New Global Chokepoints Project Tracks Censorship Around the World

Site Will Document Copyright Enforcement's Effects on Freedom of Expression Worldwide

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in collaboration with over a dozen civil society organizations worldwide, today launched Global Chokepoints at www.globalchokepoints.org to document how copyright enforcement is being used to censor online free expression in countries around the world.

Global Chokepoints, funded in part through a grant by the Open Society Foundation, is an online resource created to document and monitor proposals from around the world to turn Internet intermediaries into copyright police. These proposals harm Internet users' rights of privacy, due process and freedom of expression, as well as endanger the future of the free and open Internet. Global Chokepoints is designed to provide empirical information to digital activists and policymakers and to help coordinate international opposition to attempts to cut off free expression through misguided copyright laws and transnational agreements, like the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Global Chokepoints will document the escalating global efforts to turn Internet intermediaries into chokepoints for online free expression. Internet intermediaries all over the world—from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to community-driven sites like Twitter and YouTube to online payment processors—are increasingly facing demands by IP rightsholders and governments to remove, filter, or block allegedly infringing or illegal content, as well as to collect and disclose their users' personal data.

At the same time, it's unclear whether and under what circumstances Internet intermediaries have liability for content posted by their users. Hotly contested court cases in Europe, Australia, and elsewhere are considering how copyright law fits with obligations to protect Internet users' rights of privacy, due process, and freedom of expression.

Global Chokepoints analyzes global trends in four types of copyright censorship: 1) three-strikes policies and laws that require Internet intermediaries to terminate their users' Internet access on repeat allegations of copyright infringement; 2) requirements for Internet intermediaries to filter all Internet communications for potentially copyright-infringing material; 3) ISP obligations to block access to websites that allegedly infringe or facilitate copyright infringement; and 4) efforts to force intermediaries to disclose the identities of their customers to IP rightsholders upon allegations of copyright infringement. The site includes links to digital rights organizations, consumer groups, law school clinics, and technology industry groups that are opposing the spread of overbroad copyright policing efforts, as well as national advocacy campaigns to protect the free and open Internet and citizens' fundamental rights.

"IP rightsholders are attempting to choke-off online free expression through overbroad laws, litigation, and coercive agreements that require Internet intermediaries to filter, block and disconnect their customers," said EFF International Intellectual Property Director Gwen Hinze. "As both the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression and the European Court of Justice have recently recognized, these initiatives harm Internet users' rights of privacy, due process and freedom of expression, and endanger the future of the free and open Internet."

Global Chokepoints is launching with in-depth analysis of ten regions: Chile, Columbia, the European Union, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Spain, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The website will expand to include additional regions and countries in the coming months and will be updated as new copyright proposals and agreements are introduced.

"Laws around the world are forcing service providers like ISPs to act as judges for what's valid speech on the Internet, using copyright as an excuse to cut off speech and infringe on the privacy rights of users," EFF Activism Director Rainey Reitman said. "For example, in the United States, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) could undermine long-standing legal protections for intermediaries and could potentially 'blacklist' many popular websites–like Etsy, Flickr, and Vimeo. The Global Chokepoints project will help concerned citizens fight dangerous legislation around the world."

For the Global Chokepoints website:
www.globalchokepoints.org

Contact:

Rainey Reitman
Activist
Electronic Frontier Foundation
rainey@eff.org

Man arrested during G20 settles lawsuit against police

A Toronto man who was arrested on his way to church has settled a financial claim against the police.

Jason Wall, 25, was walking along Yonge Street by himself on the morning of June 27, 2010, when he was swarmed by as many as 20 Toronto police officers and taken into custody.

The police were part of the detail that was providing security for the G20 summit taking place that weekend in the city.

Wall says he was arrested because he was wearing a bandana around his neck.

According to statement from his lawyer Wall "spent approximately 28 hours in custody ... He was forced to wear handcuffs for more than 20 hours, slept on the floor, and had to submit to a degrading strip search after which he was released without charge."

The Toronto man filed a complaint with the Ontario Independent Police Review Director.

The OIPRD investigation discovered that Wall has been unlawfully arrested.

The final final report said that an unnamed officer with the Toronto Police Service wrote: “…we were given specific direction in regards to people that were wearing banners [sic], gasmask, goggles and that they were going to be arrestable or that they were to be arrested for Disguise with Intent, which is a Criminal Code Offense and as well anyone with a backpack was to be searched and if they refused to be search [sic] then they would be arrestable for obstruct police which is a Criminal Offence and as well as people, weapons including bottles and canisters of liquid were to be investigated and arrested for Possession of Weapons."

