described in the Inspector General’s memo says Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, put the kibosh on an investigation involving Obama’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Iraq, according to the paper. Members of State’s Special Investigations Division never interviewed the nominee, Bret McGurk, about sexually charged e-mails between him and Wall Street Journal reporter Gina Chon because Mills intervened, the report says.

Mills advised McGurk to withdraw his name from consideration and the investigation was dropped, according to the memo.

Ex-Houston officer convicted in teen’s beating

Associated Press Wed Jun 12, 2013 12:44 PM

HOUSTON — A former Houston police officer was convicted Wednesday for his role in the 2010 beating of a teenage burglary suspect that was caught on surveillance video.

A six-person jury convicted Drew Ryser of official oppression, a misdemeanor. He faces up to a year in jail.

Ryser, 32, is the last of four fired and indicted police officers to have their cases resolved in court for their roles in the beating of then-15-year-old Chad Holley.

Holley’s beating prompted fierce public criticism of Houston’s police department by community activists, who called it an example of police brutality against minorities. Holley is black; Ryser is white.

Ryser testified during his trial that his use of physical force against Holley — including striking the back of his head and hitting him repeatedly with his knee — was justified because the teenager was resisting arrest and might have had a gun. His attorneys said he followed textbook procedures to arrest a suspect he thought might be armed.

Prosecutors told jurors that Ryser did not follow proper procedures and mistreated a suspect who was not a threat.

In the security camera video of the March 2010 arrest, Holley is seen falling to the ground after trying to hurdle a police squad car. He’s then surrounded by at least five officers, some of whom appear to kick and hit his head, abdomen and legs.

Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland Jr. testified against Ryser, saying the video sickened him and gave the department a “black eye.”

Two other former officers charged in the case pleaded no contest and were sentenced in April to two years of probation. A fourth ex-officer was acquitted in May 2012. All four officers who were indicted in the case were charged with misdemeanors. Three other officers involved in Holley’s arrest were also fired, but two later got their jobs back.

Police said that Holley and three others had tried to run away after burglarizing a home. He was convicted of burglary in juvenile court in October 2010 and placed on probation.

Last year, Holley, now 19, was arrested on another burglary charge, and a judge sentenced him in April to six months in jail and seven years of probation.

A federal lawsuit Holley filed against Ryser, the other fired officers and the city of Houston is pending.

Racist Surprise Police???

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Surprise man seeks $500K, alleges racial profiling in DUI case

By Jen Lebron Kuhney The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jun 11, 2013 5:32 PM

A 64-year-old retired firefighter has filed a $500,000 claim alleging Surprise police arrested him for drunk driving although tests confirmed he had not been drinking.

The notice of claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, also alleges Jessie Thornton’s Dec. 7 arrest is part of a pattern of racial profiling by the department. Thornton, who is Black, has been stopped by police 10 times in four years, according to his attorney.

Surprise police have declined to comment about the details of the December incident, but released a statement on Monday.

“We all know there are two sides to a story,” Police Chief Michael Frazier said.

“I will not sensationalize this matter or try a legal case in public. I ask you to do the same: keep an open mind, withhold judgment, do not jump to conclusions based on one side of a story,” Frazier said. “The facts will emerge.”

News of the the Surprise case comes weeks after a May ruling from a federal judge that prohibits sheriff’s deputies from using race as a factor in law-enforcement decisions.

That includes detaining people solely for suspected immigration violations and from contacting federal immigration authorities to arrest suspected illegal immigrants who are not accused of committing state crimes. County officials have not announced if they plan to appeal.

Thornton says he plans to file a lawsuit to prevent Surprise police from harassing others.

“What I want to do is to hold the officers who did this accountable,” Thornton said. “I’m not looking to make a lot of money, but I’m hoping some people who can’t afford a lawyer see this and don’t have to feel helpless.”

Thornton said he felt powerless when he was pulled over on the evening of Dec. 7, just a few blocks away from his home.

Thornton was heading west on Bell Road near North Bell Pointe Boulevard when he saw a squad car in his rearview mirror.

Police stopped Thornton 11:16 p.m., after he swerved in and out of his lane while driving his white Mitsubishi sports car, according to the police report.

Thornton had bloodshot eyes, wrote Officer J.J. Otterman, and he asked Thornton to take a series of sobriety tests.

Thornton told the officer he was unsure if he could complete the tests successfully. Thornton had his two smallest toes on each feet removed and had bad knees from a car accident. He said he was also scheduled for hip-replacement surgery on Dec. 10, according to police records.

Thornton told the officer his eyes were bloodshot because he had been swimming at his gym.

Thornton did poorly on the balance tests, according to the police report.

Otterman handcuffed Thornton and drove him to the police station, where Thornton took a breathalyzer test. His blood-alcohol content was 0.00 percent. After the test, Thornton said he was notified of his Miranda rights and arrested.

A drug-recognition expert at the station analyzed Thornton’s behavior and concluded, “Jessie was not under the influence of drugs and or alcohol,” according to the expert’s report.

Thornton also agreed to a blood test, which a month later confirmed that he was not impaired, according to police records.

Thornton’s car was impounded and his wife came to pick him up.

The results of blood test were completed on January 11 and all accusations against Thornton were dropped, according to police. However, Thornton and his attorney, Marc Victor, were not notified until Feb. 1, they say.

While he waited for the test results, Thornton received a notice from the Motor Vehicle Division of the Arizona Department of Transportation that his license would be suspended and he must attend a substance-abuse class. His attorney was able to prevent the suspension, but Thornton said it created stress for him while he was trying to recover from his hip surgery.

Thornton didn’t have to pay any fines, but he said he spent about $5,000 to get his car back and to pay his lawyer for the criminal case and the civil-rights suit.

It appears that Surprise police handled the case normally, but there are some unusual aspects to the case, said Glendale attorney John Phebus.

An arresting officer can disagree with a drug-recognition expert and request further testing, but it is rare, said Phebus, vice chair of State Bar of Arizona Criminal Justice Executive Council, who has handled Valley DUI cases for 15 years.

“I’ve never seen when a DRE (drug recognition expert) says there are no signs of impairment that an officer continued to request a blood or urine test,” Phebus said.

Victor, Thornton’s attorney, said the only reason police cited Thornton was because he is black.

“Racism is not dead,” Victor said. “I think it’s something when an officer pulls someone over and arrests him, extracts his blood and charges him with a DUI based on what I would call no evidence at all.”

Victor said his client has been pulled more than 10 times over the last four years and has been cited four times. In one incident, Thornton was ticketed for driving without a license when he had his identification in his gym bag in the backseat of his car, according to the notice of claim.

The notice of claim for the potential lawsuit was issued on April 29. Cities have 60 days to respond to a notice of claim before it is deemed denied and a lawsuit can be filed.

Victor expects to file the lawsuit by the end of the year.

Marc Victor thinks Mark Goudeau is guilty?????

I am surprised that in this article Marc Victor seems to think Mark Goudeau is guilty.

'I believe the detectives did a good job," said Victor ... "There were actually eight people murdered during that time frame, that would not have been murdered had Mark Goudeau simply been taken into custody," said Victor'

Normally with DNA matches they say something like

There is a 99.99999 percent chance that Mark Goudeau did it.

And of course in that case it is like saying Mark Goudeau was guilty, because the alleged murderer was a Black man, thus because Mark Goudeau is a Black man he is guilty.

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Baseline Killer case: Valley lawyer claims proof evidence went untested

Posted: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 4:01 am

By Christopher Sign, ABC15

As a lawsuit against the City of Phoenix makes its way through the courts, new documents allege the crime lab handling the evidence failed to test critical items.

The documents, obtained by ABC15, were sent to several family members of victims now suing the City of Phoenix for failing to stop Mark Goudeau.

Goudeau, the so-called Baseline Killer, is on death row after being convicted of killing nine people and raping and robbing others during a crime spree in 2005 and 2006.

The new documents were prepared by a DNA expert in Massachusetts for Valley attorney Marc Victor.

Victor represents the families suing the city regarding the handling of evidence.

"It's not frivolous, it's what I would call a slam dunk kind of a case," Victor told ABC15.

Victor hired the DNA expert to analyze the Baseline Killer investigation evidence and handling of the evidence by the Phoenix Police Department crime lab.

In the documents, Forensic DNA Consultant Mary Kate McGilvray said the crime lab "failed" on several occasions, had "reckless disregard" and failed to test the evidence in a timely manner.

The document focuses on the evidence from a rape in a south Phoenix park.

Victor says the lab failed to test two DNA swabs from the victim along with the victim's underwear.

"They take the right breast swab and they order those for testing at the Phoenix crime lab, the left breast swabs are not sent for testing, they're put in the freezer," said Victor.

McGilvray also noted in the documents that Phoenix Police detectives had submitted a priority request on all of the evidence, but Victor and McGilvray claim the evidence sat for several months before the additional evidence was tested.

"I believe the detectives did a good job," said Victor. "They got the ball down the field and it just stopped, they (crime lab technicians) simply dropped the ball."

Victor says he believes there was a communication breakdown as well.

"I believe the detectives thought it was all tested, and we believe at this point the detectives were told it was all tested, and then found out and said 'test everything, everything now,'" said Victor.

According to the report, as the evidence sat in the freezer from the 2005 rape, Goudeau's crimes continued.

"There were actually eight people murdered during that time frame, that would not have been murdered had Mark Goudeau simply been taken into custody," said Victor. "I do have a detective who was very involved in the Baseline Killer investigation who is going to be on our witness list."

Victor says the additional swabs that sat in the freezer were not tested by technicians because an initial swab that was analyzed was difficult for technicians to extract DNA, therefore, the remaining swabs were held.

"They're chasing pot smokers like crazy and testing green leafy substances while serial murderers and serial rapists aren't getting enough attention, this is an outrage, a huge public safety problem," said Victor.

Goudeau's DNA profile was already in the system from a previous felony conviction.

Once lab technicians tested the remaining evidence Victor says, "Bam, match right to Mark Goudeau from that breast swab and the rest is history, they go out and pick up Mark Goudeau, end of case."

The trial between Victor and the City of Phoenix is expected to begin in September.

To be clear, ABC15 contacted the Phoenix Police Department for reaction to this story and the report conducted by Victor's expert, but department officials were unable to comment due to pending litigation.

It is standard procedure for the City of Phoenix Police Department to not comment on pending lawsuits.

$50 million prison project advances

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$50 million prison project advances

By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jun 12, 2013 10:49 PM

A legislative panel on Wednesday gave its consent to build a $50 million maximum-security facility, adding 500 beds to the Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis in Buckeye.

The Legislature last year approved funding for the facility, which is slated to open in October 2014. The Joint Committee on Capital Review also is charged with examining state construction expenditures, and the group gave a “favorable review” to go forward with the project in a voice vote after a short hearing Wednesday.

“It’s a blessing,” Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, the committee’s chairman, said of the vote. “We are responsible for the taxpayers’ money, and it’s good oversight.”

However, critics of the facility say the new prison beds are a waste of tax dollars because they are not needed.

They argued that the state prison population has leveled off, and they question whether inmates already in maximum-security facilities are being treated properly because of lengthy isolation time in their cells.

Caroline Isaacs, program director for the American Friends Service Committee, criticized the need for additional prison beds.

She called the committee’s vote a “rubber stamp” to what the Legislature had already done, and she said she was disappointed that the committee didn’t allow any public comment on the issue Wednesday.

Arizona Corrections Director Charles Ryan told the committee that inmates in maximum security spend about 22 hours a day in their cells.

Ryan said later in an interview that inmates spend that much time alone because they are violent and pose a risk.

He said inmates are not in “solitary confinement,” as critics contend, because inmates can easily communicate with other inmates who are in nearby cells, and they can communicate with others during recreation time.

Maximum-security inmates also can purchase televisions to view in their cells, and they have access to magazines and books.

Ryan provided The Arizona Republic with Department of Corrections records showing an increase of 551 inmates this fiscal year, lifting the total inmate population to 40,428.

He said a growing prison population, combined with violent offenders outnumbering non-violent offenders by a more than 2-1 ratio, create a need for more maximum-security beds.

Arizona recreational marijuana use initiative launched

Arizona recreational marijuana use initiative launched

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jun 12, 2013 10:44 PM

A north Phoenix man has launched an initiative to legalize marijuana for recreational use in Arizona.

Dennis Bohlke, the 59-year-old computer programmer who is leading the effort, said the Safer Arizona initiative is modeled after Colorado’s newly enacted law, which taxes and regulates marijuana.

“The intent of the initiative is to legalize marijuana in Arizona and to treat it as we treat alcohol,” said Bohlke.

The effort would amend the state Constitution to allow people 18 and older “to consume or possess limited amounts” of marijuana. The initiative would allow state officials to license grow facilities, marijuana stores and other facilities.

The initiative needs 259,213 valid signatures by July 3, 2014, to qualify for the November 2014 ballot.

Bohlke said he has no major financial backing to fund signature gathering. He said he has spoken with Republican, “tea party” and Democratic lawmakers about his effort and that while they would not support him, they “were very receptive” of his effort. [I am sure that if he would ask the Libertarian Party they would support him 100 percent for legalizing marijuana - well with the exception of wanting to tax it.]

Bohlke acknowledged it will be challenging to gather the signatures necessary to place the initiative on the ballot without major funding.

In addition, law enforcement and prosecutors would likely mount a strong opposition campaign.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who has made the fight against medical marijuana a signature issue, said any effort to legalize pot “even through the initiative process, would run afoul of the same supremacy clause issues that Arizona’s medical-marijuana program faces.” [[Oddly the royal rulers of the state of Arizona invoke the 10th Amendment for their laws like racist SB 1070 which counters Federal law, but seem to forget about the 10th Amendment when it comes to marijuana and the drug war. The 10th Amendment says if a power isn't given to the Feds, or forbidden to the states, the power is reserved for the states and the people. ]

But Karen O’Keefe of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., a national legalization-advocacy group, said the proposed initiative “makes sure the state wouldn’t waste any more money arresting people for using a substance that’s objectively safer than alcohol and tobacco.

“It would also allow the state to regulate and control the industry and to generate substantial revenue” that would benefit Arizona residents “instead of drug dealers,” she said.

Bohlke said he is motivated by his pot-related brushes with the law. He was arrested twice in Scottsdale in 2010 on drug-related charges. Bohlke was stopped in February 2010 on suspicion of crossing the white line with his car, according to police records, and when the officer walked up to the vehicle he claimed he could smell marijuana. A search of the car turned up a small amount of marijuana stored in a mint box and a package of rolling papers, according to police. The case was dismissed last year after Bohlke’s defense raised questions about when the arresting officer gave Bohlke his Miranda warning.

“That is part of the motivation for doing this,” said Bohlke, who said he was stopped and searched by police without cause.

Bohlke was arrested again in July 2010 after a Scottsdale police officer said he failed to stop at a red light and initiated a DUI investigation, according to police records. Lab test results showed the presence of the metabolite associated with marijuana and Bohlke was convicted of being impaired to the slightest degree and driving under the influence of drugs, according to court records. The conviction is on appeal.

“It’s a very bad thing for people to get arrested for marijuana — especially for young people going to college and going to school,” he said. “It has a very bad impact on their life and I just think it’s time that we do something about it.”

Arizona voters approved the use of medicinal marijuana in 2010 for conditions such as chronic pain and cancer. More than 35,000 Arizonans participate in the program, which is overseen by the Department of Health Services.

Colorado and Washington are the only states to have legalized marijuana for recreational use. Lawmakers in 10 states have introduced bills to legalize marijuana for recreational use. All of those efforts have failed, O’Keefe said.

An April Pew Research Center poll found that for the first time since the 1960s, most Americans favor legalizing marijuana. The national survey found that 52 percent say marijuana should be made legal while 45 percent say it should not. Pew reported that support for legalizing marijuana has risen 11 points since 2010.

Republic reporter JJ Hensley contributed to this article.

Prosecutor says man endangered teen’s life in Phoenix hoax

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Prosecutor says man endangered teen’s life in Phoenix hoax

Associated Press Wed Jun 12, 2013 10:22 PM

A prosecutor told jurors Wednesday that a man on trial for carrying out a terrorism hoax in Phoenix last summer could have gotten his 16-year-old nephew killed when he sent him into a street with a fake grenade launcher as he filmed the masked teen pointing it at passing vehicles during rush-hour traffic.

Filmmaker Michael David Turley, 40, is charged with endangerment and engaging in a criminal hoax for the mock terrorism scenario on a busy intersection in northwest Phoenix on July 28. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Lawyers made their opening statements Wednesday at Turley’s trial. If convicted of both charges, Turley would face penalties ranging from probation to more than five years in prison.

Prosecutor Michael Anderson said the costume worn by the nephew, whose body was draped in a sheet and whose head was wrapped in a scarf, was intended to evoke the worst stereotype of a Middle Eastern terrorist. “As you would expect, people started calling 911,” Anderson said, adding that some motorists who saw the teen with the fake launcher had discussions about whether they should run him over.

Recordings of 911 calls also showed that some people who saw the 16-year-old told authorities that they assumed the weapon was a fake.

Turley’s attorney, Brad Rideout, said no one was injured and no vehicles wrecked as a result of the hoax.

Still, Rideout said it was foolish for his client to send his nephew into a potentially dangerous situation. “I am not going to insult your intelligence and tell you this was a bright idea,” said Turley’s attorney, Brad Rideout.

Jurors stoically watched a video of the hoax that Turley posted on YouTube.

During the video, a narrator identified by police as Turley said he wanted to see how long it took authorities to respond to a terrorist situation and mentioned a movie theater shooting two weeks earlier that killed 12 people in Aurora, Colo.

The teenager carried the fake launcher on his shoulder as he made his way across a crosswalk. The narrator said the teen wanted to appear as intimidating as possible in hopes that people would call police.

The video also showed the first police officer to arrive on the scene, finding the 16-year-old standing in his uncle’s driveway. The officer calmly told the teenager to put down the weapon and Turley to put down the camera. The officer didn’t draw his gun.

Rideout said the video was shot after Turley and his nephew had played a video game in which one character wears a turban and carries a grenade launcher.

Turley’s arrest came nearly two months after the hoax. Police left the scene that day without making any arrests. But Turley was later arrested after police interviewed people who called emergency services and later saw the video posted on YouTube.

Police Agencies Are Assembling Records of DNA

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Police Agencies Are Assembling Records of DNA

Mark Makela for The New York Times

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

Published: June 12, 2013

Slowly, and largely under the radar, a growing number of local law enforcement agencies across the country have moved into what had previously been the domain of the F.B.I. and state crime labs — amassing their own DNA databases of potential suspects, some collected with the donors’ knowledge, and some without it.

And that trend — coming at a time of heightened privacy concerns after recent revelations of secret federal surveillance of telephone calls and Internet traffic — is expected only to accelerate after the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding a Maryland statute allowing the authorities to collect DNA samples from those arrested for serious crimes.

These local databases operate under their own rules, providing the police much more leeway than state and federal regulations. And the police sometimes collect samples from far more than those convicted of or arrested for serious offenses — in some cases, innocent victims of crimes who do not necessarily realize their DNA will be saved for future searches.

New York City has amassed a database with the profiles of 11,000 crime suspects. In Orange County, Calif., the district attorney’s office has 90,000 profiles, many obtained from low-level defendants who give DNA as part of a plea bargain or in return for having the charges against them dropped. In Central Florida, several law enforcement agencies have pooled their DNA databases. A Baltimore database contains DNA from more than 3,000 homicide victims.

These law enforcement agencies are no longer content to rely solely on the highly regulated network of state and federal DNA databases, which have been more than two decades in the making and represent one of the most significant developments in the history of law enforcement in this country.

The reasons vary. Some police chiefs are frustrated with the time it can take for state crime labs to test evidence and enter DNA profiles into the existing databases. Others want to compile DNA profiles from suspects or low-level offenders long before their DNA might be captured by the state or national databases, which typically require conviction or arrest.

“Unfortunately, what goes into the national database are mostly reference swabs of people who are going to prison,” said Jay Whitt of the company DNA:SI Labs, which sells DNA testing and database services to police departments. “They’re not the ones we’re dealing with day in day out, the ones still on the street just slipping under the radar.”

The rise in these local databases has aroused concerns among some critics, worried about both the lax rules governing them and the privacy issues they raise.

“We have been warning law enforcement that when public attention began to focus on these rogue, unregulated databases, people would be disturbed,” said Barry Scheck, a co-director of the Innocence Project, which seeks to exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners. “Law enforcement has just gone ahead and started collecting DNA samples from suspects in an unregulated fashion.”

For their part, law enforcement officials say that the crime-solving benefits of local databases are dramatic.

“Our take is that it’s good for law enforcement and good for the community,” [well great for the law enforcement police state, but horrible for the community] said Doug Muldoon, police chief of Palm Bay, a city of about 100,000 in Central Florida, about its database, which has produced 1,000 matches. He said his officers could now use DNA to address the crime conditions “in our community — property crimes and burglaries.” State crime labs can take months to analyze evidence from low-level felonies like that, he said.

As local authorities devise their own policies, they are increasingly taking DNA from people on the mere suspicion of a crime, long before any arrest, and holding on to it regardless of the outcome. Often detectives get DNA samples simply by asking suspects for them.

Other times, investigators take DNA surreptitiously, from discarded trash. Or the DNA might originate from a warrant issued in a specific case, authorizing the authorities to compare it against crime scene evidence — with the resulting profile then stored in a database for future use.

In some jurisdictions, it is not only suspects whose DNA goes into the database, but occasionally victims, too.

“If an officer goes to your house on a burglary, they will swab a door handle and then they will ask, ‘Can we get a sample from the homeowner so we can eliminate them as the source?’ ” Chief Muldoon said. “They say, ‘Sure.’ ”

The homeowner’s sample goes into the database, too, Chief Muldoon said. In many jurisdictions, so would samples from others even briefly considered potential suspects.

“That’s so profoundly disturbing — that you would give DNA to the police to clear yourself and then once cleared, the police use it to investigate you for other crimes, and retain it indefinitely,” said Stephen B. Mercer, the chief attorney of the forensics division of the Maryland public defender’s office and one of the lawyers involved in the case that resulted in the recent Supreme Court decision on DNA. “If that doesn’t strike at a core value of privacy, I don’t know what does.”

The Supreme Court’s decision last week, in Maryland v. King, was its first to squarely address DNA collection and databanking. While that decision said nothing explicit about the authority of local law enforcement to keep DNA databases, it could well encourage local jurisdictions to push ahead, several experts said.

“In light of the Supreme Court decision, more and more organizations are going to be doing this,” said Frederick Harran, the public safety director in Bensalem Township, a Philadelphia suburb that is aggressively building its own DNA database.

The court’s decision readily accepted the utility of DNA collection as a routine station house booking procedure, comparing it to fingerprinting.

“King is a green light,” said Erin E. Murphy, a New York University law professor who has written about DNA databases and DNA profiling. “It’s a ringing endorsement of DNA testing, and many law enforcement agencies would see this as a dramatic opportunity to expand DNA collection.”

It is not clear how many local jurisdictions maintain DNA databases. DNA SI Labs provides databanks for nine police departments, including those in Bensalem and Palm Bay, Mr. Whitt said, and has contracts with a dozen other departments to build more.

Palm Bay shares its database of 15,000 profiles with nearby departments, creating a regional pool. It is more common for prosecutors, the police and local crime labs to maintain their own DNA data, typically from suspects, which may be ineligible for upload to the national database.

Few states have laws regarding local DNA databases. Alaska prohibits them. California and Hawaii are explicit in not precluding them. In many states, including New York, the law is silent on the issue. And there is little consensus about what DNA retention policies are appropriate at the local level.

“There really are no rules as to what you can specifically keep,” said Jill Spriggs, who runs the Sacramento district attorney’s crime lab. “The forensic community is all over the board.”

The issues raised by these local databases include what type of DNA testing should be permitted. In Denver, which keeps a local database, the district attorney, Mitchell R. Morrissey, is a leading proponent of familial DNA searching. The technique uses special software not to identify matches, but for clues as to whether a relative of a person whose DNA is on file may be the source of crime scene DNA.

Because local databases operate without the stricter rules governing federal and local ones, local authorities have been able to set the pace for how DNA is collected and used in criminal investigations. That pace, experts say, could accelerate if rapid DNA testing devices capable of quickly developing DNA profiles from samples are deployed in station houses.

The ability to very quickly generate DNA profiles, experts say, could provide a greater incentive for local authorities to build and maintain their own database.

Mentioned in last week’s Supreme Court opinion, such technology is not yet generally in the hands of law enforcement, although the Palm Bay Police Department is field testing one such device.

Louis Scarcella frames innocent people for murder??????

I posted a previous article Louis Scarcella which said he may have framed as many as 50 people for murder.

Source

Several Murder Confessions Taken by Brooklyn Detective Have Similar Language

By FRANCES ROBLES

Published: June 12, 2013

As the Brooklyn homicide detective Louis Scarcella told it, the suspect in a ruthless home invasion that left one man dead and two more people in a coma started talking after just a few minutes of questioning.

“You got it right,” the suspect, Jabbar Washington, said. “I was there.”

The phrase was straightforward and damning, introducing the central piece of evidence that sent him to prison for 25 years to life. At the 1997 trial, Mr. Scarcella told the jury that it was the easiest confession he had obtained in more than two decades working for the Police Department.

But if the interrogation was unique for him, the wording was not. In at least four more murder cases, suspects questioned by Mr. Scarcella began their confessions with either “you got it right” or “I was there.”

Mr. Scarcella, 61, was a member of the Brooklyn North Homicide squad who developed a reputation for eliciting confessions when no other detective could. But questions about his credibility have led the Brooklyn district attorney’s office to reopen all of his trial convictions.

The similarity of the confessions, which was discovered in a review of cases by The New York Times, raises new doubts about the statements that Mr. Scarcella presented and that the prosecutors used to win convictions in dozens of murder cases. One of the men, David Ranta, who had spent more than two decades arguing that he never made the confession attributed to him that began “I was there,” has already been released from prison.

Defense lawyers fighting the convictions say the resemblance of statements attributed to inmates who shared nothing in common makes it more likely that Mr. Scarcella fabricated evidence, laying the groundwork for cases to be dismissed and millions to be paid in wrongful conviction lawsuits.

“It’s sort of beyond belief that it would be coincidental,” said Steven Banks, chief lawyer for the Legal Aid Society, which is reviewing 20 cases handled by Mr. Scarcella.

Mr. Scarcella, a 26-year veteran who retired in 1999, stood by his record, saying he was one of the best detectives in the department. As for the similarities, he said: “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. I will say this again: I have never fabricated a confession in my life.”

In a previous interview, Mr. Scarcella said that because of Mr. Ranta’s recent exoneration, inmates now considered him a “get-out-of-jail-free key.”

However, records show that in many cases, the allegations of misconduct and manufactured confessions are not new.

Mr. Washington, who is still in prison for the 1995 killing of Ronald Ellis, took the stand in his trial and testified that Mr. Scarcella provided the script for the confession. The detective, he said, grabbed him by the neck and testicles and forced him to sign his name to a document the detective wrote. “He always said the cop fed him what to say,” said Mark Pollard, who was Mr. Washington’s lawyer at the trial.

Mr. Washington, who was 23 during the trial, had an alibi, and the survivors of the shooting were unable to identify him in court, leaving the confession as the crux of the prosecution’s case. Mr. Washington’s claim of a forced confession was undermined, prosecutors wrote in response to his appeal, by a video of the confession that showed he did not appear to be looking to Mr. Scarcella for cues.

“The D.A. broke the confession down and tried to show it was extemporaneous,” Mr. Pollard said. “But I would not accept these similarities as coincidence. It definitely doesn’t smell right.”

By then the language had already appeared in several other cases. One of them centered on a 1994 arson in Williamsburg in which two people died. The suspect, Hector Lopez, had been entangled in a dispute with his former girlfriend and her new boyfriend, both of whom survived, and was accused of setting the man’s building on fire.

After about 12 hours in custody, Mr. Scarcella said that Mr. Lopez began to weep and said: “You guys got it right.”

Mr. Lopez, who was confronted with other evidence like a gas can in his car, is serving 25 years to life at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, N.Y. But his lawyer, William Loeb, wrote in an appeal that discrepancies between the confession and evidence suggested “the disturbing likelihood” that Mr. Scarcella had made up the confession.

Pierre Sussman, Mr. Ranta’s lawyer, said that was precisely what Mr. Scarcella did with Mr. Ranta, who in 1990 was an unemployed drug addict when the detective questioned him for the killing of a Hasidic rabbi. Mr. Scarcella testified that he was at central booking with Mr. Ranta when his prisoner did an about-face and decided to come clean about the robbery and shooting.

Mr. Scarcella said he scribbled the man’s exact words on the back of a manila envelope, starting with “I was there.”

Mr. Ranta, who has frequently said he never confessed to the detective, was exonerated in March after 23 years in prison. “If you take a look at statements given to Detective Scarcella, and they start out the same way — ‘I was there’ — and then follow with a narrative, that’s a huge problem,” Mr. Sussman said. “It’s a sign that it may be Scarcella’s words, and not the suspects’.”

Scholars who study police interrogations say it is not uncommon for confessions to include traces of the detective’s speech, particularly law enforcement jargon the suspect was unlikely to have used without prompting. In addition, sometimes a detective will prompt a person to admit being present at the crime scene, while still playing down the role in the crime, a technique known as minimizing, which has been cited as sometimes leading to false confessions.

“It’s hard to imagine all five people used the same exact words,” said Richard Leo, a University of San Francisco law professor who specializes in confessions. “It almost sounds like a template.”

The phrases still seemed etched in Mr. Scarcella’s memory. Even in spontaneous retellings of various confessions in recent years, he has reached for those exact words.

In an interview with The New York Post last month, he said he still remembered Mr. Ranta’s confession from a quarter century earlier: “I said: ‘You come from 66th Street. I come from 66th Street. We’re both Italian. Why don’t you tell me the truth?’ So he says, ‘Yeah, you’re right. I was there.’ ”

And talking about a different case during an appearance on the “Dr. Phil” television program in 2007, where he discussed the tactics he used to get suspects to admit their misdeeds, Mr. Scarcella recalled a similar conversation with a suspect. “He says to me, ‘Louis, you were right. I was there, but he kicked me, and I shot him by accident.’ I said, ‘Don’t you feel better now?’ And he’s now doing 37 ½ years to life.”

Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, has declined to publicly identify the 50 cases that are under review by the office’s Conviction Integrity Unit. So it is unclear how many more may have featured such language.

“We are looking for certain patterns,” said Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the office. The wording “may be a pattern.”

An earlier examination by The Times also showed that Mr. Scarcella used the same crack-addicted prostitute as a witness in a series of unrelated murder cases.

The Legal Aid Society was informed by the office that 20 of the cases under review involved the agency’s clients. At the request of The Times, the organization’s lawyers reviewed those cases and found two with similar wording at the start of the confession. They declined to reveal the names but said both defendants served about 14 years in prison for shootings that took place in the 1990s, six years apart.

“One of the confessions includes ‘I was there’ and the other says, ‘I want to tell you the truth: you are right,’ ” Mr. Banks said. “Given the patterns that are emerging, clearly that gives great concern about the detective’s techniques.”

We "MUST" be able to trust our Valley law enforcement officials

Source

Richardson: We must be able to trust our Valley law enforcement officials

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Posted: Thursday, June 13, 2013 11:15 am

Guest Commentary by Bill Richardson

You can’t pick up the paper or turn on the news without hearing about yet another Arizona police officer being fired or investigated for a crime or violating their department’s rules of conduct. [And you never hear about the hundreds more that commit crimes against the people they pretend to serve and don't make it to the news]

Last Saturday’s Arizona Republic told about a member of the Phoenix Police Department’s DUI unit being investigated for filing a false police report and insurance fraud. He reportedly lied about his stolen truck. Last July a Phoenix sergeant was caught on video stealing cash from a business during a burglary investigation.

On Friday the Republic reported an ex-con who was friendly with deputies at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office obtained a sheriff’s badge and access to county vehicles, uniforms and was impersonating a deputy. The list of misconduct at MCSO is lengthy. Last April a deputy pled guilty to stealing $5,000. Another deputy just pled guilty to beating a man and faces prison.

Last week an ex-Tempe officer was jailed for stealing city property. Earlier in the year a Tempe detective pled guilty to stealing evidence from the police station. A few weeks ago a Tempe officer was allowed to retire after he lied to get a search warrant. [Instead of being fired like he should have been, and slapped with criminal charges of perjury like a civilian would have been.] In December a Tempe detective reportedly violated internal policies and procedures, lied to a murder victim’s mother and botched a murder investigation along with several other serious felonies. He still has his job.

A Mesa police sergeant was indicted last summer. A Coolidge sergeant was arrested for beating his wife and a Pinal deputy was investigated for homicide.

In December it was reported a police motorcycle gang was involved in a drunken melee that sent a citizen to the hospital. Criminal charges are pending. [Yea, but don't count on it. Crooked cops are rarely charged with crimes. Of course if a civilian had committed the same crime he would still be in jail waiting to go to trial]

For whatever reason Arizona seems to be plagued with excessive police misconduct. The problems aren’t just with lower ranking officers. [You forgot to mention Sheriff Joe, he is the biggest criminal in Maricopa County]

In my April 20, 2012 column (Arizona lacking in good, honest law enforcement leaders,” evtnow.com/5ju) I wrote about the reported integrity and conduct issues of two sheriffs, the MCSO ex-chief deputy, the ex-Glendale, Quartzite and Glendale police chiefs, the current Tempe chief, the Arizona Attorney General and the head of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Since I wrote that column a Glendale assistant police chief has been demoted for intimidating a business owner.

Law enforcement officers are only as good as their leadership. Weak and corruptive leadership can trickle down and negatively affect an agencies organizational integrity and effectiveness.

The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, or AZPOST, is the agency that licenses officers and operates under the wing of DPS. AZPOST has no standards for what it takes to be a police chief and has been hit and miss when it comes to holding some officers accountable for their conduct. In many cases new police chiefs and command officers aren’t required to submit to a polygraph or a new background investigation. [Look Bill, even though I hate corrupt cops, a lie detector test or polygraph test is a subjective tool that is worthless in rooting out corrupt cops. That is why it's not allowed to be used as evidence in courts]

AZPOST allowed a fired Chandler officer who cost the city millions after his negligence resulted in the deaths of two people to keep his officer’s license. They refused to take action against the Tempe detective who botched the murder case I mentioned above. Lying by a police officer in Arizona is no longer sure grounds to lose your license. Lying by an officer can’t be tolerated in any form. [But of course it is a crime for us civilians to lie to cops and people who do it are routinely arrested and punished. On the other hand the Supreme Court has said a number of times it is OK for cops to lie to civilians to trick them into confession to crimes. And the "9 Step Reid Method" which is used by most police departments across the USA and world is based on using LIES to get suspects to confess!!!!]

With the serious corruptive influences from Mexican Drug Cartels ever present in Arizona, the integrity of our police should be of utmost concern.

Several officers who work for a department with a history of problems told me they’re proud to wear the badge, but ashamed of the departmental patch.

Just one bad officer can cause the public to distrust the police. [Sadly it ain't just ONE corrupt cop, the police have more corrupt cops then honest ones] It’s not fair to the officers who serve honorably to be painted with the same brush as the crooked officers who continually make the news. It’s also not fair to us. If we want a safe community to live in we must be able to trust the police and their leadership unequivocally. [And that isn't going to happen. So if you want to keep the system from screwing you you should figure out right now that the police are corrupt to the core and can't be trusted for ANYTHING]

• Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Surprise Police Chief Michael Frazier supports his racist cops???

Source

Chief stands by force in DUI case

By D.S. Woodfill Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Jun 13, 2013 11:13 PM

Surprise’s chief of police on Thursday released a detailed account of police interactions with a man who has accused the department of racial profiling in a $500,000 claim.

Jessie Thornton, a 64-year-old retired firefighter who moved to Surprise in 2008, said in court documents that Surprise police arrested him on suspicion of drunken driving on Dec. 7 despite a test that showed he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.00. He later also cleared a blood screening for intoxicating substances.

Thornton, who is African-American, said he felt targeted in a string of traffic stops by Surprise police. Thornton worked for the Akron Fire Department for 29 years in Ohio. He retired in 2007 and moved to Surprise with his wife, a nurse who works for a local hospital.

Chief Michael Frazier presented a report to the City Council Thursdaydetailing all of the contacts the department has had with Thornton. There were seven from March 2009 to December 2012, when he was pulled over on suspicion of DUI.

One police interaction with Thornton was for a traffic accident in which Thornton was rear-ended while he waited at a red light, according to the report. The others were traffic stops for alleged speeding violations and failure to obey a traffic-control device, among other things.

Thornton was cited by the officers during two of the traffic stops, according to the report. One was in April 2010 when a “patrol officer observed a vehicle fail to obey a traffic control device at the intersection of West Bell Road and North Dysart Road.”

Thornton was cited for lacking proof of insurance and not having a driver’s license in his possession. “The officer chose to warn Mr. Thornton about the ‘Failure to Obey a Traffic Control Device’ violation,” the report said.

Thornton later presented his driver’s license and proof of insurance to the court and was found “to be not responsible and the case was listed as completed.”

The other citation was issued in December 2010 after an officer said he spotted Thornton driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone, swerving and changing lanes without signaling. Thornton was cited for failing to signal but was warned about his speed and not having a driver’s license in his possession.

Thornton chose to fight the citation in Surprise City Court, which found him “not responsible.”

Thornton said police never caught him speeding with an enforcement device and that he always had his driver’s license despite the city’s claims.

“I put my driver’s license in my gym bag when I go to the (gym) or when I leave,” he said. “Every time they said I didn’t have a valid driver’s license, it was in my gym bag in the back seat or the trunk.”

In a memo to the council, Frazier called statements about Thornton’s case “provocative and sensationalized.”

“I am sharing this report with you as I believe it is critical that you and our residents have accurate information on this matter,” Frazier wrote.

The department and city have declined to comment further on the case.

Marc Victor, Thornton’s attorney, disputed Frazier’s report.

“I don’t think there’s any dispute that his blood came back negative for everything,” Victor said. “I don’t think there’s any dispute that the Surprise Police Department’s own drug-recognition expert concluded that there was no evidence to think that he was impaired at all.

“There’s no sensationalizing there. Those are the facts as reported by Surprise PD.”

Profanity on speeding ticket leads to arrest, suit

Profanity on speeding ticket leads to arrest, suit

Associated Press Thu Jun 13, 2013 11:40 AM

LIBERTY, N.Y.— A 22-year-old Connecticut man who wrote obscenities and “Tyranny” on his speeding ticket payment claims in a federal lawsuit that his free speech rights were violated when he was arrested.

William Barboza is suing two police officers in the Catskill-area village of Liberty over the arrest.

Barboza had replaced the word “Liberty” with “Tyranny” and added an obscenity-laced insult on the payment form accompanying an August 2012 ticket.

The lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union says the Fairfield County man was ordered to town court, where he was handcuffed and arrested for aggravated harassment. He posted $200 bail that day. The charge was dismissed in March.

The NYCLU argues that offensive language is protected speech.

There was no immediate comment from Liberty police.

Effort to legalize marijuana launched in Arizona

Effort to legalize marijuana launched in Arizona

Posted: Friday, June 14, 2013 8:04 am

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

Voters who have seen how medical marijuana works in Arizona may get a chance to extend the ability to use the drug to all other adults.

Proponents of legalization filed the necessary paperwork Wednesday to start gathering the 259,213 signatures they need to put the issue of legalization on the 2014 ballot. They have through July 3, 2014.

The proposed constitutional amendment would do more than allow both the possession of marijuana and its sale at retail outlets.

It also would alter drunk-driving laws so that the mere presence of a metabolite of the drug in a motorist's system is not, by itself, proof the person was legally impaired. Instead, it would be one bit of evidence that could be offered -- but legally insufficient without a video of any field sobriety tests.

Robert Clark, chairman of the Safer Arizona Committee which is pushing the measure, said this is particularly important, as metabolites of marijuana remain in the blood for a long period after someone has used the drug.

Dennis Bohlke, treasurer of the campaign, tried a similar campaign for the 2010 ballot, proposing to make the possession of up to four ounces of marijuana a petty offense, punishable by only a $300 fine. But he gave up after his plan wound up in competition with the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act which eventually was approved by voters.

This new measure is actually far more expansive than Bohlke's 2010 effort, with marijuana possession and sale to adults actually legalized. The only role of the state and local governments would be to regulate it, as it does alcohol, with Arizona entitled to collect a 15 percent excise tax on purchases as well as state and local sales taxes.

Bohlke acknowledged that the medical marijuana initiative was approved by just a narrow margin, actually going down to defeat in 12 of the state's 15 counties. But he said even his far more expansive proposal for outright legalization should have no problem getting approved.

"Three years has made a big difference,'' he said, saying polls show more people support legalizing marijuana now than when he made his first proposal. And Bohlke pointed out that voters in Colorado and Washington have since made marijuana possession legal.

All that, however, presumes Clark and Bohlke can get the measure on the ballot.

At this point they are waging what they say is a "grassroots'' efforts, meaning they have no money for paid circulators. But Clark said they have been promised financial support from national groups for the actual campaign if he can manage to get the necessary signatures.

The change in drunk-driving laws alone would be significant.

In a ruling earlier this year, the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld existing laws which say the presence of any metabolite of marijuana in a motorist's blood, in any amount, is sufficient to sustain a charge of driving under the influence of drugs, a variant of state DUI laws. Clark said that's not fair.

"There's no correlation between the amount of cannaboids in your system and impairment,'' he said. Clark said it can vary among individuals based on how much they've used and how long they have been using the drug.

"We're not advocating for people to go out there and smoke cannabis while they're driving and endanger somebody else,'' he said. "But we want to also be fair and not set up ways for the state to continue to fill our jails up and our prisons up with people that are using cannabis.''

For Bohlke, the issue is more than academic. He said he has charged by Scottsdale police with driving under the influence of drugs based on the presence of metabolites in his blood.

PGP - Pretty Good Privacy - Use it to encrypt your data

Personally I suspect that if you can encrypt it the government can decrypt it. The only question is how long will it take for the government to decrypt it and how much will it cost the government to decrypt it.

When Phil Zimmermann first invented PGP the US government threatened to put him in jail if he gave people outside of the USA copies of the software. The government says PGP is a munition and therefor subject to the governments control.

Phil Zimmermann got around that problem and put the source code on the internet and the cat has been out of the bag since then. The government didn't carry out it's threat to put him in jail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security of e-mail communications. It was created by Phil Zimmermann in 1991.

http://www.gnupg.org/

The free version of PGP

http://www.pgpi.org/

More free PGP software

http://www.symantec.com/encryption

The commercial version of PGP

http://cryptography.org/getpgp.htm

Where to get PGP

http://www.openpgp.org/

http://philzimmermann.com/EN/findpgp/ http://philzimmermann.com/EN/findpgp/

Presidente Vicente Fox, defendió su propuesta para la legalización de la mariguana

Source

Fracaso total, guerra de Calderón: Fox

Por: EL UNIVERSAL/México, DF

El ex presidente de la República, Vicente Fox, defendió su propuesta para la legalización de la mariguana y señaló que la estrategia en contra del narcotráfico emprendida por su predecesor, el panista Felipe Calderón, fue un fracaso "absoluto y total".

Propuesta. El ex presidente de la República, Vicente Fox, defendió su propuesta para la legalización de la mariguana.

Entrevistado en el canal "Foro TV", Fox reiteró que el enfoque de enfrentarse frontalmente contra los narcotraficantes es errado:

"Hay que distinguir (la) guerra contra las drogas de Nixon, (y la) guerra contra los cárteles y los criminales de Calderón, ambas fracaso absoluto y total".

Recordó que en el último año de su gobierno, el índice de homicidios y de crímenes en México tuvo su nivel más bajo en toda la historia del país, con nueve delitos por cada 100 mil habitantes.

"Y hoy estamos en 24. Algo que me mueve a tomar la postura que he tomado es lo que ha sucedido a partir de entonces".

El pasado miércoles, Fox avaló la legalización de las drogas e incluso dijo que de ser legal, él mismo cultivaría mariguana.

Dijo que las muertes ocasionadas por el crimen organizado han ocasionado una pérdida de turismo en el país, así como una disminución de inversión extranjera directa.

"Hoy se ve a México lleno de sangre y tratamos de ocultarlo pero esa es la cruda realidad en las mesas de los inversionistas, en las mesas de los turistas, el precio es ya demasiado y si encima ponemos la pérdida de esperanza que es lo que al final esto representa para los jóvenes, es urgente buscar salidas", dijo.

Obama Africa trip to cost $60 to $100 million

Source

Source: President Obama Africa trip could cost $60 million

By Carol D. Leonnig and David Nakamura The Washington Post Fri Jun 14, 2013 10:22 AM

When President Obama makes his first extended trip to sub-Saharan Africa this month, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be taking any chances.

Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.

Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bullet­proof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.

The elaborate security provisions — which will cost the government tens of millions of dollars — are outlined in a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post. While the preparations appear to be in line with similar travels in the past, the document offers an unusual glimpse into the colossal efforts to protect the U.S. commander in chief on trips abroad.

Any journey by the president, such as one scheduled next week for Northern Ireland and Germany, is an immense and costly logistical challenge. But the trip to Africa is complicated by a confluence of factors that could make it one of the most expensive of Obama’s tenure, according to people familiar with the planning.

The first family is making back-to-back stops from June 26 to July 3 in three countries where U.S. officials are providing nearly all the resources, rather than depending heavily on local police forces, military authorities or hospitals for assistance.

The president and first lady had also planned to take a Tanzanian safari as part of the trip, which would have required the president’s special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could neutralize cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat, according to the planning document.

But officials said Thursday that the safari had been canceled in favor of a trip to Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner.

When The Post first asked White House officials about the safari last week, they said no final decision had been made. A White House official said Thursday that the cancellation was not related to The Post’s inquiries.

“We do not have a limitless supply of assets to support presidential missions, and we prioritized a visit to Robben Island over a two-hour safari in Tanzania,” said spokesman Josh Earnest. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t do both.” [Well $60 to $100 million for a stinking trip to Africa is close to a limitless supply of assets]

Internal administration documents circulated in April show that the Obama family was scheduled to go to both Robben Island and the safari park, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also made trips to multiple African nations involving similarly laborious preparations. Bush went in 2003 and 2008, bringing his wife on both occasions. Bush’s two daughters went along on the first trip, which included a safari at a game preserve on the Botswana-South Africa border.

“Even in the most developed places of Western Europe, the level of support you need for mass movements by the president is really extraordinary,” said Steve Atkiss, who coordinated travel as special assistant for operations to Bush. “As you go farther afield, to less-developed places, certainly it’s more of a logistical challenge.”

White House and Secret Service officials declined to discuss the details of the security operations, and administration aides cautioned that the president’s itinerary is not finalized.

Obama’s overseas travels come as government agencies, including the Secret Service, are wrestling with mandatory, across-the-board spending cuts. The service has had to slice $84 million from its budget this year, and this spring the agency canceled public White House tours to save $74,000 a week in overtime costs.

Many details about foreign presidential trips are classified for national security reasons, and there is little public information about overall costs. A report from the Government Accountability Office found that Clinton’s 1998 trip to six African nations cost the U.S. government at least $42.7 million. Most of that was incurred by the military, which made 98 airlift missions to transport personnel and vehicles, and set up temporary medical evacuation units in five countries.

That figure did not include costs borne by the Secret Service, which were considered classified.

Obama’s trip could cost the federal government $60 million to $100 million based on the costs of similar African trips in recent years, according to one person familiar with the journey, who was not authorized to speak for attribution. The Secret Service planning document, which was provided to The Post by a person who is concerned about the amount of resources necessary for the trip, does not specify costs.

“The infrastructure that accompanies the president’s travels is beyond our control,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “The security requirements are not White House-driven, they are Secret Service-driven.”

Current and former government security officials involved in presidential trips said White House staff also help determine what’s required, because they plan the visits and parameters. The Secret Service and military respond to that itinerary by providing what their agencies consider the required security.

White House officials said the trip was long overdue, marking Obama’s first visit as president to sub-Saharan Africa aside from a 22-hour stopover in Ghana in 2009. The emerging democracies on the itinerary are crucial partners in regional security conflicts, Rhodes said.

Obama will hold bilateral meetings with each country’s leader and seek to forge stronger economic ties at a time when China is investing heavily in Africa. He also will highlight global health programs, including HIV/AIDS prevention.

The first lady, who toured South Africa and Botswana without the president in 2011, will headline some events on her own during the week. The stops will add to the logistical challenges, because she will require her own security detail and vehicles, the planning document shows.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan declined to discuss details of the journey. “We always provide the appropriate level of protection to create a secure environment,” he said.

According to the Secret Service document, Obama will spend a night in Dakar, Senegal, two nights in Johannesburg, a night in Cape Town and one night in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Among the 56 vehicles for the trip are parade limousines for the president and first lady, a specialized communications vehicle for secure telephone and video connections, a truck that jams radio frequencies around the presidential motorcade, a fully loaded ambulance that can handle biological or chemical contaminants and a truck for X-ray equipment.

The Secret Service transports such vehicles, along with bulletproof glass, on most trips, including those inside the United States, White House officials said. But with quick stops in three countries, the agency will need three sets of each, because there is not enough time to transfer the equipment, according to the planning document.

One hundred agents are needed as “post-standers” — to man security checkpoints and borders around the president — in each of the first three cities he visits. Sixty-five are needed to meet up with Obama in Dar es Salaam. Before the safari in Mikumi National Park was canceled this week, an additional 35 post-standers had been slated to protect the Obamas and their two daughters there, according to the document.

In addition, 80 to 100 additional agents will be flown in to work rotating shifts, with round-the-clock coverage, for Obama’s and his family’s security details, counterassault teams and logistics coordinators.

The planning document does not provide a total number of how many individual agents will be involved in the trip; some will work in more than one location.

Officials said the Secret Service does not want the president traveling anywhere without a top-rated trauma center nearby. The White House medical unit makes decisions about which foreign hospitals meet its standards when it makes advance visits to the locations for planned trips, officials said.

In much of the developing world, the U.S. Navy provides a “floating hospital” on an aircraft carrier or amphibious ship nearby, officials said.

“This is what you need to support the American presidency,” Atkiss said of the requirements, “regardless of who the president is.”

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Fears of National ID With Immigration Bill

Fears of National ID With Immigration Bill

By ERIC LIPTON

Published: June 15, 2013

WASHINGTON — Driver’s license photographs and biographic information of most Americans would be accessible through an expanded Department of Homeland Security nationwide computer network if the immigration legislation pending before the Senate becomes law.

The proposed expansion is part of an effort to crack down on illegal immigration by requiring all employers to confirm the identity and legal status of any new workers by tapping into a Homeland Security Department system called E-Verify, which is now used voluntarily by about 7 percent of employers in the United States.

But the proposal already faces objections from some civil liberties lawyers and certain members of Congress, who worry about the potential for another sprawling data network that could ultimately be the equivalent of a national ID system.

The questions are being raised while a debate takes places over access to domestic phone records and Internet files of foreigners.

“Over time, this could become a single, national, searchable database of vital biographic information and photographs of nearly every American,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware. “I want to make sure we embed privacy protections in the system, both in how it is built and administered so that data cannot easily be stolen, and also that the information is only used for legitimate purposes.”

Homeland Security Department officials consider such fears unwarranted because E-Verify simply reaches out to other existing government computer systems, like Social Security records or passport records, to confirm a person’s identity and work eligibility.

“It is not a stand-alone database that collects and stores,” said Christopher Bentley, a spokesman at the department’s Citizenship and Immigration Services division, which runs E-Verify. “It pings the other databases that are already established for confirmation, and once that process is complete the information disappears.”

E-Verify would have to be greatly expanded if the immigration bill is passed, because within four years all employers would have to electronically submit information gathered from new employees, including citizens, to confirm that they are eligible to work in the United States.

Alex Conant, a spokesman for Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, whose staff helped write the language in the Senate bill, said the E-Verify changes would make it harder for someone who has entered the country illegally to find a job and would accomplish this without creating a national identification card.

“The system we currently have is full of fraud and contributes to illegal immigration,” Mr. Conant said. “This proposed system protects individual civil liberties while giving employers the tools to make sure their employees are legal.”

To prevent a job applicant from using fraudulent credentials — as often occurs with illegal immigrants — the legislation mandates the expansion of a photo-based confirmation system. It would allow employers to compare a photo on a driver’s license or a passport with what should be a replica of that photo maintained by the agency that issued the identification document.

Since late 2010, the Homeland Security Department has had access to the 113 million State Department passport records and photos to help prevent abuse. But the Senate bill would direct the department to expand the photo program by offering grants to states if they allow the department to tap into their driver’s license photo records, and also makes it clear that allowing such access would not represent a violation of a federal privacy law.

Currently, only Mississippi allows the department into its motor vehicle database, Mr. Bentley said, and only for biographic information, like name and date of birth, not photographs.

But several civil liberties lawyers and lawmakers have said they were concerned that an expanded E-Verify — if it had access to all 212 million driver’s license records in the United States — would soon be tapped by other federal agencies, like the Transportation Security Administration at airport checkpoints or the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a search for suspects.

Just as Social Security numbers became adopted for identification uses never intended, E-Verify, they say, would draw many unexpected uses.

“We are wary of giving the federal government this kind of centralized power over our daily lives,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, wrote in an opinion article in The Washington Times, opposing the plan for expanding the E-Verify system.

The Senate legislation makes it clear that the proposed law should not be interpreted to “permit or allow” any other government agency to use the E-Verify data for any purpose other than employment verification. But it does not explicitly prohibit such a use, as the law governing the census does, critics said.

In fact, privacy guidelines issued by the Homeland Security Department governing E-Verify say it may, on a case-by-case basis, “give law enforcement agencies extracts of information on potential fraud, discrimination or other illegal activities.”

Mr. Bentley said this provision was intended to prevent individual cases of wrongdoing, and not to allow broad searches of the data that are linked together by the E-Verify system.

Mr. Conant said Senator Rubio would consider amendments to the legislation to address privacy concerns about the proposals.

“Given the justified concerns that many Americans have with the current administration’s overreach,” Mr. Conant said in a statement, “we are open to refinements that would further restrict the government’s use of this technology, without undermining the ability of employers to ensure undocumented immigrants are not illegally obtaining employment.”

L.A. County court cuts to result in longer waits for public

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L.A. County court cuts to result in longer waits for public

By Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times

June 12, 2013, 4:35 p.m.

If you want to sue your landlord, divorce your spouse or fight a traffic ticket this year, you'll probably pay more, travel farther and wait longer.

As a result of the latest round of deep cuts to Los Angeles County's court system, court reporters will no longer be provided for most civil cases. Traffic courts will be clogged — already, they are so busy that people at the end of long lines are given vouchers guaranteeing them a spot near the front of the line the next day.

A projected $85-million budget shortfall for the fiscal year beginning July 1 prompted the cuts, forcing the closure of seven regional courthouses this month and the elimination of more than 500 jobs.

Justice won't be denied, Presiding Judge David S. Wesley said. But for many, it certainly will be delayed.

"It's the biggest change in the way law has been practiced in Los Angeles County in the history of the court," said Wesley, who has been in charge of cutting the county's court budget.

Los Angeles has the state's largest court system with about 4,400 employees, some 540 judges and an annual operating budget last year of $734 million. Wesley said the cuts he's made address about $56 million of the shortfall. A deal worked out this week between Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators agreed to restore about $20 million in funding to the county's courts. Reimbursements from the state and the use of some bond money should close the L.A. County courts' remaining budget gap, officials said.

Over the last five years, the judiciary's general fund support has been slashed by more than 65%, officials said. The courts have supplemented the budget by tapping into reserve funds and taking money that had been earmarked for capital improvements and technology upgrades. Now, those sources of funds have been largely drained.

On Friday, 177 people will lose their jobs, court officials announced this week. An additional 139 people will receive demotions and pay cuts, 223 will be transferred to other work locations and some positions will go unfilled, officials said. Including this round of cuts, the court has lost nearly 1,400 positions since 2008, said Mary Hearn, a court spokeswoman.

The Metropolitan Courthouse, a traffic court in downtown Los Angeles, already had problems dealing with the caseload, and the situation is likely to get worse, officials said. The court is expected to receive more than 50,000 additional traffic cases this year because of the elimination of traffic courts elsewhere, according to court officials.

Earlier this week, the line outside the courthouse stretched around the building. Christy Harutunian, 23, was at the end of the line, clutching her paperwork. She said she traveled from her home in Glendale to resolve a traffic ticket from February 2012 for making an illegal lane change while driving home from school. She was fined $300.

Harutunian, a USC pharmacy student, had to make the trip Monday because the court had neglected to send her traffic school paperwork to the Department of Motor Vehicles, she said. Including travel time, it took her most of the afternoon to resolve the problem, she said.

L.A. County Superior Court used to have a traffic call center offering operator assistance, but that was eliminated in an earlier round of budget cuts.

Under Wesley's cost-cutting plan, several case types, such as small claims and personal injury lawsuits, have been consolidated to a handful of locations throughout the county, called "hub" courts. The number of courts hearing eviction cases, for example, has been reduced to 5 from 26.

Court employees recently unloaded 90 large boxes of files at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, which is absorbing thousands of cases as it becomes a hub location for several types of litigation. In one closed courtroom, filing cabinets now stand in the place of audience benches. There is now a three-month backlog of unprocessed records there.

Seven L.A. County courthouses shut their doors this month: Whittier, Huntington Park, Pomona North, Malibu, West Los Angeles, San Pedro and the David V. Kenyon Juvenile Justice Center in South Los Angeles. The San Pedro Courthouse Annex on Beacon Street closed earlier this year.

Humberto Benitez, a public defender who worked at Kenyon and was reassigned this month to the Airport Courthouse, said Kenyon's closure will hit the community hard. Attorneys, he said, are concerned that young people will not attend their court hearings if they have to travel farther to reach larger, more crowded courthouses.

The court cuts are not only inconvenient for litigants, officials said, they also are costing them more money.

In her State of the Judiciary address in March, California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said courts statewide have needed to impose higher filing fees and higher fines to offset some of the cuts.

"All of us are concerned that the high fines and higher penalties are falling on those least able to afford it," she said, adding that she worried the judicial branch "may become a user-fee institution."

Statewide, the first filing fee for a general civil case has increased to $435 from $320 in 2008. Divorce filing have also increased by more than 35% over that time period to $435 today. The cost of getting a certified copy of a court document has increased to $25 from $15.

Wesley said that civil courts have born the brunt of the cuts because criminal courts are so important to public safety. But civil courts, he said, also deal with important and urgent matters, such as restraining orders and custody battles.

"We are a place of last resort for people in distress that have issues, and it doesn't matter if they're rich people or poor people," he said. "So when I cut those services, everybody's going to suffer."

hailey.branson@latimes.com

Aaron Smith, Ex-Tempe Cop, Gets 90 Days in Jail for Being a Petty Thief

Aaron Smith, Ex-Tempe Cop, Gets 90 Days in Jail for Being a Petty Thief

By Matthew Hendley Fri., Jun. 7 2013 at 12:25 PM

Aaron Smith, the former Tempe patrol officer who decided to steal from the most cop-filled building in the City of Tempe -- the police department -- was sentenced today to 90 days in jail.

Smith lost his job, and now has a criminal record and has to serve jail time because he just needed some cash, bikes, and a GPS unit that didn't even work, telling his fellow officers that he was suffering from "extreme financial hardship."

Officers around the Tempe Police Department started noticing in July 2012 that stuff around the department started to go missing, and that stuff just happened to go missing during Smith's shift, in the general areas where Smith had access.

The big-ticket item was a lock box that was broken into, which had around $750 in it, police said.

Police decided to test out the theory that Smith was their guy, as an undercover detective gave Smith a purse with $142 in it, telling him it was found property.

About three days later, neither the purse nor the money had been impounded.

Smith was arrested that morning, as police served search warrants on his house, cars, and work locker. Two Tempe Police Department bicycles were found at Smith's house, as was the purse, which didn't have any of the money left in it.

Smith admitted to the thefts, and claimed that he got the bicycles for his children, while he tossed the GPS unit in the garbage, apparently after he found out that it wouldn't work.

Police valued Smith's total haul was just over $1,000, which as the reward certainly didn't seem to outweigh the risk for a 7 1/2-year veteran.Smith initially faced charges of felony theft, burglary, and tampering with evidence, as well as misdemeanor theft, but as part of a plea agreement, he pleaded guilty to a single theft charge.

In addition to the 90 days in jail, Smith was also sentenced to three years of probation.

Secret Court Ruling Put Tech Companies in Data Bind

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Secret Court Ruling Put Tech Companies in Data Bind

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Published: June 13, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO — In a secret court in Washington, Yahoo’s top lawyers made their case. The government had sought help in spying on certain foreign users, without a warrant, and Yahoo had refused, saying the broad requests were unconstitutional.

The judges disagreed. That left Yahoo two choices: Hand over the data or break the law.

So Yahoo became part of the National Security Agency’s secret Internet surveillance program, Prism, according to leaked N.S.A. documents, as did seven other Internet companies.

Like almost all the actions of the secret court, which operates under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the details of its disagreement with Yahoo were never made public beyond a heavily redacted court order, one of the few public documents ever to emerge from the court. The name of the company had not been revealed until now. Yahoo’s involvement was confirmed by two people with knowledge of the proceedings. Yahoo declined to comment.

But the decision has had lasting repercussions for the dozens of companies that store troves of their users’ personal information and receive these national security requests — it puts them on notice that they need not even try to test their legality. And despite the murky details, the case offers a glimpse of the push and pull among tech companies and the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that try to tap into the reams of personal data stored on their servers.

It also highlights a paradox of Silicon Valley: while tech companies eagerly vacuum up user data to track their users and sell ever more targeted ads, many also have a libertarian streak ingrained in their corporate cultures that resists sharing that data with the government.

“Even though they have an awful reputation on consumer privacy issues, when it comes to government privacy, they generally tend to put their users first,” said Christopher Soghoian, a senior policy analyst studying technological surveillance at the American Civil Liberties Union. “There’s this libertarian, pro-civil liberties vein that runs through the tech companies.”

Lawyers who handle national security requests for tech companies say they rarely fight in court, but frequently push back privately by negotiating with the government, even if they ultimately have to comply. In addition to Yahoo, which fought disclosures under FISA, other companies, including Google, Twitter, smaller communications providers and a group of librarians, have fought in court elements of National Security Letters, which the F.B.I. uses to secretly collect information about Americans. Last year, the government issued more than 1,850 FISA requests and 15,000 National Security Letters.

“The tech companies try to pick their battles,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at American University who has challenged government counterterrorism surveillance. “Behind the scenes, different tech companies show different degrees of cooperativeness or pugnaciousness.”

But Mr. Vladeck added that even if a company resisted, “that may not be enough, because any pushback is secret and at the end of the day, even the most well-intentioned companies are not going to be standing in the shoes of their customers.”

FISA requests can be as broad as seeking court approval to ask a company to turn over information about the online activities of people in a certain country. Between 2008 and 2012, only two of 8,591 applications were rejected, according to data gathered by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit research center in Washington. Without obtaining court approval, intelligence agents can then add more specific requests — like names of individuals and additional Internet services to track — every day for a year.

National Security Letters are limited to the name, address, length of service and toll billing records of a service’s subscribers.

Because national security requests ban recipients from even acknowledging their existence, it is difficult to know exactly how, and how often, the companies cooperate or resist. Small companies are more likely to take the government to court, lawyers said, because they have fewer government relationships and customers, and fewer disincentives to rock the boat. One of the few known challenges to a National Security Letter, for instance, came from a small Internet provider in New York, the Calyx Internet Access Corporation.

The Yahoo ruling, from 2008, shows the company argued that the order violated its users’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. The court called that worry “overblown.”

“Notwithstanding the parade of horribles trotted out by the petitioner, it has presented no evidence of any actual harm, any egregious risk of error, or any broad potential for abuse,” the court said, adding that the government’s “efforts to protect national security should not be frustrated by the courts.”

One of the most notable challenges to a National Security Letter came from an unidentified electronic communications service provider in San Francisco. In 2011, the company was presented with a letter from the F.B.I., asking for account information of a subscriber for an investigation into “international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”

The company went to court. In March, a Federal District Court judge, Susan Illston, ruled the information request unconstitutional, along with the gag order. The case is under appeal, which is why the company cannot be named.

Google filed a challenge this year against 19 National Security Letters in the same federal court, and in May, Judge Illston ruled against the company. Google was not identified in the case, but its involvement was confirmed by a person briefed on the case.

In 2011, Twitter successfully challenged a silence order on a National Security Letter related to WikiLeaks members.

Other companies are asking for permission to talk about national security requests. Google negotiated with Justice officials to publish the number of letters they received, and were allowed to say they each received between zero and 999 last year, as did Microsoft. The companies, along with Facebook and Twitter, said Tuesday that the government should give them more freedom to disclose national security requests.

The companies comply with a vast majority of nonsecret requests, including subpoenas and search warrants, by providing at least some of the data.

For many of the requests to tech companies, the government relies on a 2008 amendment to FISA. Even though the FISA court requires so-called minimization procedures to limit incidental eavesdropping on people not in the original order, including Americans, the scale of electronic communication is so vast that such information — say, on an e-mail string — is often picked up, lawyers say.

Last year, the FISA court said the minimization rules were unconstitutional, and on Wednesday, ruled that it had no objection to sharing that opinion publicly. It is now up to a federal court.

Nicole Perlroth and Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from San Francisco.

How to avoid snooping by the NSA Prism program

How to avoid snooping by the NSA Prism program

By Raphael Satter

Associated Press

Posted: 06/14/2013 09:29:47 AM PDT

LONDON -- Phone call logs, credit card records, emails, Skype chats, Facebook message, and more: The precise nature of the NSA's sweeping surveillance apparatus has yet to be confirmed.

But given the revelations spilling out into the media, there hardly seems a single aspect of daily life that isn't somehow subject to spying by the U.S. agency.

For some, it's a matter of indifference who or what is rifling through their electronic records. Others, mindful of spy agencies' history of abuse, are more concerned.

Here are some basic tips to avoid having your personal life turned into an intelligence report:

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ENCRYPT YOUR EMAILS

Emails sent across the Web are like postcards. In some cases, they're readable by anyone standing between you and its recipient. That can include your webmail company, your Internet service provider and whoever is tapped into the fiber optic cable passing your message around the globe -- not to mention a parallel set of observers on the recipient's side of the world.

To beat the snoops, experts recommend encryption, which scrambles messages in transit, so they're unreadable to anyone trying to intercept them. Techniques vary, but a popular one is called PGP, short for "Pretty Good Privacy." PGP is effective enough that the U.S. government tried to block its export in the mid-1990s, arguing that it was so powerful it should be classed as a weapon.

Disadvantages: Encryption can be clunky. And to work, both parties have to be using it.

[The government probably can still decrypt and read your emails, but the only question is how long will it take them to decrypt the data, and how much will it cost them. If you are committing a victimless less crime that should be legal, play it safe and don't send it over the internet. On the other hand it's a great idea to use PGP to encrypt your weekly grocery shopping list and useless chit chat you talk to friends about. Make it expensive for the government to spy on you an collect useless information.]

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USE TOR

Like emails, your travels around the Internet can easily be tracked by anyone standing between you and the site you're trying to reach. TOR, short for "The Onion Router," helps make your traffic anonymous by bouncing it through a network of routers before spitting it back out on the other side. Each trip through a router provides another layer of protection, thus the onion reference.

Originally developed by the U.S. military, TOR is believed to work pretty well if you want to hide your traffic from, let's say, eavesdropping by your local Internet service provider. And criminals' use of TOR has so frustrated Japanese police that experts there recently recommended restricting its use. But it's worth noting that TOR may be ineffective against governments equipped with the powers of global surveillance.

Disadvantages: Browsing the web with TOR can be painfully slow. And some services -- like file swapping protocols used by many Internet users to share videos and music -- aren't compatible.

[If you ask me TOR sounds pretty useless. The data you send on the internet is already split into packets and some times the packets travel different paths to get to the final destination]

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DITCH THE PHONE

Your everyday cell phone has all kinds of privacy problems. In Britain, cell phone safety was so poor that crooked journalists made a cottage industry out of eavesdropping on their victims' voicemails. In general, proprietary software, lousy encryption, hard-to-delete data and other security issues make a cell phone a bad bet for storing information you'd rather not share.

An even bigger issue is that cell phones almost always follow their owners around, carefully logging the location of every call, something which could effectively give the NSA a daily digest of your everyday life. Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum has described cell phones as tracking devices that also happen to make phone calls. If you're not happy with the idea of an intelligence agency following your footsteps across town, leave the phone at home. [And remember cell phones are just RADIO TRANSMITTERS. Everything you say is broadcast on the radio, and ANYBODY can listen in. Grab one of those old TV sets with 81 channels and tune in to the high end of the dial. Hear that junk. It's cell phone calls. If you can hear it on an old TV set, the government can also listen in.]

Disadvantages: Not having a cell phone handy when you really need it. Other alternatives, like using "burner" phones paid for anonymously and discarded after use, rapidly become expensive.

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CUT UP YOUR CREDIT CARDS

The Wall Street Journal says the NSA is monitoring American credit card records in addition to phone calls. So stick to cash, or, if you're more adventurous, use electronic currencies to move your money around.

Disadvantages: Credit cards are a mainstay of the world payment system, so washing your hands of plastic money is among the most difficult moves you can make. In any case, some cybercurrency systems offer only limited protection from government snooping and many carry significant risks. The value of Bitcoin, one of the better-known forms of electronic cash, has oscillated wildly, while users of another popular online currency, Liberty Reserve, were left out of pocket after the company behind it was busted by international law enforcement.

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DON'T KEEP YOUR DATA IN AMERICA OR WITH AMERICAN COMPANIES

U.S. companies are subject to U.S. law, including the Patriot Act, whose interpretations are classified. Although the exact parameters of the PRISM data mining program revealed by the Guardian and The Washington Post remain up for debate, what we do know is that a variety of law enforcement officials -- not just at the NSA -- can secretly demand your electronic records without a warrant through an instrument known as a National Security Letter. Such silent requests are made by the thousands every year.

If you don't like the sound of PRISM, National Security Letters, or anything to do with the Patriot Act, your best bet is to park your data in a European country, where privacy protections tend to be stronger.

Disadvantages: Silicon Valley's Internet service providers tend to be better and cheaper than their foreign counterparts. What's more, there's no guarantee that European spy agencies don't have NSA-like surveillance arrangements with their own companies. When hunting for a safe place to stash your data, look for smaller countries with robust human rights records. Iceland, long a hangout for WikiLeaks activists, might be a good bet.

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STEER CLEAR OF MALICIOUS SOFTWARE

If they can't track it, record it, or intercept it, an increasing number of spies aren't shy about hacking their way in to steal your data outright. Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker, warned the Guardian that his agency had been on a worldwide binge of cyberattacks.

"We hack everyone everywhere," he said.

Former officials don't appear to contradict him. Ex-NSA chief Michael Hayden described it as "commuting to where the information is stored and extracting the information from the adversaries' network." In a recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, he boasted that "we are the best at doing it. Period."

Malicious software used by hackers can be extremely hard to spot. But installing an antivirus program, avoiding attachments, frequently changing passwords, dodging suspicious websites, creating a firewall, and always making sure your software is up to date is a good start.

Disadvantages: Keeping abreast of all the latest updates and warily scanning emails for viruses can be exhausting.

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SO WILL ALL THIS KEEP MY DATA SAFE FROM SPYING?

Safer, maybe.

Using anonymity services and encryption "simply make it harder, but not impossible for a dedicated investigator to link your activities together and identify you," Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy and security researcher, said in an email.

"Someone can always find you ---- just depends on how motivated they are (and how much information they have access to)."

Oxnard Police Officer Sentenced to Jail for Workers’ Comp. Fraud

Oxnard Police Officer Sentenced to Jail for Workers’ Comp. Fraud

OXNARD, Calif. (KTLA) — A former Oxnard police officer was sentenced to 120 days in jail on Friday after pleading guilty to two counts of felony workers’ compensation insurance fraud.

Edward Idukas, 28, told his supervisors that he had hurt his back on the job and was too injured to work.

The police department offered to let Idukas do desk duty, but he claimed he was just in too much pain.

Later, sources tipped off the Ventura County District Attorney’s office that he was playing baseball in an adult league while out on disability.

KTLA’S Mary Beth McDade exclusively reported that an investigation was launched and surveillance video showed Idukas hitting the ball, running, pitching and even sliding into bases.

In addition to being sentenced to jail, Idukas was ordered to pay $120,000 in restitution. He no longer works for Oxnard police.

Pushing the envelope, NSA-style

Pushing the envelope, NSA-style

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: June 13 E-mail the writer

Thirty-five years ago in United States v. Choate, the courts ruled that the Postal Service may record “mail cover,” i.e., what’s written on the outside of an envelope — the addresses of sender and receiver. [I have to disagree with that decision. If I pay a private company to provide me with mail service I think it would be wrong for them to tell everybody on the plant who I was sending and receiving letters to and from. And I would switch companies if I found out they were blabbing that information all over the planet]

The National Security Agency’s recording of U.S. phone data does basically that with the telephone. It records who is calling whom — the outside of the envelope, as it were. The content of the conversation, however, is like the letter inside the envelope. It may not be opened without a court order. [Again I disagree with that logic. My phone company should not be telling everybody on the planet who I make calls to and who I receive calls from. And I would switch companies if I found out they were giving out this information]

The constitutional basis for this is simple: The Fourth Amendment protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for what’s written on an envelope. It’s dropped in a public mailbox, read by workers at the collection center and read once again by the letter carrier. It’s already openly been shared, much as your phone records are shared with, recorded by, and (e-)mailed back to you by a third party, namely the phone company. [Again I disagree with the Supreme Courts definition of a "reasonable expectation of privacy"]

Indeed, in 1979 the Supreme Court (Smith v. Maryland) made the point directly regarding the telephone: The expectation of privacy applies to the content of a call, not its record. There is therefore nothing constitutionally offensive about the newly revealed NSA data-mining program that seeks to identify terrorist networks through telephone-log pattern recognition.

But doesn’t the other NSA program — the spooky-sounding James Bond-evoking PRISM — give you the willies? Well, what we know thus far is that PRISM is designed to read the e-mails of non-U.S. citizens outside the United States. If an al-Qaeda operative in Yemen is e-mailing a potential recruit, it would be folly not to intercept it.

As former attorney general Michael Mukasey explained, the Constitution is not a treaty with the rest of the world; it’s an instrument for the protection of the American citizenry. And reading other people’s mail is something countries do to protect themselves. It’s called spying. [Again I have to disagree with that. The American government should not be SPYING on ANYONE, including foreign countries. If we declare war on a county I see no problems with spying on them as part of the war effort, but spying on a country we are not at war with is wrong]

Is that really shocking?

The problem here is not constitutionality. It’s practicality. Legally this is fairly straightforward. But between intent and execution lies a shadow — the human factor, the possibility of abuse. And because of the scope and power of the NSA, any abuse would have major consequences for civil liberties.

The real issue is safeguards. [The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are the safeguards here, and they both have been flushed down the toilet by Congress and the President!!!] We could start by asking how an Edward Snowden — undereducated, newly employed, rootless and grandiose — could have been given such access and power. We need a toughening of both congressional oversight and judicial review, perhaps even some independent outside scrutiny. Plus periodic legislative revision — say, reauthorization every couple of years — in light of the efficacy of the safeguards and the nature of the external threat.

The object is not to abolish these vital programs. [Again I disagree, these programs should be ABOLISHED] It’s to fix them. Not exactly easy to do amid the current state of national agitation — provoked largely because such intrusive programs require a measure of trust in government, and this administration has forfeited that trust amid an unfolding series of scandals and a basic problem with truth-telling.

There are nonetheless two other reasons these revelations have sparked such anxiety. Every spying program is a compromise between liberty and security. Yet here is a president who campaigned on the proposition that he would transcend such pedestrian considerations. “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” he declared in his first inaugural address, no less.

When caught with his hand on your phone data, however, President Obama offered this defense: “You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy. . . . We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”

So it wasn’t such a false choice after all, was it, Mr. President? [OK, now it looks like we can agree on something??? Emperor Obama is a tyrant and hypocrite!!!]

Nor does it help that just three weeks ago the president issued a major foreign-policy manifesto whose essential theme was that the war on terror is drawing to a close and its very legal underpinning, the September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, should be not just reformed but repealed to prevent “keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing.”

Now it turns out that Obama’s government was simultaneously running a massive, secret anti-terror intelligence operation. But if the tide of war is receding, why this vast, ever-expanding NSA dragnet whose only justification is an outside threat — that you assure us is receding?

Which is it, Mr. President? Tell it straight. We are a nation of grown-ups. We can make choices. Even one it took you four years to admit is not “false.”

Read more from Charles Krauthammer’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Five myths about privacy

Five myths about privacy

By Daniel J. Solove, Published: June 13

Daniel J. Solove is a law professor at George Washington University, the founder of the privacy and data-security training company TeachPrivacy and the author of “Nothing to Hide.”

The disclosure of two secret government surveillance programs — one involving phone records and the other personal data from Internet companies — has sparked debate about privacy and national security. Has the government gone too far? Or not far enough? How much privacy should we sacrifice for security? To discuss these issues productively, some myths must be dispelled.

1. The collection of phone numbers and other “metadata” isn’t much of a threat to privacy.

Don’t worry, argue defenders of these surveillance programs: The government is gathering innocuous data, not intimate secrets. “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” President Obama declared. Intelligence agencies are “looking at phone numbers and durations of calls; they are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content.”

But “metadata” about phone calls can be quite revealing. Whom someone is talking to may be just as sensitive as what’s being said. Calls to doctors or health-care providers can suggest certain medical conditions. Calls to businesses say something about a person’s interests and lifestyle. Calls to friends reveal associations, potentially pointing to someone’s political, religious or philosophical beliefs.

Even when individual calls are innocuous, a detailed phone record can present a telling portrait of the person associated with a telephone number. Collect millions of those records, and there’s the potential to trace the entire country’s social and professional connections.

2. Surveillance must be secret to protect us.

The administration and intelligence agencies have been quick to defend the classified status of the phone and Internet surveillance programs. “Disclosing information about the specific methods the government uses to collect communications can obviously give our enemies a ‘playbook’ of how to avoid detection,” said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander went further: “Grave harm has already been done by opening this up.” Presidents Obama and George W. Bush have both perpetuated this myth.

Of course, if the government is trying to gather data about a particular suspect, keeping the specifics of surveillance efforts secret will decrease the likelihood of that suspect altering his or her behavior.

But secrecy at the level of an individual suspect is different from keeping the very existence of massive surveillance programs secret. The public must know about the general outlines of surveillance activities in order to evaluate whether the government is achieving the appropriate balance between privacy and security. What kind of information is gathered? How is it used? How securely is it kept? What kind of oversight is there? Are these activities even legal? These questions can’t be answered, and the government can’t be held accountable, if surveillance programs are completely classified.

With the phone and Internet programs, it isn’t clear that sufficient protective measures are in place. The president and security officials assure us there are, but without transparency, we can’t really know.

3. Only people with something to hide should be concerned about their privacy.

In the wake of the leaks about government surveillance, writer and privacy supporter Daniel Sieradski started a Twitter account with the handle @_nothingtohide and has been retweeting variations on this myth. A typical tweet: “I don’t care if the government knows everything I do. I am fully confident that I will not be arrested.”

When privacy is compromised, though, the problems can go far beyond the exposure of illegal activity or embarrassing information. It can provide the government with a tremendous amount of power over its people. It can undermine trust and chill free speech and association. It can make people vulnerable to abuse of their information and further intrusions into their lives.

Even if a person is doing nothing wrong, in a free society, that person shouldn’t have to justify every action that government officials might view as suspicious. A key component of freedom is not having to worry about how to explain oneself all the time.

4. National security requires major sacrifices in privacy.

Obama invoked this myth this month when he said, “You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.” The implication is that those upset about surveillance fail to recognize that we must trade some privacy for security.

But usually it’s not either-or. As Obama himself said in his 2009 inaugural address: “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

Protecting privacy doesn’t need to mean scuttling a security measure. Most people concerned about the privacy implications of government surveillance aren’t arguing for no surveillance and absolute privacy. They’d be fine giving up some privacy as long as appropriate controls, limitations, oversight and accountability mechanisms were in place.

This sentiment was evident in the public outcry over the Transportation Security Administration’s use of full-body X-ray scanners that displayed what looked like nude images of airline passengers. No one wanted to end airport security checks. They wanted checks that were less intrusive. Congress required the TSA to use less-revealing software, and the agency ended up switching to different machines.

5. Americans aren’t especially bothered by government intrusions into their privacy.

“The public is just fine with government snooping in the name of counterterrorism,” read one Washington Post headline this past week. Indeed, a Post and Pew Research Center poll found that a majority of Americans prioritized the investigation of possible terrorist threats over the protection of personal privacy and considered it “acceptable” for the NSA to use secret court orders to access phone records to investigate terrorism.

Yet the same poll showed that the public was more closely divided on whether “the U.S. government should be able to monitor everyone’s e-mail and other online activities if officials say this might prevent future terrorist attacks.” And a Gallup poll found that only 37 percent of Americans approved of the NSA obtaining phone records and Internet communications as part of efforts to investigate terrorism, while 53 percent disapproved.

I would expect polls to show even more support for privacy if it weren’t falsely pitted — in public debates and in poll questions themselves — against stopping terrorist attacks. We don’t have to choose between preserving privacy and preventing terrorism. We do have to decide how much oversight and accountability there should be when the government conducts surveillance of its citizens.

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NSA-proof encryption exists. Why doesn’t anyone use it?

Personally I wouldn't bet that NSA proof encryption exists. I suspect that NSA if it wants to spend lots of money and time can decrypt just about anything.

If you are going to encrypt your emails using the longest possible keys to make NSA work a little bit harder and longer to crack your emails.

Also encrypt everything you send. Make the folks at NSA spend lots of money to read that grocery list you sent to your boy friend or girl friend. Encrypt the chit chat you email your friends about the Super Bowl or what ever. Make NSA spend big bucks to learn useless details of your private life.

Also remember that the more emails that your friends send to you using the same public key makes it easier for NSA to crack your code. So change your public and private keys frequently.

The best policy to follow is that if you don't want the government to read your messages don't put them on the internet. And remember the government also listens to our phone calls. If you don't want the government to hear it, don't say it on a telephone.

Source

NSA-proof encryption exists. Why doesn’t anyone use it?

By Timothy B. Lee, Published: June 14, 2013 at 10:50

Computer programmers believe they know how to build cryptographic systems that are impossible for anyone, even the U.S. government, to crack. So why can the NSA read your e-mail?

Last week, leaks revealed that the Web sites most people use every day are sharing users’ private information with the government. Companies participating in the National Security Agency’s program, code-named PRISM, include Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. During the 1990s, a “cypherpunk” movement predicted that ubiquitous, user-friendly cryptographic software would make it impossible for governments to spy on ordinary users’ private communications.

The government seemed to believe this story, too. “The ability of just about everybody to encrypt their messages is rapidly outrunning our ability to decode them,” a U.S. intelligence official told U.S. News & World Report in 1995. The government classified cryptographic software as a munition, banning its export outside the United States. And it proposed requiring that cryptographic systems have “back doors” for government interception.

The cypherpunks won that battle. By the end of the Clinton administration, the government conceded that the Internet had made it impossible to control the spread of strong cryptographic software. But more than a decade later, the cypherpunks seem to have lost the war. Software capable of withstanding NSA snooping is widely available, but hardly anyone uses it. Instead, we use Gmail, Skype, Facebook, AOL Instant Messenger and other applications whose data is reportedly accessible through PRISM.

And that’s not a coincidence: Adding strong encryption to the most popular Internet products would make them less useful, less profitable and less fun.

“Security is very rarely free,” says J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan. “There are trade-offs between convenience and usability and security.”

Most people’s priority: Convenience

Consumers have overwhelmingly chosen convenience and usability. Mainstream communications tools are more user-friendly than their cryptographically secure competitors and have features that would be difficult to implement in an NSA-proof fashion.

And while most types of software get more user-friendly over time, user-friendly cryptography seems to be intrinsically difficult. Experts are not much closer to solving the problem today than they were two decades ago.

Ordinarily, the way companies make sophisticated software accessible to regular users is by performing complex, technical tasks on their behalf. The complexity of Google, Microsoft and Apple’s vast infrastructure is hidden behind the simple, polished interfaces of their Web and mobile apps. But delegating basic security decisions to a third party means giving it the ability to access your private content and share it with others, including the government.

Most modern online services do make use of encryption. Popular Web services such as Gmail and Hotmail support an encryption standard called SSL. If you visit a Web site and see a “lock” icon in the corner of your browser window, that means SSL encryption is enabled. But while this kind of encryption will protect users against ordinary bad guys, it’s useless against governments.

That’s because SSL only protects data moving between your device and the servers operated by Google, Apple or Microsoft. Those service providers have access to unencrypted copies of your data. So if the government suspects criminal behavior, it can compel tech companies to turn over private e-mails or Facebook posts.

That problem can be avoided with “end-to-end” encryption. In this scheme, messages are encrypted on the sender’s computer and decrypted on the recipient’s device. Intermediaries such as Google or Microsoft only see the encrypted version of the message, making it impossible for them to turn over copies to the government.

Software like that exists. One of the oldest is PGP, e-mail encryption software released in 1991. Others include OTR (for “off the record”), which enables secure instant messaging, and the Internet telephony apps Silent Circle and Redphone.

But it’s difficult to add new features to applications with end-to-end encryption. Take Gmail, for example. “If you wanted to prevent government snooping, you’d have to prevent Google’s servers from having a copy of the text of your messages,” Halderman says. “But that would make it much harder for Google to provide features like search over your messages.” Filtering spam also becomes difficult. And end-to-end encryption would also make it difficult for Google to make money on the service, since it couldn’t use the content of messages to target ads.

A similar point applies to Facebook. The company doesn’t just transmit information from one user to another. It automatically resizes users’ photos and allows them to “tag” themselves and their friends. Facebook filters the avalanche of posts generated by your friends to display the ones you are most likely to find the most interesting. And it indexes the information users post to make it searchable.

These features depend on Facebook’s servers having access to a person’s private data, and it would be difficult to implement them in a system based on end-to-end encryption. While computer scientists are working on techniques for creating more secure social-media sites, these techniques aren’t yet mature enough to support all of Facebook’s features or efficient enough to serve hundreds of millions of users.

Other user headaches

End-to-end encryption creates other headaches for users. Conventional online services offer mechanisms for people to recover lost passwords. These mechanisms work because Apple, Microsoft and other online service providers have access to unencrypted data.

In contrast, when a system has end-to-end encryption, losing a password is catastrophic; it means losing all data in the user’s account.

Also, encryption is effective only if you’re communicating with the party you think you’re communicating with. This security relies on keys — large numbers associated with particular people that make it possible to scramble a message on one end and decode it on the other. In a maneuver cryptographers call a “man in the middle” attack, a malicious party impersonates a message’s intended recipient and tricks the sender into using the wrong encryption key. To thwart this kind of attack, sender and recipient need a way to securely exchange and verify each other’s encryption keys.

“A key is supposed to be associated closely with a person, which means you want a person to be involved in creating their own key, and in verifying the keys of people they communicate with,” says Ed Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton University. “Those steps tend to be awkward and confusing.”

And even those who are willing to make the effort are likely to make mistakes that compromise security. The computer scientists Alma Whitten and J.D. Tygar explored these problem in a famous 1999 paper called “Why Johnny Can’t Encrypt.” They focused on PGP, which was (and still is) one of the most popular tools for users to send encrypted e-mail.

PGP “is not usable enough to provide effective security for most computer users,” the authors wrote.

Users expect software to “just work” without worrying too much about the technical details. But the researchers discovered that users tended to make mistakes that compromise their security. Users are supposed to send other people their “public key,” used to encode messages addressed to them, and to keep their private key a secret. Yet some users foolishly did the opposite, sending others the private key that allowed eavesdroppers to unscramble e-mail addressed to them. Others failed to make backup copies of their private encryption keys, so when their hard drives crashed, they lost access to their encrypted e-mail.

Using PGP is such a hassle that even those with a strong need for secure communication resist its use. When Edward Snowden, the man who leaked the details of the PRISM program, first contacted Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian in February, he asked the journalist to set up PGP on his computer so the two could communicate securely. He even sent Greenwald a video with step-by-step directions for setting up the software. But Greenwald, who didn’t yet know the significance of Snowden’s leaks, dragged his feet. He did not set up the software until late March, after filmmaker Laura Poitras, who was also in contact with Snowden, met with Greenwald and alerted him to the significance of his disclosures.

Going with the flow

Felten argues that another barrier to adopting strong cryptography is a chicken-and-egg problem: It is only useful if you know other people are also using it. Even people who have gone to the trouble of setting up PGP still send most of their e-mail in plain text because most recipients don’t have the capability to receive encrypted e-mail. People tend to use what’s installed on their computer. So even those who have Redphone will make most of their calls with Skype because that’s what other people use.

Halderman isn’t optimistic that strong cryptography will catch on with ordinary users anytime soon. In recent years, the companies behind the most popular Web browsers have beefed up their cryptographic capabilities, which could make more secure online services possible. But the broader trend is that users are moving more and more data from their hard drives to cloud computing platforms, which makes data even more vulnerable to government snooping.

Strong cryptographic software is available to those who want to use it. Whistleblowers, dissidents, criminals and governments use it every day. But cryptographic software is too complex and confusing to reach a mass audience anytime soon. Most people simply aren’t willing to invest the time and effort required to ensure the NSA can’t read their e-mail or listen to their phone calls. And so for the masses, online privacy depends more on legal safeguards than technological wizardry.