According to Wall's lawyer "the report shows that senior command directed officers to make unlawful arrests." “Wearing a bandana or refusing to allow police to look in your backpack are not criminal offences. We now have proof that many arrests were not the result of a few bad apples or overreaction by officers on the ground. The orders came from the top," lawyer Davin Charney said in a release to the media.

Wall sued police for $25,000.

He settled the case recently but the amount cannot be revealed under the terms of the settlement.

San Diego police arrest congressional candidate for voter registration in Civic Center Plaza

Democratic congressional candidate Ray Lutz was arrested for registering voters in San Diego's public Freedom Plaza (AKA Civic Center Plaza), where the local Occupy protest has taken place. The San Diego police arrested Mr Lutz for trespassing and confiscated his voter registration forms.
I've been skeptical of the "this is what democracy looks like" slogan (since mostly, democracy looks like boring things like long meetings, constituency consultations, and voter booths). But by any measure, registering voters in a civic square is assuredly "what democracy looks like." And arresting people who register voters? Well, that's something else altogether.

Senators Demand the Military Lock Up of American Citizens in a “Battlefield” They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window

While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.

Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a “battlefield” and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.

I know it sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States? Hasn’t anyone told the Senate that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the president is pulling all of the combat troops out of Iraq and trying to figure out how to get combat troops out of Afghanistan too? And American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?

The answer on why now is nothing more than election season politics. The White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the Attorney General have all said that the indefinite detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act are harmful and counterproductive. The White House has even threatened a veto. But Senate politics has propelled this bad legislation to the Senate floor.

But there is a way to stop this dangerous legislation. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is offering the Udall Amendment that will delete the harmful provisions and replace them with a requirement for an orderly Congressional review of detention power. The Udall Amendment will make sure that the bill matches up with American values.

In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial “American citizen or not.” Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because “America is part of the battlefield.”

The solution is the Udall Amendment; a way for the Senate to say no to indefinite detention without charge or trial anywhere in the world where any president decides to use the military. Instead of simply going along with a bill that was drafted in secret and is being jammed through the Senate, the Udall Amendment deletes the provisions and sets up an orderly review of detention power. It tries to take the politics out and put American values back in.

In response to proponents of the indefinite detention legislation who contend that the bill “applies to American citizens and designates the world as the battlefield,” and that the “heart of the issue is whether or not the United States is part of the battlefield,” Sen. Udall disagrees, and says that we can win this fight without worldwide war and worldwide indefinite detention.

The senators pushing the indefinite detention proposal have made their goals very clear that they want an okay for a worldwide military battlefield, that even extends to your hometown. That is an extreme position that will forever change our country.

Now is the time to stop this bad idea. Please urge your senators to vote YES on the Udall Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.

UPDATE: Don’t be confused by anyone claiming that the indefinite detention legislation does not apply to American citizens. It does. There is an exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032 of the bill), but no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial (section 1031 of the bill). So, the result is that, under the bill, the military has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens, but it does not have to use its power unless ordered to do so.

But you don’t have to believe us. Instead, read what one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Lindsey Graham said about it on the Senate floor: “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

There you have it — indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial. And the Senate is likely to vote on it Monday or Tuesday.

URGENT UPDATE: The debate on NDAA has begun. Your Senator needs to hear from you RIGHT NOW! >>

Technology once protected our privacy, now erodes it

By Olivia Solon, wired.co.uk
 
In light of the erosion of privacy online, we need to be careful to protect our privacy at home, according to Michael Birnhack, law professor at Tel Aviv University, speaking at Intelligence Squared's If conference.

In direct contrast to Martin Blinder's argument in favor of personal analytics, Birnhack said: "Yes we can measure stuff, but do we want to measure all that stuff? I would argue that at least some of us would like to maintain a place where nothing is measured and nothing should be measured."

We have always used technology to maintain privacy within our properties, such as locks, curtains, shades, CCTV, and security systems, and a person's home has always provided a degree of privacy where you can do what you like. Birnhack contrasted this with the life of homeless people—who must live their lives out in public. "Privacy in the home is the management of the boundaries between me and you," he said. It is not clear who always makes that decision.

Birnhack was particularly concerned with the impact of technologies like Google Street View on privacy in the home. He made a comparison between having a stranger walk past and look into your home with Street View.

He said that many London houses have large windows, allowing people walking up and down the street to peer in. "But it's rare for someone to stand and stare inside. The person inside would then feel nervous, close the curtains, call the police and it could even get violent," he said. He explained that although people can see inside these houses quite easily, they don't, because there's a social norm that dictates that you shouldn't.

Google Street View, on the other hand, is permanent and opens up the windows of your house to a world beyond the people who walk down your street. But the main difference is the privacy implications. "I can't open my window and yell at Google's camera to get out of here. There's no social norm—they are completely irrelevant."