The cypherpunks dreamed of a future where technology protected people from government spying. But end-to-end encryption doesn’t work well if people don’t understand it. And the glory of Google or Facebook, after all, is that anyone can use them without really knowing how they work.

Supreme Court: Arizona citizenship proof law illegal

Source

Supreme Court: Arizona citizenship proof law illegal

Associated Press Mon Jun 17, 2013 7:36 AM

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says states cannot require would-be voters to prove they are U.S. citizens before using a federal registration system designed to make signing up easier.

The justices voted 7-2 to throw out Arizona’s voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal “Motor Voter” voter registration law.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which doesn’t require such documentation, trumps Arizona’s Proposition 200 passed in 2004. Arizona officials say their law is needed to stop non-Americans from voting in elections, while opponents see it as an attack on minorities, immigrants and the elderly.

But the high court agreed with the federal government in the case.

Police: Valley Metro bus driver assaults passenger

Police: Valley Metro bus driver assaults passenger

By Laurie Merrill The Republic | azcentral.com

Sun Jun 16, 2013 9:47 PM

A Valley Metro bus driver was arrested after physically throwing a passenger off the bus, assaulting him, and breaking his cell phone, Phoenix police said Sunday.

The bus operator, Todd Allen Shields, 45, was arrested on suspicion of assault, criminal damage and disorderly conduct after the 11:45 a.m. Friday fight, police said.

The disagreement began when the victim, 21, boarded the bus near 19th Avenue and Montebello Road and presented a reduced-fare card intended for people 18 and younger, police said.

The driver challenged the man’s age, the two argued, and Shields physically threw him off the bus and assaulted him, police said. The man’s injuries were minor but his cell phone was broken, police said.

Shields is a Valley Metro operator, employed by Veolia Transportation, which contracts with the city to manage bus service, police said.

In a statement Sunday, a Veolia Transportation spokeswoman said Shields has been placed on leave pending the company’s investigation of an altercation “related to fare collection.”

“We are fully investigating this matter as we do any instance of possible misconduct,” Valerie Michael, a spokeswoman, said in the statement. “Safety for our passengers and our employees is Veolia’s number one priority and drivers are trained to follow specific procedures in dealing with passengers and fare issues. “

Current, former officials back secret surveillance

And of course that is why the Founders gave us the 4th, 5th and most importantly the Second Amendments to keep these government tyrants in check.

But sadly the Bill of Rights and Constitution doesn't work that well and our current royal government masters have pretty much flushed the 4th Amendment down the toilet and have used the Patriot Act along with a bunch of rhetoric on terrorists to justify their spying on us.

As H. L. Mencken said:

"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."

Current, former officials back secret surveillance

Associated Press Sun Jun 16, 2013 1:00 PM

WASHINGTON — Current and former top U.S. officials on Sunday defended the government’s collection of phone and Internet data following new revelations about the secret surveillance programs, saying the operations were essential in disrupting terrorist plots and did not infringe on Americans’ civil liberties.

In interviews on Sunday television talk shows, guests ranging from President Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff Denis McDonough to former Vice President Dick Cheney and former CIA and National Security Agency head Michael Hayden said the government’s reliance on data collection from both Americans and foreign nationals was constitutional and carefully overseen by executive, legislative and court authorities.

All three branches of government, using “aggressive internal checks inside the administration, from inspectors general and routine audits, are overseeing how we do these programs,” McDonough said. He added, “I think that the American people can feel confident that we have those three branches looking.”

The latest reassurances came as a new Washington Post report Sunday described the massive intertwined structure of four major data collection programs that have been set up by the government since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Post report follows earlier stories based on documents provided by NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Two secret programs, the Post reported in its new disclosures, are aimed at phone and Internet metadata, while two more target contents of phone and Internet communications.

Metadata includes logs and timing of phone calls and lists of Internet communications, but does not include the actual contents of communications. Even without knowing those contents, intelligence officials can learn much from metadata, including likely locations and patterns of behavior.

A previously reported surveillance program aimed at the phone logs and location information of millions of Americans is called Mainway, the Post reported. A second program targeting the Internet contact logs and location information of foreign users is called Marina.

A third program, which intercepts telephone calls and routes their contents to government listeners, is called Nucleon.

A fourth program, Prism, exposed recently by Snowden, forces major Internet firms to turn over the detailed contents of Internet communications. Prism is aimed at foreign users but sometimes also sweeps up the content of Americans’ emails and other Internet communications, officials have acknowledged.

“The metadata story does touch upon Americans in a massive way with phone records but not the content. The Prism story is about foreigners and it is about content,” Hayden told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Rep. Mike Rogers, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, said that any phone metadata from Americans swept up in the surveillance is held under careful safeguards, kept in a “lockbox” that can only be accessed if it becomes relevant to terror investigations. U.S. officials also said Saturday that gathered data is destroyed every five years.

“This is a lock box with only phone numbers, no names, no addresses in it, we’ve used it sparingly,” Rogers said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

But one Congressional critic of the secrecy surrounding the government’s surveillance raised doubts about the effectiveness of the widespread collection of Americans’ phone metadata.

“I don’t think collecting millions and millions of Americans’ phone calls — now this is the metadata, this is the time, place, to whom you direct the calls — is making us any safer,” said Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat. Udall said he would introduce a bill this week to narrow the reach of that collection to only “those who have a link to terrorism.”

Hayden said he worried that news reports about the programs have often provided erroneous information, “much to the harm of a rational national debate.” He did not specify those concerns.

The disclosures, provided in recent days by both the Post and The Guardian newspaper, came from classified documents exposed by Snowden, 29, who was working as a private contractor with the NSA and later said he grew disenchanted by what he saw as a growing secret American surveillance apparatus. After working with the two newspapers, Snowden turned up in Hong Kong, prompting concern that he might cooperate with Chinese authorities.

“I am very, very worried that he still has additional information that he hasn’t released yet, the Chinese would welcome the opportunity and probably be willing to provide immunity for him or sanctuary for him, if you will, in exchange for what he presumably knows,” Cheney said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Cheney added that he has “trouble believing” Snowden had access to all the materials he has disclosed, suggesting the possibility that Snowden had an accomplice inside U.S. security circles.

“I think you have to ask that question,” Cheney said.

McDonough, speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” declined to speculate on Snowden’s dealings with China or his access to secret documents, citing a law enforcement investigation. But he cautioned against “some of the hyperbole that now is being thrown around from him and from others involved in this debate that would somehow cast a pall on the intelligence community.”

But McDonough also disputed Snowden’s claim that he had the ability to listen in on any phone conversation, including the president’s.

“That’s incorrect,” McDonough said.

Uncle Sam wants to know more about your Facebook page

Facebook reveals number of requests under government Internet surveillance program

By Brandon Bailey

Mercury News

Posted: 06/14/2013 08:45:50 PM PDT

MENLO PARK -- For the first time, Facebook late Friday disclosed the number of requests it received for user data from all government entities, and became the first Silicon Valley company to include in that figure the number of ultrasecret national security requests.

In a blog post, Facebook general counsel Ted Ullyot revealed that for the six months ending Dec. 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. -- including local, state, and federal authorities, and including criminal and national security-related requests -- was between 9,000 and 10,000.

run the gamut -- everything from a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat.

The total number of Facebook user accounts for which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9,000 to 10,000 requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts, he noted.

But with more than 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, Ullyot added, "this means that a tiny fraction of one percent of our user accounts were the subject of any kind of U.S., state, local, or federal U.S. government request (including criminal and national security-related requests) in the past six months."

Reports surfaced last week that government officials were collecting huge amounts of private Internet and telephone data -- disclosures enabled by leaks from a former National Security Agency contractor. Since then, Ullyot said, Facebook has been in discussions with U.S. national security authorities, urging them to allow more transparency and flexibility around national security-related orders the company is required to comply with.

Google (GOOG) followed up Tuesday by announcing it has asked the FBI and Department of Justice for permission to begin reporting how many data requests the company receives from the government under the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. FISA, the authority used by the government for its secret PRISM program aimed at tracking online activities of some Internet users, requires companies to keep those requests secret.

"We're pleased that as a result of our discussions, we can now include in a transparency report all U.S. national security-related requests (including FISA as well as National Security Letters) -- which until now no company has been permitted Facebook on Friday became the first Silicon Valley company to disclose how many requests for user data it has received under the U.S. government's ultrasecret foreign-intelligence surveillance laws. (Robert Galbraith / Reuters) to do," Ullyot wrote. As of Friday, he said, the government will only authorize Facebook to communicate about these numbers in aggregate, and as a range.

Ullyot called the initial step "progress," and said the company is continuing to push for even more transparency, "so that our users around the world can understand how infrequently we are asked to provide user data on national security grounds."

Civil liberties groups that have criticized the government's data-gathering efforts say that such disclosures are helpful, but they have also complained that the broad ranges that the companies have reported are too vague and do not provide a full picture of government surveillance.

Until now, Facebook has not disclosed any data about government information requests, saying it was not allowed to provide a complete picture of those requests because of government secrecy rules.

Google has previously disclosed certain types of requests, including so-called "National Security Letters" issued under the Patriot Act, but it has not been allowed to say anything about requests issued under FISA.

Facebook's move revealed a split within the tech industry: Microsoft issued a similar report Friday that also provided a total number of government data requests that included an unspecified number of FISA requests. But Google criticized that approach, saying it was not helpful for the government to require the companies to provide only a single total for all types of requests.

"We have always believed that it's important to differentiate between different types of government requests. We already publish criminal requests separately from National Security Letters," Google said in a statement reported by several tech blogs. "Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users. Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately."

Another tech company, Twitter, echoed Google's concern. Twitter legal director Benjamin Lee posted a tweet on his personal account late Friday, saying "We agree with @google: It's important to be able to publish numbers of national security requests -- including FISA disclosures -- separately."

Mercury News Staff Writer Tracy Seipel contributed to this report. Contact Brandon Bailey at bbailey@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/BrandonBailey.

Facebook now can say more on U.S. user surveillance

Facebook now can say more on U.S. user surveillance

Associated Press Fri Jun 14, 2013 9:32 PM

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook’s top attorney said Friday night that after negotiations with national security officials the company has been given permission to make new but still very limited revelations about government orders to turn over user data.

Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel, said in a statement Friday that Facebook is only allowed to talk about total numbers and must give no specifics. But he said the permission it has received is still unprecedented, and the company was lobbying to reveal more.

Using the new guidelines, Ullyot said Facebook received between 9,000 and 10,000 government requests from all government entities from local to federal in the last six months of 2012, on topics including missing children investigations, fugitive tracking and terrorist threats. The requests involved the accounts of between 18,000 and 19,000 Facebook users.

Facebook was not allowed to make public how many orders it received from a particular agency or on a particular subject. But the numbers do include all national security related requests including those submitted via national security letters and under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which companies had not previously been allowed to reveal.

Ullyot said the company wanted to reveal the information because of “confusion and inaccurate reporting” on the issue, and to show that only “a tiny fraction of one percent” of its 1.1 billion users have been affected.

In a rare alliance, Facebook, Google and Microsoft Corp. have been pressuring the Obama administration to loosen their legal gag on government surveillance orders.

The companies have sought to distance themselves from the Internet dragnet code-named “PRISM” that was revealed in leaks last week.

“We have always believed that it’s important to differentiate between different types of government requests,” a statement from Google said. “We already publish criminal requests separately from National Security Letters. Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users. Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.”

Facebook repeated recent assurances that the company scrutinizes every government request, and works aggressively to protect users’ data. Facebook said it has a compliance rate of 79 percent on government requests.

“We frequently reject such requests outright, or require the government to substantially scale down its requests, or simply give the government much less data than it has requested,” Ullyot said.” And we respond only as required by law.”

Sheriff Joe Arpaio appeal funding questioned

Don't count on it. It's about politics, not good government or human rights.

Sure Sheriff Joe is a thug that would make Hitler or Stalin proud, but despite that he is THE most popular politician in Arizona and it is highly unlikely that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will shut off his funding for that reason.

Source

Sheriff Joe Arpaio appeal funding questioned

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jun 8, 2013 8:35 PM

Dozens of Latino legislators and anti-Sheriff Joe Arpaio demonstrators are calling on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to pick a side in a public ultimatum: Deny funding the sheriff’s appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that his office engaged in racial profiling, or concede that the supervisors condone racial profiling.

But the board refused to take a public stance on the issue last week, with the majority of supervisors saying the issue is not so black-and-white, and there are outstanding questions over legalities and logistics of the appeals process.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow issued a ruling late last month that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office engaged in racial profiling against Latinos. In his 142-page ruling on Melendres vs. Arpaio, Snow outlined the constitutional violations sheriff’s deputies committed when they targeted Latino drivers and detained them on the side of the road longer than other drivers. Arpaio’s attorney, Tim Casey, denied Snow’s findings and said he would appeal the ruling.

Casey said the sheriff should determine how the case moves forward as the elected official named in the lawsuit.

“It is my understanding that, because this case does not involve a claim for money damages and only involves a claim for declaratory and injunctive relief that relate to the operations of MCSO, that the elected sheriff as policymaker for MCSO and its operations determines whether to appeal,” Casey said.

Maricopa County was named in the 2007 lawsuit, but administrators made the decision in 2009 to sever the county from the case. State statutes dictating the powers and duties of elected officers give the Board of Supervisors the authority to “direct and control the prosecution and defense of all actions to which the county is a party.”

The decision to remove the county from the litigation also could remove the board’s authority to have a say in the litigation, according to one reading of the statute, but there is not widespread agreement.

The board last Monday held a closed-door meeting on the ruling with Casey and Deputy County Attorney Tom Liddy. It was the first of what is expected to be a series of private board meetings on the issue. State law allows public bodies to meet behind closed doors in limited circumstances, such as to obtain legal advice by invoking attorney-client privilege.

County Attorney Bill Montgomery is reviewing whether, or how much, the board has a say in a potential appeals process.

The newly elected supervisors have wanted to resolve outstanding legal cases involving conflict among elected offices from recent years of political fights. In the past five months, the board settled three long-standing lawsuits involving the Sheriff’s Office and former County Attorney Andrew Thomas, agreeing to pay $3 million in an effort to move past lingering legal conflicts.

The Melendres case is the first major legal case that would test the new supervisors’ political leadership and how they would shape the course of a high-profile case that has brought national attention to county leaders.

A group of 33 Latino legislators from the House and the Senate wrote a letter urging the board not to fund the appeal of Snow’s ruling and to instead implement a remediation plan. The legislators proposed their own remediation plan for the board to consider.

To date, Maricopa County has spent $1,025,241 to defend Arpaio in the Melendres case.

The board is not a party to the lawsuit, so it is unclear how much of a say it has on whether to appeal. But the board oversees the budget and typically makes the final funding decisions for settlements and appeals in lawsuits against the county and elected officials.

“As such, you play an important role in mending the rift in this county that was caused by the illegal racial profiling by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office,” legislators wrote in the joint letter.

About two dozen Arpaio protesters descended on last week’s board meetings, calling on supervisors to pick a side: Latinos or the sheriff. At times, the protesters’ demands became heated, leading board Chairman Andy Kunasek to forcefully ask them to maintain a civil discussion.

Kunasek said while he is not happy about paying for lawsuits the board was not named in, it is too early in the process to say whether he would support an appeal, and the board has not yet explored its options.

“(They’re) still ongoing matters, and the time for consideration isn’t even here yet,” Kunasek said.

While the sheriff has rights as an independently elected county official, Kunasek said the board would need, and want, to have a say in some part of the decision to appeal Snow’s ruling. Supervisors would need to review which, if any, parts of Snow’s ruling they are comfortable with appealing, he said.

Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, an Arpaio critic and the lone Democrat on the five-member board, opposed an appeal. She said the county would be better off spending the money on implementing remedies and monitoring the Sheriff’s Office. After reading the ruling, Wilcox said she believed there is no room to appeal.

“I really think we should move on. I think it would be a waste of taxpayer money to continue this battle,” Wilcox said. “An appeal, in my eyes, is that we support the racial profiling practices that went on.”

Wilcox said even if Arpaio were to appeal, she believes the board should deny funding and let Arpaio figure out an alternative way to pay for it that would not affect his budget.

Supervisors Denny Barney and Clint Hickman said it is too early to decide whether to appeal. Supervisor Steve Chucri declined to comment, saying that he believes he should reserve his thoughts for the board’s private meetings with attorneys for now and that the case can have implications on other pending litigation.

Hickman said he considers it the board’s job to ask questions of attorneys and find out its role in the appeals process.

“I do know that it’s up to the sheriff’s department to decide to appeal or not,” Hickman said. “They’re the ones that were involved in this lawsuit, but then we need to see what the further aspects of that are.”

Barney said he does not believe paying for an appeal would mean the board is wasting taxpayer money. Rather, the board would agree on and fund an appeal if it believes there are points in Snow’s ruling that need to be addressed so that county leaders can better understand legal constraints on future operations of the Sheriff’s and County Attorney’s offices within their mandated public-safety duties.

“The reality is, the only reason we would fund the appeal is if we felt like there was an actual point of law that needs to be addressed, if there’s an issue that relates to the police power of a municipality or a jurisdiction like the county — a subdivision of the state,” Barney said. “We’re going to spend money to do that.”

Republic reporter JJ Hensley contributed to this article. we’ve got the results that we have,” Wang said. “They’re entitled to play a very active role in how we go forward.”

Arpaio asegura que es víctima de discriminación por su edad

Arpaio asegura que es víctima de discriminación por su edad

El alguacil del condado de Maricopa, Joe Arpaio, dijo ser víctima de discriminación debido a su edad, ya que asegura mucha gente se cuestiona si todavía está capacitado para hacer su trabajo.

En entrevista con la cadena de televisión Fox en Arizona, Arpaio, quien la próxima semana cumplirá 81 años, dijo que se postulará nuevamente al cargo en 2016.

"Me molesta mucho que haya mucha gente que utilice mi edad como último recurso para atacarme", dijo el polémico alguacil republicano, conocido por sus operativos en contra de inmigrantes indocumentados.

Aseguró que es un "insulto" para todas las personas de edad avanzada que critiquen y hagan burla de la edad de una persona.

"Les aseguro que no me 'caeré muerto' en mi oficina, eso no pasará", dijo Arpaio.

Aseguró que así como ha sido un fuerte opositor de la inmigración indocumentada ahora luchará por aquellos que son discriminados por su edad.

"Tengo que decirles que si tengo éxito no es por todos mis estudios es porque tengo la experiencia, y la edad no me detendrá para hacer mi trabajo", afirmó el alguacil.

Arpaio, que tiene más de dos décadas como alguacil del condado de Maricopa, fue reelegido el pasado mes de noviembre por sexta vez consecutiva.

A pesar de su éxito electoral, Arpaio ha sufrido reveses por su actuación al frente de la Oficina del Alguacil del condado de Maricopa, y el pasado mes de mayo un juez federal determinó que ha discriminado en contra de residentes hispanos.

El alguacil enfrenta además una demanda por parte del Departamento de Justicia federal por acusaciones similares.

El alguacil del condado de Maricopa, Joe Arpaio, dijo ser víctima de discriminación debido a su edad.

El alguacil del condado de Maricopa, Joe Arpaio, dijo ser víctima de discriminación debido a su edad, ya que asegura mucha gente se cuestiona si todavía está capacitado para hacer su trabajo.

En entrevista con la cadena de televisión Fox en Arizona, Arpaio, quien la próxima semana cumplirá 81 años, dijo que se postulará nuevamente al cargo en 2016.

"Me molesta mucho que haya mucha gente que utilice mi edad como último recurso para atacarme", dijo el polémico alguacil republicano, conocido por sus operativos en contra de inmigrantes indocumentados.

Aseguró que es un "insulto" para todas las personas de edad avanzada que critiquen y hagan burla de la edad de una persona.

"Les aseguro que no me 'caeré muerto' en mi oficina, eso no pasará", dijo Arpaio.

Aseguró que así como ha sido un fuerte opositor de la inmigración indocumentada ahora luchará por aquellos que son discriminados por su edad.

"Tengo que decirles que si tengo éxito no es por todos mis estudios es porque tengo la experiencia, y la edad no me detendrá para hacer mi trabajo", afirmó el alguacil.

Arpaio, que tiene más de dos décadas como alguacil del condado de Maricopa, fue reelegido el pasado mes de noviembre por sexta vez consecutiva.

A pesar de su éxito electoral, Arpaio ha sufrido reveses por su actuación al frente de la Oficina del Alguacil del condado de Maricopa, y el pasado mes de mayo un juez federal determinó que ha discriminado en contra de residentes hispanos.

El alguacil enfrenta además una demanda por parte del Departamento de Justicia federal por acusaciones similares.

Silence means your guilty??? - Supremes???

Source

In Miranda case, Supreme Court rules on the limits of silence

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

June 17, 2013, 8:11 p.m.

WASHINGTON — Crime suspects need to speak up if they want to invoke their legal right to remain silent, the Supreme Court said Monday in a ruling that highlights the limited reach of the famous Miranda decision.

The 5-4 ruling upheld the murder conviction of a Texas man who bit his lip and sat silently when a police officer asked him about the shotgun shells that were found at the scene of a double slaying. They had been traced to the suspect's shotgun.

At his trial, prosecutors pointed to the defendant's silence as evidence of his guilt. In affirming the conviction of Genovevo Salinas, the court's majority admitted that some suspects might think they had a right to say nothing.

"Popular misconceptions notwithstanding," the Constitution "does not establish an unqualified 'right to remain silent,'" said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Rather, he said, the 5th Amendment says no one may be "compelled in any criminal case to be witness against himself." Since the Miranda decision in 1966, the court has said police must warn suspects of their rights when they are taken into custody.

But the Miranda decision covers only suspects who are held in custody and are not free to leave.

In the Texas case, Salinas was asked to come to the police station, and he agreed to do so. "All agree that the interview was noncustodial," Alito said, so the police were not required to read him his rights under the Miranda decision.

And although Salinas had a qualified right to remain silent under the 5th Amendment, a suspect must invoke his rights and say he wants to remain silent, the court ruled Monday.

Salinas "alone knew why he did not answer the officer's question, and it was therefore his burden to make a timely assertion of the privilege," Alito said.

The decision is consistent with the high court's grudging approach to the Miranda decision and related 5th Amendment questions over recent decades. The court's conservative-leaning justices have not been willing to overturn the Miranda precedent, but they have repeatedly narrowed its scope.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas voted with Alito to uphold the conviction in Salinas vs. Texas.

Alito noted that during a trial, defendants may refuse to testify, and prosecutors may not use their silence in court as evidence against them, citing the court's 1965 ruling in Griffin vs. California. In a concurring opinion, Thomas and Scalia said the Griffin case was mistaken and should be overruled.

Meanwhile, in another case, Thomas spoke for himself and four liberal justices to require a jury to find a defendant guilty of every facet of a crime that could lead to a mandatory prison term.

In Alleyne vs. United States, the court ruled that before a judge imposes an extra mandatory prison term on a defendant for conduct such as brandishing a firearm, a jury must find the defendant guilty of that offense. To do otherwise violates the defendant's basic right to a jury trial with his guilt proven beyond a reasonable doubt, Thomas said.

Thomas has long maintained that juries, not judges, must decide whether a defendant is guilty of all the elements of a crime that warrant extra punishment. And in a rare show of unity with the court's more liberal members, he overruled earlier decisions that left this power in the hands of a judge.

In the case before the court, Allen Alleyne was given four years in prison for helping his girlfriend rob the manager of a convenience store. Following the prosecution's recommendation, the judge gave him an extra seven years for having brandished a firearm. But Alleyne said he had not brandished a gun, and the jury had not convicted him of that extra offense.

The 5-4 ruling overturns the extra seven-year term. The dissenters faulted the majority for overruling a precedent from 2002 that allowed judges to make such decisions.

david.savage@latimes.com

Secret to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure

Secret to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure

Posted: Sunday, June 16, 2013 8:41 am

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.

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 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.

But 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. But those interviews, 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 story line 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.

___

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.

But 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 terrorist attacks, 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 U.S. 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 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."

___

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. Though 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. Though 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 last year. 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 making 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 slide made public by the newspapers, NSA analysts were encouraged to use data coming from both 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. But it's the broader operation on the Internet fiber optics cables that actually captures the data, experts agree.

"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 whether 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. But 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 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 remains a closely guarded secret.

___

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 explained 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 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.

State photo-ID databases become troves for police

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State photo-ID databases become troves for police

Written by Craig Timberg Ellen Nakashima

Published: June 16

E-mail the writers

The faces of more than 120 million people are in searchable photo databases that state officials assembled to prevent driver’s-license fraud but that increasingly are used by police to identify suspects, accomplices and even innocent bystanders in a wide range of criminal investigations.

The facial databases have grown rapidly in recent years and generally operate with few legal safeguards beyond the requirement that searches are conducted for “law enforcement purposes.” Amid rising concern about the National Security Agency’s high-tech surveillance aimed at foreigners, it is these state-level facial-recognition programs that more typically involve American citizens.

The most widely used systems were honed on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq as soldiers sought to identify insurgents. The increasingly widespread deployment of the technology in the United States has helped police find murderers, bank robbers and drug dealers, many of whom leave behind images on surveillance videos or social-media sites that can be compared against official photo databases.

But law enforcement use of such facial searches is blurring the traditional boundaries between criminal and non-criminal databases, putting images of people never arrested in what amount to perpetual digital lineups. The most advanced systems allow police to run searches from laptop computers in their patrol cars and offer access to the FBI and other federal authorities.

Such open access has caused a backlash in some of the few states where there has been a public debate. As the databases grow larger and increasingly connected across jurisdictional boundaries, critics warn that authorities are developing what amounts to a national identification system — based on the distinct geography of each human face.

“Where is government going to go with that years from now?” said Louisiana state Rep. Brett Geymann, a conservative Republican who has fought the creation of such systems there. “Here your driver’s license essentially becomes a national ID card.”

Facial-recognition technology is part of a new generation of biometric tools that once were the stuff of science fiction but are increasingly used by authorities around the nation and the world. Though not yet as reliable as fingerprints, these technologies can help determine identity through individual variations in irises, skin textures, vein patterns, palm prints and a person’s gait while walking.

The Supreme Court’s approval this month of DNA collection during arrests coincides with rising use of that technology as well, with suspects in some cases submitting to tests that put their genetic details in official data­bases, even if they are never convicted of a crime.

Facial-recognition systems are more pervasive and can be deployed remotely, without subjects knowing that their faces have been captured. Today’s driver’s- license databases, which also include millions of images of people who get non-driver ID cards to open bank accounts or board airplanes, typically were made available for police searches with little public notice.

Thirty-seven states now use ­facial-recognition technology in their driver’s-license registries, a Washington Post review found. At least 26 of those allow state, local or federal law enforcement agencies to search — or request searches — of photo databases in an attempt to learn the identities of people considered relevant to investigations.

“This is a tool to benefit law enforcement, not to violate your privacy rights,” said Scott McCallum, head of the facial-recognition unit in Pinellas County, Fla., which has built one of the nation’s most advanced systems.

The technology produces investigative leads, not definitive identifications. But research efforts are focused on pushing the software to the point where it can reliably produce the names of people in the time it takes them to walk by a video camera. This already works in controlled, well-lit settings when the database of potential matches is relatively small. Most experts expect those limitations to be surmounted over the next few years.

That prospect has sparked fears that the databases authorities are building could someday be used for monitoring political rallies, sporting events or even busy downtown areas. Whatever the security benefits — especially at a time when terrorism remains a serious threat — the mass accumulation of location data on individuals could chill free speech or the right to assemble, civil libertarians say.

“As a society, do we want to have total surveillance? Do we want to give the government the ability to identify individuals wherever they are . . . without any immediate probable cause?” asked Laura Donohue, a Georgetown University law professor who has studied government facial databases. “A police state is exactly what this turns into if everybody who drives has to lodge their information with the police.”

A facial ‘template'

Scott McCallum, systems analyst and co-administrator of the facial-recognition program for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office in Florida, discusses aspects of one of the most advanced facial recognition programs used for law enforcement in the country.

Facial-recognition systems analyze a person’s features — such as the shape of eyes, the curl of earlobes, the width of noses — to produce a digital “template” that can be quickly compared with other faces in a database.

The images must be reasonably clear, though newer software allows technicians to sharpen blurry images, bolster faint lighting or make a three-dimensional model of a face that can be rotated to ease comparisons against pictures taken from odd angles.

For the state officials issuing driver’s licenses, the technology has been effective at detecting fraud. As millions of images are compared, the software typically reveals the identities of hundreds or thousands of people who may have more than one driver’s license.

When searches are made for criminal investigations, typically a photo called a “probe” is compared against existing images in a database. The analytical software returns a selection of potential matches, though their accuracy can vary dramatically. A probe image of a middle-aged white man, for example, could produce a possible match with a 20-something African American woman with similarly shaped eyes and lips. Many systems include filters that allow searchers to specify race, sex and a range of possible ages for a suspect.

“It’s a fine line where you need to protect the rights of the citizens, but you also are protecting the right of citizens when you ferret out crime,” said Anthony J. Silva, administrator of Rhode Island’s Division of Motor Vehicles and a former town police chief.

Establishing identity, Silva said, is essential to effective police work: “I can’t tell you how many times I was handed fraudulent documents. And when you are on the street at 3 a.m., who do you call?”

Pennsylvania’s Justice Network, which has allowed police anywhere in the state to compare a facial image with mug-shot databases, has become a key in­vestigative tool, officials said, and last month it added access to 34 million driver’s-license photos. (Some residents have several images, taken over years.)

A detective in Carlisle, Pa., attempting to learn the real name of a suspect known on the street as “Buddha the Shoota” compared a Facebook page picturing the man with the mug-shot database and got a promising lead.

“Facebook is a great source for us,” said Detective Daniel Freedman, who can do facial searches from his department-issued smartphone. “He was surprised when we walked in and said, ‘How you doin’, Buddha?’  ”

He said the suspect responded, “How you know that?” — to which Freedman replied simply, “We’re the police.”

Safeguards and trends

There typically is little concern when facial-recognition systems relying on criminal databases help identify suspects in narrowly targeted investigations. But searches against images of citizens from driver’s licenses or passports, as opposed to mug shots of prisoners, raise more complex legal questions.

Police typically need only to assert a law enforcement purpose for facial searches, whether they be of suspects or potential witnesses to crimes. Civil libertarians worry that this can lead to broadly defined identity sweeps. Already many common but technically illegal activities — blocking a sidewalk, cycling at night without a light or walking a dog without a leash — can trigger police stops and requests for identification, they say.

“The potential for abuse of this technology is such that we have to make sure we put in place the right safeguards to prevent misuse,” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said in a statement. “We also need to make sure the government is as transparent as possible in order to give the American people confidence it’s using this technology appropriately.”

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.)

A few states, including Washington, Oregon and Minnesota, have legal barriers to police accessing facial-recognition technology in driver’s-license registries. New Hampshire’s legislature passed a law prohibiting ­motor vehicle officials from collecting any biometric data.

But the broader trend is toward more sophisticated databases with more expansive access. The current version of the Senate’s immigration bill would dramatically expand an electronic photo-verification system, probably relying on access to driver’s-license registries.

Montana has a facial-recognition system to help prevent fraud in its driver’s-license registry, but officials are still debating whether to allow police any kind of access.

“I can see it’s an amazingly powerful tool. It has a lot of possibilities,” said Brenda Nordlund, the administrator of the Motor Vehicle Division there. “I don’t know if that’s what citizens expect when they come in and get their driver’s-license pictures taken.”

There are substantial variations in how states allow police searches of their driver’s-license databases. Some allow only licensing-agency officials to conduct the actual searches. Others let police do searches themselves, but only from a headquarters office. And still others have made the technology available to almost any officer willing to get trained.

The District of Columbia has facial-recognition technology for its driver’s-license registry but does not permit law enforcement searches, spokeswoman Vanessa Newton said. Virginia motor vehicle officials have run a pilot program experimenting with facial-recognition technology but have not made a decision on whether police will have access to such a system if it is eventually installed, spokeswoman Sunni Brown said. Maryland does not use such technology in its driver’s-license registry.

Police long have had access to some driver’s-license information — including photographs — when they are investigating criminal suspects whose names they know. But facial-recognition technology has allowed police working from a photo of an unknown person to search for a name.

Las Vegas police, for example, called on authorities two states away in Nebraska for help solving a homicide. Based on a tip, investigators had a page from a social-media site featuring the image of an unknown suspect; the tipster said the woman in the photo had lived in Nebraska. The facial-recognition software produced a hit on a driver’s license there, cracking open the case.

“That picture hung on our wall for a long time,” said Betty Johnson, vehicle services administrator in Nebraska. “We are pretty darn proud of that one.”

Who has the databases?

A single private contractor, MorphoTrust USA, which is based in a suburban Boston office park but is owned by French industrial conglomerate Safran, dominates the field of government facial- recognition technology systems. Its software operates in systems for the State Department, the FBI and the Defense Department. Most facial-recognition systems installed in driver’s-license registries use the company’s technology, it says.

The largest facial database belongs to the State Department and includes about 230 million searchable images, split almost equally between foreigners who apply for visas and U.S. citizens who hold passports. Access for police investigations, though, is more limited than with state driver’s-license databases.

The FBI’s own facial-recognition database has about 15 million criminal mug shots. Bureau officials are pushing to expand that by tens of millions more by encouraging states to upload their criminal justice photos into the national system. The FBI does not collect driver’s-license images, but the bureau has developed access to state systems that do.

That effort began with“Project Facemask,” which compared images of federal suspects and fugitives against photos in North Carolina’s driver’s-license registry, helping identify a double-homicide suspect who had changed his name and moved to that state from California. The FBI now has agreements giving access to driver’s-license databases in 10 states for investigative purposes. Many motor vehicle officials say they also run searches for federal agents who request them, typically through “fusion centers” that ease the sharing of information among state, local and federal authorities.

Depending on the importance of the case, federal agents can potentially tap facial databases held by driver’s-license registries, state criminal justice systems, the FBI, the State Department and the Defense Department, which has several million searchable faces, mostly Afghans and Iraqi men. Together these amount to an estimated 400 million facial images in government hands, though the rules on access to each database vary. (Often an individual is pictured in more than one database, or even more than once in a single one.)

Federal investigators searched several facial databases in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing in April, officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. But the images were not clear enough to produce hits, even though both of the alleged bombers had driver’s licenses in Massachusetts, a state that uses facial-recognition technology.

Yet as facial databases grow and video cameras become more prevalent and powerful, such searches will become more effective, experts say.

“More and more, what you’re going to see is criminals and other people whose images were taken over the years are digitized, [and] put into these databases, and incidents like Boston will be easier to solve,” said James Albers, senior vice president for government operations for MorphoTrust USA.

Jake Ruberto, left, and and Scott McCallum, co-administrators of the facial-recognition program run by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. Jake Ruberto, left, and and Scott McCallum, co-administrators of the facial-recognition program run by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. (Edward Linsmier/For The Washington Post)

Pinellas County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Dressback has been using facial-recognition software for more than six years. Pinellas County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Dressback has been using facial-recognition software for more than six years. (Edward Linsmier/For The Washington Post)

Pinellas County

The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office says its facial-recognition unit conducts 5,000 searches a month and has assisted in nearly 1,000 arrests since 2004. A bulletin board in the office is lined with success stories: A teenage boy who was sending lewd messages to young girls through multiple Facebook accounts was identified, as was a suicide victim and an alleged bank robber — whose scowling image was captured by the branch’s surveillance camera.

In another case, a man reported a stolen computer but then noticed that an online photo album he long had maintained was automatically uploading new snapshots of a couple he did not recognize. When the sheriff’s office ran a search, the pictures matched faces in both the mug-shot and driver’s-license data­bases. The couple soon fingered an acquaintance who was arrested for stealing the computer and then selling it to them.

The sheriff’s office, whose jurisdiction includes St. Petersburg and its suburbs, built its facial-recognition system over more than a decade, relying for most of that time on mug shots collected at prisons and police booking centers across the state.

The system now has partnerships with the sheriff’s offices in more than half of Florida’s counties and many other government agencies. This year the unit added the ability to search more than 20 million driver’s-license records, bringing the number of facial images in the database to 30 million, officials say.

The Pinellas County system also has access to 250,000 mug shots — though not driver’s-license images — from the Northern Virginia Regional Identification System, a joint project of Washington area jurisdictions, including some Maryland counties.

Pinellas Deputy Jeremy Dressback, a community policing officer, uses access from the laptop in his patrol car to keep track of the people he encounters on a dingy country stretch notorious for prostitution, drugs and seedy motels.

On a recent patrol, when a scruffy-looking man he did not recognize walked up to one of the motels, Dressback stopped him on suspicion of trespassing and asked for identification. The man did not have a driver’s license but gave his name — James A. Shepherd, age 33, from Kentucky — and said he was staying at the motel with his girlfriend.

Dressback pulled out a digital camera, asked permission to take a picture and then snapped a shot. When the image did not match anyone in the facial-recognition system, Dressback downloaded the picture to his laptop computer and attached it to a field report on Shepherd as a “suspicious person.”

Shepherd, who said he was a roofer returning from work, grumbled at the intrusion, even though he had agreed to have his picture taken. “I’m not a criminal, so there’s really no reason for me to be in a criminal database,” Shepherd said before adding, “But I have been arrested quite a few times.”

When his girlfriend walked by moments later — they were indeed staying at the motel — Shepherd directed her toward their room.

“Get out of here,” he said. “You’ll be in his database in 10 seconds.”

Brook Silva-Braga contributed to this report.

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Feds want what Apple Computer has on you!!!

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Apple received more than 4,000 government requests for customer data over six months

By Hayley Tsukayama, Updated: Monday, June 17, 5:48 AM E-mail the writer

Apple has released information on how many data requests it receives from U.S. law enforcement, as it joins Facebook, Microsoft and others in pushing for looser restrictions on what tech companies can share with their customers.

The effort comes in the wake of reports that the National Security Administration has a wide-ranging surveillance program that analyzes consumer information from companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

According to the statement, Apple said it has recently been authorized to reveal that it has received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from federal, state and local U.S. authorities for customer data between Dec. 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013. Those requests, the company said affected between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices. Apple said the company’s legal team reviews each request to see if it is appropriate.

“We will continue to work hard to strike the right balance between fulfilling our legal responsibilities and protecting our customers’ privacy as they expect and deserve,” a statement on the company’s Web site says.

The statement does not explicitly mention how many of these requests have been made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or by the NSA. The company said the figures dealt specifically with “requests we receive related to national security.” Apple did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on that point.

The most common type of request, Apple said, comes from local authorities “investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide.

Apple’s statements follows Friday statements from Facebook and Microsoft that broadly disclosed the number of FISA requests those companies have received in the last six months of 2012. The companies used similar examples of why officials may want the information, such as aiding in a search for missing children.

Apple also said that there are certain kinds of information that it does not provide to law enforcement because it simply doesn’t keep it. This, the company said, includes conversations that take place over its proprietary Messages service, or its video-conferencing FaceTime program. The company also said that it does not store data related to consumers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in a way that they can be traced back to an individual.

The statement did not mention other data Apple keeps on its servers, such as consumer e-mails, videos, photos or files stored on its servers.

New Leak Indicates Britain and U.S. Tracked Diplomats

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New Leak Indicates Britain and U.S. Tracked Diplomats

By SCOTT SHANE and RAVI SOMAIYA

Published: June 16, 2013 8 Comments

A new set of classified documents disclosed Sunday suggested that Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has provided a trove of documents to The Guardian newspaper, had obtained a wider range of materials about government surveillance than had been known, including one document revealing how American and British intelligence agencies had eavesdropped on world leaders at conferences in London in 2009.

The latest disclosures, appearing again in The Guardian, came the night before a meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations was to open in Northern Ireland, where some of the leaders who were intelligence targets four years ago will be in attendance.

The newspaper reported Sunday night that Government Communications Headquarters, or G.C.H.Q., the British eavesdropping agency that works closely with the N.S.A., monitored the e-mail and phones of other countries’ representatives at two London conferences, in part by setting up a monitored Internet cafe for the participants. In addition, the United States intercepted the communications of Dmitri A. Medvedev, then the Russian president and now the prime minister, the newspaper said.

The Guardian posted some G.C.H.Q. documents on its Web site with part of the contents blacked out. A spokesman for The Guardian said Sunday that the paper decided to redact the documents, and that enough was published “to show the authenticity of the report.”

The documents indicated that e-mail interception and key-logging software was installed on the computers in the ersatz Internet cafe, that foreign diplomats’ BlackBerry messages and calls were intercepted, and that 45 analysts tracked who was phoning whom at the meeting.

Richard J. Aldrich, a professor of international security at the University of Warwick and the author of a history of the G.C.H.Q., said the logos of the N.S.A. and Canadian intelligence on one of the British documents suggested that they were accessible to Mr. Snowden “under the auspices of a joint program.”

He said Mr. Snowden’s leak showed that British and American diplomats and politicians got a real-time feed of intelligence on their counterparts at major summit meetings. “Now this is integrated into summit diplomacy, almost like a newsreader getting a feed in their ear,” he said.

American intelligence officials have expressed alarm at the variety of highly classified material Mr. Snowden obtained, suggesting that his actions revealed a shocking breach in the fundamental principle that intelligence officers should have access only to the material they need to do their jobs. On Sunday, a spokesman for the British foreign service said he would not comment on intelligence matters.

Mr. Snowden, 29, who left the N.S.A. station in Hawaii this spring and is now thought to be hiding in Hong Kong, delivered hundreds of N.S.A. documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post. Their initial reports covered the routine collection of data on all phone calls handled by the major American telephone companies and an N.S.A. program called Prism that collects the e-mails and other Web activity of foreigners using major Internet services like Google, Yahoo and Facebook.

Disclosures linked to Mr. Snowden now rank among the most significant breaches in the strict secrecy of the N.S.A., the largest American intelligence agency, since its creation in 1952. It suffered a handful of defections during the cold war; more recently, insiders have revealed warrantless eavesdropping inside the United States.

By contrast, the latest disclosures have exposed surveillance approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and shared with Congress.

A letter delivered to Congress on Saturday from the office of James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said that the surveillance programs had helped thwart “dozens” of terrorist plots in the United States and more than 20 other countries.

While the N.S.A. collects and stores the phone records of millions of Americans each year, it examines the records only when there is suspicion of a connection to terrorism, the letter said, adding that in 2012, fewer than 300 phone records were reviewed.

The Guardian’s latest reports offered a rare window onto the everyday electronic spying that the agency does in close cooperation with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Matthew M. Aid, an intelligence historian in Washington, said the reports have “confirmed longstanding suspicions that N.S.A’s surveillance in this country is far more intrusive than we knew.” He added, “We desperately need to have a public discussion about the proper limits on N.S.A.”

But he said the reports of spying on world leaders, while distressing to the eavesdroppers because it will make their targets more wary, contained no surprises. “This is just what intelligence agencies do — spy on friends and enemies alike,” he said. “Only because the shroud of secrecy that covers all of N.S.A. operations is so thick does a glimpse like this come as a shock.”

While some members of Congress have raised questions about the sweep of the N.S.A.’s collection of data on Americans, leaders of both parties have defended the programs and denounced Mr. Snowden before The Guardian published its latest report.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” former Vice President Dick Cheney praised the agency and called Mr. Snowden a criminal and a traitor. “I think it’s one of the worst occasions in my memory of somebody with access to classified information doing enormous damage to the national security interests of the United States,” he said.

The White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, appearing on “Face the Nation” on CBS, said leaking information about American surveillance “in effect gives the playbook to those who would like to get around our techniques and our practices, and obviously that’s not in our interest in the long haul.”

John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington, and John F. Burns from London.

Living With the Surveillance State

Living With the Surveillance State

By BILL KELLER

Published: June 16, 2013 326 Comments

MY colleague Thomas Friedman’s levelheaded take on the National Security Agency eavesdropping uproar needs no boost from me. His column soared to the top of the “most e-mailed” list and gathered a huge and mostly thoughtful galaxy of reader comments. Judging from the latest opinion polling, it also reflected the prevailing mood of the electorate. It reflected mine. But this is a discussion worth prolonging, with vigilant attention to real dangers answering overblown rhetoric about theoretical ones.

Tom’s important point was that the gravest threat to our civil liberties is not the N.S.A. but another 9/11-scale catastrophe that could leave a panicky public willing to ratchet up the security state, even beyond the war-on-terror excesses that followed the last big attack. Reluctantly, he concludes that a well-regulated program to use technology in defense of liberty — even if it gives us the creeps — is a price we pay to avoid a much higher price, the shutdown of the world’s most open society. Hold onto that qualifier: “well regulated.”

The N.S.A. data-mining is part of something much larger. On many fronts, we are adjusting to life in a surveillance state, relinquishing bits of privacy in exchange for the promise of other rewards. We have a vague feeling of uneasiness about these transactions, but it rarely translates into serious thinking about where we set the limits.

Exhibit A: In last Thursday’s Times Joseph Goldstein reported that local law enforcement agencies, “largely under the radar,” are amassing their own DNA databanks, and they often do not play by the rules laid down for the databases compiled by the F.B.I. and state crime labs. As a society, we have accepted DNA evidence as a reliable tool both for bringing the guilty to justice and for exonerating the wrongly accused. But do we want police agencies to have complete license — say, to sample our DNA surreptitiously, or to collect DNA from people not accused of any wrongdoing, or to share our most private biological information? Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project and a member of the New York State Commission on Forensic Science, says regulators have been slow to respond to what he calls rogue databanks. And a recent Supreme Court ruling that defined DNA-gathering as a legitimate police practice comparable to fingerprinting is likely to encourage more freelancing. Scheck says his fear is that misuse will arouse public fears of government overreach and discredit one of the most valuable tools in our justice system. “If you ask the American people, do you support using DNA to catch criminals and exonerate the innocent, everybody says yes,” Scheck told me. “If you ask, do you trust the government to have your DNA, everybody says no.”

Exhibit B: Nothing quite says Big Brother like closed-circuit TV. In Orwell’s Britain, which is probably the democratic world’s leading practitioner of CCTV monitoring, the omnipresent pole-mounted cameras are being supplemented in some jurisdictions by wearable, night-vision cop-cams that police use to record every drunken driver, domestic violence call and restive crowd they encounter. New York last year joined with Microsoft to introduce the eerily named Domain Awareness System, which connects 3,000 CCTV cameras (and license-plate scanners and radiation detectors) around the city and allows police to cross-reference databases of stolen cars, wanted criminals and suspected terrorists. Fans of TV thrillers like “Homeland,” “24” and the British series “MI-5” (guilty, guilty and guilty) have come to think of the omnipresent camera as a crime-fighting godsend. But who watches the watchers? Announcing the New York system, the city assured us that no one would be monitored because of race, religion, citizenship status, political affiliation, etc., to which one skeptic replied, “But we’ve heard that one before.”

Exhibit C: Congress has told the F.A.A. to set rules for the use of spy drones in American air space by 2015. It is easy to imagine the value of this next frontier in surveillance: monitoring forest fires, chasing armed fugitives, search-and-rescue operations. Predator drones already patrol our Southern border for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers. Indeed, border surveillance may be critical in persuading Congress to pass immigration reform that would extend our precious liberty to millions living in the shadows. I for one would count that a fair trade. But where does it stop? Scientific American editorialized in March: “Privacy advocates rightly worry that drones, equipped with high-resolution video cameras, infrared detectors and even facial-recognition software, will let snoops into realms that have long been considered private.” Like your backyard. Or, with the sort of thermal imaging used to catch the Boston bombing fugitive hiding under a boat tarp, your bedroom.

And then there is the Internet. We seem pretty much at peace, verging on complacent, about the exploitation of our data for commercial, medical and scientific purposes — as trivial as the advertising algorithm that pitches us camping gear because we searched the Web for wilderness travel, as valuable as the digital record-sharing that makes sure all our doctors know what meds we’re on.

In an online debate about the N.S.A. eavesdropping story the other day, Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, pointed out that we have grown comfortable with the Internal Revenue Service knowing our finances, employees of government hospitals knowing our medical histories, and public-school teachers knowing the abilities and personalities of our children.

“The information vacuumed up by the N.S.A. was already available to faceless bureaucrats in phone and Internet companies — not government employees but strangers just the same,” Posner added. “Many people write as though we make some great sacrifice by disclosing private information to others, but it is in fact simply the way that we obtain services we want — whether the market services of doctors, insurance companies, Internet service providers, employers, therapists and the rest or the nonmarket services of the government like welfare and security.”

Privacy advocates will retort that we surrender this information wittingly, but in reality most of us just let it slip away. We don’t pay much attention to privacy settings or the “terms of service” fine print. Our two most common passwords are “password” and “123456.”

From time to time we get worrisome evidence of data malfeasance, such as the last big revelation of N.S.A. eavesdropping, in 2005, which disclosed that the agency was tapping Americans without the legal nicety of a warrant, or the more recent I.R.S. targeting of right-wing political groups. But in most cases the advantages of intrusive technology are tangible and the abuses are largely potential. Edward Snowden’s leaks about N.S.A. data-mining have, so far, not included evidence of any specific abuse.

The danger, it seems to me, is not surveillance per se. We have already decided, most of us, that life on the grid entails a certain amount of intrusion. Nor is the danger secrecy, which, as Posner notes, “is ubiquitous in a range of uncontroversial settings,” a promise the government makes to protect “taxpayers, inventors, whistle-blowers, informers, hospital patients, foreign diplomats, entrepreneurs, contractors, data suppliers and many others.”

The danger is the absence of rigorous, independent regulation and vigilant oversight to keep potential abuses of power from becoming a real menace to our freedom. The founders created a system of checks and balances, but the safeguards have not kept up with technology. Instead, we have an executive branch in a leak-hunting frenzy, a Congress that treats oversight as a form of partisan combat, a political climate that has made “regulation” an expletive and a public that feels a generalized, impotent uneasiness. I don’t think we’re on a slippery slope to a police state, but I think if we are too complacent about our civil liberties we could wake up one day and find them gone — not in a flash of nuclear terror but in a gradual, incremental surrender.

Your ever-vigilant friends at the NSA

Durst: Your ever-vigilant friends at the NSA

Posted: Monday, June 17, 2013 10:31 pm | Updated: 10:51 pm, Mon Jun 17, 2013.

Guest Commentary by Will Durst

Dear U.S. Citizen: Please accept our most egregiously sincere apologies for the difficulties and inconveniences the secret monitoring of your phone records and email and GPS units and foreign travel and bank accounts and yes, even your snail mail has evidently caused.

We here at the NSA strive for the perfection of our services, which depend on the chronic obliviousness of you, our valued customers. Unfortunately, due to one disgruntled deadbeat (who escaped to China to avoid government persecution- which is like joining the Army because you're tired of people telling you what to do) you now know of our continuing efforts to keep you safe. That was never our intention.

When you are even tangentially aware of the absurd lengths the National Security Agency will go to keep you and your loved ones out of harm's way, our mission has failed. If you knew half the crap we have to slog through here, your hair would curl, but that's another story altogether.

Yes, we're pretty much keeping tabs on everything everyone says and does, all the time, which we understand upsets a few of you. Folks. Don't worry. Nobody's actually listening to any of this stuff. We're just used to collecting it. If it makes you feel any better, think of this whole enterprise as an exceedingly long, government-subsidized episode of "Hoarders." You can trust us.

And seriously, anybody who didn't suspect this kind of snooping was going on is not to be trusted with knives in the kitchen without a fencing mask. Privacy is soooo 20th Century. You share the regularity of your bowel movements on Facebook, but we check around to find out who's making coded phone calls to al-Qaida and suddenly everybody's nose is out of joint? You kidding me?

Unfortunately, one of our representatives testified in front of Congress, "no, we aren't collecting data on Americans," when what he meant to say is, "yes, we ARE collecting data on Americans." James Clapper simply gave the "least untruthful answer possible." Then again, Congress knows that getting a straight answer from us is harder than bending a wire coat-hanger into a number representing pi to the sixth digit with your teeth. All for your protection.

See, the problem is, nobody knows who the enemy is anymore. Narrowing suspicion is much too time-consuming. Lot easier to wiretap the entire nation than try to pick out the one or two most devious of you. Besides, what could be more democratic than spying on everybody?

We call the process data mining. And you, the soft quarry, are producing up to a billion records a day. Which is real similar to pulverizing Everest, then sifting through the rubble for a blue pebble. It ain't easy, people. Lot of haystacks, not so many needles.

To ensure this glitch never occurs again, we are rectifying the glitcher in order to return our service to the high-level quality that you, the citizens of America, have come to expect. For the inconvenience we have caused, each household in America will receive 3 free months of HBO.

If you have any questions or comments regarding this matter, please contact your Congressperson. Thanks for your understanding, and please, don't bother looking for us. You can be sure, we'll be looking after you.

Sincerely.

Your ever-vigilant friends at the NSA.

P.S. Don't forget to "like us" on Facebook.

Recipient of seven consecutive nominations for Stand-Up of the Year, Will Durst's new one-man show, "BoomerAging: From LSD to OMG," is presented every Tuesday at The Marsh, San Francisco. Go to... themarsh.org for more info. Or willdurst.com

NSA director defends sweeping surveillance program

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NSA director defends sweeping surveillance program, says plot against Wall Street thwarted

By Associated Press, Published: June 17 | Updated: Tuesday, June 18, 8:29 AM

WASHINGTON — The director of the National Security Agency said Tuesday the government’s sweeping surveillance programs have foiled some 50 terrorist plots worldwide, including one directed at the New York Stock Exchange, in a forceful defense of spy operations that was echoed by the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee.

Army Gen. Keith Alexander said the two recently disclosed programs — one that gathers U.S. phone records and another that is designed to track the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism — are critical in the terrorism fight.

Intelligence officials have disclosed some details on two thwarted attacks, and Alexander offered some information on other attempts.

He said the NSA was monitoring a known extremist in Yemen who was in contact with an individual in the United States. Identifying that person and other individuals, Alexander said, officials “were able to detect a nascent plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange. ... The FBI disrupted and arrested these individuals.”

The programs “assist the intelligence community to connect the dots,” Alexander told the committee in a rare, open Capitol Hill hearing.

Alexander got no disagreement from the leaders of the panel, who have been outspoken in backing the programs since Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, disclosed information to The Washington Post and the Guardian newspapers.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the committee, and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the panel’s top Democrat, said the programs were vital to the intelligence community and assailed Snowden’s actions as criminal.

“It is at times like these where our enemies within become almost as damaging as our enemies on the outside,” Rogers said.

Ruppersberger said the “brazen disclosures” put the United States and its allies at risk.

The general counsel for the intelligence community said the NSA cannot target phone conversations between callers inside the U.S. — even if one of those callers was someone they were targeted for surveillance when outside the country.

The director of national intelligence’s legal chief, Robert S. Litt, said that if the NSA finds it has accidentally gathered a phone call by a target who had traveled into the U.S. without their knowledge, they have to “purge” that from their system. The same goes for an accidental collection of any conversation because of an error.

Litt said those incidents are then reported to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which “pushes back” and asks how it happened, and what the NSA is doing to fix the problem so it doesn’t happen again.

The hearing came the morning after President Barack Obama, who is attending the G-8 summit in Ireland, vigorously defended the surveillance programs in a lengthy interview Monday, calling them transparent — even though they are authorized in secret.

“It is transparent,” Obama told PBS’ Charlie Rose in an interview. “That’s why we set up the FISA court,” the president added, referring to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes two recently disclosed programs: one that gathers U.S. phone records and another that is designed to track the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism.

Obama said he has named representatives to a privacy and civil liberties oversight board to help in the debate over just how far government data gathering should be allowed to go — a discussion that is complicated by the secrecy surrounding the FISA court, with hearings held at undisclosed locations and with only government lawyers present. The orders that result are all highly classified.

“We’re going to have to find ways where the public has an assurance that there are checks and balances in place ... that their phone calls aren’t being listened into; their text messages aren’t being monitored, their emails are not being read by some big brother somewhere,” the president said.

A senior administration official said Obama had asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to determine what more information about the two programs could be made public, to help better explain them. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly.

Snowden on Monday accused members of Congress and administration officials of exaggerating their claims about the success of the data gathering programs, including pointing to the arrest of the would-be New York subway bomber, Najibullah Zazi, in 2009.

In an online interview with The Guardian in which he posted answers to questions, he said Zazi could have been caught with narrower, targeted surveillance programs — a point Obama conceded in his interview without mentioning Snowden.

“We might have caught him some other way,” Obama said. “We might have disrupted it because a New York cop saw he was suspicious. Maybe he turned out to be incompetent and the bomb didn’t go off. But, at the margins, we are increasing our chances of preventing a catastrophe like that through these programs,” he said.

Obama repeated earlier assertions that the NSA programs were a legitimate counterterror tool and that they were completely noninvasive to people with no terror ties — something he hoped to discuss with the privacy and civil liberties board he’d formed. The senior administration official said the president would be meeting with the new privacy board in the coming days.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

14-year-old kid arrested for NRA shirt faces a year in jail

I wonder if 14-year-old Jared Marcum is one of the 50 or terrorists plots the NSA busted up as a result of spying on millions of Americans????

Lardieri has claimed that police in Logan City (pop. 1,779) threatened to charge Marcum with making terroristic threats during the incident that led to his arrest.

Source

The 14-year-old kid arrested over his pro-NRA shirt now faces a year in jail

The Daily CallerThe Daily Caller

The West Virginia eighth-grader who was suspended and arrested in late April after he refused to remove a t-shirt supporting the National Rifle Association appeared in court this week and was formally charged with obstructing an officer.

As CBS affiliate WTRF reports, 14-year-old Jared Marcum now faces a $500 fine and a maximum of one year in prison.

The boy’s father, Allen Lardieri, is not pleased.

“Me, I’m more of a fighter and so is Jared and eventually we’re going to get through this,” Lardieri told WTRF. “I don’t think it should have ever gotten this far.”

“Every aspect of this is just totally wrong,” Lardieri added. “He has no background of anything criminal up until now and it just seems like nobody wants to admit they’re wrong.”

Officials at Logan Middle School in Logan County, West Va. maintain that Marcum, who has since completed eighth grade, was suspended for one day because he caused a disruption after a teacher asked him to remove a shirt emblazoned with a hunting rifle and the statement “protect your right.”

“She said, ‘Are you supposed to wear that in school?’” Marcum had previously explained in an interview with local station, WOWK-TV. “I said, ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’”

In a move The Daily Caller can only characterize as courageous, Marcum returned to school after his suspension wearing exactly the same shirt. Students across the rural county showed their support for Marcum by wearing similar shirts on that day as well.

There are no accounts of any additional arrests or suspensions when Marcum returned to school.

Lardieri has claimed that police in Logan City (pop. 1,779) threatened to charge Marcum with making terroristic threats during the incident that led to his arrest.

In legal documents obtained by the CBS station, the arresting officer, James Adkins, reportedly fails to inform the court about any terrorist threats or any violent action. Instead, Adkins asserts that the 14-year-old boy did not follow his orders to stop talking. This verbosity somehow prevented Adkins from performing his police duties.

“In my view of the facts, Jared didn’t do anything wrong,” Ben White, Marcum’s attorney, opined, according to WTRF. “I think Officer Adkins could have done something differently.”

White has previously asserted that his client was exercising his free speech rights by wearing the shirt.

The school district’s policy doesn’t prohibit shirts promoting Second Amendment rights.

Logan police and the prosecuting attorney, Michael White, declined to answer questions.

Follow Eric on Twitter and send education-related story tips to erico@dailycaller.com. Join the conversation on The Daily Caller

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Mistrial over cop who murdered 7 year old with machine gun

Mistrial in case of girl shot by Detroit officer

Associated Press Tue Jun 18, 2013 12:43 PM

DETROIT — A judge declared a mistrial Tuesday after jurors failed to reach a verdict in the trial of a Detroit police officer who fatally shot a 7-year-old girl during a chaotic search for a murder suspect that was recorded by a reality TV crew.

Loud voices could be heard in the jury room a few hours before jurors threw in the towel and were dismissed. They sent three notes, the last one indicating they still couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict on the third day of deliberations, despite encouragement from Wayne County Judge Cynthia Gray Hathaway.

Joseph Weekley, a member of an elite police squad, was charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of Aiyana Stanley-Jones.

He was accused of being “grossly negligent” in how he handled his submachine gun as his black-clad, masked and armed unit stormed the Detroit home to capture a suspect in May 2010. Police threw a stun grenade through a window, and Weekley was the first officer through the door.

He told jurors that he accidentally pulled the trigger during a struggle with the girl’s grandmother, but Mertilla Jones denied interfering with the gun. Weekley was not charged with intentionally shooting Aiyana.

The hunt for a murder suspect was being recorded by a crew from “The First 48,” a police show on A&E Networks. Some video shot from the sidewalk was part of the evidence.

The jury could have convicted Weekley of involuntary manslaughter, a felony, or reckless discharge of a firearm, a misdemeanor. He also could have been cleared of all charges.

The judge listed several factors for the jury to consider on the involuntary manslaughter charge. To convict, the jury had to find that he willfully disregarded possible injuries to others by failing to control his gun, as well as other elements.

“We are stuck,” the jury said in its first note Tuesday.

Before dismissing the jurors, the judge asked if anyone felt that more deliberations would be fruitful if “some matters” could be addressed. She didn’t elaborate. Only one juror raised her hand.

“One out of 12 probably won’t be enough,” Hathaway said.

The mistrial doesn’t mean the charges go away. Hathaway will hold future hearings to discuss the case.

“The Wayne County prosecutor’s office is prepared to proceed with the case,” Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from Weekley or his attorney, Steve Fishman.

Separately, a videographer for the “The First 48,” Allison Howard, is charged with perjury and withholding video crucial to the investigation. Her trial is set for June 24.

Google petitions FISA court for ability to disclose NSA user-data requests

OK, technically Google is right and the Patriot Act is unconstitutional, but don't expect that silly FISA court to understand that.

Source

Google petitions FISA court for ability to disclose NSA user-data requests on First Amendment basis

By Brandon Bailey and Jeremy C. Owens

Staff writers

Posted: 06/19/2013 06:06:31 AM PDT

MOUNTAIN VIEW -- Citing a constitutional right to free speech, Google (GOOG) asked the secretive U.S. foreign intelligence court Tuesday for permission to tell the public how many national security data requests the company receives from federal authorities, separate from routine law enforcement requests.

"Google's reputation and business has been harmed by the false or misleading reports in the media" about government data-gathering, "and Google's users are concerned by the allegations," the company said in a court filing. "Google must respond to such claims with more than generalities."

Civil liberties groups applauded the legal motion from the Internet giant, which has balked at the government's restrictions on disclosing national security requests.

"Other companies should follow suit," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a Twitter post Tuesday afternoon. But other companies' reaction was muted. A source at one Internet company suggested that a lawsuit might be cumbersome and slow down the disclosure process.

Google and other Internet companies have said they want to provide more information in part to dispel the impression that government agencies have broad access to Internet users' online activities. That notion was raised by initial news reports in The Washington Post and the British newspaper the Guardian about a government surveillance program known as Prism, which suggested that the National Security Agency is able to tap directly into the servers of Google and other leading Internet companies.

Internet companies have denied that the government has direct access to their servers, but Google and the other companies have acknowledged that they provide information when they are legally required to comply with government requests.

"We have long pushed for transparency so users can better understand the extent to which governments request their data," Google said Tuesday, noting that it was the first company to win permission to report how many requests it receives under one national security law, the Patriot Act.

But companies have not been allowed to report on a second type of request, made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The Prism program operates under FISA authority. Federal authorities only agreed last week that companies could report on FISA requests if they were included in a broad total of all requests from local police and other government agencies.

In recent days, Yahoo (YHOO), Apple (AAPL), Facebook and Microsoft have issued reports that complied with that requirement, even though critics have said the gross numbers do not provide a clear picture of what kinds of requests the government is making.

"Greater transparency is needed," Google said Tuesday, "so today we have petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow us to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures," separately from other types of requests such as those coming from local police.

The Washington, D.C.-based court has jurisdiction over government intelligence programs and operates mostly in secret.

But in its filing, Google argued: "These matters are of significant weight and importance, and transparency is critical to advancing public debate in a thoughtful and democratic manner."

Contact Brandon Bailey at bbailey@mercurynews.com; follow him at Twitter.com/BrandonBailey.

Ex-fire chief facing theft charges now Hayden mayor

Source

Ex-fire chief facing theft charges now Hayden mayor

The Associated Press Wed Jun 19, 2013 11:06 AM

FLORENCE -- A former acting Hayden fire chief accused of theft and trafficking in stolen property has been sworn in as the community’s mayor.

KPHO-TV reports that 37-year-old Charles Vega was sworn in Monday after winning the seat in March.

He was arrested a month before his election by Pinal County sheriff’s deputies for allegedly taking money from a fundraising dance for the Hayden Volunteer Fire Department and chainsaws meant for the Asarco Mine in Kearney.

Vega was removed as the fire chief and is a former worker at the Asarco Mine.

He told KPHO-TV he’s innocent until proven guilty.

The incumbent that Vega beat in the election, Monica Badillo, says Vega should step down.

A pretrial conference for Vega’s case is slated for next month.

Phoenix officer tied to slideshow reinstated

Source

Phoenix officer tied to slideshow reinstated

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jun 19, 2013 8:07 AM

A Phoenix police detective fired last year for her role in organizing a holiday slideshow that included photos of dead bodies found at police scenes has been reinstated following a hearing with a municipal appeals board.

Within hours of regaining her job, Detective Courtney Mayo filed a notice of claim against the city of Phoenix saying administrators violated a state law when they released records related to the Police Department internal investigation late last year.

Mayo is also part of a separate lawsuit filed against the city alleging defamation and infliction of emotional distress for statements city and police leaders made about the photos when the investigation was publicly revealed in early 2012.

Mayo and Officers Howard Pacifico, Brandy Villarreal and Jeffrey Johnson filed the suit after the city failed to settle the claim for $2.9 million.

Those three officers were each suspended and have appealed, according to city records.

The slideshow with photos of the dead was produced for a December 2011 holiday party where members of the night-detectives squad planned to celebrate making it through another year, according to court records.

The slideshow begins with photos of squad members enjoying themselves on the job and at other social functions. About 10 minutes in, the presentation provides a warning for viewers to avert their eyes “if disgusting is not your thing.”

The presentation continues for another 20 minutes featuring photos of the dead and decomposing bodies and shots of other scenes that squad members encountered.

The officers contend that the photos were from the squad’s personal files and that the pictures were all of non-criminal deaths, such as a suicide or an overdose.

“The slideshow was shown a single time, to officers who attended the December 17 get-together,” according to court documents. “It was never shown again, posted publicly or ever intended for viewing other than those officers in the squad attending the event.”

Phoenix internal investigators were alerted to the presentation through an anonymous complaint filed shortly after the party.

The defamation lawsuit claims that then-acting Police Chief Joe Yahner made false statements to the media about the nature of the photos in the slideshow.

The lawsuit also cites a statement Mayor Greg Stanton made in February 2012: “The video does show victims of crime, people who have either been the subjects of homicide or other tragic deaths, and they’re shown in an inappropriate light.”

Police and city officials declined to comment on Mayo’s reinstatement or any of the pending legal claims.

A police-union representative working with Mayo said that the appeal of her termination was not based on whether there should be discipline, but whether the discipline she received was appropriate.

Police records indicate that Mayo’s supervisor provided her with 19 of the 30 photos that were used in the presentation. Mayo’s supervisor received a 240-hour suspension, and Mayo was fired.

Friday’s decision by the civil-service board reverses Mayo’s dismissal and instead suspended her for 240 hours.

“The supervisor was aware of it, the supervisor sanctioned the making of the video, the supervisor provided the bulk of the offending pictures,” said Ken Crane, vice president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, a labor group that represents some Phoenix officers. “The discipline needs to be applied fairly and equally across the board.”

The civil-service board’s decision also led Mayo to threaten a new lawsuit against city administrators over the release of the internal investigation into the slideshow, offering to settle for $285,000.

State law prohibits the public release of potentially negative information about a law-enforcement officer until the officer’s appeals are exhausted. Mayo’s appeals were not exhausted until the hearing with the civil-service board late last week, but police shared the slideshow with politicians soon after the investigation commenced and released it to the media in December.

Crane said the decision to share the slideshow with non-law-enforcement personnel so early in the investigation is a concern.

“The investigation was in its infancy, they were still trying to figure out the extent of it, who’s involved, who’s not involved, and then this video gets shopped around to the mayor and City Council,” Crane said. “Some of them started making public comments, meanwhile, my guys are under a gag order. In our opinion, that violates Arizona state law.”

California to flush public record laws down the toilet???

Budget could limit public's access to government documents

By Anthony York, Los Angeles Times

June 18, 2013, 8:07 p.m.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown is poised to sign legislation that could reduce the public's access to basic government records that have long been used to scrutinize the actions of elected officials.

The proposal, a late insert into the state budget that lawmakers passed last week, would allow local officials to opt out of parts of the California law that gives citizens access to government documents.

Under that law, officials now must respond to a request for records from a member of the public within 10 days and are required to make the documents available electronically. The change, which Brown requested as a cost-cutting measure, would allow the officials to skip both requirements with a voice vote.

The same vote would permit them to reject requests without explanation and would no longer require them to help citizens identify existing information.

Brown and other defenders of the legislation predict that it would have little effect — that most local governments would choose to abide by the old rules. [Yea, except when it will make them look like crooks or tyrants, which is the whole purpose of these public record laws] But the California Newspaper Publishers Assn. called the measure a stealth attack on government transparency and a blow to the public's right to information.

"If the local agencies were predisposed to share information with the public," association lobbyist Jim Ewert said," there wouldn't be a need for a public records act to begin with." [Just as a said before, but said a little more politelly]

Ewert, who wrote to Brown this week urging him to veto the bill, said the governor's record on open government is spotty. He cited Brown's 2012 decision to temporarily suspend open-meeting laws for local governments and three closed-door or private phone meetings that the governor had with Los Angeles County supervisors to sell his prison overhaul in 2011.

"I wouldn't give him very high marks," Ewert said. "His actions don't demonstrate a strong commitment to government transparency.''

News organizations rely on California's open-records law to help expose information about state and local government that may otherwise remained hidden.

The Times has used the law to find the results of child abuse investigations and the amount of pension money paid to public retirees. Times reporters have also used the law to aid in uncovering questionable spending in public institutions such as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and in revealing corruption in the city of Bell, where officials paid themselves outsized salaries and imposed illegal taxes on residents.

Bell resident Donna Gannon, 59, worries that changing the law could disable what little civic engagement exists in cities across the state. "Too much is going to be hidden from us," she said. Government officials, she noted, "work for us."

Brown's Department of Finance spokesman, H.D. Palmer, said the proposal maintains the public's right to know what officials are doing. "This does not alter the core provisions of the Public Records Act," he said.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that the measure would save tens of millions of dollars a year because Sacramento would no longer have to reimburse local governments for the cost of providing some records. Cities and counties would assume those costs.

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, voted to change the law. He said that if any local agency decided not to comply with its provisions, voters could direct their anger at those officials.

"Their own constituents will be aware that it is they who have decided it is not worth their expenditure of their funds,'' Leno said.

The California Public Records Act, which established access to government information as a "fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state," was signed into law by Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1968. In 2000 and 2001, Gov. Gray Davis expanded it.

Los Angeles County in 2002 filed a legal challenge to those new requirements with the Commission on State Mandates, successfully arguing that the new provisions put a financial burden on local governments that should be reimbursed by the state.

Brown's proposal, by making compliance with those provisions optional, would gut key pieces of the law, opponents said. But the measure sailed though both houses of the Legislature during Friday's budget debate with just one Democrat, Leland Yee of San Francisco, voting against it.

Yee, who is running for secretary of state next year, said the measure was "just the latest indication this nation is moving backward in terms of being open and transparent." He said many of his fellow Democrats share the blame for that trend.

"This came from the governor, but it was blessed by the leadership," he said. "I thought that there would be sufficient checks and balances that something like this would not occur."

The measure was tucked into a larger bill on government administration, one of 21 pieces of budget legislation. The 107-page measure directs billions in state spending, creates a new grant program for trauma centers, makes changes to the workers' compensation system and limits tax credits for owners of the Honda Center in Anaheim, among other things.

Brown would have to reject the entire bill if he were to block the open-records proposal, and his administration has indicated that he intends to sign it.

anthony.york@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ruben Vives contributed to this report.

Edward Snowden detalla actos de ciberespionaje

Edward Snowden detalla actos de ciberespionaje

El exagente de la CIA, ha revelado que Estados Unidos ha estado llevando a cabo actos de ciberespionaje contra Hong Kong y contra China, según la agencia Europa Press.

Un reciente informe publicado por el diario South China Morning Post reseña que Snowden les facilitó información durante una entrevista tienen documentos en los que aparecen fechas específicas y las direcciones de IP de ordendores tanto en Hong Kong como en China que fueron ‘hackeados’ por la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional (NSA) durante cuatro años.

El diario South China Morning Post refirió que estos documentos también incluyen información sobre si el ataque contra un ordenador seguía o se había completado, así como detalles más específicos de la operación.

"No sé qué información específica estaban buscando en estas máquinas, sólo que usando herramientas técnicas para conseguir acceso no autorizado a ordenadores civiles es una violación de la ley, además de ser algo éticamente dudoso", subrayó el exagente de la CIA, según el diario South China Morning Post.

Un popular periódico respaldado por el Partido Comunista exhortó el viernes a los dirigentes chinos a obtener más información de un contratista estadounidense en lugar de repatriarlo, ya que, dijo, sus revelaciones sobre los programas de vigilancia de Estados Unidos son de relevancia para China, según un artículo publicado por la agencia AP.

El editorial del Global Times se publicó después de que Snowden afirmara en una entrevista que la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional de Estados Unidos hackeó 61 mil blancos, incluyendo cientos en Hong Kong y China.

La entrevista se publicó en el diario South China Morning Post, de Hong Kong.

Snowden reveló el fin de semana que él era la fuente de una filtración de información ultrasecreta sobre las operaciones de espionaje de la NSA, alegando que estaba revelando atropellos.

Habló con reporteros desde una ubicación secreta en el territorio chino semiautónomo de Hong Kong, una elección que generó dudas sobre si Washington pediría su repatriación para procesarlo.

El Global Times dijo en su editorial, que se publicó en las ediciones en chino e inglés, que Snowden podría brindar datos de inteligencia que ayudarían a China a actualizar su comprensión del ciberespacio y mejorar su posición en negociaciones con Washington.

"Snowden tomó la iniciativa para exponer los ataques del gobierno de Estados Unidos contra las redes informáticas de Hong Kong y China continental. Esto es de relevancia para los intereses nacionales de China", dice el comentario. "Quizá tiene más evidencia. El gobierno chino debería dejarlo hablar y, de acuerdo a si la información es pública, usarla como evidencia para negociar con Estados Unidos de manera abierta o en privado".

El diario dijo que el gobierno chino no sólo debería considerar las relaciones de Beijing con Estados Unidos, sino también la opinión pública nacional, la cual de acuerdo con el diario estaría descontenta si Snowden es repatriado, publicó AP.

Benefició programa de espionaje

Benefició programa de espionaje

Se pudieron evitar más de 50 ataques terroristas en 20 países tras los atentados del 11S, según la NSA.

Los programas de vigilancia con los que el Gobierno de EU., recopila registros de llamadas y datos de usuarios de internet que evitaron más de 50 ataques terroristas en 20 países tras los atentados del 11S, incluido uno contra la Bolsa de Valores de Nueva York.

Así lo reveló el director de la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional (NSA) de Estados Unidos, el general Keith Alexander.

En una audiencia ante el Comité de Inteligencia de la Cámara de Representantes, Alexander sugirió que algunas de las herramientas de esos programas podrían haber ayudado a evitar los atentados terroristas del 11 de septiembre de 2001.

Alexander prevé dar detalles de los más de 50 ataques terroristas abortados a los miembros del Congreso en una sesión a puerta cerrada este miércoles.

El director adjunto de la Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (FBI), Sean Joyce, dio algunos detalles y afirmó que entre los ataques evitados figura uno contra un periódico danés y otro para poner una bomba en la Bolsa de Valores de Nueva York.

El supuesto complot para atentar contra la bolsa neoyorquina implicó a un "extremista" localizado en Yemen y a otra persona ubicada en Kansas que intercambiaron varias llamadas telefónicas.

El director de la NSA defendió la efectividad de los programas de su agencia, que eran secretos hasta que Edward Snowden reveló su existencia, y alertó de que desclasificarlos por completo causaría "un daño irreversible" a la seguridad de EU. y de sus aliados.

Snowden, extécnico de la CIA y de la NSA, filtró a los diarios The Guardian y The Washington Post la existencia de los programas secretos mediante los que EU recopila registros telefónicos y datos digitales de millones de usuarios.

BP jobs program???

Source

U.S. senators reach deal on border-security proposals

By Erin Kelly and Dan Nowicki Gannett Washington Bureau Thu Jun 20, 2013 12:09 PM

Supporters of a sweeping immigration reform bill reached a tentative deal today to super-size the bill’s border security provisions by doubling the number of Border Patrol agents to 40,000, building 700 miles of fencing along the Southwest border, and increasing aerial drones and surveillance equipment used to detect illegal border crossings.

The so-called “border surge” amendment, crafted by Republican Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota in consultation with the authors of the main bill, would spend roughly $30 billion just to hire the additional Border Patrol agents, Senate aides said.

The border security requirements would have to be met before undocumented immigrants could move from a provisional legal status to earn “green cards” that make them legal permanent residents. However, some farm workers and young immigrants brought to the United States as children would not have to wait for the border requirements to be met. The larger bill already offers them an expedited pathway to citizenship.

The development won bipartisan praise Thursday as a breakthrough. The goal of the change is to attract more Republicans to the reform bill crafted by a bipartisan group of senators known as the “Gang of Eight.” The group includes Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake. Both Arizona senators have signed on as co-sponsors of the Corker-Hoeven amendment.

The compromise “would substantially, and I mean substantially, increase the border-security elements” in terms of “triggers,” Flake said Thursday during a conference call with national media.

“The bill already had 350 miles of fencing — this would require 700 miles of fencing, so this is a substantial difference and we believe it will bring a number of votes as well,” Flake said.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the Gang of Eight’s chief Democratic negotiator, also hailed the deal.

“The idea that broke the logjam is the so-called ‘border surge’ plan,” Schumer said Thursday, on the Senate floor. “The border surge is breathtaking in its size and scope. This deal will employ an unprecedented number of boots on the ground and drones in the air. It would double the size of the Border Patrol, from its current level to over 40,000. It will finish the job of completing the fence along the entire 700-mile stretch of the Southwest border.”

Conservatives have attacked the larger bill on the Senate floor during the past two weeks, saying it is too weak on border security. Supporters hope the new amendment will persuade more Republicans to vote for the legislation, allowing it to pass with a large majority that could have an impact on the willingness of House leaders to agree to comprehensive reform. GOP backers of the bill hope it can pass the Senate with at least 70 votes.

“We must secure the border first,” Hoeven said Thursday on the Senate floor. “It’s what Americans demand, and that’s what we must do to get comprehensive immigration reform right.”

Hoeven said the amendment would be filed later today.

On the floor, McCain called the emerging measure “a very tough bill” and asked Corker if critics could still argue against the legislation “by saying that it does not give us a secure border?”

Corker responded: “If this amendment passes, which I hope that it will, I don’t know how anybody could argue that the reason they’re not supporting this legislation is because we haven’t addressed securing the border. We have addressed that — we’ve addressed that in spades in this legislation.”

Bra-shaking police search questioned

Bra-shaking police search questioned

Associated Press Fri Jun 21, 2013 8:27 AM

LAKELAND, Fla. — State and local law enforcement officials are investigating the actions of a Lakeland police officer who instructed a woman to shake out her bra for drugs during a traffic stop last month.

State Attorney Jerry Hill took the rare step of writing a complaint letter to the Lakeland Police Department this week, fearing that the practice was widespread among officers.

“This highly questionable search method is not only demeaning,” Hill wrote, “but is ineffective and possibly dangerous.”

The incident occurred May 21 when Officer Dustin Fetz stopped Zoe Brugger for driving with a broken headlight.

The Ledger of Lakeland (http://bit.ly/13V8j1H) reports Fetz asked the driver and her boyfriend for permission to search the vehicle. When they denied his request, Brugger said Fetz escorted her behind the car, where he asked her to lift her shirt above her stomach, pull her bra away from her chest and shake it out. Unsatisfied with her first attempt, Fetz made her shake her bra a second time.

No drugs were found on the woman, but Fetz persisted in searching the car — even after Brugger withdrew her consent.

When the vehicle search turned up no drugs, Fetz gave Brugger a ticket. The woman told the state attorney’s office that the officer told her, “I’m done scaring you, and now you can go home.”

Fetz told investigators that the bra-shaking search is a known technique that is used by some Lakeland) officers, but he could not recall ever formally being trained to do this.

Hill said police didn’t have reason to suspect Brugger was carrying drugs. In his letter, he said such searches could undermine future cases, citing a DUI arrest in which a woman threatened to sue an officer for sexual harassment after he asked her to shake out her bra. Even a suspect who was legally drunk was able to grasp the impropriety and the demeaning nature of this type of search, Hill wrote.

According to a report by State Attorney Investigator Mike Brown, Fetz’s action violated Brugger’s constitutional rights, but his conduct did not constitute a criminal offense.

“Looking back on the incident, (Fetz) recognizes he was overzealous,” the investigator wrote.

Police Chief Lisa Womack told the Ledger she has reviewed Hill’s letter and plans to investigate.

The department placed Fetz on paid leave for four days. He returned to work Tuesday.

Uncertain future for border prosecution program

Source

Uncertain future for border prosecution program

Associated Press Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:07 PM

FALFURRIAS, Texas — On an October afternoon in 2009, a Dallas man arrived at a highway checkpoint about an hour north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Inside the gas tank of his pickup truck, agents found 99 pounds of marijuana.

When the Border Patrol called the Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency said it was not interested because the bust wasn’t big enough. So the 32-year-old suspect was passed to the local sheriff and pleaded guilty to drug possession in state court. He got a suspended sentence and paid a fine.

If the same incident happened again today at the checkpoint south of Falfurrias, the man would lose his drugs but probably not be charged at all.

Since the fall of 2010, prosecutors in tiny Brooks County, population 7,223, have refused to take such cases because of a debt dispute with the Justice Department involving a long-running program that reimburses border-state prosecutors for the cost of pursuing some drug offenders. Other border counties are frustrated too, because the government has proposed eliminating the reimbursements.

Now prosecutors from Texas to California fear the lack of federal help could allow many drug suspects to go free.

The reimbursement program was supposed to allow local prosecutors to help federal authorities go after suspected criminals without squeezing their offices financially.

In fiscal year 2009, the Justice Department reimbursed prosecutors in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California for more than 10,000 cases through what was then called the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative. But the money stopped coming for Brooks County after an audit showed the county was overpaid by nearly $2 million. The funding for all other border prosecutors could dry up as well.

Armando Barrera, the former Brooks County district attorney who first stopped accepting the cases, once questioned the federal prosecutor in charge of the government’s Corpus Christi office about the cases he used to take.

“I asked him, ‘Well, what are you guys doing with the checkpoint cases?’ and he said, ‘Well, we’re just turning them loose,’” Barrera recalled.

That doesn’t sit well with John Hubert, district attorney in neighboring Kenedy County, which is home to a similar Border Patrol highway checkpoint.

“If the feds cut them loose … the first thing that is going to happen is the drug dealers are going to know ‘Hey, guess what? If you go through there with less than 250 pounds, you get cut loose,’” Hubert said.

Hubert estimated his office gets about 245 cases a year from the checkpoint. The Falfurrias checkpoint generated 158 cases for the Brooks County district attorney in 2009, according to records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Poor, rural counties can’t afford to subsidize the federal government’s prosecution efforts by paying for the cases themselves, Hubert said. But at the same time, he worries about the message sent by letting suspects go.

The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, Kenneth Magidson, said all the cases brought to his office from the Falfurrias checkpoint are reviewed. Last month, his office won another conviction against a drug-trafficking ring that had tons of marijuana seized at that checkpoint.

Will Glaspy, who oversees the DEA’s operations in an area of South Texas that includes the checkpoint, said the DEA continues to process those cases even if suspects are not charged. And if any of the smugglers are arrested again, they could be prosecuted for the cumulative amounts.

The cooperative arrangement dates back to 1994, when border district attorneys and federal prosecutors agreed to share some of the drug caseload.

In San Diego County, home to the Border Patrol’s busiest checkpoints, an agreement was signed that year. Local authorities would pursue low-level “mules” without criminal records who were caught by the feds with smaller drug amounts.

“Those were the cases the U.S. attorney was not prosecuting,” said Rachel Cano, now an assistant chief for the San Diego County district attorney. Ninety percent pleaded guilty and got probation, she said.

But by 1998, local prosecutors on the border had banded together to tell the federal government that they couldn’t continue accepting the cases without compensation.

Eventually, Congress budgeted money for reimbursement. Last year, San Diego County received nearly $2.7 million from the program for handling 1,335 cases, more than any other local prosecutor’s office.

One of those who pushed for the reimbursement program was longtime El Paso District Attorney Jaime Esparza. If reimbursement were halted, Esparza said, he and other border prosecutors would have to stop accepting cases from federal authorities.

“The best part of the program is it allows the federal government to prosecute the more complex, the more serious cases” and still provides for the prosecution of lesser drug offenders in state court, Esparza said.

Getting money for the reimbursement program has been an annual fight. The funding reached $31 million in 2011 but fell to $10 million in 2012 combined with similar efforts along the northern border. The program was left out of the White House’s 2013 budget request.

However, a comprehensive immigration reform bill being debated in the Senate calls for funding through 2018.

Brooks County District Judge Richard Terrell handled the Dallas man’s case and every other checkpoint matter that came through the county courthouse during his years on the bench. He said the practice that county commissioners once saw as an easy revenue source became a financial burden.

Costs such as transporting probation violators back to the county or tracking down fugitives swamped the system. An early promise by federal authorities to send only first-time offenders who would be eligible for probation was repeatedly compromised, he said.

“This is a poor county,” Terrell said. “They do not have the resources, and it’s completely unrealistic to think that this county can handle those things.”

Looming in the background is the $1.9 million overpayment revealed by a 2007 federal audit. The Justice Department does not seem willing to forgive the debt, and the county has held firm that it needs the money.

Carlos Garcia, who just began serving as Brooks County district attorney in January, says the reimbursement issue must be solved before he can resume taking checkpoint cases, but unlike Terrell, he wants them.

“People need to be held accountable for whatever crimes they commit,” Garcia said. If the county had an arrangement with the federal government to handle some cases, then “at least they’re getting justice in one of the courts, the state side or the federal side.”

The F.B.I. Deemed Agents Faultless in 150 Shootings

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The F.B.I. Deemed Agents Faultless in 150 Shootings

By CHARLIE SAVAGE and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

Published: June 18, 2013 153 Comments

WASHINGTON — After contradictory stories emerged about an F.B.I. agent’s killing last month of a Chechen man in Orlando, Fla., who was being questioned over ties to the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, the bureau reassured the public that it would clear up the murky episode.

“The F.B.I. takes very seriously any shooting incidents involving our agents, and as such we have an effective, time-tested process for addressing them internally,” a bureau spokesman said.

But if such internal investigations are time-tested, their outcomes are also predictable: from 1993 to early 2011, F.B.I. agents fatally shot about 70 “subjects” and wounded about 80 others — and every one of those episodes was deemed justified, according to interviews and internal F.B.I. records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The last two years have followed the same pattern: an F.B.I. spokesman said that since 2011, there had been no findings of improper intentional shootings.

In most of the shootings, the F.B.I.’s internal investigation was the only official inquiry. In the Orlando case, for example, there have been conflicting accounts about basic facts like whether the Chechen man, Ibragim Todashev, attacked an agent with a knife, was unarmed or was brandishing a metal pole. But Orlando homicide detectives are not independently investigating what happened.

“We had nothing to do with it,” said Sgt. Jim Young, an Orlando police spokesman. “It’s a federal matter, and we’re deferring everything to the F.B.I.”

Occasionally, the F.B.I. does discipline an agent. Out of 289 deliberate shootings covered by the documents, many of which left no one wounded, five were deemed to be “bad shoots,” in agents’ parlance — encounters that did not comply with the bureau’s policy, which allows deadly force if agents fear that their lives or those of fellow agents are in danger. A typical punishment involved adding letters of censure to agents’ files. But in none of the five cases did a bullet hit anyone.

Critics say the fact that for at least two decades no agent has been disciplined for any instance of deliberately shooting someone raises questions about the credibility of the bureau’s internal investigations. Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha who studies internal law enforcement investigations, called the bureau’s conclusions about cases of improper shootings “suspiciously low.”

Current and former F.B.I. officials defended the bureau’s handling of shootings, arguing that the scant findings of improper behavior were attributable to several factors. Agents tend to be older, more experienced and better trained than city police officers. And they generally are involved only in planned operations and tend to go in with “overwhelming presence,” minimizing the chaos that can lead to shooting the wrong people, said Tim Murphy, a former deputy director of the F.B.I. who conducted some investigations of shootings over his 23-year career.

The F.B.I.’s shootings range from episodes so obscure that they attract no news media attention to high-profile cases like the 2009 killing of an imam in a Detroit-area warehouse that is the subject of a lawsuit alleging a cover-up, and a 2002 shooting in Maryland in which the bureau paid $1.3 million to a victim and yet, the records show, deemed the shooting to have been justified.

With rare exceptions — like suicides — whenever an agent fires his weapon outside of training, a team of agents from the F.B.I.’s Inspection Division, sometimes with a liaison from the local police, compiles a report reconstructing what happened. This “shooting incident review team” interviews witnesses and studies medical, ballistics and autopsy reports, eventually producing a narrative. Such reports typically do not include whether an agent had been involved in any previous shootings, because they focus only on the episode in question, officials said.

That narrative, along with binders of supporting information, is then submitted to a “shooting incident review group” — a panel of high-level F.B.I. officials in Washington. The panel produces its own narrative as part of a report saying whether the shooting complied with bureau policy — and recommends what discipline to mete out if it did not — along with any broader observations about “lessons learned” to change training or procedures.

F.B.I. officials stressed that their shooting reviews were carried out under the oversight of both the Justice Department’s inspector general and the Civil Rights Division, and that local prosecutors have the authority to bring charges.

The 2,200 pages of records obtained by The Times include an internal F.B.I. study that compiled shooting episode statistics over a 17-year period, as well as a collection of individual narratives of intentional shootings from 1993 to early 2011. Gunfire was exchanged in 58 such episodes; 9 law enforcement officials died, and 38 were wounded.

The five “bad shoots” included cases in which an agent fired a warning shot after feeling threatened by a group of men, an agent fired at a weapon lying on the ground to disable it during an arrest, and two agents fired their weapons while chasing fugitives but hit no one. In another case, an agent fired at a safe during a demonstration, and ricocheting material caused minor cuts in a crowd of onlookers.

Four of the cases were in the mid-1990s, and the fifth was in 2003.

In many cases, the accuracy of the F.B.I. narrative is difficult to evaluate because no independent alternative report has been produced. As part of the reporting for this article, the F.B.I. voluntarily made available a list of shootings since 2007 that gave rise to lawsuits, but it was rare for any such case to have led to a full report by an independent authority.

Occasionally, however, there were alternative reviews. One, involving a March 2002 episode in which an agent shot an innocent Maryland man in the head after mistaking him for a bank robbery suspect, offers a case study in how the nuances of an F.B.I. official narrative can come under scrutiny.

In that episode, agents thought that the suspect would be riding in a car driven by his sister and wearing a white baseball cap. An innocent man, Joseph Schultz, then 20, happened to cross their path, wearing a white cap and being driven by his girlfriend. Moments after F.B.I. agents carrying rifles pulled their car over and surrounded it, Agent Christopher Braga shot Mr. Schultz in the jaw. He later underwent facial reconstruction surgery, and in 2007 the bureau paid $1.3 million to settle a lawsuit.

The internal review, however, deemed it a good shoot. In the F.B.I.’s narrative, Agent Braga says that he shouted “show me your hands,” but that Mr. Schultz instead reached toward his waist, so Agent Braga fired “to eliminate the threat.” While one member of the review group said that “after reading the materials provided, he could not visualize the presence of ‘imminent danger’ to law enforcement officers,” the rest of the group voted to find the shooting justified, citing the “totality of the circumstances surrounding the incident,” including that it involved a “high-risk stop.”

But an Anne Arundel County police detective prepared an independent report about the episode, and a lawyer for Mr. Schultz, Arnold Weiner, conducted a further investigation for the lawsuit. Both raised several subtle but important differences.

For example, the F.B.I. narrative describes a lengthy chase of Mr. Schultz’s car after agents turned on their siren at an intersection, bolstering an impression that it was reasonable for Agent Braga to fear that Mr. Schultz was a dangerous fugitive. The narrative spends a full page describing this moment in great detail, saying that the car “rapidly accelerated” and that one agent shouted for it to stop “over and over again.” It cites another agent as estimating that the car stopped “approximately 100 yards” from the intersection.

By contrast, the police report describes this moment in a short, skeptical paragraph. Noting that agents said they had thought the car was fleeing, it points out that the car “was, however, in a merge lane and would need to accelerate to enter traffic.” Moreover, a crash reconstruction specialist hired for the lawsuit estimated that the car had reached a maximum speed of 12 miles per hour, and an F.B.I. sketch, obtained in the lawsuit, put broken glass from a car window 142 feet 8 inches from the intersection.

The F.B.I. narrative does not cite Mr. Schultz’s statement and omits that a crucial fact was disputed: how Mr. Schultz had moved in the car. In a 2003 sworn statement, Agent Braga said that Mr. Schultz “turned to his left, towards the middle of the car, and reached down.” But Mr. Schultz insisted that he had instead reached toward the car door on his right because he had been listening to another agent who was simultaneously shouting “open the door.”

A former F.B.I. agent, hired to write a report analyzing the episode for the plaintiffs, concluded that “no reasonable F.B.I. agent in Braga’s position would reasonably have believed that deadly force was justified.” He also noted pointedly that Agent Braga had been involved in a previous shooting episode in 2000 that he portrayed as questionable, although it had been found to be justified by the F.B.I.’s internal review process.

Asked to comment on the case, a lawyer for Agent Braga, Andrew White, noted last week that a grand jury had declined to indict his client in the shooting.

In some cases, alternative official accounts for several other shootings dovetailed with internal F.B.I. narratives.

One involved the October 2009 death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah, a prayer leader at a Detroit-area mosque who was suspected of conspiring to sell stolen goods and was shot during a raid on a warehouse. The F.B.I. report says that Mr. Abdullah got down on the ground but kept his hands hidden, so a dog was unleashed to pull his arms into view. He then pulled out a gun and shot the dog, the report says, and he was in turn shot by four agents.

The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit against the F.B.I. The group was concerned in part because the handgun had no recoverable fingerprints and because of facial injuries to Mr. Abdullah. It also contends that the dog may have been shot instead by the F.B.I. agents and the gun thrown down in a cover-up.

A report by the Michigan attorney general’s office, however, detailed an array of evidence that it says “corroborates the statements of the agents as to the sequence of events,” including that bullet fragments in the dog’s corpse were consistent with the handgun, not the rifles used by the F.B.I. agents. Such an independent account of an F.B.I. shooting is rare. After the recent killing of Mr. Todashev in Orlando, both the Florida chapter of the same group and his father have called for investigators outside the F.B.I. to scrutinize the episode.

James J. Wedick, who spent 34 years at the bureau, said the F.B.I. should change its procedures for its own good.

“At the least, it is a perception issue, and over the years the bureau has had a deaf ear to it,” he said. “But if you have a shooting that has a few more complicated factors and an ethnic issue, the bureau’s image goes down the toilet if it doesn’t investigate itself properly.”

Scalia’s quiddities leave Arizona in a bind

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Posted on June 18, 2013 6:11 pm by Robert Robb

Scalia’s quiddities leave Arizona in a bind

On Monday, the left celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court striking down Arizona’s requirement that proof of citizenship be provided before registering to vote.

Except that the court did no such thing. Not even close. In fact, closer to the opposite.

Since statehood, Arizona’s Constitution has stated that only citizens can vote. In 2004, state voters approved a ballot measure, Proposition 200, requiring that proof of citizenship be provided before a new voter can be registered. The law specified various documents — such as birth certificates, passports, tribal documents and some driver licenses — that constituted proof of citizenship.

In the interim, Congress passed the colloquially-named motor voter law, providing for a federal voter registration form to be “accepted and used” by all the states. The federal form only requires that registrants attest that they are citizens, not offer proof of it.

Until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared it unconstitutional, Arizona was asking new registrants using the federal form for proof of citizenship and not enrolling those who didn’t come up with it.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not declare that Arizona’s proof of citizenship requirement was unconstitutional. It still can be required as part of the state’s own voter registration form. There was not a single word by a single justice suggesting that was a problem.

The question was whether the state had to accept the federal form without requiring additional proof of citizenship before putting new registrants on the voting rolls. The majority decision was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, and the answer was both yes and no.

Scalia sees quiddities no else can discern. You get the impression that sometimes the other justices decide to indulge Scalia’s quiddities just so he can, once in a blue moon, write a majority opinion rather than a dissent or concurring opinion. This seems to be such a case.

According to Scalia, the U.S. Constitution clearly gives states the authority to decide who can vote in state and federal elections, and Congress cannot intrude on that right. So, Arizona can limit voting to citizens and require proof of citizenship to ensure that qualification is met.

The Constitution does, however, give Congress final authority, not over who can vote, but over the time, places and manner of elections for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. So, Congress can mandate that states accept a federal voter registration form without demanding addition information.

But, hold on. Arizona can ask a federal commission that approves such forms to include, in Arizona, the additional proof of citizenship required by state law. And if the commission refuses, Scalia strongly suggests the state can successfully appeal in federal court, arguing that its right to decide who can vote has been infringed.

In other words, according to Scalia, Arizona has to accept the federal form without demanding additional information directly from new registrants. But Arizona can demand that the federal form itself require the same additional information Arizona can’t ask the new registrants for directly. Got it?

Significantly, there wasn’t a concurring opinion by the liberal justices agreeing with the result but asserting that the federal government did have the constitutional right to forbid Arizona from requiring proof of citizenship, regardless of which registration form is used, to vote in federal elections. Nor did any liberal justice disagree with Scalia basically saying that the federal commission had no choice but to amend the federal form to include the proof of citizenship Arizona law requires.

For Arizona, there are some significant practical problems with Scalia’s quiddities. For one thing, as Justice Samuel Alito pointed out in his dissent, the federal commission Scalia says Arizona should demand amend the federal form to include the state’s proof of citizenship provisions has no current members. So, Scalia, in a footnote, added yet another quiddity. If there’s no one home when Arizona makes its demand, the state can then ask a federal court to allow it, under those circumstances, to do what the court just said it can’t do under current circumstances – ask for the additional proof of citizenship from those submitting the federal form.

So, for now, Arizona has to accept federal voter registration forms that don’t include proof of citizenship, but at some point in the future — somehow, someway — it won’t.

Perhaps it would be better to just let Scalia perpetually dissent or separately concur. It certainly would be clearer.

Boy finds deputy’s gun in Tampa theater

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Boy finds deputy’s gun in Tampa theater

Associated Press Tue Jun 18, 2013 3:35 PM

TAMPA, Fla. — Police say a gun found by a 9-year-old boy inside a bathroom stall at a movie theater in Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood belonged to a Hillsborough County deputy.

The incident happened on Father’s Day, while Zane Noland, his 15-year-old brother and his dad were attending a 3 p.m. showing of the new Superman movie, “Man of Steel.”

Shortly after the film started, the boy said he went to the bathroom. The Tampa Bay Times reports he found a loaded Glock 26 on top of a toilet paper dispenser in the theater’s restroom. The child then told his father, 48-year-old Marine veteran Wesley Noland.

“Dad,” he said. “There’s a gun.”

Wesley Noland says he took the firearm and his son into a private bathroom designed for families and called 911. He disarmed the gun and put it on a diaper changing table.

“We did our Superman deed for the day,” Noland said he told Zane. “We protected people from getting hurt.”

Police responded in minutes. Authorities took the gun and traced it to Detective Luke Hussey, a 13-year veteran at the sheriff’s office. The Times (http://goo.gl/JmxgE ) reports that Hussey was off duty and at the theater to watch a movie.

“HCSO takes this matter very seriously and has already begun an administrative investigation to determine any policy violations that may have occurred,” sheriff’s office spokesman Larry McKinnon said in a statement.

Before learning that the gun belonged to a law enforcement officer, Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said they were looking at the possibility of criminal charges, such as reckless endangerment or culpable negligence. On Tuesday afternoon, police said they would turn the weapon over to the sheriff’s office for it to handle the incident administratively.

Marijuana Crops in California Threaten Forests and Wildlife

If marijuana was legal, a kilo wouldn't cost any more then a head of lettuce and people would be growing it on the same farms that lettuce and tomatoes are grown on.

Of course since the government has made marijuana illegal, people grow it in places which make it hard to find by the police. Like the national forests in this article.

Legalize pot and the problem will go away.

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Marijuana Crops in California Threaten Forests and Wildlife

By FELICITY BARRINGER

Published: June 20, 2013 178 Comments

ARCATA, Calif. — It took the death of a small, rare member of the weasel family to focus the attention of Northern California’s marijuana growers on the impact that their huge and expanding activities were having on the environment.

While some marijuana farms divert and dry up streams, this grower uses conservation methods like a rainwater holding pond.

The animal, a Pacific fisher, had been poisoned by an anticoagulant in rat poisons like d-Con. Since then, six other poisoned fishers have been found. Two endangered spotted owls tested positive. Mourad W. Gabriel, a scientist at the University of California, Davis, concluded that the contamination began when marijuana growers in deep forests spread d-Con to protect their plants from wood rats.

That news has helped growers acknowledge, reluctantly, what their antagonists in law enforcement have long maintained: like industrial logging before it, the booming business of marijuana is a threat to forests whose looming dark redwoods preside over vibrant ecosystems.

Hilltops have been leveled to make room for the crop. Bulldozers start landslides on erosion-prone mountainsides. Road and dam construction clogs some streams with dislodged soil. Others are bled dry by diversions. Little water is left for salmon whose populations have been decimated by logging.

And local and state jurisdictions’ ability to deal with the problem has been hobbled by, among other things, the drug’s murky legal status. It is approved by the state for medical uses but still illegal under federal law, leading to a patchwork of growers. Some operate within state rules, while others operate totally outside the law.

The environmental damage may not be as extensive as that caused by the 19th-century diking of the Humboldt estuary here, or 20th-century clear-cut logging, but the romantic outlaw drug has become a destructive juggernaut, experts agree.

“In my career I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Stormer Feiler, a scientist with California’s North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. “Since 2007 the amount of unregulated activities has exploded.” He added, “They are grading the mountaintops now, so it affects the whole watershed below.”

Scott Bauer, of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said, “I went out on a site yesterday where there was an active water diversion providing water to 15 different groups of people or individuals,” many of them growers. “The stream is going to dry up this year.”

While it is hard to find data on such an industry, Anthony Silvaggio, a sociology lecturer at Humboldt State University, pointed to anecdotal evidence in a Google Earth virtual “flyover” he made of the industrial farm plots and the damage they cause. The video was later enhanced and distributed by Mother Jones magazine.

Brad Job’s territory as a federal Bureau of Land Management officer includes public lands favored, he said, by Mexican drug cartels whose environmental practices are the most destructive. “The watershed was already lying on the ground bleeding,” Mr. Job said. “The people who divert water in the summer are kicking it in the stomach.”

That water is crucial to restoring local runs of imperiled Coho salmon, Chinook salmon and steelhead, which swam up Eel River tributaries by the tens of thousands before the logging era. Scott Greacen, executive director of Friends of the Eel River, said, “It’s not weed that drove the Coho to the brink of extinction, but it may kick it over the edge.” By various estimates, each plant needs at least one gallon and as much as six gallons of water during a season.

The idea that the counterculture’s crop of choice is bad for the environment has gone down hard here. Marijuana is an economic staple, particularly in Humboldt County’s rural southern end, called SoHum. Jennifer Budwig, the vice president of a local bank, estimated last year that marijuana infused more than $415 million into the county’s annual economic activity, one-quarter of the total.

For the professed hippies who moved here decades ago, marijuana farming combines defiance of society’s strictures, shared communal values and a steady income. “Marijuana has had a framework that started in the 1930s with jazz musicians,” said Gregg Gold, a psychology professor at Humboldt State University. “It’s a cultural icon of resistance to authority.”

“In 2013,” he added, “you’re asking that we reframe it in people’s minds as just another agribusiness. That’s a huge shift.”

It is a thriving agribusiness. Derek Roy, a special agent enforcing endangered species protections for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said, “These grow sites continue to get larger and larger.” Things took off after 1996, when California decriminalized the use of medical marijuana, Mr. Roy said.

The older farmers say that as the fierce antidrug campaigns waned and the medical marijuana market developed, newcomers arrived eager to cash in, particularly in the past decade, according to two growers who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Marijuana is approved by California for medical uses but still illegal under federal law, leading to a patchwork of growers.

“There is a gold rush,” Mr. Greacen said. “And it’s a race to the bottom in terms of environmental impacts.”

Now that Colorado and Washington voters have approved the recreational use of the drug, there is a widespread belief that the days of high prices for marijuana are nearly over.

As Mikal Jakubal, a resident of SoHum who is directing a documentary film about Humboldt County’s marijuana business, puts it, “Everyone thinks, ‘This might be the last good year.’ ” That helps fuel the willy-nilly expansion of cultivation, the tearing up of hillsides and the diversions that dry out creeks.

The worst damage is on public lands. There, extensive plantings are surrounded by d-Con-laced tuna and sardine cans placed around perimeters by the dozens, Dr. Gabriel said. Mr. Job of the land management bureau said these illegal operations have 70,000 to 100,000 plants; they are believed to be the work of Mexican drug cartels.

But small farmers have an impact, too. Mr. Bauer of the State Fish and Wildlife Department said that when he found the water diversion last week and asked those responsible about it, “these people we met with were pointing a finger all over the watershed, saying: ‘We’re not that big. There are bigger people out there.’ ”

Federal environmental agents, including Mr. Roy and Mr. Job, have brought two cases to the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco. The office declined to prosecute a case last year, they said. A new one is under review. But, they said, manpower for enforcement is limited.

Given federal prohibitions against profiting from marijuana, county officials have a limited toolbox. “We have land-use authority, that’s it,” said Mark Lovelace, a Humboldt County supervisor. He chafes at the county’s inability to establish a system of permits, for fear of running afoul of federal law. His board did just pass a resolution asking local businesses not to sell d-Con. (A representative of Reckitt Benckiser, which makes the poison, wrote a letter of protest.)

Mr. Lovelace and others contend that legalizing marijuana would open the door to regulation and put the brakes on environmental abuses.

In the meantime, the industry has begun to police itself. Some growers have benefited from a program run by a local nonprofit organization, Sanctuary Forest, that subsidizes the installation of tanks that can store water in the winter, when it is plentiful, for use in dry months.

“There may be people who grow pot in our group,” said Tasha McKee, executive director of Sanctuary Forest. “I’m sure there are. We don’t ask that question.”

A local group, the Emerald Growers Association, recently produced a handbook on sustainable practices.

“There is an identity crisis going on right now,” said Gary Graham Hughes, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center in Arcata. “The people who are really involved with this industry are trying to understand what their responsibilities are.”

A cushy jobs program for cops in high schools????

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Three Glendale high schools might get police officers

By Colleen Sikorski The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jun 19, 2013 9:23 AM

Peoria Unified School District’s three high schools in Glendale may have school resource officers when classes open in August.

The school board unanimously approved an agreement with the city of Glendale to place resource officers in each of the schools for the 2013-14 school year, with the district paying $117,293. The district’s four high schools in Peoria already have resource officers.

“I have wanted this for a long, long time,” school board member Kathy Knecht said.

The agreement still needs approval by the Glendale City Council, which would contribute the same amount. It is expected to go to a vote Tuesday.

Steve Savoy, Peoria’s administrator of K-12 academic services, attributed the delay at the high schools in Glendale to the city’s budget issues.

Under the latest plan, the district would pay 75 percent of the cost for officers at Ironwood and Cactus high schools and Glendale would pay 25 percent.

The city would pick up the full cost for a resource officer at Raymond S. Kellis High School, to repay the district for allowing the city to use the Kellis parking lot during Arizona Cardinals football games.

The city of Peoria has paid the bulk of the costs, about $66,000 of the $96,200 cost for each school resource officer per year, in the district’s four high schools in Peoria. The school district and the city added the first resource officer in January 2009, Savoy said. The most recent was added at Liberty High School at the start of the 2012-13 school year.

Glendale police spokeswoman Tracey Breeden could not immediately say whether Glendale intends to work with other school districts to provide funding for school resource officers.

Deer Valley School District has never received city of Glendale funding for school resource officers. Since the 1990s, the district has had high-school resource officers, who were funded by a grant until 2006. Deer Valley then picked up the tab, hiring police officers at $30 to $35 an hour for all five of its high schools.

Glendale Union High School District got rid of school resource officers two years ago after losing a state grant that had paid for them.

Phoenix brothel hid behind porn ruse, police say

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Phoenix brothel hid behind porn ruse, police say

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:02 PM

Police arrested nine people Thursday in a raid of a Phoenix business that they say uses pornography as a front for prostitution, ostensibly luring clients who want to star in their own adult films.

William James Hartwell, 52, the owner of the studio, and eight women were taken into custody.

Officers quickly made entry into the business, operated by New Media Studios, located in an industrial area near Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and immediately began escorting women out.

Some wore dresses and jeans, one woman had leopard-print pajamas, and another was visibly pregnant and told officers she was weeks away from giving birth.

Hartwell told an arresting officer that he was not surprised police showed up at his company’s door.

“We’ve been expecting you guys for a long time,” Hartwell said as he was escorted to a police car. “We run a safe, legal business.”

The raid marked the end of a 6-month investigation.

Investigators learned of the business through a tip and began developing information that led them to believe the studio was selling more than photos and videos.

Clients contacted the business and were directed to the location. Once there, they received paperwork to sign, according to court documents.

The paperwork states explicitly that “he is paying to have his pornographic fantasy recorded,” according to court documents.

The operators would also perform a “check” for sexually transmitted diseases that required customers to drop their pants and expose themselves, according to records.

Investigators believe this was as much an attempt to screen for law-enforcement officers, who might be prohibited from exposing themselves, than it was to check for diseases, according to court documents.

Once inside, the customer met with a woman in a private room where photos were taken. Then, according to court documents, the customer was told he “could do whatever he wanted.”

The women told clients that they made money taking photos and “whatever else happens, happens,” according to records.

There is no sign outside the beige block building alluding to the business or its trade, but the company frequently placed ads in the adult-services sections of popular websites, including some posted Thursday asking for models and promoting services for new clients.

And a website affiliated with the company details the legal theory that some believed made the business legitimate.

“Most porn is constitutionally protected as free speech,” the site states. “While at the studio you are paying for equipment and studio rental only and may not engage in any illegal or unsafe activities. ... If you come to make amateur porn, you are welcome at the studio.”

Whether the studio was making pornography or serving as a prostitution front will be the crucial question for prosecutors.

Arizona law prohibits the production and sale of obscene material, but proving a violation of obscenity statutes typically requires proof that someone ran afoul of community standards with material that had no legal, artistic or scientific value.

Businesses already produce porn in the Valley, many featuring women touted as amateurs.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery has said in the past that he will prosecute pornography cases police bring to his office, but he references anti-prostitution statutes as his primary tools.

Cops use blinking eyes used to convict man of murder

Source

OH man to be sentenced in dying blink murder case

Associated PressBy LISA CORNWELL | Associated Press – Thu, Jun 20, 2013

CINCINNATI (AP) — An Ohio man found guilty in a murder trial that hinged on a paralyzed victim blinking his eyes to identify his shooter is scheduled to be sentenced.

A jury last month convicted Ricardo Woods, 35, of murder and felonious assault in the death of David Chandler who was shot Oct. 28, 2010, as he sat in a car in Cincinnati. Woods, who has continued to maintain he is innocent, faces up to life in prison on Thursday.

Police interviewed Chandler after he was shot in the head and neck and only able to communicate with his eyes. Chandler died about two weeks later.

During the trial, jurors viewed the videotaped police interview that prosecutors say showed Chandler blinked three times for "yes" to identify a photo of Woods as his shooter. The defense had tried to block the video, saying Chandler's blinks were inconsistent and unreliable.

A doctor who treated Chandler testified that Chandler was able to communicate clearly about his condition. But the defense argued that Chandler's condition and drugs used to treat him could have affected his ability to understand and respond during the police interview.

A jailhouse informant testified that Woods told him he shot at Chandler because he caught him buying drugs from someone else while still owing Woods money for drugs. But the defense argued that the informant, who faced armed robbery charges, was trying to use testimony against Woods to get a lighter sentence for himself. Defense attorneys also said Chandler stole drugs from other dealers and had many enemies.

Woods attorney, Kory Jackson, has said there will be an appeal.

Source

Ohio Man Sentenced to 36 Years to Life in 'Blink' Testimony Murder Case

By ALYSSA NEWCOMB (@alyssanewcomb) June 21, 2013

An Ohio man plans to appeal his 36 years to life sentence for murder after videotaped testimony of a dying man, whose eye blinks were used to identify his alleged killer, helped lead to his conviction.

Ricardo Woods, 35, was sentenced Thursday for the murder David Chandler, and on felonious assaults and weapons charges.

Much of the case against Woods hinged on a a 17-minute video in which detectives showed victim David Chandler, who was paralyzed and hooked up to a ventilator, a picture of Woods and asked if Woods was the man who shot him. He was told to blink two times to say "no" and three times to say "yes."

Kory Jackson, Woods' attorney, told the judge on Thursday that his client "always maintained that he is not guilty and still maintains that today," The Associated Press reported.

The controversial blink testimony video was shown during Woods' trial last month after a judge denied the defense's request to not show it.

In the video, Chandler looked at the photo for a couple of seconds before he responded with pronounced blinks, according to the AP. When police asked if he was sure, Chandler blinked again three times, the AP reported.

"Police set up these rules, and they asked him a series of questions," Woods' attorney, Kory Jackson, told ABC News in April. "There are times he doesn't blink at all in response to questions. There are times he blinks more than three times, so it is often unclear what exactly he is trying to communicate."

Woods was accused of fatally shooting Chandler in the head and neck on Oct. 28, 2010, in Cincinnati.

Detectives interviewed Chandler on Nov. 2, 2010. Ten days later, he died of complications from his paralysis and gunshot wounds.

El Monte Police Fatally Shoot Family Dog Inside Fenced Yard

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El Monte Police Fatally Shoot Family Dog Inside Fenced Yard

EL MONTE, Calif. (KTLA) — Police were investigating the fatal officer-involved shooting of a two-year-old German shepherd inside the fenced-in yard of a family in El Monte.

Officers came to the home on Maxson Road on Wednesday to follow-up on a report of a runaway teenager.

The encounter with the dog, named Kiki, was recorded by a home security camera.

It showed two police officers arriving at the home of Cathy Luu and her husband Chi Nguyen around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Police said the officers shook the gate and otherwise took care to check if there were dogs present in the yard before opening the gate and entering, according to a report in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

Federal law nullification??? A better word is the Tenth Amendment.

Source

Gun laws: Federal nullification efforts mounting in states

Brad Stemple, Gary Marbut

Matt Gouras

June 21, 2013 7:30 am • Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Imagine the scenario: A federal agent attempts to arrest someone for illegally selling a machine gun. Instead, the federal agent is arrested — charged in a state court with the crime of enforcing federal gun laws.

Farfetched? Not as much as you might think.

The scenario would become conceivable if legislation passed by Missouri's Republican-led Legislature is signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.

The Missouri legislation is perhaps the most extreme example of a states' rights movement that has been spreading across the nation. States are increasingly adopting laws that purport to nullify federal laws — setting up intentional legal conflicts, directing local police not to enforce federal laws and, in rare cases, even threatening criminal charges for federal agents who dare to do their jobs.

An Associated Press analysis found that about four-fifths of the states now have enacted local laws that directly reject or ignore federal laws on marijuana use, gun control, health insurance requirements and identification standards for driver's licenses. The recent trend began in Democratic leaning California with a 1996 medical marijuana law and has proliferated lately in Republican strongholds like Kansas, where Gov. Sam Brownback this spring became the first to sign a measure threatening felony charges against federal agents who enforce certain firearms laws in his state.

Some states, such as Montana and Arizona, have said "no" to the feds again and again — passing states' rights measures on all four subjects examined by the AP — despite questions about whether their "no" carries any legal significance.

"It seems that there has been an uptick in nullification efforts from both the left and the right," said Adam Winkler, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who specializes in constitutional law.

Yet "the law is clear — the supremacy clause (of the U.S. Constitution) says specifically that the federal laws are supreme over contrary state laws, even if the state doesn't like those laws," Winkler added.

The fact that U.S. courts have repeatedly upheld federal laws over conflicting state ones hasn't stopped some states from flouting those federal laws — sometimes successfully.

About 20 states now have medical marijuana laws allowing people to use pot to treat chronic pain and other ailments — despite a federal law that still criminalizes marijuana distribution and possession. Ceding ground to the states, President Barack Obama's administration has made it known to federal prosecutors that it wasn't worth their time to target those people.

Federal authorities have repeatedly delayed implementation of the 2005 Real ID Act, an anti-terrorism law that set stringent requirements for photo identification cards to be used to board commercial flights or enter federal buildings. The law has been stymied, in part, because about half the state legislatures have opposed its implementation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

About 20 states have enacted measures challenging Obama's 2010 health care laws, many of which specifically reject the provision mandating that most people have health insurance or face tax penalties beginning in 2014.

After Montana passed a 2009 law declaring that federal firearms regulations don't apply to guns made and kept in that state, eight other states have enacted similar laws. Gun activist Gary Marbut said he crafted the Montana measure as a foundation for a legal challenge to the federal power to regulate interstate commerce under the U.S. Constitution. His lawsuit was dismissed by a trial judge but is now pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"The states created this federal monster, and so it's time for the states to get their monster on a leash," said Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that local police could not be compelled to carry out provisions of a federal gun control law. But some states are now attempting to take that a step further by asserting that certain federal laws can't even be enforced by federal authorities.

A new Kansas law makes it a felony for a federal agent to attempt to enforce laws on guns made and owned in Kansas. A similar Wyoming law, passed in 2010, made it a misdemeanor. The Missouri bill also would declare it a misdemeanor crime but would apply more broadly to all federal gun laws and regulations — past, present, or future — that "infringe on the people's right to keep and bear arms."

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter in late April to the Kansas governor warning that the federal government is willing to go to court over the new law.

"Kansas may not prevent federal employees and officials from carrying out their official responsibilities," Holder wrote.

Federal authorities in the western district of Missouri led the nation in prosecutions for federal weapons offenses through the first seven months of the 2013 fiscal year, with Kansas close behind, according to a data clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Felons illegally possessing firearms is the most common charge nationally. But the Missouri measure sets it sights on nullifying federal firearms registrations and, among other things, a 1934 law that imposes a tax on transferring machine guns or silencers. Last year, the federal government prosecuted 83 people nationally for unlawful possession of machine guns.

So what would happen if a local prosecutor actually charges a federal agent for doing his or her job?

"They're going to have problems if they do it — there's no doubt about it," said Michael Boldin, executive director of the Tenth Amendment Center, a Los Angeles-based entity that promotes states' rights. "There's no federal court in the country that's going to say that a state can pull this off."

Yet states may never need to prosecute federal agents in order to make their point.

If enough states resist, "it's going to be very difficult for the federal government to force their laws down our throats," Boldin said.

Missouri's governor has not said whether he will sign or veto the bill nullifying federal gun laws. Meanwhile, thousands of people have sent online messages to the governor's office about the legislation.

Signing the measure "will show other states how to resist the tyranny of federal bureaucrats who want to rob you of your right to self-defense," said one message, signed by Jim and Arlena Sowash, who own a gun shop in rural Stover, Mo.

Others urged a veto.

"Outlandish bills like this — completely flouting our federal system — make Missouri the laughingstock of the nation," said a message written by Ann Havelka, of the Kansas City suburb of Gladstone.

Source

Bill to Nullify Federal Gun Control Signed into Law in Alaska

By TAC Daily Updates on June 21, 2013 in 2nd Amendment, All Posts, Issues, Nullification, State Bills 1 59

JUNEAU, Ala - Today, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell signed HB69, the 2nd Amendment Preservation Act, into law.

The bill nullifies a large swath of unconstitutional federal power over the right to keep and bear arms. It begins with the premise that violations of the 2nd Amendment are not law at all. It reads, in part:

a statute, regulation, rule, or order that has the purpose, intent, or effect of confiscating any firearm, banning any firearm, limiting the size of a magazine for any firearm, imposing any limit on the ammunition that may be purchased for any firearm, or requiring the registration of any firearm or its ammunition infringes on an Alaskan’s right to bear arms in violation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and, therefore, is not made in accordance with the Constitution of the United States, is not authorized by the Constitution of the United States, is not the supreme law of the land, and, consequently, is invalid in this state and shall be considered null and void and of no effect in this state

It continues, requiring the state to stand down on enforcement of federal laws violating the right to keep and bear arms:

A state or municipal agency may not use or authorize the use of an asset to implement or aid in the implementation of a requirement of

(1) an order of the President of the United States, a federal regulation, or a law enacted by the United States Congress that is applied to

(A) infringe on a person’s right, under the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to keep and bear arms;

This is a VERY effective method to stop the federal government from infringing the right to keep and bear arms within Alaska. It’s a known fact that a vast majority of federal enforcement actions rely on state and local assets in order to have the manpower and resources to carry them out. As Judge Andrew Napolitano has said recently, such widespread noncompliance would make federal gun laws “nearly impossible to enforce” (video here)

The bill also instructs the State Attorney General to defend any citizen who may be charged by the federal government, or its representatives, under such “laws” as may be passed by Washington DC.

Senator Coghill, who worked on the amendment instructing the AG to defend citizens, had this to say in the closing arguments when it passed in the legislature: “we believe in a strong central government, but we don’t believe in an omnipotent central government… Remember, it was the states that made the federal government. The states are now being forgotten by the very central government they put together, by them ignoring the very Constitution that tied us together as states. The tension has arisen and we have to answer that tension. This (bill) does that.”

HB69 is also an expansion on the state’s previously passed Firearms Freedom Act. That bill made state law that federal power under the constitution’s commerce clause did not apply to firearms, parts and accessories manufactured and held within the state, as this was not interstate commerce. The new legislation takes the natural progression and included firearms and accessories that are not just manufactured in the state – but any possessed in the state as well. Read quite clearly, that’s all firearms, parts and accessories in the state except those few which are intended for sale across state lines.

As what some might consider a bonus added to the legislation in the Senate Amendment, the bill also prohibits compliance with NDAA “indefinite detention” AND the Real ID Act of 2005.

The prohibition on use of state assets (above) also includes the following:

1. Any federal act that would “deny a person a right to due process, or a protection of due process, that would otherwise be available to the person under the Constitution of the State of Alaska, or the Constitution of the United States

2. P.L. 109-13, Division B (REAL ID Act of 2005).

LEGISLATION TRACKING

Keep up to date with the status of bills to nullify unconstitutional federal gun control here:

tenthamendmentcenter

Get model legislation for your state or local community to nullify federal gun control here:

tenthamendmentcenter

Documents show FBI monitored Mexican author

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Documents show FBI monitored Mexican author

Associated Press Fri Jun 21, 2013 9:06 PM

MEXICO CITY — The FBI and the U.S. State Department closely monitored Mexican author Carlos Fuentes for more than two decades because he was considered a communist and a sympathizer of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, recently released documents show.

The documents posted on the FBI’s website this week show the United States denied Fuentes an entry visa at least twice in the 1960s.

In one of the memorandums Fuentes is described as “a leading Mexican communist writer” and a “well-known Mexican novelist with long history of subversive connections.”

Fuentes died in 2012 at age 83 after suffering an internal hemorrhage.

In the 170-page dossier of internal official documents and some newspaper articles, the FBI describes how it monitored Fuentes and denied him permission to enter the United States for having been a member of the Mexican Communist Party.

One of the 20th Century’s most influential Latin American authors and intellectuals, Fuentes backed Castro after he took over Cuba and also supported the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. But Fuentes’ good relations with the Cuban government ended in 1971 when he joined protests over its treatment of poet Heberto Padilla, something that Cuban officials never forgave him for.

The first documents date from 1962, when Fuentes received an invitation to go to the United States for a televised debate with the then Secretary of State Richard Goodwin.

A note dated April 3, 1962, states that until that day Fuentes had not requested a visa at the U.S. Embassy Mexico, and adds that there were instructions from Washington to delay his application and await further instructions.

The FBI’s file for Fuentes includes newspaper articles about how his visa application was later denied.

Although Fuentes was denied an entry visa at least a couple of times, the Mexican writer did make several visits to the United States and was granted permission to teach at American universities. But authorities continued to track him in U.S. territory.

In a memorandum from October 1970 addressed to the FBI’s director, the bureau suggests finding sources and informants at Columbia and New York University who could monitor Fuentes. The memo warned against an active investigation because of media attention.

“Because of Fuentes’ prominence as an author, the publicity which has attended his prior visa refusals, and his indicated connection with two New York City universities, no active investigation regarding him is desired at this time,” the document reads.

It ends with a note stating that Fuentes has had a “long history of subversive connections and has traveled to the Iron Curtain and Cuba.”

Once considered a communist, Fuentes spent some of his childhood in the U.S. as the son of a Mexican diplomat. He said it grated on him that his left-of-center politics meant he often was portrayed as anti-American.

“To call me anti-American is a stupendous lie, a calumny. I grew up in this country. When I was a little boy I shook the hand of Franklin Roosevelt and I haven’t washed it since,” he said with characteristic good humor in a 2006 interview in Los Angeles.

More recently, as a moderate leftist, Fuentes strongly opposed U.S. tactics in the crackdown on immigration as part of the war on terrorism. But he also blasted Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez as a “Tropical Mussolini.”

The FBI files also show how over time the bureau changed its views about Fuentes.

Early on, the FBI highlighted his leftist tendencies but in 1985 he is described as a prominent author and is given a visa to teach at Harvard.

In Fuentes’ application, U.S. authorities say that even though he had been deemed ineligible for an entry permit for being a member of a banned organization in the early 1960s, an apparent reference to the Mexican Communist Party, he should be given a visa to go to Harvard because he is an “outstanding 20th Century Mexican author.”

The FBI released the documents after NYCity News Service filed a request in September 2012 for Fuentes’ FBI file under the Freedom of Information Act, which requires the agency to release certain documents to the public once a person has died.

Cops burn down 2 homes over car that failed to turn on it's headlights!!!!

Source

Two San Jose homes explode into flames when stolen car slams into them

By Pete Carey

pcarey@mercurynews.com

Posted: 06/22/2013 10:40:00 AM PDT

SAN JOSE -- Two south San Jose homes exploded in flames late Friday night after a stolen car carrying four juveniles with a police car in pursuit slammed into the homes, rupturing a gas line.

No one was seriously hurt in the explosion and fire that followed, although one juvenile and one police officer were treated for minor injuries.

"This had the potential of leading to some fatal outcomes," said Officer Albert Morales, a police spokesman. "Luckily, we only had a couple of minor injuries."

One juvenile -- the driver -- was booked into Juvenile Hall, Morales said. The others were interviewed and released to their parents and guardians.

The homes, at 396 and 393 Bluefield Drive, were occupied at the time of the crash, but everyone inside them escaped unharmed, Morales said.

The incident began when a police officer tried to stop a car traveling with no headlights on Vista Park Drive near Branham Lane. The car made a quick right onto Bluefield and spun out of control, Morales said.

A fire department spokesman said one home was destroyed and the second had extensive damage.

Both homes were "fully involved" by the time the fire department reached the scene, said fire department senior dispatcher Eric Joslin.

The two-alarm fire, reported at 11:55 p.m., was battled by more than 40 firefighters, Joslin said.

PG&E crews also responded to the scene, eventually declaring the area safe to return to.

FBI uses drones inside U.S. for spying, director says

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FBI uses drones inside U.S. for spying, director says

By Richard A. Serrano and Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau

June 19, 2013, 6:18 p.m.

WASHINGTON — FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III testified Wednesday that the controversial National Security Agency surveillance program "has been a contributing factor, one dot among many dots" for tracking terrorist plots, and he admitted for the first time that the bureau had used surveillance drones inside the U.S.

The FBI uses drones "in a very, very minimal way and very seldom," said Mueller, adding that "we have very few."

Mueller's comments were the first time an FBI official publicly acknowledged that the bureau used remotely piloted aircraft, though the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have both tested drones for use in investigations.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, asked Mueller to detail what protections the FBI had put in place to limit how video and other information collected by drones was used by federal investigators. She called drones "the greatest threat to the privacy of Americans."

"I will have to go back and check in terms of what we keep in terms of the images and the like. But it is very narrowly focused on particularized cases and particularized needs, and that is the principal privacy limitations we have," Mueller said.

Mueller said the FBI was in the "initial stages" of writing policies to limit the effect on the privacy of American citizens. "We're exploring not only the use but also the necessary guidelines for that use," he added.

In what is probably his last appearance before Congress before he leaves office, Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the NSA's use of telephone logs and Internet records was especially crucial in learning which home-grown suspects or foreign immigrants are in contact with Al Qaeda or other terrorist networks overseas.

"You never know which dot is going to be the key," he said. "But you want as many dots as you can. And if you close down a program like this, there will be ... fewer dots to connect."

Mueller, the sixth FBI director, said the bureau already was making transition plans for his successor, even though President Obama had not yet sent the name of a nominee to the Senate for confirmation.

Mueller said he had met with Obama to discuss his replacement, but would not detail their conversation. The White House, meanwhile, has indicated the president plans to nominate James B. Comey, a former deputy attorney general, to the post.

But, Mueller said, no matter how much the FBI prepares and who is ultimately installed to succeed him, some unexpected crime event probably will change everything. Just a week after Mueller took office, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks instantly morphed the FBI from a traditional anti-crime organization fighting gangs and bank robberies into one with terrorism and national security as its top priority.

"It will take I would say a month to really get one's feet on the ground," Mueller said. "But in that month, I can tell you something's going to happen. So whatever you planned in terms of sitting down and looking at something, something else will come up and your attention will be diverted."

Committee members from both political parties were generous in their compliments to the outgoing director, thanking him for his 12 years of running the bureau. Some proclaimed his success in upgrading the FBI into a more sophisticated, highly technological organization to deal with an emerging world of cyber-crime, international terrorism and complex Wall Street money schemes.

But several Republicans appeared frustrated over a number of issues, including why Mueller's FBI had not made arrests in the Internal Revenue Service political controversy, in which tea party and other conservative groups were targeted for special scrutiny.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) pressed Mueller to divulge the scope and goal of the FBI's investigation into the IRS matter, but the director provided only minimal details. He said a dozen agents were assigned to the case and that it was being directed out of the Washington field office.

"There is a sense of urgency with the investigation," he said. "It is not languishing."

richard.serrano@latimes.com

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Obscure untested oversight board will protect our rights

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Obama relying on untested oversight board

Associated Press Tue Jun 18, 2013 11:55 PM

WASHINGTON — The obscure oversight board that President Barack Obama wants to scrutinize the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance system is little known for good reason. The U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has operated fitfully during its eight years of low-profile existence, stymied by congressional infighting and, at times, censorship by government lawyers.

The privacy board was to meet Wednesday, its first meeting since revelations that the NSA has been secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Americans. The meeting will be closed to the public.

The board has existed since 2004, first as part of the executive branch, then after a legislative overhaul that took effect in 2008, as an independent board of presidential appointees reporting to Congress. But hindered by Obama administration delays and then resistance from Republicans in Congress, the new board was not fully functional until May, when its chairman, David Medine, finally was confirmed.

Obama’s sudden leaning on the board as a civil libertarian counterweight to the government’s elaborate secret surveillance program places trust in an organization that is untested and whose authority at times still defers to Congress and government censors.

“They’ve been in startup mode a long time,” said Sharon Bradford Franklin, a senior counsel at the Constitution Project, a bipartisan civil liberties watchdog group. “With all the concerns about the need for a debate on the issue of surveillance, this is a great opportunity for them to get involved.”

It was not clear how much classified information would be discussed at Wednesday’s meeting. As late as April 2012, the board’s incoming chairman did not have a security clearance and the board did not have the classified, secure meeting area that is necessary to review and discuss classified government material.

The board’s five appointees recently got security clearances, said Franklin, who attended the new group’s first two meetings in October and March. “The first thing they can do is push for more disclosure and a more well-rounded picture of the surveillance programs,” she said.

In an interview with television talk show host Charlie Rose, Obama said he wanted the group to spearhead a national conversation not only on the surveillance programs recently disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, but also “about the general problem of these big data sets because this is not going to be restricted to government entities.”

The board’s mandate includes privacy as well as national security concerns, so, in theory, it could veer into questions about how Internet companies like Google and Facebook as well as hundreds of other data-mining firms deal with privacy and how government might regulate those entities. But as Franklin and other civil liberties experts said, the board’s role is largely advisory, setting out problems and suggesting possible options.

“They have statutory authority in two main areas,” Franklin said. “One is evaluating whether safeguards on civil liberties are adequate and the other is in transparency — informing the public and ensuring the government is more transparent.”

But there are still limits on the group’s independence when it comes to the public disclosure of classified material. While the board has leeway in scrutinizing classified material and referencing top secret documents, it can only make those materials public if they are first declassified by the government, said Lanny Davis, who was one of the board’s first five members.

“They can say anything they want short of putting out classified information,” said Davis, a former senior counselor to President Bill Clinton who has worked as a consultant, commentator and representative for several foreign governments.

Davis ran into that brick wall in 2007 when the board was preparing a draft of its report for Congress on government national security programs. One passage in the draft described anti-terrorism programs that represented “potentially problematic” intrusions on civil liberties, but it was deleted at the direction of the President George W. Bush’s White House. Bush administration lawyers made more than 200 other revisions in the report, and while the board accepted most of the changes, Davis quit. Going public with his decision, Davis said he was not reacting to censorship of any classified material but instead the board’s structural ties to the executive branch that allowed White House lawyers to heavily edit the report.

“The law as it was then made the board a functional equivalent of White House staff,” Davis said. “Congress corrected that by making the board independent. If they have a problem with classified material, they still can’t release it on their own. But they can go out and have a press conference complaining about it. Before, they had to defer to the White House.”

Congress’ revision of the legal authority that set up the board gave Obama the ability to appoint a new group of appointees when he came into office in January 2009. But Obama did not forward his first nominations until December 2010, and they languished among dozens of other nominations in Congress.

The current board is a mix of civil libertarians and former government lawyers. Medine, the chairman, most recently worked as a Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer. James X. Dempsey is a vice president of public policy with the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet civil liberties group. Elisebeth Collins Cook and Rachel Brand both worked as Justice Department lawyers during the Bush administration and are now in private practice. Patricia M. Wald is a former federal judge appointed by President Jimmy Carter.

Three members — Medine, Cook and Brand — have worked as lawyers at WilmerHale, a top legal and lobbying shop in Washington. Medine lobbied for several years for data security groups, including Iron Mountain and the National Association for Information Destruction, a trade association for shredding and other information disposal companies. Brand lobbied for Google, T-Mobile and a pharmaceutical association.

Feds charge freedom fighter Snowden with treason!!!!

Source

No word from China on NSA leaker’s possible return

By Pete Yost Associated Press Sat Jun 22, 2013 9:49 AM

WASHINGTON — Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who says he revealed that the National Security Agency collects Americans’ phone records and Internet data from U.S. communication companies, now faces charges of espionage and theft of government property.

Snowden is believed to be in Hong Kong, which could complicate efforts to bring him to a U.S. federal court to answer charges that he engaged in unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information.

In addition to those charges, both brought under the Espionage Act, the government charged Snowden with theft of government property. Each crime carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Hong Kong was silent Saturday on whether Snowden should be extradited to the United States now that he has been charged, but some of China’s legislators said the decision should be up to the Chinese government.

The one-page criminal complaint against Snowden was unsealed Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., part of the Eastern District of Virginia where his former employer, government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered, in McLean.

The complaint is dated June 14, five days after Snowden’s name first surfaced as the person who had leaked to the news media that the NSA, in two highly classified surveillance programs, gathered telephone and Internet records to ferret out terror plots.

It was unclear Friday whether the U.S. had yet to begin an effort to extradite Snowden from Hong Kong. He could contest extradition on grounds of political persecution. In general, the extradition agreement between the U.S. and Hong Kong excepts political offenses from the obligation to turn over a person.

Hong Kong had no immediate reaction to word of the charges against Snowden.

The Espionage Act arguably is a political offense. The Obama administration has now used the act in seven criminal cases in an unprecedented effort to stem leaks. In one of them, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning acknowledged he sent more than 700,000 battlefield reports, diplomatic cables and other materials to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. His military trial is underway.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, welcomed the charges against Snowden.

“I’ve always thought this was a treasonous act,” he said in a statement. “I hope Hong Kong’s government will take him into custody and extradite him to the U.S.”

But the Government Accountability Project, a whistle-blower advocacy group, said Snowden should be shielded from prosecution by whistle-blower protection laws.

“He disclosed information about a secret program that he reasonably believed to be illegal, and his actions alone brought about the long-overdue national debate about the proper balance between privacy and civil liberties, on the one hand, and national security on the other,” the group said in a statement.

Michael di Pretoro, a retired 30-year veteran with the FBI who served from 1990 to 1994 as the legal liaison officer at the American consulate in Hong Kong, said “relations between U.S. and Hong Kong law enforcement personnel are historically quite good.”

“In my time, I felt the degree of cooperation was outstanding to the extent that I almost felt I was in an FBI field office,” di Pretoro said.

The U.S. and Hong Kong have a standing agreement on the surrender of fugitives. However, Snowden’s appeal rights could drag out any extradition proceeding.

The success or failure of any extradition proceeding depends on what the suspect is charged with under U.S. law and how it corresponds to Hong Kong law under the treaty. In order for Hong Kong officials to honor the extradition request, they have to have some applicable statute under their law that corresponds with a violation of U.S. law.

Hong Kong lawmakers said Saturday that the Chinese government should make the final decision on whether Snowden should be extradited to the United States.

Outspoken legislator Leung Kwok-hung said Beijing should instruct Hong Kong to protect Snowden from extradition before his case gets dragged through the court system.

Leung urged the people of Hong Kong to “take to the streets to protect Snowden.”

In Iceland, a business executive said Friday that a private plane was on standby to transport Snowden from Hong Kong to Iceland, although Iceland’s government says it has not received an asylum request from Snowden.

Business executive Olafur Vignir Sigurvinsson said he has been in contact with someone representing Snowden and has not spoken to the American himself. Private donations are being collected to pay for the flight, he said.

“There are a number of people that are interested in freedom of speech and recognize the importance of knowing who is spying on us,” Sigurvinsson said. “We are people that care about privacy.”

Disclosure of the criminal complaint came as President Barack Obama held his first meeting with a privacy and civil liberties board and as his intelligence chief sought ways to help Americans understand more about sweeping government surveillance efforts exposed by Snowden.

The five members of the little-known Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board met with Obama for an hour in the White House Situation Room, questioning the president on the two NSA programs that have stoked controversy.

One program collects billions of U.S. phone records. The second gathers audio, video, email, photographic and Internet search usage of foreign nationals overseas, and probably some Americans in the process, who use major Internet service providers, such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo.

Snowden background check may have been flawed

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Official: Snowden background check may have been flawed

USA Today Thu Jun 20, 2013 8:01 PM

A 2011 re-investigation of Edward Snowden's background check may have been faulty, Office of Personnel Management Inspector General Patrick McFarland told Congress on Thursday. Snowden is a former National Security Agency contract employee who leaked details of a top-secret spying program at NSA.

"We do believe that there may be some problems" with the re-investigation, McFarland said when Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., asked him whether he had concerns about whether Snowden's reinvestigation may not have been carried out in an appropriate or thorough manner. McFarland was testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on the federal workforce, which Tester chairs.

McFarland said that U.S. Investigative Services, a company that handles 45% of the federal government's contracted background checks, conducted the 2011 re-investigation into Snowden. Later that year, McFarland's office began investigating USIS for contract fraud. That investigation is still ongoing.

In a statement, USIS said it received a subpoena for records from McFarland's office in January 2012, with which it complied. USIS said it has cooperated fully with the government's civil investigation, but said it has not been told it is under criminal investigation.

USIS would not confirm or deny whether it had conducted any investigations into Snowden, saying those investigations are confidential.

McFarland told the subcommittee that 18 background investigators and record searchers — 11 federal employees and seven contractors — have been convicted for falsifying background investigation reports since the IG began investigating so-called fabrication cases in 2006. The abuses included interviews that never occurred, answers to questions that were never asked, and record checks that were never conducted, McFarland said.

A 19th investigator pled guilty last month, McFarland said, and a 20th is expected to plead guilty this week. Both investigators are contractors, he said.

Snowden was fired from his job as a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor after revealing NSA programs that collect private online communications from companies such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google, and phone records and metadata from Verizon.

The numbers game muddies NSA surveillance debate

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The numbers game muddies NSA surveillance debate

Associated PressBy EILEEN SULLIVAN and LARA JAKES | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Seeking to win over public trust, the Obama administration has been throwing around a lot of numbers as it tries to describe — in as much detail as possible without jeopardizing national security — the terror plots it says were thwarted by the government's sweeping surveillance of U.S. communications.

There's 50, 12, 10 and four. You also hear 20 and 90 in statements and official testimony, and even 702 and 215, though those aren't for estimates of plots.

The numbers game is just part of the effort to convince skeptical Americans that the recently disclosed National Security Agency spy programs are vital in detecting and stopping extremist plots. But the approach has produced relatively limited, often vague information, and it has ended up confusing many in Congress as lawmakers grapple with how to assure people that their privacy rights are protected along with their security.

There are questions about effectiveness that still lack answers, "and we've gotten some answers that need further clarity," House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Thursday. He was referring to the so-called 215 program, which refers to the section of the anti-terror Patriot Act that authorizes the NSA to collect Americans' phone records.

And, he added, "we also should ask in those cases where it was successful, how dated were the records."

Another NSA program — known as 702 — authorizes the agency to sweep up Internet usage data from all over the world that goes through nine major U.S.-based providers.

Officials have used the rest of the numbers in Capitol Hill testimony over the past week as they have sought to allay Americans' concerns that the programs violate their privacy.

Top officials told Congress that the programs have been key in thwarting at least 50 terror plots across 20 countries. And, they said, an estimated 10 to 12 of those plots were directed at the U.S. They publicly offered four examples among the 50-plus cases:

—An NSA-provided phone record led authorities to identify a terrorist financier in San Diego who was arrested in 2007.

—The NSA's surveillance of Internet usage in 2009 revealed that a Chicago man, David Headley, was plotting to bomb a Danish newspaper that had published a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad, Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce said. The FBI had been tipped off that Headley was involved in the deadly 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

—Information from the NSA's Internet usage surveillance of overseas operatives helped thwart a 2009 plot to blow up the New York City subway system. NSA Director General Keith Alexander said this information led investigators to Najibullah Zazi in Colorado. And the phone records collection gave investigators the connections between Zazi and his associates. Zazi ultimately pleaded guilty and provided information that helped send two of his friends to prison.

—A plot to blow up the New York Stock Exchange was thwarted in its early planning stages because the NSA was able identify an extremist in Yemen who was in touch with Khalid Ouazzani in Kansas City, Mo., Joyce said. This enabled investigators to identify co-conspirators and prevent the attack he said. Ouazzani pleaded guilty in May 2010 in federal court in Missouri to charges of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization, bank fraud and money laundering. Ouazzani was not charged with the alleged plot against the stock exchange.

The administration has yet to provide firm numbers of precisely how many plots have been stopped worldwide because of these programs — in part because intelligence officials are still trying to figure that out.

"The reason I'm not giving you a specific number is we want the rest of the community to actually beat those up and make sure that everything we have there is exactly right," Alexander said Tuesday during a House intelligence committee hearing. "I'd give you the number 50-X, but if somebody says, 'Well, not this one. Actually, what we're finding out is there's more. They said you missed these three or four.'"

Alexander said, "These programs are immensely valuable for protecting our nation and securing the security of our allies." And the NSA's authorization to sweep up Internet usage data has contributed to 90 percent of the information used to thwart at least 50 terror plots Alexander and his deputy told lawmakers.

On Wednesday, outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there are 10 to 12 cases in which the phone records surveillance program, authorized in the Patriot Act, contributed to breaking up terror plots.

He said that "of those, domestically, I think there will be anywhere from 10 or 12 where 215 was important in some way, shape or form."

But later in the same hearing, Mueller said he's not actually sure if it was the phone records authorization that helped thwart terror attacks in the 10 to 12 cases.

"I'm not sure whether all of them are 215. They're a combination or the other," Mueller said, referring to the phone records program and Internet usage programs.

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson referred requests for clarification to the NSA and National Counterterrorism Center. He said Mueller "was obviously unclear on the breakdown" since the FBI is not compiling the list of cases.

The confusion has, predictably, given rise to demands for more transparency by the intelligence agencies.

A growing number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers are pushing plans to open secret court orders authorizing the surveillance. Schiff, who filed House legislation on Thursday to match a similar Senate proposal, said it aimed at "allowing Americans to know how the court has interpreted the legal authorities" to ensure they are not being overly or improperly intrusive.

Additionally, a group of mostly Democratic senators are seeking to amend the Patriot Act to require the government to cite specific suspected links to terrorism or espionage before asking the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to approve the collection of Americans' phone records.

But the legislation isn't likely to be approved quickly, and confusion continues to hang over Congress and its constituents.

Noting frustration, Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said trying to balance support for classified intelligence programs against a transparent democracy is always a challenge. But all concerned agree the current situation has fueled public skepticism.

"The public trusts their government to protect the country from another 9/11-type attack," Rogers said this week, "but that trust can start to wane when they are faced with inaccuracies, half-truths and outright lies about the way the intelligence programs are being run."

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Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

Follow Eileen Sullivan on Twitter at https://twitter.com/esullivanap and Lara Jakes at: https://twitter.com/larajakesAP

Web’s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders

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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.

Court lets NSA use data snagged 'inadvertently'

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Report: Court lets NSA use data snagged 'inadvertently'

USA Today Thu Jun 20, 2013 8:00 PM

WASHINGTON — Rules governing a recently disclosed surveillance program targeting non-U.S. citizens abroad appear to give National Security Agency analysts broad discretion in determining who qualifies for such scrutiny, according to two new classified documents published Thursday by The Guardian.

Without "specific information'' about whether the target is an American, and if the person's location is unknown, the target will be "presumed a non-U.S. citizen'' and subject to surveillance, according to one of the documents.

The White House declined to comment on the new disclosures. And the NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A second document outlines authority for government officials to retain communications by U.S. citizens that are inadvertently intercepted if the material contains "foreign intelligence'' or "evidence of crime.''

The Guardian report suggested that the retention provision contradicts recent assertions by government officials who claim that all such inadvertent communications are routinely destroyed.

But Deputy Attorney General James Cole, in testimony Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee, specifically referred to the government's "limited'' authority to keep communications involving Americans. "If it has to do with foreign intelligence ... or evidence of a crime or threat of serious bodily injury, we can respond to that,'' Cole told lawmakers. "Other than that, we have to get rid of it. We have to purge it, and we can't use it.''

Both documents published by the London newspaper are dated July 29, 2009, and carry the signature of Attorney General Eric Holder. The Justice Department also declined comment Thursday.

The Guardian's disclosures are the first since the newspaper and The Washington Post revealed details of the formerly secret program and a separate operation that collects the telephone records of U.S. citizens for use in terror investigations.

Since then, President Obama and congressional leaders have defended the practices, asserting they were vital to national security.

But civil liberties advocates maintain that the operations are serious breaches of privacy and lack adequate controls.

"Collectively, these documents show ... that the legal framework under which the NSA operates is far too feeble, that existing oversight mechanisms are ineffective, and that the government's surveillance policies now present a serious and ongoing threat to our constitutional rights,'' ACLU staff attorney Alex Abdo said. "The release of these documents will help inform a crucial public debate that should have taken place years ago."

NSA surveillance may be legal

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NSA surveillance may be legal — but it’s unconstitutional [now ain't that an oxymoron!!!!]

By Laura K. Donohue, Published: June 21

Laura K. Donohue is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and director of Georgetown’s Center on National Security and the Law.

The National Security Agency’s recently revealed surveillance programs undermine the purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was established to prevent this kind of overreach. They violate the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. And they underscore the dangers of growing executive power.

The intelligence community has a history of overreaching in the name of national security. In the mid-1970s, it came to light that, since the 1940s, the NSA had been collecting international telegraphic traffic from companies, in the process obtaining millions of Americans’ telegrams that were unrelated to foreign targets. From 1940 to 1973, the CIA and the FBI engaged in covert mail-opening programs that violated laws prohibiting the interception or opening of mail. The agencies also conducted warrantless “surreptitious entries,” breaking into targets’ offices and homes to photocopy or steal business records and personal documents. The Army Security Agency intercepted domestic radio communications. And the Army’s CONUS program placed more than 100,000 people under surveillance, including lawmakers and civil rights leaders.

After an extensive investigation of the agencies’ actions, Congress passed the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to limit sweeping collection of intelligence and create rigorous oversight. But 35 years later, the NSA is using this law and its subsequent amendments as legal grounds to run even more invasive programs than those that gave rise to the statute.

We’ve learned that in April, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordered Verizon to provide information on calls made by each subscriber over a three-month period. Over the past seven years, similar orders have been served continuously on AT&T, Sprint and other telecommunications providers.

Another program, PRISM, disclosed by the Guardian and The Washington Post, allows the NSA and the FBI to obtain online data including e-mails, photographs, documents and connection logs. The information that can be assembledabout any one person — much less organizations, social networks and entire communities — is staggering: What we do, think and believe.

The government defends the programs’ legality, saying they comply with FISA and its amendments. It may be right, but only because FISA has ceased to provide a meaningful constraint.

Under the traditional FISA, if the government wants to conduct electronic surveillance, it must make a classified application to a special court, identitying or describing the target. It must demonstrate probable cause that the target is a foreign power or an agent thereof, and that the facilities to be monitored will be used by the target.

In 2008, Congress added section 702 to the statute, allowing the government to use electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence on non-U.S. persons it reasonably believes are abroad, without a court order for each target. A U.S. citizen may not intentionally be targeted.

To the extent that the FISC sanctioned PRISM, it may be consistent with the law. But it is disingenuous to suggest that millions of Americans’ e-mails, photographs and documents are “incidental” to an investigation targeting foreigners overseas.

The telephony metadata program raises similar concerns. FISA did not originally envision the government accessing records. Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Congress allowed applications for obtaining records from certain kinds of businesses. In 2001, lawmakers further expanded FISA to give the government access to any business or personal records. Under section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government no longer has to prove that the target is a foreign power. It need only state that the records are sought as part of an investigation to protect against terrorism or clandestine intelligence.

This means that FISA can now be used to gather records concerning individuals who are neither the target of any investigation nor an agent of a foreign power. Entire databases — such as telephony metadata — can be obtained, as long as an authorized investigation exists.

Congress didn’t pass Section 215 to allow for the wholesale collection of information. As Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who helped draft the statute, wrote in the Guardian: “Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations. How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?”

As a constitutional matter, the Supreme Court has long held that, where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, search and seizure may occur only once the government has obtained a warrant, supported by probable cause and issued by a judge. The warrant must specify the places to be searched and items to be seized.

There are exceptions to the warrant requirement. In 1979 the court held that the use of a pen register to record numbers dialed from someone’s home was not a search. The court suggested that people who disclose their communications to others assume the risk that law enforcement may obtain the information.

More than three decades later, digitization and the explosion of social-network technology have changed the calculus. In the ordinary course of life, third parties obtain massive amounts of information about us that, when analyzed, have much deeper implications for our privacy than before.

As for Section 702 of FISA, the Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not protect foreigners from searches conducted abroad. But it has never recognized a foreign intelligence exception to the warrant requirement when foreign-targeted searches result in the collection of vast stores of citizens’ communications.

Americans reasonably expect that their movements, communications and decisions will not be recorded and analyzed by the government. A majority of the Supreme Court seems to agree. Last year, the court considered a case involving 28-day GPS surveillance. Justice Samuel Alito suggested that in most criminal investigations, long-term monitoring “impinges on expectations of privacy.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor recognized that following a person’s movements “reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”

The FISC is supposed to operate as a check. But it is a secret court, notorious for its low rate of denial. From 1979 to 2002, it did not reject a single application. Over the past five years, out of nearly 8,600 applications, only two have been denied.

Congress has an opportunity to create more effective checks on executive power. It could withdraw Sections 215 and 702 and introduce new measures to regulate intelligence collection and analysis. There are many options.

James Madison put it best: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

lkdonohue@law.georgetown.edu

Obama meeting with privacy board about government surveillance

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Obama meeting with privacy board about government surveillance

By Julie Pace

Associated Press

Posted: 06/21/2013 09:07:13 AM PDT

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is holding his first meeting with a privacy and civil liberties board Friday as he seeks to make good on his pledge to have a public discussion about secretive government surveillance programs.

Obama has said the little-known Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board will play a key role in that effort. The federal oversight board reviews terrorism programs enacted by the executive branch to ensure that privacy concerns are taken into account.

The president is also tasking the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, to consider declassifying more details about the government's collection of U.S. phone and Internet records. Obama is specifically asking Clapper to review possible declassification of opinions from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves the data-mining efforts.

The government has already lifted some of the secrecy surrounding the programs following disclosures earlier this month about their existence by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. But the legal opinions from the highly secretive court remain private.

The privacy board was created in 2004 but has operated fitfully ever since, given congressional infighting and at times, censorship by government lawyers. The board was dormant during Obama's first term and only became fully functional in May, before the NSA programs became public.

The board's chairman, David Medine, said the five-member group has a "broad range of questions" to ask about the NSA's widespread collection programs. The board was given a classified briefing on the programs last week and plans to release a report eventually with recommendations for the government.

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Follow Julie Pace at on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Obama & NSA lied about not listening to our phone calls???

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New documents reveal parameters of NSA’s secret surveillance programs

By Ellen Nakashima, Barton Gellman and Greg Miller, Published: June 20

The National Security Agency may keep the e-mails and telephone calls of citizens and legal residents if the communications contain “significant foreign intelligence” or evidence of a crime, according to classified documents that lay out procedures for targeting foreigners and for guarding Americans’ privacy.

Newly disclosed documents describe a series of steps the world’s largest spy agency is supposed to take to keep Americans from being caught in its massive surveillance net. They suggest that the NSA has latitude to keep and use citizens’ communications under certain conditions.

President Obama said the National Security Agency’s email collecting program “does not apply to U.S. citizens and...people living in the United States.”

President Obama said the National Security Agency’s email collecting program “does not apply to U.S. citizens and...people living in the United States.”

The papers, made available to The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, are the first public written documentation of procedures governing a far-reaching NSA surveillance program authorized by Congress in 2008 to gather the e-mails and phone calls of targets who are supposed to be foreigners located overseas.

In recent days, the Obama administration has defended the program as critical to national security, saying it has helped foil more than 50 terrorist plots in the United States and abroad.

President Obama said after the disclosures that NSA domestic activities “do not involve listening to people’s phone calls, do not involve reading the e-mails of U.S. citizens or U.S. residents, absent further action by a federal court, that is entirely consistent with what we would do, for example, in a criminal investigation.”

The new documents show that the NSA collects, processes, retains and disseminates the contents of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails under a wide range of circumstances.

NSA Director Keith B. Alexander described the program as “limited, focused and subject to rigorous oversight.” Testifying before Congress, he said “the disciplined operation” of this and a related surveillance program “protects the privacy and civil liberties of the American people.”

A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the documents Thursday.

Privacy advocates expressed concern about what they viewed as rules that leave much wiggle room for NSA analysts to monitor Americans’ communications.

“These documents confirm what we have feared all along, that the NSA believes it can collect Americans’ international communications with little, if any, restriction,” said Alex Abdo, a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. “Its procedures allow it to target for surveillance essentially any foreigner located abroad — whether or not they’re suspected of any wrongdoing, let alone terrorism.”

Administration officials say the surveillance program does not target Americans anywhere without a warrant. Still, said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, “there’s a lot of leeway to use ‘inadvertently’ acquired domestic communications,” for instance, for criminal inquiries.

And the rules show that the communications of lawyers and their clients may be retained if they contain foreign intelligence information, although dissemination must be approved by the NSA general counsel.

Congress authorized the collection program amid a great debate about the degree to which the government was expanding its surveillance authority without sufficient protection for Americans’ privacy.

Authorized by Section 702 of the amended Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the program did away with the traditional individual warrant for each foreign suspect whose communications would be collected in the United States. In its place, the FISA court, which oversees domestic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes and whose proceedings are secret, would certify the government’s procedures to target people overseas and ensure citizens’ privacy.

President Obama said the National Security Agency’s email collecting program “does not apply to U.S. citizens and...people living in the United States.”

It issues a certificate, good for one year, that allows the NSA to order a U.S. Internet or phone company to turn over over e-mails, phone calls and other communications related to a series of foreign targets, none of which the court approved individually.

“What’s most striking about the targeting procedures is the discretion they confer on the NSA,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security program.

In figuring out whether a target is “reasonably believed” to be located overseas, for example, the agency looks at the “totality of the circumstances” relating to a person’s location. In the absence of that specific information, “a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person,” according to rules on the targeting of suspects.

Nonetheless, the documents contain a series of steps the NSA may take to determine a foreigner’s location. Agency analysts examine leads that may come from other agencies, including from human sources. They conduct research in NSA databases, scrutinize Internet protocol addresses and target “Internet links that terminate in a foreign country.”

“When NSA proposes to direct surveillance at a target, it does so because NSA has already learned something about the target,” according to the targeting rules. Often, that lead comes from the CIA or a law enforcement agency.

The NSA uses whatever details are contained in that lead to make an initial assessment of whether it is being asked to eavesdrop on an overseas target. But the agency then takes other steps depending on the circumstances, such as scanning databases “to which NSA has access but did not originate” for clues about location.

To prevent U.S. citizens and legal residents from being targeted, NSA keeps a database of phone numbers and e-mail addresses associated with people thought to be living in the country. New requests are compared to records on the list. Matches are signals to put the surveillance on hold.

The NSA then goes through a sequence of potential additional checks, according to the document. It may look at area codes and the ordinary data packets that accompany e-mails as they cross the Internet. And it may check contact lists associated with e-mail accounts, as well as massive “knowledge databases” that contain CIA intelligence reports.

After it begins intercepting calls or e-mails, the NSA is supposed to continue to look for signs that the person it is monitoring has entered the United States, which would prompt a halt in surveillance and possibly a notification to the FBI.

The document on “minimization” spells out rules for protecting privacy, some of which have been described publicly. The rules protect not just citizens, but foreigners in the United States.

If domestic communications lack significant foreign intelligence information, they must be promptly destroyed. Communications concerning Americans may not be kept more than five years.

If a target who was outside the United States enters the country, the monitoring must stop immediately.

Five myths about the National Security Agency (NSA)

Five myths about the National Security Agency (NSA)

By James Bamford, Published: June 21

James Bamford is the author of three books on the NSA, including “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.”

When the National Security Agency was created through a top-secret memorandum signed by President Harry Truman in 1952, the agency was so secret that only a few members of Congress knew about it. While the NSA gradually became known over the decades, its inner workings remain extremely hidden, even with the recent leaks about its gathering of Americans’ phone records and tapping into data from the nine largest Internet companies. Let’s pull back the shroud a bit to demystify this agency.

1. The NSA is allowed to spy on everyone, everywhere.

After his release of documents to the Guardian and The Washington Post, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden said, “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal e-mail.”

But Snowden probably couldn’t eavesdrop on just about anyone, including the president, without breaking the law. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act forbids the NSA from targeting U.S. citizens or legal residents without an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This applies whether the person is in the United States or overseas. According to documents from Snowdenpublished by The Post and the Guardian on Thursday, if agency employees pick up the communications of Americans incidentally while monitoring foreign targets, they are supposed to destroy the information unless it contains “significant foreign intelligence” or evidence of a crime.

What’s technically feasible is a different matter. Since 2003, the NSA has been able to monitor much of the Internet and telephone communication entering, leaving and traveling through the United States with secret eavesdropping hardware and software installed at major AT&T switches, and probably those of other companies, around the country.

2. The courts make sure that what the NSA does is legal.

This is part of the NSA’s mantra. Because both the surveillance court and the activities it monitors are secret, it’s hard to contradict. Yet we know about at least one transgression since Congress created the court in 1978 in response to the NSA’s previous abuses.

Under the court’s original charter, the NSA was required to provide it with the names of all U.S. citizens and residents it wished to monitor. Yet the George W. Bush administration issued a presidential order in 2002 authorizing the NSA to eavesdrop without court-approved warrants.

After the New York Times exposed the warrantless wiretapping program in 2005, Congress amended the law to weaken the court’s oversight and incorporate many of the formerly illegal eavesdropping activities conducted during the Bush years. Rather than individual warrants, the court can now approve vast, dragnet-style warrants, or orders, as they’re called. For example, the first document released by the Guardian was a top-secret order from the court requiring Verizon to hand over the daily telephone records of all its customers, including local calls.

3. Congress has a lot of oversight over the NSA.

This is the second part of the mantra from NSA Director Keith Alexander and other senior agency officials. Indeed, when the congressional intelligence committees were formed in 1976 and 1977, their emphasis was on protecting the public from the intelligence agencies, which were rife with abuses.

Today, however, the intelligence committees are more dedicated to protecting the agencies from budget cuts than safeguarding the public from their transgressions. Hence their failure to discover the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping activity and their failure to take action against the NSA’s gathering of telephone and Internet records.

4. NSA agents break into foreign locations to steal codes and plant bugs.

Five Myths

A feature from The Post’s Outlook section that dismantles myths, clarifies common misconceptions and makes you think again about what you thought you already knew.

According to intelligence sources, a number of years ago there was a large debate between the NSA and the CIA over who was responsible for conducting “black-bag jobs” — breaking into foreign locations to plant bugs and steal hard drives, or recruiting local agents to do the same. The NSA argued that it was in charge of eavesdropping on communications, known as signals intelligence, and that the data on hard drives counts. But the CIA argued that the NSA had responsibility only for information “in motion,” while the CIA was responsible for information “at rest.” It was eventually decided that the CIA’s National Clandestine Service would focus on stealing hard drives and planting bugs, and the NSA, through a highly secret unit known as Tailored Access Operations, would steal foreign data through cyber-techniques.

5. Snowden could have aired his concerns internally rather than leaking the documents.

I’ve interviewed many NSA whistleblowers, and the common denominator is that they felt ignored when attempting to bring illegal or unethical operations to the attention of higher-ranking officials. For example, William Binney and several other senior NSA staffers protested the agency’s domestic collection programs up the chain of command, and even attempted to bring the operations to the attention of the attorney general, but they were ignored. Only then did Binney speak publicly to me for an article in Wired magazine.

In a Q&A on the Guardian Web site, Snowden cited Binney as an example of “how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they’ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.”

And even when whistleblowers bring their concerns to the news media, the NSA usually denies that the activity is taking place. The agency denied Binney’s charges that it was obtaining all consumer metadata from Verizon and had access to virtually all Internet traffic. It was only when Snowden leaked the documents revealing the phone-log program and showing how PRISM works that the agency was forced to come clean.

washwriter@gmail.com

Government Dodging Questions About Spying In Chicago Terror Plot

Source

Adel Daoud Secret Surveillance: Government Dodging Questions About Spying In Chicago Terror Plot

By MICHAEL TARM 06/21/13 04:09 PM ET EDT AP

CHICAGO — Lawyers for a U.S. citizen charged with terrorism in Chicago said in a Friday filing that the government is dodging questions about whether it used expanded secret surveillance programs against their client to ensure the hotly debated practices can't be challenged in the Supreme Court.

The claim in the Chicago case came in an early-morning filing at federal court in Chicago by attorneys for Adel Daoud, a 19-year-old, of Hillside, who is accused of trying to ignite what he thought was a car bomb outside a bar last year in Chicago. Daoud, whose trial is set for Feb. 3, has pleaded not guilty to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and other charges.

Legal observers say the question of what the government has to divulge and when has become an increasingly pressing one in light of new revelations about US. intelligence methods, and the answer courts eventually provide could have far-reaching implications.

Recent leaks by a former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA court, authorized one program that gathers U.S. phone records and another that tracks the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism.

Prosecutors in the Daoud case refused to say in a filling last week whether they used far-reaching surveillance programs to launch their two-year investigation of the suburban teenager, saying they were under no legal obligation to spell out just what led to an FBI sting focused on him.

Friday's 13-page defense filing argues the government's refusal to confirm or deny whether it used those programs left defense attorneys legally hamstrung: With no answer, they have no grounds to mount a challenge to the programs' constitutionality. And yet, prosecutors could still use the evidence at trial.

"Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly (about its surveillance methods)," the filing says. "When a criminal defendant's constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of state secrets."

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago, Kim Nerheim, declined comment on the filing.

But Karen Greenberg, director of the New York-based Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, says government prosecutors, if they can, typically err on the side of not divulging procedures in terrorism cases.

"I don't think it necessary means they fear losing a Supreme Court challenge," she said. "Actually, I don't get the sense they are worried."

She added that defense attorneys face such insurmountable odds in terrorism cases, it's no surprise many are now zeroing in on the constitutionality of surveillance methods.

"They don't have too many other legal tools in their tool box," she said. "You will have more and more of these kinds of challenges."

A judge in the Chicago case is expected to rule soon on whether prosecutors are obliged to say if they used the expanded surveillance.

The primary source of contention in Daoud's case, as in much of the national debate over U.S. surveillance, is the secret FISA court – set up by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA amendments passed in 2008 allow the government to obtain broad intercept orders from the court – raising the prospect that calls and emails between foreign targets and innocent Americans could be subject to surveillance.

Similar disputes over the possible use of expanded surveillance have surfaced elsewhere, including in the federal case of two Florida brothers, Sheheryar Alam Qazi and Raees Alam Qazi, arrested last year for allegedly plotting to detonate bombs in New York City. Both men, who are naturalized U.S. citizens, have pleaded not guilty.

A recent filing by Sheheryar Alam Qazi's attorneys echoes the Daoud filing, saying the defense wasn't seeking details about the secret surveillance procedures – only whether they were used.

Since the 2008 amendments extended the reach of the foreign intelligence law, the U.S. government has consistently declined requests in terrorism cases to say if enhanced surveillance powers kick-started wider investigations, according to both the Daoud and Qazi filings.

"(The government) would undoubtedly prefer to maintain that record, which has rendered the government's warrantless wiretapping program all but unreviewable in the interim," the Qazi filing says.

In February, the Supreme Court threw out an attempt by U.S. citizens to challenge the 2008 expansion of FISA because the plaintiffs couldn't prove the government did or will monitor their conversations along with those of potential foreign terrorist and intelligence targets.

But the high court added its decision did not insulate the FISA expansion from judicial review in the future.

___

Follow Michael Tarm at www.twitter.com/mtarm

Teen terror suspect says feds must admit spying on him

Teen terror suspect says feds must admit spying on him, Americans

Friday, June 21, 2013

June 21, 2013 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- NSA, CIA, FBI and FISA have become acronyms that simply translate as SPY to many Americans after recent revelations that U.S. government agencies have been tracking the populous' electronic movements in the name of national security.

Now, as a worldwide debate ensues over privacy vs. security, the federal prosecution of suburban Chicago teenager Adel Daoud could become the defining case in how far American authorities may go while snooping on Americans citizens.

In a blunt and occasionally snarky motion filed Friday morning, Mr. Daoud's attorneys chide the government for refusing to disclose whether they used far-reaching electronic surveillance to build a case against the 19-year old west suburban Hillside man. Daoud, an American citizen, was arrested in a federal sting last September amidst a Jihadist plot to blow up a downtown Chicago bar, investigators said.

Daoud's attorney Thomas Durkin, a former federal prosecutor, says that U.S. authorities utilize "a Global War on Terror playbook" to their advantage and then in every case refuse to disclose it.

"Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly. When a criminal defendant's constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of State Secrets" Durbin states in the motion.

At issue in the Daoud case is whether federal law enforcement agencies relied on electronic surveillance under a controversial, five-year old amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA.)

The amendment, officially known as the FISA Amendments Act-or FAA-has lately been branded as PRISM. But by whatever name or grouping of letters, it amounts to American authorities spying on American citizens without the usual approval by a conventional public court.

"In the nearly five years since the FAA was enacted, the government has never once disclosed its reliance on material obtained through FAA surveillance" states the Daoud motion. "It would undoubtedly prefer to maintain that record, which has rendered the government's warrantless wiretapping program all but unreviewable in the interim.

"As appears it has done in other cases, the government would be able, in essence, to transform its FAA surveillance into FISA evidencereaping the fruits of that FAA surveillance, while cleverly sidestepping any possible constitutional challenge to the FAA's warrantless wiretapping program."

Prosecutors contend that federal law does not require the disclosure sought by lawyer Mr. Durkin in Daoud's case. In a court filing last week, government attorneys maintained that they have actually provided more information than the required minimum-although they did not disclose whether extraordinary surveillance tactics were used during the two-year Daoud investigation.

Daoud's legal team disputes that and Judge Sharon Coleman Johnson will determine who is correct.

As the I-Team first reported, Daoud's legal defense team says it first learned of the spy campaign against the Hillside teen from the floor of the United State Senate.

"When Senator Diane Feinstein urged the Senate to reauthorize the FAA during a December 27, 2012, floor debate, she observed that the FAA had been used in nine specific cases, including a 'plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar.' The government does not deny that this is a reference to Defendant's case, but if nothing else, the government should be forced to answer whether Senator Feinstein had correct information from the intelligence agencies when she spoke from the Senate floor."

Daoud, who has been held without bond in the Chicago MCC since his arrest last September, is now looking for notice from the government concerning suspicions that agents eavesdropped on him, monitored his internet usage and surveilled him using any other electronic methods.

"Whether the government relied on FAA surveillance when it obtained its FISA order is a crucial element of giving adequate notice to criminal defendants. The government should be compelled to provide a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer to the question of whether its evidence was obtained or derived from electronic surveillance conducted under the FAA" his motion states.

As the NSA and PRISM spy programs controversy grows around the world, U.S. officials have eeked out some details. According to attorney Durkin: "On June 18, 2013, Army Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, appeared before the House Intelligence Committee and testified that NSA surveillance programs helped prevent 'potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11."

"As appears it has done in other cases, the government would be able, in essence, to transform its FAA surveillance into FISA evidencereaping the fruits of that FAA surveillance, while cleverly sidestepping any possible constitutional challenge to the FAA's warrantless wiretapping program" the defense motion states.

"In the nearly five years since the FAA was enacted, the government has never once disclosed its reliance on material obtained through FAA surveillance to counsel's knowledge. It would undoubtedly prefer to maintain that record, which has rendered the government's warrantless wiretapping program all but unreviewable in the interim."

Well publicized leaks this month from former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden have revealed that a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court) authorized the gathering of U.S. phone records. Another program made public by Snowden showed that American agents track the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links terrorism.

Last February, the Supreme Court blocked U.S. citizens from challenging the 2008 expansion of FISA on grounds they could not prove the government will monitor their conversations along with those of potential foreign terrorist and intelligence targets. The vote was 5-4.

U.K. Spy Agency Taps Trans-Atlantic Fiber Optic Cables

Source

Report: U.K. Spy Agency Taps Trans-Atlantic Fiber Optic Cables

by Eyder Peralta

June 21, 2013 1:30 PM

The drip-drip of classified information has now moved overseas: Citing more classified documents leaked by , that the British spy agency taps into trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables, sucking up vast amounts of data that includes communication sent by Americans and Britons.

The big claim here is that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the equivalent of the NSA, sucks up that information in an indiscriminate manner. The NSA has access to the information.

Here's how The Guardian describes the program:

"The sheer scale of the agency's ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.

"One key innovation has been GCHQ's ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months.

"GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects.

"This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites – all of which is deemed legal, even though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets."

The newspaper quotes an unnamed source with knowledge of the program as saying that while the program collects a lot of information, it does not have the "resources" to look at it.

"If you had the impression we are reading millions of emails, we are not. There is no intention in this whole programme to use it for looking at UK domestic traffic — British people talking to each other," the source told the paper.

Snowden told The Guardian that the GCHQ is "worse than the U.S."

Communications of Millions Subject to US-UK Spying

Communications of Millions Subject to US-UK Spying

By Eric London

Global Research, June 22, 2013

World Socialist Web Site

Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed on Friday that the UK intelligence agency GCHQ and the NSA record the content of phone calls, email messages, Facebook posts and browser histories of tens of millions of people. By tapping into fiber-optic cables—the infrastructure through which all Internet traffic must pass—the two agencies have created a systematic procedure for procuring, filtering and storing private communications.

The leak is the latest in a series that have left the US and UK governments scurrying to cover up their deeply antidemocratic maneuvers with scripted lies. It comes one day after the release of secret FISA Court documents showing the NSA has almost complete latitude to monitor the communications of US residents (See, “NSA monitoring US communications without a warrant, documents show”)

Hours after the release of the latest documents, the US government announced that it was filing charges against Snowden under the Espionage Act, which contains a possible penalty of execution.

“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” President Obama said in a public speech two weeks ago. UK Foreign Minister William Hague told MPs last week that there is “a strong framework of democratic accountability and oversight” within the national intelligence apparatus.

According to documents leaked to the Guardian, and reported by Glenn Greenwald, however, GCHQ and the NSA have set up a complex scheme by which the intelligence agencies collect data and content from the communications of at least tens of millions of people. Officials monitor the data and content of those communications and then store what they deem valuable.

Described by GCHQ with the revealing titles “Mastering the Internet” and “Global Telecoms Exploitation,” the programs expose the repeated claims of President Obama and his coconspirators as outright lies.

Through the “Tempora” program, the two agencies have been tapping and storing hundreds of petabytes of data from a majority of the fiber-optic cables in the UK over the past 18 months. The NSA has a similar program in the US, as revealed in an Associated Press report last week.

First, GCHQ handles 600 million “telephone events” each day by tapping over 200 fiber-optic cables, including those that connect the UK to the US. According to the Guardian, GCHQ is able to collect data at a rate “equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours” by processing data from a minimum of 46 fiber-optic cables simultaneously.

The data is then transmitted to a government database and shared with the NSA, which is given top clearance. Lawyers for the GCHQ told their American counterparts that it was “your call” as to what limitations should be in place for data sifting and storage.

According to the leaked documents, these massive databases have been built up over the past several years through widespread corporate collaboration. GCHQ colludes with an array of companies it calls “intercept partners,” and sometimes forces them to hand over huge quantities of data for inspection and storage. The corporate agreements were kept highly guarded under fears that public knowledge of the collusion would lead to “high-level political fallout.”

Once the data is collected, the agencies then filter information through a process known as Massive Volume Reduction (MVR). Through this process, information is pared down to specific individuals, email addresses, or phone numbers. The NSA identified 31,000 “selector” terms, while GCHQ identified 40,000. The leaked documents reveal that a majority of the information extracted is content, including word-for-word email, text and phone recordings.

Through Tempora, GCHQ and the NSA have set up Internet buffers that allow the agencies to watch data accumulate in real-time and store it for less than a week for content or 30 days for metadata.

“Internet buffers represent an exciting opportunity to get direct access to enormous amounts of GCHQ’s special source data,” agents explained in the leaked documents. Valuable information is presumably removed from this temporary buffer and kept on file in intelligence storage facilities.

This information filtration system is not aimed at eliminating the possibility of storing the data of innocent people. In fact, this is precisely the purpose of the surveillance programs. Rather, unnecessary information is sifted out because the governments do not yet have the ability to store such vast quantities of communications content and metadata.

Despite these technological limitations, the immensity of the Tempora program was best described by GCHQ attorneys who acknowledged that listing the number of people targeted by the program would be impossible because “this would be an infinite list which we couldn’t manage.”

GCHQ officials bragged that its surveillance program “produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA,” and were told by GCHQ attorneys that “[w]e have a light oversight regime compared with the US.” The latter statement is extraordinary given the fact that the FISA Court allows the NSA to operate almost entirely without constraint.

Friday’s revelations highlight the international character of the global surveillance programs. Far from being satisfied by storing the content of the communications of its own residents, the US and UK governments are working together to create an unprecedented database of international intelligence.

The intimacy of the two spy agencies is evidenced by an order given by NSA head Keith Alexander in 2008: “Why can’t we collect all the signals, all the time? Sounds like a good summer homework project for [British and American spy center] Menwith!”

Snowden noted Friday that “it’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight. They [GCHQ] are worse than the US.”

Just like their American counterparts, the GCHQ attorneys have attempted to place a legal veneer over the facially illegal spying operations of the government.

GCHQ lawyers have invoked paragraph four of section 8 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to run around the legal requirement that intelligence officials acquire a warrant before performing a wiretap. Since this would have required GCHQ to acquire a warrant for every person in the UK, the attorneys instead have claimed that they can perform indiscriminate data mining operations with a “certificate” from a minister.

In a briefing document released by Snowden, GCHQ attorneys claim that these certificates “cover the entire range of GCHQ’s intelligence production.”

Under Ripa, GCHQ officials may also seek a Sensitive Targeting Authority (STA), which would allow them to spy on any UK citizen “anywhere in the world” or on a foreign person in the UK.

A lawyer for GCHQ also noted in the secret documents that the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which oversees the intelligence agencies, has “always been exceptionally good at understanding the need to keep our work secret,” and that a tribunal set up to monitor the agencies has “so far always found in our favor.”

Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK is a signatory, states: “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence,” and that “[t]here shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society…”

In Britain as much as the United States, the ruling class is engaged in activity that is in flagrant violation of these democratic principles.

The legal loopholes that allow GCHQ to spy on the world

The legal loopholes that allow GCHQ to spy on the world

Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball

The Guardian, Friday 21 June 2013 12.23 EDT

William Hague was adamant when he addressed MPs on Monday last week. In an emergency statement (video) forced by the Guardian's disclosures about GCHQ involvement with the Prism programme, the foreign secretary insisted the agency operated within a "strong framework of democratic accountability and oversight".

The laws governing the intelligence agencies provide "the strongest systems of checks and balances for secret intelligence anywhere in the world", he said.

Leaked documents seen by the Guardian give the impression some high-ranking officials at GCHQ have a different view.

In confidential briefings, one of Cheltenham's senior legal advisers, whom the Guardian will not name, made a note to tell his guests: "We have a light oversight regime compared with the US".

The parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which scrutinises the work of the agencies, was sympathetic to the agencies' difficulties, he suggested.

"They have always been exceptionally good at understanding the need to keep our work secret," the legal adviser said.

Complaints against the agencies, undertaken by the interception commissioner, are conducted under "the veil of secrecy". And the investigatory powers tribunal, which assesses complaints against the agencies, has "so far always found in our favour".

The briefings offer important glimpses into the GCHQ's view of itself, the legal framework in which it works, and, it would seem, the necessity for reassuring the UK's most important intelligence partner, the United States, that sensitive information can be shared without raising anxiety in Washington.

None of the documents advocates law-breaking – quite the opposite. But critics will say they highlight the limitations of the three pieces of legislation that underpin the activities of GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 – which were repeatedly mentioned by Hague as pillars of the regulatory and oversight regime during his statement to the Commons.

The foreign secretary said GCHQ "complied fully" with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), the Human Rights Act (HRA) and the Intelligence Services Act (Isa).

Privacy campaigners argue the laws have one important thing in common: they were drafted in the last century, and nobody involved in writing them, or passing them, could possibly have envisaged the exponential growth of traffic from telecoms and internet service providers over the past decade.

Nor could they have imagined that GCHQ could have found a way of storing and analysing so much of that information as part of its overarching Mastering the Internet project.

The Tempora programme appears to have given Britain's spymasters that resource, with documents seen by the Guardian showing Britain can retain for up to 30 days an astronomical amount of unfiltered data garnered from cables carrying internet traffic.

This raises a number of questions about the way GCHQ officials and ministers have legitimised the programme.

The briefings, which are entitled UK Operational Legalities, stress that GCHQ "is an organisation with a highly responsible approach to compliance with the law".

GCHQ also has a well staffed legal team, known as OPP-LEG, to help staff navigate their way through the complexities of the law.

But there appears to be some nervousness about Tempora. In a paper written for National Security Agency (NSA) analysts entitled A Guide to Using Internet Buffers at GCHQ, the author notes: "[Tempora] represents an exciting opportunity to get direct access to enormous amounts of GCHQ's special source data.

"As large-scale buffering of metadata and content represent a new concept for GCHQ's exploitation of the internet, GCHQ's legal and policy officers are understandably taking a careful approach to their access and use."

So how did GCHQ secure the legal authority for setting up Tempora, and what safeguards are in place for sharing the intelligence with the Americans? According to the documents, the British government used Ripa to get taps on to the fibre-optic cables.

These cables carry internet traffic in and out of the country and contain details of millions of emails and web searches. The information from these cables went straight into the Tempora storage programme.

In one presentation, which appeared to be for US analysts from the NSA, GCHQ explained: "Direct access to large volumes of unselected SSE data [is] collected under a Ripa warrant."

The precise arrangement between the firms is unclear, as are the legal justifications put before ministers. Isa gives GCHQ some powers for the "passive collection" of data, including from computer networks.

But it appears GCHQ has relied on paragraph four of section 8 of Ripa to gain "external warrants" for its programmes.

They allow the agency to intercept external communications where, for instance, one of the people being targeted is outside Britain.

In most Ripa cases, a minister has to be told the name of an individual or company being targeted before a warrant is granted.

But section 8 permits GCHQ to perform more sweeping and indiscriminate trawls of external data if a minister issues a "certificate" along with the warrant.

According to the documents, the certificate authorises GCHQ to search for material under a number of themes, including: intelligence on the political intentions of foreign governments; military postures of foreign countries; terrorism, international drug trafficking and fraud.

The briefing document says such sweeping certificates, which have to be signed off by a minister, "cover the entire range of GCHQ's intelligence production".

"The certificate is issued with the warrant and signed by the secretary of state and sets out [the] class of work we can do under it … cannot list numbers or individuals as this would be an infinite list which we couldn't manage."

Lawyers at GCHQ speak of having 10 basic certificates, including a "global" one that covers the agency's support station at Bude in Cornwall, Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, and Cyprus.

Other certificates have been used for "special source accesses" – a reference, perhaps, to the cables carrying web traffic. All certificates have to be renewed by the foreign secretary every six months.

A source with knowledge of intelligence confirmed: "Overall exercise of collection and analysis [is] done under a broad, overall legal authority which has to be renewed at intervals, and is signed off at a senior political level."

The source said the interception commissioner was able to "conclude that [the process] was not appropriate", and that the companies involved were not giving up the information voluntarily.

"We have overriding authority to compel [them] to do this," the source said. "There's an overarching condition of the licensing of the companies that they have to co-operate in this.

"Should they decline, we can compel them to do so. They have no choice. They can't talk about the warrant, they can't reveal the existence of it."

GCHQ says it can also seek a sensitive targeting authority (STA), which allows it snoop on any Briton "anywhere in the world" or any foreign national located in the UK.

It is unclear how the STA system works, and who has authority over it.

The intelligence agencies also have to take note of the HRA, which demands any interception is "necessary and proportionate".

But the documents show GCHQ believes these terms are open to interpretation – which "creates flexibility". When Tempora became fully functional in around 2011, GCHQ gave the NSA access to the programme on a three-month trial – and the NSA was keen to impress.

The US agency sent a briefing to some of its analysts urging them to show they could behave responsibly with the data. Under a heading – "The need to be successful!" – the author wrote: "As the first NSA users to receive operational access [to Tempora], we're depending on you to provide the business case required to justify expanded access. Most importantly we need to prove that NSA users can utilise the internet buffers in ways that are consistent with GCHQ's legal and policy rules.

"In addition, we need to prove that NSA's access … is necessary to prosecute our mission and will greatly enhance the production of the intelligence … success of this three-month trial will determine expanded NSA access to internet buffers in the future."

The NSA appears to have made a successful case. In May last year, an internal GCHQ memo said it had 300 analysts working on intelligence from Tempora, and the NSA had 250. The teams were supporting "the target discovery mission".

But the safeguards for the sharing of this information are unclear.

Though GCHQ says it only keeps the content of messages for three working days, and the metadata for up to 30 days, privacy campaigners here and in the US will want to know if the NSA is adhering to the same self-imposed rules. One concern for privacy campaigners is that GCHQ and the NSA could conduct intercepts for each other, and then offer to share the information – a manoeuvre that could bypass the domestic rules they have to abide by.

This was raised by MPs during last week's statement, with the former Labour home secretary David Blunkett calling for clarification on this potential loophole.

Last week, the Guardian sent a series of questions to the Foreign Office about this issue, but the department said it would not be drawn on it.

"It is a longstanding policy not to comment on intelligence matters; this includes our intelligence co-operation with the United States.

"The intelligence and security committee is looking into this, which is the proper channel for such matters."

German minister seeks answers from UK over spying 'catastrophe'

German minister seeks answers from UK over spying 'catastrophe'

By Michael Nienaber

BERLIN | Sat Jun 22, 2013 4:24pm BST

(Reuters) - Britain's European partners will seek urgent clarification from London about whether a British spy agency has tapped international telephone and Internet traffic on a massive scale, Germany's justice minister said on Saturday.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper read like the plot of a horror film and, if confirmed as true, would be a "catastrophe".

In its latest article based on information from Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the Guardian reported a project codenamed "Tempora" under which Britain's eavesdropping agency can tap into and store huge volumes of data from fibre-optic cables.

Tempora has been running for about 18 months and allows the Government Communications Headquarters agency (GCHQ) to access the data and keep it for 30 days, the paper said, adding that much information was shared with the NSA.

"If these accusations are correct, this would be a catastrophe," Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

"The accusations against Great Britain sound like a Hollywood nightmare. The European institutions should seek straight away to clarify the situation."

With a few months to go before federal elections, the minister's comments are likely to please Germans who are highly sensitive to government monitoring, having lived through the Stasi secret police in communist East Germany and with lingering memories of the Gestapo under the Nazis.

"The accusations make it sound as if George Orwell's surveillance society has become reality in Great Britain," the parliamentary floor leader of the opposition Social Democrats, Thomas Oppermann, was quoted as saying in a newspaper.

Orwell's novel "1984" envisioned a futuristic security state where "Big Brother" spied on the intimate details of people's lives.

"This is unbearable," Oppermann told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. "The government must clarify these accusations and act against a total surveillance of German citizens."

Earlier this month, in response to questions about the secret U.S. data-monitoring programme Prism, also exposed by Snowden, British Foreign Secretary William Hague told parliament that GCHQ always adhered to British law when processing data gained from eavesdropping.

He would not confirm or deny any details of UK-U.S. intelligence sharing, saying that to do so could help Britain's enemies.

News of Prism outraged Germans, with one politician likening U.S. tactics to those of the Stasi, and the issue overshadowed a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to Berlin last week.

(Writing by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

UK security agency has spy program; shares data with NSA

Guardian newspaper: UK security agency has spy program; shares data with NSA

By CNN Staff

updated 9:16 PM EDT, Fri June 21, 2013

London (CNN) -- Britain's equivalent to the U.S. National Security Agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, has tapped into many of the world's key international fiber optic cables and is routinely downloading and analyzing vast quantities of Internet and phone traffic, sharing the data with the NSA, The Guardian newspaper reported Friday.

The NSA slammed the report as "absolutely false."

"Any allegation that NSA relies on its foreign partners to circumvent U.S. law is absolutely false. NSA does not ask its foreign partners to undertake any intelligence activity that the U.S. government would be legally prohibited from undertaking itself," NSA spokeswoman Judith Emmel said.

The scope of the surveillance dragnet described in the article is enormous.

The newspaper says the report, like many previous ones, is based on the Guardian's reading of documents provided by former U.S. defense contractor Edward Snowden, who admitted leaking documents this month detailing government surveillance programs.

Unlike some previous reports, the paper has not published the full documents on which the story was based.

A spokesman for the British agency, known as GCHQ, issued a statement saying that in line with long-standing practice, it does not comment on intelligence matters.

"It is worth pointing out that GCHQ takes its obligations under the law very seriously," the statement read. "Our work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the secretary of state, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Intelligence and Security Committee."

The prime minister's office at 10 Downing Street also gave a statement saying only, "We don't comment on intelligence matters."

The GCHQ is one of the three UK intelligence agencies and, according to its website, forms a "crucial part of the UK's national intelligence and security machinery."

A source with knowledge of intelligence matters said "intelligence agencies are there to keep citizens safe and the vast majority of data collected is discarded."

The process used by the GCHQ, the source said, "scans bulk data for any information that can have national security implication.

"Only information deemed useful for national security is pulled out and examined in more detail. The vast majority of data is not examined or retained.

"The process is legal and governed by the 2000 Regulatory Investigatory Power Act. It is regularly reviewed and authorized by ministerial warrants. This is vital national security work. It's proportionate and it's about following terrorist or criminal activity and not about following law-abiding citizens."

CNN's Bharati Naik contributed to this report.

Freedom fighter Snowden off to Venezuela???

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Reports: Snowden fled Hong Kong, in Moscow

Associated Press Sun Jun 23, 2013 10:37 AM

HONG KONG — NSA leaker Edward Snowden was permitted to leave Hong Kong despite an extradition request that he be returned to the United States to face charges of espionage, Hong Kong said Sunday.

Russian state media say he has landed in Moscow and that he intends to fly to Cuba and on to Venezuela.

The U.S. Justice Department confirmed his departure from Hong Kong just hours after officials announced they filed a formal petition with Chinese authorities seeking Snowden's arrest and return to the United States.

"We have been informed by the Hong Kong authorities Mr. Snowden has departed Hong Kong for a third country,'' Justice Department spokeswoman Nanda Chitre said Sunday. "We will continue to discuss this matter with Hong Kong and pursue relevant law enforcement cooperation with other countries where Mr. Snowden may be attempting to travel.''

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said on Sunday that the U.S. government must exhaust all legal options to get Snowden back.

"Every one of those nations is hostile to the United States," Rogers, R-Mich., said on NBC's Meet the Press.

"When you think about what he says he wants and what his actions are, it defies logic," said Rogers, who repeated his assertion that Snowden's leaks of secret government surveillance programs had damaged U.S. national security.

The Hong Kong government said Sunday that Snowden, 30, was allowed to fly out "on his own accord" because a the U.S. extradition request announced Saturday did not fully comply with Hong Kong law.

Russian news media site RT reported that Snowden will be on a flight to Havana, leaving Moscow on Monday and then on to Caracas, arriving Monday night. Russia's state ITAR-Tass news agency said Snowden was on Flight SU213, which landed on Sunday afternoon.

RT reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin was unaware of Snowden's plans to fly to Moscow. It said Russian Interfax news agency said Snowden was met at the airport by an official from the Venezuela embassy.

Venezuela's Foreign Ministry in Caracas said it had no information on Snowden to provide. Earlier this month, Peskov said the Kremlin would consider granting Snowden asylum if he asked for it.

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, told Australian Sydney Morning Herald that Snowden will be met by "diplomats from the country that will be his ultimate destination" in the airport, who'll accompany him on a further flight to his destination.

Interfax reported that Snowden has not been able to leave the airport because he does not have a Russian visa. He was accompanied by Wikileaks representative Sarah Harrison, a British citizen and Assange confidante who does have a Russian visa, according to Interfax. A car belonging to the Venezuela embassy was spotted visiting the airport.

Wikileaks has published national secrets on its site in the past and Assange is hiding in the Ecuadorean embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on charges of rape. WikiLeaks said it had helped him exit Hong Kong.

"(Snowden) is bound for a democratic nation via a safe route for the purposes of asylum,and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from WikiLeaks," the group said in a statement.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said she was not surprised that Snowden would seek safe haven in Cuba or Venezuela, "two regimes that have a longstanding history of giving refuge to fugitives from U.S. law."

"The cruel irony is that there are no press freedoms in either Cuba or Venezuela, yet Snowden who supposedly stands for transparency in government seeks refuge in police states like these two countries," she said.

Hong Kong said in a statement that it allowed Snowden to leave because documents provided by the U.S. government for extradition did not "fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law," and the U.S. had not yet provided the additional information requested to consider the U.S. request for a provisional arrest warrant.

It said there was no legal basis to stop Snowden from leaving, and the U.S. had been informed of his departure.

Regina Ip, a legislator and Cabinet member, said Sunday that a judge in Hong Kong might have rejected a provisional arrest warrant for Snowden if the government had proceeded with the "insufficient" information the U.S. had provided.

"I don't think we need to be concerned about any consequences," she said without elaboration.

After the announcement Saturday of the extradition request, an Obama administration official told USA TODAY that Hong Kong risked harming relations with the two sides if it did not comply with its legal obligations.

Snowden has been the focus of a criminal investigation since he acknowledged earlier this month that he was the source of materials detailing surveillance programs that collected telephone records for millions of Americans and a separate operation that targeted the Internet communications of non-citizens abroad who were suspected of terrorist connections.

A criminal complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia on June 14 and was unsealed Friday.

Hong Kong also said it had asked the U.S. to clarify reports, based on interviews with Snowden, that the NSA had hacked into computers in Hong Kong and would follow up on the matter "to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong."

Legislator Leung Kwok Hung called Snowden's departure "a loss" for the people of Hong Kong given the value of his leaks in bringing attention to U.S. electronic surveillance in Hong Kong and globally. Leung worries that Snowden may end up in a place where he is less able to call attention to the NSA's activities.

"He has done something good for Hong Kong and the rest of the world already," said Leung, chairman of the League of Social Democrats. "I totally respect his choice as an individual" to leave Hong Kong. As an individual he needs to take care of his interests," he said.

The South China Morning Post meanwhile published additional allegations of hacking in Hong Kong and China on Sunday based on its June 12 interview with Snowden. The newspaper reported that Snowden had provided information to show that the NSA had hacked into the Hong Kong system of Pacnet, which runs undersea telecommunications cables around the Pacific, and into 63 computers and servers at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China's most elite schools.

He added, "The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data."

The newspaper did not indicate why it withheld publication of these reports until Snowden had left Hong Kong.

Snowden, who was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton as an NSA systems analyst in Hawaii, fled to the Chinese territory of Hong Kong last month with top-secret documents and court orders on government surveillance operations.

A one-page criminal complaint against Snowden was unsealed Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., part of the Eastern District of Virginia where his former employer, government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered, in McLean. He is charged with unauthorized communication of national defense information, willful communication of classified communications intelligence information and theft of government property. The first two are under the Espionage Act and each of the three crimes carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison on conviction.

The complaint is dated June 14, five days after Snowden's name first surfaced as the person who had leaked to the news media that the NSA, in two highly classified surveillance programs, gathered telephone and Internet records to ferret out terror plots.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post in an interview published June 12 on its website that he hoped to stay in the autonomous region of China because he has faith in "the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate."

James Hon, a leader of the League in Defense of Hong Kong's Freedom, said, "If (Snowden) has left, that would be good news… because you don't know what the Hong Kong government and the Chinese government together are going to do to him."

Hon, whose group participates in many opposition protests in Hong Kong, added, "I wish him luck."

Contributing: Kevin Johnson in Washington; Richard Wolf in McLean, Va.; Arutunyan reported from Moscow

Snowden seeks asylum, Ecuador says

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Snowden flees Hong Kong for Moscow

By Kathy Lally, Jia Lynn Yang and Anthony Faiola, Updated: Sunday, June 23, 11:30 AM E-mail the writers

MOSCOW — Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who leaked top-secret documents about U.S. surveillance programs, fled Hong Kong for Moscow on Sunday with the assistance of the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, landing at Sheremetyevo International Airport aboard an Aeroflot flight, according to Russian media reports and a WikiLeaks spokesman.

Snowden’s ultimate destination was unknown, but Ricardo Patiño Aroca, Ecuador’s foreign minister, tweeted Sunday afternoon that his government had received a request for asylum from Snowden. WikiLeaks released a statement saying Snowden was “bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum.”

The Hong Kong government said Sunday that Snowden left “on his own accord for a third country.” A black BMW with diplomatic license plates assigned to the Ecuadoran Embassy was seen parked at Sheremetyevo, but it was unclear who might have been in the car.

The Russian news agency Interfax and Radio Ekho Moskvy reported that Snowden was booked on a flight to Cuba and then from Havana to Caracas, Venezuela. Either, or both, could be stopping points on the way to Ecuador. The next Aeroflot flight to Havana leaves Monday afternoon.

WikiLeaks, which has published hundreds of thousands of classified documents, said it is aiding Snowden in his bid to avoid a return to the United States, which has filed espionage charges against him and asked Hong Kong to detain him.

The group posted on Twitter about 5 a.m. EDT that Snowden was “currently over Russian airspace accompanied by WikiLeaks legal advisors.” The organization later said Snowden was accompanied on his flight to Moscow by Sarah Harrison, who the organization said is a UK citizen, journalist and researcher working with the WikiLeaks legal defense team.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic investigative journalist and spokesman for WikiLeaks, said in a phone interview that Snowden would overnight in Moscow, which he described as “not a final destination.” He declined to say when Snowden would be departing or where his next or ultimate stop would be.

Hrafnsson said he had personally established contact with Snowden last week while the American was still in Hong Kong. Arrangements were made for Harrison, a member of the WikiLeaks legal defense team, to meet Snowden in Hong Kong and accompany him out. Harrison was still with Snowden in Moscow, Hrafnsson said.

He said information on Snowden’s next step would probably be withheld until at least tonight or tomorrow morning.

“The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr. Snowden’s rights and protecting him as a person,” said Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for Julian Assange, the group’s founder, who has spent the past year holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. “What is being done to Mr. Snowden and to Mr. Julian Assange — for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest — is an assault against the people.”

Three U.S. officials said that Snowden’s passport had been revoked, before he left Hong Kong. The State Department said privacy laws prevented it from commenting on Snowden’s passport.

“As is routine and consistent with U.S. regulations, persons with felony arrest warrants are subject to having their passport revoked,” said spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “. . . Persons wanted on felony charges, such as Mr. Snowden, should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States.”

But Interfax, quoting a Russian law enforcement source, said Snowden could continue on his journey from Moscow despite revocation of his U.S. passport if the country where he was seeking asylum provided him with travel documents. Those documents could include affirmation of refugee status, Interfax reported, or even a passport from the destination country.

Snowden, who has drawn comparisons to Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who provided secret files to WikiLeaks, was being examined at the airport by a doctor from the Ecuadoran Embassy on Sunday morning, according to RT, a television network financed by the Russian government. Other Russian media also reported that Snowden was in Moscow.

The Hong Kong government said that documents from the U.S. government requesting a warrant for his arrest “did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law” and it had asked the United States to provide “additional information.”

“As the HKSAR Government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong,” the statement said.

A senior Justice Department official disputed that claim. “The request met the requirements of the agreement,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. “They came back to us late Friday with additional questions, and we were in the process of responding. Obviously, this raises concerns for us and we will continue to discuss this with the authorities there.”

The Hong Kong government said it had informed the U.S. government that Snowden had left.

It has also formally written to the U.S. government asking for “clarification” on reports that computer systems in Hong Kong had been hacked by U.S. agencies.

“The HKSAR Government will continue to follow up on the matter so as to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong,” the statement said.

Nanda Chitre, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, confirmed in a statement that U.S. officials had been informed by Hong Kong of Snowden’s departure.

“We will continue to discuss this matter with Hong Kong and pursue relevant law enforcement cooperation with other countries where Mr. Snowden may be attempting to travel,” Chitre said.

Snowden would not need a Russian visa if he remained at Sheremetyevo International Airport and departed for another country from there. He could stay within passport control and wait for another flight.

However, if he had to transfer to another Russian airport for a flight out, he would need a transit visa, which usually is not difficult to obtain.

Hrafnsson said he had made contact with Iceland’s government on Snowden’s behalf, but had been told that asylum seekers need to be present and within that nation’s jurisdiction before any claim could be processed. Hrafnsson added that people “within the WikiLeaks circle” had also approached “other governments” on Snowden’s behalf, but he declined to be more specific.

If Snowden is relocating to Ecuador, he would have limited travel options. There are no direct flights from Moscow to Quito, and many would-be layover destinations would probably heed Washington’s request to detain him. One likely exception would be transitioning through Havana. There are direct flights from Moscow to Havana five days a week, including Mondays, and a direct flight from Havana to Quito on Fridays.

Famous leaks in American history: Ten famous leaks in American history — and leakers from Ben Franklin to Edward Snowden.

Patiño recently said Quito would be willing to consider an asylum claim by Snowden. Speaking at a news conference in London after visiting Assange last Monday, Patiño suggested that his nation would approve such a request.

“If he wants to seek asylum from the Ecuadorian government he can do so, and we, of course will analyze it,” Patiño said during the news conference at the Ecuadoran Embassy. Authorities in Ecuador would weigh a petition “responsibly, just like we did so in Mr. Assange’s case,” the minister added.

Assange, the head of the anti-secrecy group, has been unable to leave the Ecuadoran Embassy because the United Kingdom has refused to provide him safe passage while he faces rape charges in Sweden.

Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa has emerged as one of the loudest critics of U.S. policy in the Western hemisphere. In 2011, his administration expelled the American ambassador in Quito to protest a cable released by WikiLeaks that alleged the Ecuadoran police force was rife with corruption.

The extradition treaties between the United States and both Ecuador and Venezuela state that offenses of “a political character” do not warrant extradition — much like the United States’ agreement with Hong Kong. A U.S. report on international narcotics control from 2012 says that Venezuela “does periodically deport non-Venezuelan nationals to the United States.” The treaty with Ecuador was signed in 1872; the agreement with Venezuela went into effect in 1923.

The Russian consulate in Hong Kong declined to comment.

The U.S. government last week asked Hong Kong to issue a provisional arrest warrant and filed charges against Snowden, including theft, “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.”

Under the extradition treaty between the United States and Hong Kong, a judge must review the request for a provisional arrest warrant and make sure it meets certain conditions before issuing the warrant. .

The judge may have considered Snowden more of an activist than a criminal. The extradition also can be rejected if there’s any reason to believe that the person would not receive a fair trial if returned to his home country.

It’s unclear whether Chinese leadership in Beijing had any role in Hong Kong’s decision. Hong Kong is a semiautonomous region that prides itself on its independent legal system, but the government ultimately answers to the mainland government, whose influence can be difficult to discern. Residents in Hong Kong are deeply resistant to any overt sign of interference from the Communist Party.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing said in a statement Sunday that it had seen the reports of Snowden’s departure but did not have “specific details,” stating it would continue to pay attention to developments. The government added that it was “deeply concerned” about reports of U.S. government cyberattacks on China, saying “it proved that China is a victim of cyberattacks.”

The statement also said China opposes all forms of cyberattacks. “China is willing to strengthen dialogue and cooperation with international community based on the spirit of mutual respect, make joint effort to maintain peace and security in cyberspace.”

Ken Lieberthal, a China expert with the Brookings Institution, said it was doubtful that Beijing — or Hong Kong — had much appetite for having Snowden within their borders.

“I think the Chinese government’s position has been, ‘We don’t want to have anything to do with this,’ ” said Lieberthal, adding that this episode is unlikely to damage U.S.-China relations because U.S. government officials knowledgeable about China would understand the distinction between Hong Kong’s actions and Beijing’s.

Lieberthal said Hong Kong may well have looked carefully at the information provided by the U.S. government and decided it technically didn’t meet the test for issuing a warrant. “That seems like a perfectly justifiable position,” Lieberthal said. “I assume they’d be delighted not to be in the middle of this.”

Yang reported from Hong Kong, Lally reported from Moscow and Faiola reported from London. Ernesto Londoño in Kabul, Sari Horwitz in Washington and Liu Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.

Where Did Our ‘Inalienable Rights’ Go?

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Where Did Our ‘Inalienable Rights’ Go?

By MAX FRANKEL

Published: June 22, 2013

NOW that we sense the magnitude of our government’s effort to track Americans’ telephone and Internet transactions, the issue finally and fully before us is not how we balance personal privacy with police efficiency.

We have long since surrendered a record of our curiosities and fantasies to Google. We have broadcast our tastes and addictions for the convenience of one-button Amazon shopping. We have published our health and financial histories in exchange for better and faster hospital and bank services. We have bellowed our angers and frustrations for all to overhear while we walk the streets or ride a bus. Privacy is a currency that we all now routinely spend to purchase convenience.

But Google and Amazon do not indict, prosecute and jail the people they track and bug. The issue raised by the National Security Agency’s data vacuuming is how to protect our civil liberty against the anxious pursuit of civic security. Our rights must not be so casually bartered as our Facebook chatter. Remember “inalienable”?

I envy the commentators who, after a few days of vague discussion, think they have heard enough to strike the balance between liberty and security. Many seem confident that the government is doing nothing more than relieving Verizon and AT&T and Facebook of their storage problems, so that government agents can, on occasion, sift through years of phone and Internet records if they need to find a contact with a suspicious foreigner. Many Americans accept assurances that specific conversations are only rarely exhumed and only if the oddly named Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allows it. Such sifting and warrants — in unexplained combination with more conventional intelligence efforts — are now said, by President Obama and his team, to have prevented several dozen potential terrorist attacks, with elliptical references to threats against New York City’s subways and stock exchange.

Even if true and satisfying, these assurances are now being publicized only because this huge data-gathering effort can no longer be denied. Whatever the motive for the leaks by Edward J. Snowden, they have stimulated a long-overdue public airing. Although the government’s extensive data-hauling activity was partly revealed by diligent reporters and a few disapproving government sources over the last seven years, the undeniable proof came only from Mr. Snowden’s documents. Until then, the very existence of the enterprise was “top secret” and publicly denied, even in Congressional hearings. Even now, the project remains a secret in every important respect.

As those of us who had to defend the 1971 publication of the secret Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War have been arguing ever since, there can be no mature discussion of national security policies without the disclosure — authorized or not — of the government’s hoard of secrets.

HOW many thousands have access to these storage bins? Who decides to open any individual file and who then gains access to its content? Is there ever a chance to challenge the necessity of opening a file? And what happens to gleaned information that has no bearing whatsoever on terrorism?

Given the history of misused “secrets” in Washington, such questions are by no means paranoid. J. Edgar Hoover used F.B.I. investigations and files to smear the reputations of individuals — even to the point of intimidating presidents. Throughout the government, “security” monitors leaked personnel files to Congressional demagogues like Senator Joseph R. McCarthy to wreck the careers of officials and blacklisted citizens with claims of disloyalty. President Lyndon B. Johnson and other officials used secret files from the Internal Revenue Service to harass and intimidate political opponents. President Richard M. Nixon tried to use the C.I.A. to cover up his Watergate crimes.

Information that is gathered and managed in secret is a potent weapon — and the temptation to use it in political combat or the pursuit of crimes far removed from terrorism can be irresistible.

President Obama and other defenders of the amassing of data insist that no individual conversation or transaction is ever examined without “court” approval, meaning a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But the court authorizes the scrutiny of more Americans than foreigners, and it is no court in the customary sense: it operates entirely in secret. Its members are federal judges from around the country, any one of whom may authorize the opening of files. Lacking any real challenge to the evidence, they function more as grand jury than court. Mr. Obama has conceded that only a handful of warrant requests have ever been turned down (a few have been modified), a success rate he attributes to government restraint.

Yet most federal judges are predisposed to defer to executive claims of national security. They are generalists with little experience in evaluating intelligence, and they are reluctant to hamper government operatives sworn to defend the nation. The same reluctance is evident among members of Congress, who pose as watchdogs but melt when they hear appeals to patriotism from the managers of the intelligence services.

In theory, Americans are in the habit of resisting government intrusions on their rights of free speech and association. Accordingly we should be skeptical of such overweening exertions. But the data-hauling has gone on for years without real challenge. When asked whether the government could not simply log individual suspicious calls without amassing a national database, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, said he was open to discussing that approach, though it might delay work in a crisis. A delay of hours? Days? Weeks? Did President George W. Bush or Mr. Obama ever ask the question?

What ought to compound our skepticism is the news that there is money to be made in the mass approach. We are learning that much of the snooping is farmed out to profit-seeking corporations that have great appetites for government contracts, secured through executives who enrich themselves by shuttling between agency jobs and the contractors’ board rooms. We have privatized what should be a most solemn government activity, guaranteeing bloat and also the inevitable and ironic employ of rebellious hackers like Mr. Snowden.

Where then can we find the skeptical oversight that such a radical challenge to our freedom demands? Presidents beholden to their own bureaucracies seem disinclined to play the skeptic or even to create an elite independent commission, like the Warren Commission, which examined the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, to assess the conflict between liberty and security and point the way to reasonable balance.

Despite the predilections of federal judges to defer to the executive branch, I think in the long run we have no choice but to entrust our freedom to them. But the secret world of intelligence demands its own special, permanent court, like the United States Tax Court, whose members are confirmed by the Senate for terms that allow them to become real experts in the subject. Such a court should inform the public about the nature of its cases and its record of approvals and denials. Most important, it should summon special attorneys to test the government’s secret evidence in every case, so that a full court hears a genuine adversarial debate before intruding on a citizen’s civil rights. That, too, might cost a little time in some crisis. There’s no escaping the fact that freedom is expensive.

Silicon Valley long has had ties to military, intelligence agencies

Silicon Valley long has had ties to military, intelligence agencies

By Brandon Bailey

bbailey@mercurynews.com

Posted: 06/22/2013 03:00:00 PM PDT

Disclosures about a secret government intelligence effort called Prism have rocked some of Silicon Valley's leading Internet companies, but the program is hardly the first instance of U.S. military and intelligence officials turning to the tech industry for help.

"The industry has always tried to make it seem like it was all venture capitalists and free thinkers. And it does include those people," said longtime Silicon Valley watcher Lenny Siegel, who runs the nonprofit Pacific Studies Center in Mountain View. "But there's no question that the government, particularly the military, was a driving force in the development of the computer technology that we use today."

Experts say the government has had good An illustration picture shows the logo of the U.S. National Security Agency on the display of an iPhone in Berlin, June 7, 2013. The debate over whether the U.S. government is violating citizens' privacy rights while trying to protect them from terrorism escalated dramatically on Thursday amid reports that authorities have collected data on millions of phone users and tapped into servers at nine internet companies. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski ( PAWEL KOPCZYNSKI ) reason to cultivate ties with Silicon Valley companies. The valley has what U.S. military and intelligence agencies want: cutting-edge technology and online services -- from social networks to Web-based email and video chat rooms -- that people all over the world use to communicate and share information.

And despite its libertarian bent, Silicon Valley, in turn, has benefited over the years from federal research funding, supply contracts and even regulators' good will.

Silicon Valley's ties to the government are decades old. Back in the 1980s, the valley's biggest employer was Sunnyvale's Lockheed Missiles and Space, which developed weapons and spy satellites for the Defense Department. The Internet itself started as a defense research project. And military contracts helped support the famed SRI think tank in Menlo Park, where researchers have developed and in some cases spun off pioneering technology used in robotics, mapping and the voice-recognition software that powers Apple's (AAPL) Siri personal assistant.

Today, the CIA has its own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, to help finance promising tech startups. Software-makers such as Palo Alto's Palantir Technologies sell sophisticated programs that law enforcement and intelligence agencies use to analyze vast amounts of data. Mainline companies such as Cisco Systems (CSCO), Oracle (ORCL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) have multimillion-dollar contracts to supply computer hardware and tech services to the military and other government offices.

But while there has always been a government presence in the valley, most people don't associate those efforts with the more widely known commercial and consumer tech industry. That's why it was a surprise, at least to some, when a former National Security Agency contractor leaked details of the Prism program. Details are still murky, but the program appears to give U.S. spy agencies, while investigating overseas terror plots, access to information about the online activities of certain individuals who use Internet services operated by Silicon Valley companies.

"These worlds coexisted, but one was hidden in plain sight. They never collided until today," said Steve Blank, a serial tech entrepreneur and Stanford University lecturer who has studied Silicon Valley history.

The valley's leading Internet companies say they supply user information only in response to specific legal demands. Google (GOOG), Facebook, Apple and Yahoo (YHOO) have all said they review government data requests carefully and reject those that don't follow the law. In recent days, they have pressed the government for permission to disclose more about those requests, so they can reassure customers that they aren't handing over information on a broad scale.

Silicon Valley's relationship with the federal government is complex: Companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple are frequently scrutinized by regulators for compliance with antitrust and consumer protection laws. And the tech industry pours millions of dollars into lobbying on legislation and policies that affect it.

Civil liberties activists worry that those interactions, especially the threat of regulatory action, make it all the more difficult for tech companies to resist when the National Security Agency or FBI come asking for customer data.

"The government has its thumb on their rate of return for investment," said attorney Shayana Kadidal of the nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights. "They have no incentive to fight the government back on any of this stuff."

Others note that at least one company fought a secret legal battle to challenge information requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which governs Prism. The name of the company, which lost its appeal in the federal court that handles FISA matters, has been classified. But The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, has reported it was Yahoo.

The court's 2008 ruling in that case sent a strong message to other Internet companies that future legal challenges would be difficult, said Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Prism is not the only instance where authorities have used a Silicon Valley company's products to collect information. Networking equipment-maker Cisco, for example, says it's legally required to build a technical feature known as "lawful intercept" capability into some of the products it sells to phone and cable providers, so their systems can be accessible to court-ordered wiretaps by police or other authorities.

Tech companies have also collaborated voluntarily with U.S. authorities in areas such as computer security. In recent years, Intel's (INTC) McAfee unit and other security firms have shared information and advised government officials about computer viruses and other malicious Internet attacks.

The government, in turn, has provided access to some of its knowledge on the subject: A few years ago, according to Bloomberg News, U.S. authorities gave Google co-founder Sergey Brin a top-secret briefing on a Chinese army unit that was linked to an attack on Google's network.

Staff writer Troy Wolverton contributed to this report. Contact Brandon Bailey at 408-920-5022. Follow him at Twitter.com/BrandonBailey.

Killing of suspect in Guadalupe called justified

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Killing of suspect in Guadalupe called justifieds

By Jim Walsh The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:18 AM

An investigation by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office concluded that a deputy was justified in killing a 19-year-old burglary suspect armed with a knife nearly a year ago.

Authorities said Joel Edward Smith III, the suspect, taunted Tempe police on Sept. 13 with the knife, daring them to shoot him, before a final confrontation where Smith refused the deputy’s commands to drop the knife as they approached each other.

The deputy said he feared for his life and believed he had no escape route along the Highline Canal, which separates Tempe from Guadalupe. He also said the Tempe officers who witnessed the fatal shooting were on the other side of the canal and unable to help him.

Tempe police had been pursuing Smith and a male juvenile after neighbors reported seeing two young males in their backyards.

At one point, a Tempe officer grabbed Smith, who was able to pull away from him and flee on foot along the canal. Police took the juvenile into custody, but Smith got away. He was then involved in the standoff with the deputy on the other side of the canal, in Guadalupe.

The report on the investigation said Smith refused orders from several officers to drop the knife and taunted them, calling the Tempe officers names and saying, “Go ahead and shoot me.”

A Tempe officer told investigators that Smith and the deputy were walking toward each other and were about 20 to 30 feet apart when Smith again refused commands to drop the 8-inch folding knife. The deputy fired three to four shots at him.

When Smith appeared unfazed and continued walking toward the deputy, the deputy fired again and struck Smith in the chest, fatally wounding him, the report said.

Another Tempe officer told investigators he believed Smith was attempting to force police into shooting him.

Neighbors initially said it appeared that Smith had nothing in his hands while walking toward the deputy and that the shooting was unnecessary.

But one of those neighbors later admitted to investigators that she was unable to see Smith’s left hand from her vantage point. It turned out that Smith had the knife in his left hand and was still clutching it when he lay mortally wounded on the canal bank.

The report said one of the officers kicked the knife out of Smith’s hand after the shooting but before Tempe firefighters arrived to treat him. Smith eventually bled to death during surgery at Maricopa Medical Center.

“His actions posed an immediate threat to the community if he had not been apprehended,” the investigation concluded. “His actions placed (the deputy) in immediate fear of physical injury or death.”

The report said Smith was wanted on a warrant for violating the terms of his probation on a child-molestation conviction and had a history of attempted suicide.

Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, said the report is under review for consideration of potential criminal charges against the deputy. The review is standard procedure in all officer-involved shootings, and no decision has been made.

You can bet that Big Brother is watching you

You can bet that Big Brother is watching you

Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:30 PM

Let me get this straight: If you use a wireless phone or the Internet, the Obama administration (aka Big Brother) is tracking you.

If you call a suicide hotline, Big Brother knows. If you buy guns, Big Brother knows. If you want an abortion, Big Brother knows. If you are a newspaper reporter contacting a source, Big Brother knows. If you call your tax adviser, Big Brother knows. When you call your doctor, Big Brother knows.

Big Brother didn’t stop the Boston bombing. But California Democrats Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein and many Republicans say that they knew your personal calls and e-mails were being tracked, so they approved the unreasonable searches. Only a terrorist would object.

Big Brother rules. Resistance is futile. And I will be tracked for sending this letter.

— Gerry Walsh, Surprise

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton piece was hot air

Source

Stanton piece was hot air

Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:54 PM

Regarding “It’s time to let the sunshine into City Hall” (Opinions, Monday):

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton’s guest column seems to have taken the place of the haboobs we haven’t had to deal with so far this summer. We get that kind of wind from Washington; it has needlessly blown into Phoenix City Hall.

— Jim Rogers, Phoenix

Source

Mayor: Time to let sunshine into City Hall

By Greg Stanton My Turn Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:40 AM

Over the past several months, we’ve made important strides to make Phoenix a more modern city.

We’ve made the Phoenix economy more attractive by ending discrimination against those with disabilities and on the basis of sexual orientation. And we’ve done the simple things, too, such as streamline the process for securing a city permit.

In my view, a modern city must also guarantee City Hall will never be in the pockets of special interests and lobbyists — but always in the hands of the people.

To do that, we need safeguards to make sure our elected officials can never break the public’s trust. Unfortunately, Arizona’s ethics rules are among the weakest in the nation — and according to one national expert, score a grade of “laughable.”

We deserve better — and we can do better. The hard truth is that far too much influence peddling takes place under the cover of darkness. It is time to let the sunshine in.

Some at the Legislature have tried to fix the problem, but the Center for Public Integrity recently got it right when it said the recent Fiesta Bowl scandal produced big headlines, but it did not lead to change.

I can’t change the rules across Arizona, but, as mayor, I am committed to creating real change in Phoenix and holding our city to a higher standard. And that’s what we’ve done. With the help of a bipartisan Ethics Reform Task Force — led by former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley — we put forward the toughest ethics package in Arizona history.

There are many components, but two are especially important: greater disclosure and real penalties.

Significantly increasing disclosure requirements will help ensure that elected officials don’t accept special favors offered to influence their actions in office.

Those who resist greater disclosure say that, as a result of the new rule, elected officials might stop going to the kind of community events they should attend. I disagree. Voters are wise enough to discern the difference between a Kiwanis luncheon and a lobbyist-paid vacation getaway to the Bahamas. I’ve even asked city staff to explore what we can do to enact a complete ban on all gifts.

Skirting the rules — failing to report a gift with the hope that nobody finds out — will come with a harsh penalty. There’s a simple reason for that: For ethics rules to be worth the paper they’re printed on, there must be real penalties for violations.

An independent ethics commission — made up of five judges — will review potential violations. To help safeguard against the commission becoming politically motivated, commissioners will need a three-quarters vote of approval from the City Council — a near guarantee of bipartisan support. In the case of wrongdoing, commissioners will be able to slap a financial penalty on a guilty party and recommend censure or even removal from office.

We can’t pretend these new rules are a cure-all that will rid the world of those determined to break them. But they’re an incredibly important step — the most significant in state history — toward creating a more open and transparent government the people deserve.

Greg Stanton is mayor of Phoenix.

Supremes - Cops can't steal homeless people's stuff

Supreme Court lets stand ban on destroying property of L.A. homeless

By Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times

June 24, 2013, 10:20 p.m.

A long-running dispute over a controversial cleanup campaign on downtown's skid row ended Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider lifting an order that bans the city of Los Angeles from destroying property left unattended by homeless people.

The court, without comment, left standing a lower-court ruling that prevents the city from disposing of the contents of shopping carts and cardboard shanties that homeless people leave behind temporarily while using a restroom, filling water jugs or lining up for meals.

City Atty. Carmen Trutanich had argued that the ban posed a public health hazard by making it impossible for the city to clean public streets and sidewalks on skid row, which has the highest concentration of homeless people in the city.

Attorney Carol Sobel, who represented the homeless plaintiffs, accused the city of letting trash and filth pile up for months to support its legal argument. She said skid row's streets and sidewalks are now being cleaned "with no problem."

"The city could find no evidence of a public health crisis," she said. "The thing they should do is provide housing for the people."

Trutanich, who asked the high court to step in, did not return phone messages. If the justices had taken up the case, it could have had a ripple effect in cities such as Fresno and Honolulu that are facing legal action over clearing homeless encampments and destroying property.

The suit was brought by eight skid row residents who accused city workers, accompanied by police, of seizing and dumping their personal possessions — including identification, medications, cellphones and toiletries.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the transients' possessions could be taken only if they posed an immediate threat to public health or were evidence of a crime. If the city carts off their things, the city must give owners a chance to reclaim them before they are destroyed.

The city, in a court filing, said homeless people defied cleaning schedules by leaving overflowing shopping carts and piles of possessions covered with tarps and blankets on the sidewalks, breeding vermin and bacteria.

The county Department of Public Health inspected skid row last year and cited the city for multiple violations of health codes. The city launched a major cleanup effort that homeless advocates said was a model of how street sanitation can and should be done. "There was adequate notice and everybody moved their property," Sobel said.

The city, however argued that forcing workers to sort through homeless peoples' belongings put their health at risk, particularly when there are facilities where the things can be stored.

The Central City East Assn., a nonprofit business group, has a storage center on skid row where homeless people can leave their possessions. The city last year added 500 plastic trash bins to the center's existing 600 containers, but organizers said there are never enough.

Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Assn., said she feared that the court action threatened the health of homeless people as well as everyone who works on skid row. "Until there are enough units for everyone and everyone agrees to housing, there will be a huge demand for sanitation," she said.

gale.holland@latimes.com

Donor bought Rolex watch for Virginia Governor!!!!

Source

Donor bought Rolex watch for Virginia Gov. McDonnell, people familiar with gift say

By Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman, Published: June 25

A prominent political donor purchased a Rolex watch for Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, according to two people with knowledge of the gift, and the governor did not disclose it in his annual financial filings.

The $6,500 luxury watch was provided by wealthy businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., the people said. He is the chief executive of dietary supplement manufacturer Star Scientific and the person who paid for catering at the wedding of the governor’s daughter. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of an ongoing federal investigation into the relationship between Williams and the McDonnell family.

The perks of politics

Gov. McDonnell has received over $300,000 in gifts since 2002. See all politicians and donors.

Williams’s gift came in August 2011 — about two weeks after he met with a top state health official to pitch the benefits of his company’s health products at a meeting arranged by first lady Maureen McDonnell, according to people who know of the meeting.

Williams bought the watch at the urging of Maureen McDonnell, who admired Williams’s own Rolex and suggested that he buy her a similar one she could give to her husband, the people said. Her proposal occurred moments before the meeting she had arranged with the state official, according to one person familiar with the request.

The Rolex, engraved with the inscription “71st Governor of Virginia,” represents the first undisclosed gift known to have been used personally by McDonnell (R) among tens of thousands of dollars of undisclosed gifts given to the governor’s family.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment. Jerry Kilgore, an attorney for Williams, declined to comment on the federal investigation, as did Star Scientific’s corporate attorney, Abbe Lowell. Tucker Martin, a spokesman for the governor, also declined to comment on the watch or the investigation.

Federal investigators have been probing a series of gifts that the political supporter gave to the McDonnells, including $15,000 to pay for the catering at his daughter’s wedding reception.

They are also investigating other money provided to Maureen McDonnell, as well as expensive designer clothing — some bought in 2011 in New York City — according to people familiar with the inquiry.

The shopping trip emanated from a social occasion with Williams and Maureen McDonnell shortly after the governor won election. The governor’s wife mentioned that she would need an inauguration dress, preferably one from the designer Oscar de la Renta, and would like Williams’s help getting one, according to two people familiar with her suggestion.

Williams agreed to buy one for her, but a top staffer to the governor advised Williams and the first lady that such a gift was not allowed. A year later, the first lady contacted Williams to propose that he take her shopping at Bergdorf Goodman, the people familiar with the shopping said. In that store, Williams purchased an estimated $15,000 in clothing for Maureen McDonnell, they said.

The governor is the subject of broad federal and state investigations into gifts given to him and his family and whether McDonnell took official action on behalf of anyone who gave gifts, people with knowledge of the investigations have said.

McDonnell said as recently as Tuesday that he has properly disclosed all gifts given to him.

Since taking office in 2010, McDonnell has disclosed receiving $9,650 in personal gifts — including private plane rides and a summer lake house vacation — from Williams and Star Scientific. According to state records, the company has contributed $108,452 to his campaign and political action committee.

The perks of politics

Gov. McDonnell has received over $300,000 in gifts since 2002. See all politicians and donors.

The newly disclosed meeting with a top state official underscores the access the McDonnells extended to Williams when Star Scientific was introducing a new dietary supplement and was stressing in regulatory filings that its success was critical to reviving the company’s sagging finances.

The meeting with a policy adviser from the Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources had been arranged by Maureen McDonnell, people with knowledge of the meeting said.

Its purpose was to give Williams an opportunity to present research about the health benefits of Anatabloc, its new non-FDA-approved anti-inflammatory, and propose that Virginia consider examining whether its use could reduce state medical-care costs, they said.

Asked in March whether the governor or first lady ever indicated that Anatabloc could be used to lower medical costs in Virginia, a spokesman for the governor denied that they had.

“The governor and first lady never led an effort to lower health care costs in Virginia by encouraging the use of Anatabloc,” said spokesman Jeff Caldwell said in a written statement.

The meeting with the state official occurred during a summer of intense interactions between the McDonnells and Williams.

On June 1 — three days before the wedding — Maureen McDonnell flew to Florida, where she touted the potential benefits of Anatabloc before a gathering of doctors and investors interested in learning more about its key chemical.

There, one attendee said, she said she believed Anatabloc could be used to lower health costs.

Later in June, the McDonnell family vacationed at a lake house owned by Williams at Virginia’s Smith Mountain Lake, driving Williams’s Ferrari back to Richmond at the conclusion of the stay.

And on Aug. 30 — a few weeks after Williams purchased the Rolex — the McDonnells allowed Star Scientific to use the mansion for an event marking the formal launch of Anatabloc. The luncheon was organized by Maureen McDonnell but the governor also attended, he has said, to recognize the company for providing grants to public universities.

Virginia law requires that elected officials disclose all gifts they receive worth at least $50. It does not require that they disclose gifts given to family members or received from family members or personal friends.

McDonnell has cited the law in explaining why he did not disclose the $15,000 Williams provided for his daughter’s wedding, indicating the gift was a wedding present to his daughter.

He has repeatedly insisted that he complied with Virginia law regarding the disclosure of gifts and said Star Scientific has received no special benefits, including economic development grants, state contracts or board appointments, while he has been in office.

His spokesman has said the governor considers Williams and his wife “family friends.” He has known them for about five years, his spokesman said, a time frame that means they first met shortly before McDonnell’s 2009 campaign for governor.

According to a regulatory filing and the company’s Web site, Star Scientific has a corporate code of conduct that prohibits corporate officers or executives from providing gifts of value to public officials.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

San Jose spends $175,000 to run the homeless out of town????

San Jose: More park rangers will help curb creekside homeless encampments

By Mark Emmons

memmons@mercurynews.com

Posted: 06/25/2013 03:31:30 PM PDT

SAN JOSE -- Exasperated residents increasingly have turned up the heat on local government to come up with better solutions to deal with unsightly homeless encampments, after massive cleanups have resulted in squatters reclaiming the sites sometimes within hours.

So now officials are trying a new strategy: More park rangers.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District board voted unanimously Tuesday to give the city of San Jose $175,000 for two additional park rangers to help patrol creek areas. This comes after the new city budget already had approved money for adding another two rangers.

While four more park rangers might not sound like all the much, officials are hoping a stepped-up presence along the creeks will discourage homeless people from returning to cleared-out encampment sites, or even from going there in the first place.

"Cleaning sites is OK, but clean-ups by themselves are not sufficient," said Chris Elias, a watershed manager for the water district. "We need to enhance the park ranger element. This is a win-win measure. We're helping the city to help us keep the creeks clean."

Illegal encampments have become a hot-button political issue in the past year or so. Residents have loudly complained about trash-laden camps, the crime associated with them, as well as the fouling of waterways. The water district action is the latest sign of the collaborative effort between local agencies to get a better handle on the problem.

Both the city and water district in recent weeks agreed to continue sharing the cost of encampment cleanups. There are 48 planned in the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1. The hope is additional park rangers will help keep those sites cleaned out.

"Park rangers have an intimate knowledge of the waterways in San Jose," said Ray Bramson, the city's project manager in charge of the encampment issue. "They know what's going on in the creeks, so they provide us with a rapid response in dealing with new sites and keeping old sites clear. It's a proven model."

Added Elias: "We think having more boots and eyes on the ground is an important component."

The water district does not have its own policing force. And the city's park ranger staff, Bramson said, has been reduced from 24 to perhaps fewer than 10 by budget cuts in recent years.

According to a 2011 survey, 7,000 people are homeless on any given night in Santa Clara County. Of those, about 2,500 are categorized as being chronically homeless. A new census was conducted earlier this year, and those results are expected to be released sometime this week.

Bramson said there are an estimated 60 encampments in San Jose. Of those, between 10 Lilly washes her feet in the Coyote Creek, which runs through the homeless encampment known as "The Jungle" off Story Road in San Jose, Calif. on Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Lilly is homeless and lives in a campsite near the creek. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group) (LiPo Ching) and 20 are classified as large, numbering more than 50 people. They typically are situated along waterways, most often the Guadalupe and Coyote creeks.

At Tuesday's water district meeting, board member Barbara Keegan said residents she hears from are more than just concerned about homelessness.

"They're actually frightened to the point of not using the trails," Keegan said.

There is widespread agreement that ultimately the best way to solve the encampment problem is to provide more permanent housing for the homeless. Bramson and Elias said that in addition to their enforcement duties, park rangers can point the homeless toward social services that hopefully can lead them off of the creek banks.

But both emphasized that clearing out encampments has to be a priority because theyare not safe or sanitary for the people living there or the environment.

"These places simply were not meant for human habitation," Elias added. "Our creeks are wildlife corridors. Having people live down there disturbs that. Also there is a public safety element because trash build-up is a threat to blocking flood waters."

Flagstaff uses panhandling laws to run the homeless out of town???

Source

ACLU files lawsuit over Flagstaff panhandling arrests

The attempt by Flagstaff police to get transient alcoholics off the streets early in the day by arresting them on panhandling or loitering charges has run into a legal challenge.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona announced today it has filed suit against the city, contending the state law authorizing the arrests is unconstitutional.

"Begging is not a crime," said ACLU of Arizona Legal Director Dan Pochoda in a press release. "To appease local business interests, Flagstaff has sacrificed the fundamental rights of individuals and is throwing people in jail simply for asking for a dollar or two for food. Numerous courts throughout the country have ruled that peacefully asking for a donation in a public area is protected speech under the First Amendment."

Flagstaff officials declined to comment. City Attorney Michelle D'Andrea said the city had not been served yet and typically does not comment on pending litigation. It will file a response, she said, in a "timely manner."

The city program, called Operation 40 after the 40-ounce beer bottles popular with street alcoholics, uses a state statute that makes it a crime to "loiter to beg" in all public places, including sidewalks, thoroughfares and parks, at all times during the day or night.

The purpose of the operation is to enforce all petty violations committed by street alcoholics, including: panhandling, drinking in public, trespassing, littering, urinating in public and disorderly conduct.

Flagstaff officials have explained that by arresting street alcoholics early in the day before they become highly intoxicated, they protect both the transients and the public from petty crime.

According to the ACLU, between June 2012 and May 2013, 135 arrests were made by the Flagstaff Police Department under the state statute.

The ACLU is arguing that the city of Flagstaff is violating people's free speech rights by arresting them for peacefully soliciting donations in public. The lawsuit also argues the state statute itself is unconstitutional and must be enjoined by the Court because it is directed at and criminalizes constitutionally-protected expression.

Alessandra Soler, executive director of the Arizona ACLU, said the courts have upheld certain anti-panhandling laws if they target specific locations and specific conduct, such as aggressive behavior.

"But this is overly broad and therefore unconstitutional," she said, adding that public defenders have raised the issue with Flagstaff defendants in court without success.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 77-year-old Marlene Baldwin, who was arrested on Feb. 22 for "loitering to beg" after asking an undercover Flagstaff police officer if he could spare $1.25 for bus fare.

In addition to Baldwin, the ACLU also is representing Robert George and Andrew R. Wilkenson, both of whom were threatened with arrest for soliciting, and Food Not Bombs, a volunteer-run organization that regularly feeds the homeless in Flagstaff parks. Several of its members have been arrested for requesting donations from passersby.

2 sent to prison for creation, sale of machine guns

"Neither the defendants nor their legal counsel appeared at the Supreme Court. A lack of financial support and procedural irregularities prevented counsel from traveling. Miller was found shot to death in April, before the decision was rendered."

United States v. Miller

2 sent to prison for creation, sale of machine guns

By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jun 26, 2013 10:33 PM

Two licensed gun dealers have been imprisoned for their roles in an illegal machine-gun manufacturing and sales operation that went undetected by authorities for nearly 15 years.

A U.S. District Court judge in Phoenix recently sentenced Randolph Benjamin Rodman, 60, of Maryland, and Idan C. Greenberg, 59, of Glendale, to prison terms of 121 months, or nearly a decade, and 33 months, or nearly three years, respectively, in connection with the bicoastal enterprise.

Authorities said Rodman, Greenberg and four other licensed dealers — three in Arizona and one in Maryland — conspired to make newly manufactured machine guns in violation of a 1986 ban and transferred them using paperwork for different firearms.

More than 30 such weapons were accounted for by agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, court records show.

Federal law defines a machine gun as any weapon that automatically shoots more than one bullet with a single trigger pull. In 1986, Congress banned the possession and transfer of all machine guns except for those legally owned before May 19, 1986, (meaning the firearms are federally registered) and machine guns possessed or manufactured for governmental entities.

Once the ban was implemented, the price of legally available machine guns, which stands at about 196,000 firearms, skyrocketed. Alan Korwin, a Scottsdale-based gun-law expert, said they can easily fetch $15,000 to $20,000 apiece in today’s market.

“They’re coveted by enthusiasts,” Korwin said. “You might find one for $10,000 that is in poor condition.”

George Clark, a defendant-turned-federal witness from the Kingman area, testified in November that he used a hacksaw to harvest serial numbers from less desirable, federally registered machine guns. Clark, a licensed gun maker, said he then welded the numbers onto new, custom-made, fully automatic weapons made at the request of other licensed dealers or for himself.

Clark’s advertisement for a MAC-style machine gun on subguns.com first piqued the ATF’s interest in October 2006, according to a search warrant. “MAC” stands for Military Armament Corp. The description of the MAC-style gun didn’t match what was actually being sold: a Model 1919 .30-caliber machine gun, a belt-fed firearm popular for infantry use during the 20th century.

Clark told agents he had been doing similar work since 1993, when he made his first M1919 using another serial number for a retired veteran who wanted the gun for sentimental reasons but couldn’t afford any on the market. Clark testified to having made similar guns for other licensed dealers, including Rodman and Greenberg, all of whom he claimed were in on the scheme.

Anyone who wants to own or transfer a registered machine gun must apply for a tax stamp, pay the tax and get ATF approval for the transfer or possession.

In addition to creating the new machine guns, authorities said, Clark and others failed to properly register the firearms with the ATF, instead passing them off as the originals.

Greenberg’s attorney did not return a call for comment. According to a court transcript of Greenberg’s testimony in August 2012, he has held a federal firearms license since 1980 and, in 1985, became a licensed dealer of weapons regulated by the National Firearms Act, which includes machine guns and short-barreled rifles and shotguns.

He ran his business, Firearms Adviser, from an address at 1001 S. Fifth St. in Phoenix, according to AFT licensing records. Greenberg’s attorney told the court that his client also trained members of the Israeli military and conducts firearms workshops for law enforcement.

A federal jury in December found Greenberg guilty of conspiracy, illegal possession of a machine gun, and receipt and possession of a firearm made in violation of the National Firearms Act.

The same jury convicted Rodman of 22 charges, including conspiracy; the manufacturing, possession, receipt and transfer of machine guns in violation of the act; and making false entries on applications and records.

Texas carries out its 500th execution since 1982

Source

Texas carries out its 500th execution since 1982

Associated Press Wed Jun 26, 2013 4:55 PM

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Texas marked a solemn moment in criminal justice Wednesday evening, executing its 500th inmate since it resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982.

Kimberly McCarthy, who was put to death for the murder of her 71-year-old neighbor, was also the first woman executed in the U.S. in nearly three years.

McCarthy, 52, was executed for the 1997 robbery, beating and fatal stabbing of retired college psychology professor Dorothy Booth. Booth had agreed to give McCarthy a cup of sugar before she was attacked with a butcher knife and candelabra at her home in Lancaster, about 15 miles south of Dallas. Authorities say McCarthy cut off Booth’s finger to remove her wedding ring.

It was among three slayings linked to McCarthy, a former nursing home therapist who became addicted to crack cocaine.

She was pronounced dead at 6:37 p.m. CDT, 20 minutes after Texas prison officials began administering a single lethal dose of pentobarbital.

In her final statement, McCarthy did not mention her status as the 500th inmate to be executed or acknowledge the victim or the victim’s family.

“This is not a loss. This is a win. You know where I’m going. I’m going home to Jesus. I love you all,” she said, while looking toward her witnesses, including her ex-husband, her attorney and her spiritual adviser.

As the drug started to take effect, she said, “God is great,” before closing her eyes. She took hard, raspy, loud breaths for several seconds before becoming quiet. Her chest moved up and down for another minute before she stopped breathing.

Texas has carried out nearly 40 percent of the more than 1,300 executions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. The state’s standing stems from its size as the nation’s second-most populous state as well as its tradition of tough justice for killers.

With increased debate in recent years over wrongful convictions, some states have halted the practice entirely. However, 32 states have the death penalty on the books. Though Texas still carries out executions, lawmakers have provided more sentencing options for juries and courts have narrowed the cases for which death can be sought.

Executions of women are infrequent. McCarthy was the 13th woman put to death in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the nation’s busiest death penalty state, since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume. In that same period, more than 1,300 male inmates have been executed nationwide, 496 of them in Texas. Virginia is a distant second, nearly 400 executions behind.

McCarthy’s lawyer, Maurie Levin, had asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt the punishment, arguing black jurors were improperly excluded from McCarthy’s trial by Dallas County prosecutors. McCarthy is black; her victim white. All but one of her 12 jurors were white. The court denied McCarthy’s appeals, ruling her claims should have been raised previously.

Prosecutors said McCarthy stole Booth’s Mercedes and drove to Dallas, pawned the woman’s wedding ring she removed from the severed finger for $200 and went to a crack house to buy cocaine. Evidence also showed she used Booth’s credit cards at a liquor store.

McCarthy blamed the crime on two drug dealers, but there was no evidence either existed.

DNA evidence also tied McCarthy to the December 1988 slayings of 81-year-old Maggie Harding and 85-year-old Jettie Lucas. Harding was stabbed and beaten with a meat tenderizer, while Lucas was beaten with both sides of a claw hammer and stabbed.

McCarthy, who denied any involvement in the attacks, was indicted but not tried for those slayings.

McCarthy is a former wife of Aaron Michaels, founder of the New Black Panther Party, and he testified on her behalf. They had separated before Booth’s slaying.

In January, McCarthy was just hours away from being put to death when a Dallas judge delayed her execution.

McCarthy was the eighth Texas prisoner executed this year. She was among 10 women on death row in Texas, but the only one with an execution date. Seven male Texas prisoners have executions scheduled in the coming months.

NYC to police the police - Probably not!!!!

Source

New York City Council Votes to Increase Oversight of Police Dept.

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

Published: June 27, 2013

Over the strident objections of the mayor and police commissioner, the New York City Council early Thursday morning approved by veto-proof majorities a pair of bills aimed at increasing oversight of the Police Department and expanding New Yorkers’ ability to sue over racial profiling by officers. [Yea, but don't count on this new law being enforced if it is passed. The cops currently flush the Bill of Rights done the toilet with out any punishment. Another toothless law won't change things]

The two bills, known together as the Community Safety Act, passed during a late-night meeting of the Council that began after 11 p.m., lasted more than three hours and in which members also voted to pass the city’s budget and override a mayoral veto of a law on paid sick leave.

But it was the two policing bills that for months have stirred a heated public debate between its supporters, who are seeking a legal means to change the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who have warned that the measures would hamstring police officers and lead to a dangerous spike in crime. [Yea, it's really hamstringing cops when you expect them to obey the same laws they expect the rest of us to obey]

One, known as Intro 1079, would create an independent inspector general to monitor and review police policy, conduct investigations and recommend changes to the department. The monitor would be part of the city’s Investigation Department alongside the inspectors general for other city agencies.

The law would go into effect Jan. 1, 2014, leaving the matter of choosing the monitor to the next mayor.

The other bill, Intro 1080, would expand the definition of bias-based profiling to include age, gender, housing status and sexual orientation. It also would allow individuals to sue the Police Department in state court — not only for individual instances of bias, but also for policies that disproportionately affect people in any protected categories without serving a significant law enforcement goal. [Sorry to tell you this it is already illegal to stop people because of their age, gender, and race, but the police do it anyhow]

Both measures passed the 51-member Council with the votes needed to override a mayoral veto. As that threshold was passed just after 2:20 a.m., scores of supporters who had filled the chamber’s gallery and waited hours through the debate erupted into cheers.

Mr. Bloomberg, who has promised to veto both measures and this week called his opposition to them a matter of “life and death,” released a statement after the vote. “I will veto this harmful legislation and continue to make our case to Council members over the coming days and weeks,” he said. [It's a life or death matter when the police are expected to obey the law???? Obliviously Bloomberg thinks he is a royal ruler and we are all serfs expected to obey him.]

An attempt to override his veto would extend the protracted clash between the mayor and the Council over policing. The process could take more than two months, putting the override vote only weeks before the mayoral primary.

The legislation has already been a nettlesome issue in the Democratic race for mayor, especially for Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker, who has faced a growing challenge to her early front-runner status. She supported the measure creating an independent inspector general for the Police Department, which passed by a vote of 40 to 11, but she opposed the other, on police profiling, which received 34 votes in favor and 17 against.

“I worry about having too much judicial involvement,” she said before casting her vote, explaining that she did not believe the profiling bill would make New Yorkers less safe. [We already have the Bill of Rights and it doesn't make us safer, because the government has flushed it down the toilet. If passed this law will almost certainly be flushed down the toilet like the Bill of Rights has been]

Despite her earlier stated opposition, she allowed both bills to move forward, and on Monday presided over a so-called discharge vote — the first since the current structure of the Council was established in 1989 — to bring the legislation out of committee, where it had stalled.

The two bills were first introduced as a package last year by Councilmen Jumaane D. Williams and Brad Lander.

Mr. Bloomberg has 30 days to veto the bills. If he does so, the City Council then has 30 days from its next full meeting to hold an override vote. The mayor and the Police Department have lobbied hard against the bills in public and behind the scenes, and they appeared likely to keep up the pressure between the veto and the override vote in an effort to change the minds of supporters.

Mr. Kelly sent a letter on Tuesday to each of the Council members, arguing that the profiling bill could be used to force the removal of surveillance cameras and urging them to vote against it. “The bill would allow virtually everyone in New York City to sue the Police Department and individual police officers over the entire range of law enforcement functions they perform,” Mr. Kelly wrote. [We certainly can't have laws where citizens are allowed to sue crooked cops can we???? Well that's how the cops feel, althought the rest of us serfs think it is a good idea]

Mr. Williams, responding to Mr. Kelly’s letter, said: “If the cameras were put in high crime neighborhoods as a response, that’s good policing. If he put them there because black people live there, that’s a problem.”

At least one Council member received a call from his local police station commander to protest the legislation ahead of the vote.

“They were deeply concerned about 250s and said they would be unable to perform them because of the profiling part of the reform,” said Councilman Daniel Dromm of Queens, referring to the police form used for street stops. “But for me, it’s the teeth of the reform; it’s the needed piece.” He voted for both bills.

In voting against the two measures early Thursday morning, Peter F. Vallone Jr., the chairman of the public safety committee, said, “New Yorkers went to bed a long time ago, safe in their beds. But they are going to wake up in a much more dangerous city.”

Papers Please - Bill to Expand U.S. Database to Verify Hires

Bill to Expand U.S. Database to Verify Hires

By JULIA PRESTON and ASHLEY PARKER

Published: June 26, 2013 245 Comments

WASHINGTON — The sweeping immigration measure advancing rapidly in the Senate goes far beyond much-debated border security measures and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants with a crucial requirement that could affect every American who takes a new job in the future.

The provision, a linchpin of the legislation, would require all employers in the country within five years to use a federal electronic system to verify the legal eligibility to work of every new hire, including American citizens.

The verification plan has united an unusual array of supporters — including Democrats protective of workers’ rights and Republicans normally skeptical of government intrusion — who say it is essential for preventing illegal immigration in the future because it would remove the jobs magnet that attracts migrants to this country.

But there has been little debate up to now about the provision to expand the federal system, which is known as E-Verify, and critics of the measure as well as some proponents worry that most Americans are unaware of the mandate’s broad scope. The system relies on imperfect federal databases that contain errors, and when it goes national, some Americans are likely to face unexpected bureaucratic headaches and could even lose new jobs.

“I don’t think people really understand that this creates a regulation not just for every employer, or for every immigrant, but also for every citizen in this country,” said David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group that favors limited government and opposes mandatory employee verification.

Now, with the bill headed for a final vote in the Senate as early as Thursday, the E-Verify mandate has become the focus of intense last-minute deal making.

Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, has demanded a separate vote on an amendment that would make the requirements even tougher by ordering employers to comply sooner and tightening antifraud measures. Sponsors of the overhaul, which seems headed for passage, are negotiating with Mr. Portman, hoping to win his support to maximize the Republican votes in the final tally.

One American who has been watching the progress of the E-Verify provisions with a growing sense of dread is David Borris, the owner of Hel’s Kitchen Catering, a small business in Northbrook, Ill. While he agrees with the path to citizenship in the bill, Mr. Borris said he worried that the requirement to check all new employees with E-Verify would bring a host of costly and time-consuming troubles.

Mr. Borris said he needed to spend his time finding new customers who are planning banquets and bar mitzvahs, and perfecting the eggplant timbale that is a signature dish of his service.

“Businesses like mine don’t have the resources to be catching up with bureaucratic snafus,” he said. Mr. Borris is a leader of the Main Street Alliance network, one of many small business organizations opposing the E-Verify mandate.

On Wednesday, talks were still under way between Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate to try to hold a vote on a several additional amendments, which would likely include the proposal on E-Verify that Mr. Portman offered, together with Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana.

The measure would speed up the dates when employers would have to start using the system. It would also increase the use of photograph technology to eliminate a flaw in the system, which can fail to detect unauthorized immigrants who present employers with valid documents belonging to someone else.

“No matter how many miles of fence we build and how many agents we station on the border, I truly believe people will come to this country illegally as long as they believe America offers a better life and a better job,” Mr. Portman said on the Senate floor. Speaking on Wednesday, the senator said, “I believe strongly that if we do not have a stronger employee verification system at the workplace, this legislation is not going to work.”

Even without Mr. Portman’s vote, the overhaul bill appears almost certain to pass. It gathered new momentum Wednesday, when the Senate voted 69 to 29 to formally add a border security plan by two Republican senators, Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, to the legislation. Fifteen Republicans supported the proposal, which would cost roughly $40 billion and create what some senators have described as a “border surge,” adding 20,000 new border patrol agents and erecting 700 miles of fencing at the southern border, among other measures.

In the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved, 22 to 9, a stand-alone bill that includes a nationwide E-Verify mandate similar to the one in the Senate legislation.

The need for worker verification to prevent unauthorized immigrants from taking jobs was one of the early agreements the eight senators who wrote the overhaul bill came to, aides said. The E-Verify mandate is one of the hard “triggers” in the legislation: under its terms, the system must be in use nationwide before any immigrants who had been here illegally can apply for permanent resident green cards, a crucial step on the path to citizenship.

Up to now the E-Verify system, which is run by Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, has been mostly voluntary and has earned surprisingly few detractors. With more than 411,000 employers currently participating, the system is reporting an accuracy rate of 99.7 percent in confirming that newly hired employees were authorized to work.

Of more than 20.2 million workers run through the system in 2012, only 0.26 percent turned out to be legally authorized after an initial erroneous denial, according to official figures. The system identified 221,155 new hires who did not have legal documents to work in this country. Officials said those figures proved the system was effective.

But under the proposed immigration changes, the system would quickly grow to include all of the nation’s 7.3 million employers and more than 156 million workers. “As you expand it out to the entire work force, even if the agency has worked hard to increase their accuracy, there is still a real problem with errors,” said Emily Tulli, a lawyer at the National Immigration Law Center, a legal assistance organization in Los Angeles.

The system matches identity information provided by newly hired employees against Social Security and Homeland Security records. Errors can occur when, for example, a newlywed adopts a spouse’s name and forgets to advise Social Security or when an employer misspells a foreign name.

In many cases, it takes a trip to a Social Security office to fix mistakes in the records. If the error is not speedily resolved, the worker can lose the job.

Homeland Security officials insist those cases are rare, and say they are confident the system can handle the expansion. A recently added tool improves accuracy by allowing employers to match a photo in the E-Verify system with a document presented by the new employee. Another tool allows people to check themselves before starting a job search.

A spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, Peter Boogaard, said new employees would not be providing any more personal information than was already required on standard hiring forms. “So mandatory verification will likely go unnoticed by the majority of Americans,” Mr. Boogaard said.

But Mr. Borris, the caterer, is unconvinced. His full-time staff of 25 employees grows during busy times with about 80 seasonal workers, including many Latinos. He has one staff member to fill out employee forms, handle his payroll, manage his e-mail list and make all-important choices about which customers will get holiday gifts. Most companies now using the voluntary program have human resources staff, he said.

“That error rate is just a small number unless it’s your business or your brother or your sister,” Mr. Borris said.

NSA collected Americans' email data for a decade under Bush and Obama

Source

NSA collected Americans' email data for a decade under Bush and Obama, new report details

By Jeremy C. Owens

jowens@mercurynews.com

Posted: 06/27/2013 09:07:46 AM PDT

The National Security Agency began tracking email and Internet-use data after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, continuing and expanding the program through 2011, according to new documents published by The Guardian on Thursday.

The Guardian, a British newspaper, received records about the NSA's Prism program -- which collected similar "metadata" on Americans' cellphone usage from top carrier Verizon Wireless -- from Edward Snowden, a security contractor with Booz Allen who fled the U.S. after passing on the information.

Thursday's report involves a different NSA program, a warrantless surveillance program code-named Stellar Wind that was begun in 2001, under President George W. Bush. The Guardian Activists of Ukraine's Internet party, one of them acting as a CIA agent making telephone taps, demand the American authorities stop the pursuit of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden at an action of protest near the US Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, Thursday, June 27, 2013. ((AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)) obtained a 2009 draft report by the NSA's inspector general and a 2007 Justice Department memo detailing the program, but did not reveal a source for the information.

President Barack Obama's administration confirmed that the program existed and was discontinued in 2011.

"The Internet metadata collection program authorized by the FISA court was discontinued in 2011 for operational and resource reasons and has not been restarted," Shawn Turner, director of communications for national intelligence, told the Guardian. "The program was discontinued by the executive branch as the result of an interagency review."

According to the report, the NSA received details about whom emails were directed to and IP addresses of the senders, which can provide physical locations, but could not see the content of the emails. In the beginning, the program only received such data when the communication involved a party outside the United States, but the 2007 memo shows that it eventually began to analyze data on communications between Americans.

Another document, created in 2008 and signed by the then-defense secretary and attorney general, says that the information provided through the program included "the information appearing on the 'to,' 'from' or 'bcc' lines of a standard email or other electronic communication," The Guardian reported.

Authorities used the information to analyze communications of targeted individuals in terrorism investigations, looking for whom was being contacted by suspects and also the contacts of those contacts, which the NSA refers to as "contact chaining."

When the program began under President Bush in 2001, it had no legal authority, according to the documents, and Justice Department and FBI officials -- including then-deputy Attorney General James Comey, Obama's nominee for FBI director -- rebelled against the program in 2004 and had it shut down. However, Bush then took the program to the court created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, and received official clearance for the activity ; the court renewed its order every 90 days until it was shut down in 2011, according to The Guardian.

Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/mercbizbreak.

Tempe, Swiss police swap beats for TV show

Source

Tempe, Swiss police swap beats for TV show

By Brennan Smith The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jun 18, 2013 12:25 PM

Tempe police Detectives Denison Dawson and Jessica Dever-Jakusz went out on traffic patrol together, something both officers had done frequently in their tenure with the city.

However, instead of patrolling the streets of Tempe like any other shift, they were 5,750 miles away, checking for violations among the drivers of Zurich, Switzerland.

Dawson and Dever-Jakusz had been whisked away for a week as participants on the Swiss television show “Job Swap,” trading places with two Swiss officers, who came to Tempe to work.

Dawson and Dever-Jakusz, with a combined 23 years on the Tempe force, had little to no idea of what they were getting themselves into.

“Chocolate, cheese and the Alps, that’s all I knew about it. I didn’t really know much about Switzerland,” Dever-Jakusz said. “I tried to Google a little bit, but even then, things were pretty basic.”

She had traveled to Mexico and Canada but had never been abroad. Dawson, however, had never been outside the U.S.

“I saw it as a life-changing experience,” Dawson said. “I’ve never traveled. I’ve never been abroad and I’ve never had a passport, so for me this was all overwhelming.”

The Tempe officers had less than 24 hours between the announcement they had been selected for the show and their flight. On top of it all, Dawson had a phobia of air travel, making the 12-hour journey across the Atlantic even more difficult.

Luckily, Dever-Jakusz had brought a stuffed monkey with her, which Dawson cuddled to ease his nerves.

“I was holding this monkey, caressing it. Any time I felt turbulence and I was shaking, I would squeeze his stomach,” Dawson said. “He was my comfort.”

When they finally arrived, the officers went straight to filming the TV show with no rest for the weary travelers as their life as Zurich police officers began immediately.

On the flip side of the Atlantic, Claudia Brandenberg had arrived in Tempe to begin her time as an exchange officer. Brandenberg, a native of Bern, the Swiss capital, hadn’t owned a television for 15 years and thought the “Job Swap” producers would pick someone “taller and more blonde,” but she applied anyway to appease her sense of adventure.

“I’m always interested in new things. If I can learn something new and get to know new people, especially when I can travel abroad, even better,” Brandenberg said.

Brandenberg had traveled around Europe, Australia, South Africa, Canada and a few places in the U.S., but had little preconception of Arizona. She acknowledged that she didn’t even know how to pronounce “Tempe” initially, but said she felt like a “VIP” from the beginning within the Tempe Police Department.

“They showed us everything and we were like part of the team, not like a visitor,” Brandenberg said. “Of course, we didn’t have our weapons, but when we went on patrol, we were part of the team.” [Maybe the royal rulers of Tempe should take the guns away from ALL their cops, after all the Tempe City Council is a bunch of gun grabbers who want to flush the 2nd Amendment down the toilet and disarm us serfs they rule over]

Brandenberg traveled to Arizona with fellow Officer Harald Plüss, who could not be reached for comment.

They were put to work immediately, splitting time between car patrol, bike patrol and even work with the SWAT team as the cameras rolled to document their time in the desert.

“This is real police work and it’s not so different from the police work we do in Switzerland,” Brandenberg said.

Back in Zurich, Denison and Dever-Jakusz were adjusting to having BMWs as patrol cars and the vastly different rules of the road in Switzerland. For example, motorists can lose their license for passing someone on the right or for braking on the highway, while most towns have only one speed-limit sign that encompasses the entire area.

The two responded to a major single-vehicle crash and were surprised to see the road left open for passing traffic and an on-call doctor responding rather than paramedics or firefighters.

“They don’t shut down the streets, either, which is different. If that was here, until we figured out what was going on, we would have shut down the whole street,” Denison said. [What a novel idea, leaving the road open so that traffic can drive around the accident, instead of causing huge traffic jams like the cops do in Arizona, by totally blocking off the roads!!! I suspect that's for the safety of the officer, and the cops could care less about us serfs that they pretend to serve]

The officers were staying in the picturesque town of Bülach on the outskirts of Zurich, but found they were reminded of home often by the film crew and Swiss police. One of the show’s producers was eating a Snickers candy bar during filming, while several of the officers had ring tones of American songs, including Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”

In Tempe, Brandenberg found the Arizona heat to be unbearable. Even in the middle of the night during Mill Avenue bike patrols, she was drenched with sweat.

“We went on bike patrol at 2 a.m. in the morning and it was still 33 degrees Celsius (91 degrees Fahrenheit),” Brandenberg said. “It made me feel very hot.”

The Swiss officer said she also found it odd that officers could execute search warrants of homes in the U.S. after the person living there has been arrested.

“This is not possible in Switzerland,” Brandenberg said. “There has to be always someone there because they can accuse officers of theft.” [How nice, the European police actually admit that some cops are crooked, instead of pretending it is impossible for a cop to commit a crime like they do in America]

Amid all the work and filming, all three officers had their chances to have fun. For Dever-Jakusz, it was competing in a regatta, racing a sailboat over the waters of Lake Zurich. Dawson got to drive a Maserati on the autobahn, reaching speeds close to 100 mph that would have earned him a hefty ticket in Tempe. Brandenberg got a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon, which she enjoyed, even if she found the Fish River Canyon from her travels in Namibia slightly more impressive. [Yep, just as I said at the begining. It sounds like the cops got a nice vacation paid by the taxpayers of Tempe!!!!]

However, they also said the hectic filming and short visit left little time for actual tourism.

“We didn’t do a lot of sightseeing. It was work, work, work,” Denison said. “We saw the countryside, but we don’t know what all Switzerland has to offer.”

Brandenberg said she couldn’t even describe what the city looked like. She kept seeing pictures of the Mill Avenue Bridge, but had no idea where it was or why it was significant because she was wrapped up in producing the show. [Well duh, probably because it isn't significant, and it's just a stinking bridge that runs over what used to be a dry river, but is now Tempe Town Toilet]

“I have no idea what this bridge is, if this bridge is famous or something like that,” Brandenberg said. “I have no idea.” [Well, Miss Brandenberg, it's not famous, it's just a bridge that goes over Tempe Town Toilet]

All three found that the notion of police camaraderie transcended the differences in culture, making lifelong friendships through a common respect for the badge and the uniform.

“Everywhere we went people knew us,” Dawson said. “They were shaking our hands, taking pictures with us. The royal treatment.” [I bet the only people doing the handshaking and picture taking were their fellow cops. In Tempe, the police are hated by the serfs they rule over]

Brandenberg said she is planning to visit her brother in Atlanta next spring and wants to make a stop in Phoenix along the way. Dawson and Dever-Jakusz are already planning a reunion trip and have invited the officers they worked with in Zurich to come to Arizona.

Dawson, who could barely stomach travel a few weeks ago, now wants to go to Berlin and South Africa. He has caught the travel bug, searching for new cultures like the loving and inspiring one he found in Zurich.

“I need to get stamps,” Dawson said. “I need to get that passport stamped.”

Messy yard cops shake down Vice-mayor of Richmond

Richmond city probe finds councilman's property in worse condition than originally thought

By Robert Rogers

Contra Costa Times

Posted: 05/02/2013 07:04:40 AM PDT

RICHMOND -- An inspection in March revealed that a fenced lot full of old cars linked to City Councilman Corky Boozé contained environmental hazards worse than initially thought and that it may violate a slew of local and state laws, according to documents obtained through a public records request.

The inspection was conducted to determine the extent of the violations and what progress, if any, had been made in cleaning up the property, as demanded by the city.

In a 21-page letter addressed to Boozé and Laura Baker, the legal owner, city prosecutor Trisha Aljoe wrote that the 28,000-square-foot lot at 22 Carlson Blvd. is home to " ... unlawful, hazardous, unsafe and blighted conditions ... so extreme and extensive that it is difficult to describe."

The conditions were assessed during a March 21 inspection by city staff, accompanied by Boozé, to see whether any progress had been made following a March 6 "notice of violation and demand to abate" letter issued by the city.

"Unfortunately," Aljoe wrote, "not only have the violations not been abated as previously demanded, the magnitude of unlawful and unsafe conditions ... were far worse than the city had been able to determine from its initial observations ..."

The city's Code Enforcement Department began to lean on Boozé last year, after local resident Kate Sibley lodged numerous complaints against the property. Baker could not be reached for comment. Court documents from 2003 show Boozé told a judge that Baker was his "domestic partner of 30 years."

Boozé called the letter and the ongoing action a "political witch hunt" and said the allegations that he is violating any laws are "totally untrue." He said Councilman Tom Butt, his political rival, "orchestrated the whole thing."

"The city has more important business than to be taking sides in a political vendetta between two council members," Boozé said.

Reached Tuesday, Butt said he did talk with Sibley before her complaints but that Boozé needs to follow the law.

"Corky is in denial," Butt said.

The property is owned by Baker, a Vallejo resident who took ownership in 1996, according to county records. Baker took over the property amid years of bitter legal battles between the city and Boozé and his son Kevin over violations and blighted conditions.

Boozé, 69, holds a business license for auto body repair and restoration at the site, adjacent to the Richmond Greenway and just beneath elevated BART tracks. Behind a 6-foot fence lies old cars and car parts, along with other metals and industrial tools. Single-family homes are Boozé's immediate neighbors and dot the surrounding blocks.

Code Enforcement officials are set to conduct an inspection of the property at 1 p.m. Thursday, after Boozé requested a reschedule of an earlier inspection.

In the letter, Aljoe wrote that the city fire marshall determined the property poses "a fire hazard and danger to public safety, health and welfare, particularly the ... residential dwellings in proximity."

The letter lists more than 20 alleged violations of local and state law and includes an inventory of more than 40 vehicles, along with piles of car batteries, unmarked containers of toxic liquids and evidence of "significant soil contamination" that will require cleanup.

Code Enforcement Director Tim Higares said the city always hopes for voluntary compliance, but sometimes litigation is necessary to compel compliance.

"We give people every opportunity to comply," Higares said. "Corky has been cooperative, not combative."

Boozé disputed the allegations that he is in violation of any ordinances but said he has been tidying up ahead of the inspection.

"I do business of the city as an elected representative all day," Boozé said. "And I am working on this, too."

Contact Robert Rogers at 510-262-2726 or rrogers@bayareanewsgroup.com and follow Twitter.com/roberthrogers

Source

Property linked to Richmond councilman subject of city probe

By Robert Rogers

Contra Costa Times

Posted: 03/11/2013 04:49:07 PM PDT

RICHMOND -- The city is demanding that a junk-strewn property linked to City Councilman Corky Boozé be cleaned up after finding it in violation of several codes and a 1997 court order, according to documents obtained through a public records request.

The property, a 28,000-square-foot lot with a 756-square-foot office building, sits at 22 Carlson Blvd., adjacent to the Richmond Greenway and just beneath elevated BART tracks. Behind a 6-foot fence lies old cars and car parts, along with other metals and industrial tools.

The property is owned by Laura Baker, a resident of Vallejo who took ownership in 1996, according to county records. Baker took over the property amid years of bitter legal battles between the city and Boozé and his son Kevin over violations and blighted conditions.

In a five-page letter, city prosecutor Trisha Aljoe demanded that Baker abate the property and scheduled a compliance inspection for 1 p.m. March 18. Boozé holds a business license for auto body repair and restoration at the site and is referred to in the letter as the "tenant."

"It is clear, based on ... overwhelming evidence, that your tenant is maintaining the property in violation and contempt of the (1997) court order," the letter reads.

Reached by phone, Aljoe acknowledged the action against the property but declined further comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

Boozé, 69, gave a reporter a tour of the property's perimeter last week, noting the secure fencing and complaining that city property adjacent to the site seems to violate its own codes. Boozé said the only holes in his fencing, one of many violations alleged by the city, were small bullet holes that dot the side along Carlson, a hazard of doing business in a rough neighborhood.

Boozé said the city's investigation is motivated by politics. He alleges that a rival councilman and politically active resident conspired to turn up the heat.

"This is just a pure political witch hunt," Boozé said. "This thing has (Councilman) Tom Butt, the (Richmond Progressive Alliance) and its allies written all over it. There was never a problem until they started harassing the city staff about it."

Baker could not be reached for comment. Court documents from 2003 show Boozé told a judge that Baker was his "domestic partner of 30 years." Boozé said Friday he and Baker "broke up years ago."

County records show that Baker owns at least two other properties in the city, both of which critics link to Boozé. One of Baker's properties, a commercial building in the 3300 block of Cutting Boulevard, has been the subject of debate over whether the city should lease it for a new police substation on the southside. Boozé has been the main proponent of that plan.

In November, a Richmond resident began sending emails to city staff complaining about the Carlson Boulevard property and alleging that it belonged to Councilman Boozé.

Butt said he told the resident, Kate Sibley, that the property belonged to Boozé but that she and other neighbors had been bothered by the site for years.

"They were flummoxed, and so I helped her get some information and pursue her complaint," Butt said.

Butt said the situation was rife with hypocrisy, noting that Boozé made several public presentations accusing owners of the SS Red Oak Victory Ship of violating city codes.

"People who live in glass houses should not throw rocks," Butt said.

Contact Robert Rogers at 510-262-2726 or rrogers@bayareanewsgroup.com and follow Twitter.com/roberthrogers.

Aesthetically, Tempe homes fall short

Survey: Aesthetically, Tempe homes fall short

Tempe home survey yields new code enforcement

By Dianna M. Náñez The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jun 13, 2013 12:21 PM

Hoping to evaluate homes that might not violate city code but still are regarded by city inspectors as having an unappealing “aesthetic value,” Tempe recently surveyed 640 residential properties and found that not one of the city’s four ZIP codes averaged even an “OK” rating.

Results were presented at a City Council strategy session, according to a May 7 public staff report.

About 25 houses received the coveted perfect rating.

Tempe’s scoring of each home for aesthetic value ranged from 1 to 3, according to the staff report.

A 3 rating equated to: “That looks good. I like that. I’d live there.”

A 2 rating equated to: “I’ve got no opinion. It’s OK.”

And a 1 rating equated to: “That looks ugly. That looks boring.”

Tempe reported that the citywide average for “aesthetic value” is 1.74.

Some residents were uncomfortable with the city conducting a subjective rating. The Arizona Republic asked them to weigh in on the survey. [What's next, are we going to have "beautiful home cops" in addition to messy yard cops??? Are the royal rulers of Tempe going to come up with a silly dress code for Tempe residents??? Maybe they will even let us dress down on weekends???]

Hollie Schineller, who has lived in Tempe for more than a decade with her husband, Freddie, and their children, took issue with the aesthetic-value rating. Schineller lives in a house south of Baseline Road where the survey said there were fewer issues with code-enforcement violations.

“An aesthetic value on anything, I think, sounds really subjective,” Schineller said. “Something that is aesthetically pleasing can be completely offensive to somebody else.” [Yea, so subjective that the jackbooted thugs on the Tempe City Council shouldn't even be thinking about it!!!!]

Neighborhoods north of Baseline in Tempe were found to have more issues, which the city said it would address by adding at least three temporary code-enforcement inspectors to monitor those neighborhoods for code violations.

Tempe City Councilman Kolby Granville, who spearheaded efforts to deal with residential code enforcement, said that the aesthetic value was not used as part of the scoring system to evaluate problem neighborhoods. [Well then why was it used jerk!!!!]

Rather, it was used to determine whether there are issues at homes that might be unappealing but not in violation of city code. The city may find that changes should be made to the code to improve neighborhoods’ aesthetic value. [Oh no!!!! I guess we are going to have "beautiful home cops" in addition to messy yard cops???]

For example, Granville said that people who own their home do not have to landscape it per city code. They can have dirt instead of a lawn, as long as it has no weeds, he said. [Tempe City Councilman Kolby Granville sounds like a nagging mother in law instead of a public servant who pretends to protect our rights!!!!]