Birnhack is particularly concerned about thermal imaging, which has been used to spot criminals in their home growing cannabis with energy and heat-intensive hydroponic systems. Similar technology have been used recently by the Telegraph to see if protestors at St. Paul's were in their tents at night during the Occupy LSX protests. He said: "They have a technology that becomes more ubiquitous and once again it bypasses social norms but it also bypasses locks, curtains, and windows."

He called for careful consideration of the implications of these technologies for privacy and perhaps even legislation to control their use.

Startup hopes to hack the immigration system with a floating incubator

By Timothy B. Lee
 
Some of the Silicon Valley's most important companies, including Intel, Google, and Yahoo, were cofounded by immigrants. Yet America's creaky immigration system makes it difficult for talented young people born outside of the United States to come to the Bay Area. There have been various proposals to make it easier for immigrant entrepreneurs to come to the United States, but they've made no progress in Congress.

So a new company called Blueseed is seeking to bypass the political process and solve the problem directly. Blueseed plans to buy a ship and turn it into a floating incubator anchored in international waters off the coast of California.

Ars talked to Blueseed founder Max Marty. He acknowledged that it would be better for America to reform immigration laws and thereby make his company unnecessary. But in the meantime, Marty and his team are hard at work tackling the practical obstacles to making their vision of a floating, year-round hack-a-thon a reality. Within the next year, they're hoping to raise a venture capital round large enough to lease or buy a ship with space for around a thousand passengers. If Blueseed's audacious hack of the immigration system is successful, it will not only open up Silicon Valley to a broader range of entrepreneurs, it will also shine a spotlight on the barriers American law places in the way of immigrants seeking to start businesses in the United States.

For everything else there's the B-1 visa

Blueseed is trying to overcome the limitations of American immigration law, but its business model also depends crucially on the goodwill of American immigration officials. That's because a key part of the Blueseed sales pitch is that residents will be able to make regular trips to the mainland.

Immigration law makes it difficult for many would-be immigrants to get permission to work in the United States. For example, there's an annual cap on the number of H1-B visas available for American employers to hire skilled immigrant workers. However, permission to travel to the United States for business or tourism is much easier to get.

Marty pointed to the B-1 business visa as a key part of his company's strategy. With a B-1 visa, visitors can freely travel to the United States for meetings, conferences, and even training seminars. B-1 visas are relatively easy to get, and can be valid for as long as 10 years.

Blueseed plans to provide regular ferry service between the ship to the United States. While Blueseed residents would need to do their actual work—such as writing code—on the ship, Marty envisions them making regular trips to Silicon Valley to meet with clients, investors, and business partners.

With the ship only 12 miles offshore, it should be practical to make a day trip to the mainland and return in the evening. A B-1 visa also permits overnight stays.

"A little bit of uncertainty every time"

Ars asked Greg Siskind, an immigration attorney with a national employment practice, to evaluate Blueseed's legal strategy. "What they're proposing seems consistent with the law," he told us. "They rightly have bypassed the most difficult part of the process, which is getting a work visa to come to the US. By moving all of the productive work offshore, it increases the odds that people will be able to do business in Silicon Valley."

But he said the uncertainties of the immigration system could cause headaches for Blueseed residents. One source of uncertainty is in getting the B-1 visa in the first place—though potential entrepreneurs should be able to get that sorted out before moving to the ship. The more serious problem is the risk of being turned away during each trip from the boat to California.

There will be "a little bit of uncertainty every time they come in," Siskind said. Each trip to the mainland would require an inspection by an immigration official who would have discretion to decide who to let into the country. "Depending on what that person had for breakfast may determine the future of your business," he said.

However, Siskind said that the political environment has gotten better for a project like Blueseed. Entrepreneurs are popular among voters, and Siskind says that immigration officials have been "somewhat on the defensive" due to a perception that the immigration system is insufficiently welcoming of potential job-creators. "I think they'll be the poster child to demonstrate what's wrong with the system," he said, which would make immigration officials reluctant to give Blueseed residents too much trouble when they arrive on American soil for business meetings.

Marty tells us that getting permission to enter the United States permanently becomes much easier once a firm grows. "If you have a $5 million-10 million company, there are several avenues and channels you can use to be in the country," he said. So the Blueseed ship would provide temporary lodgings until a startup grew large enough to move to the mainland.

Seasteading light

Marty met his cofounder, Dario Mutabdzija when both were employees of the Seasteading Institute, a nonprofit we covered back in 2008. The Institute promotes a long-term vision of autonomous floating city-states on the open ocean. Institute founder Patri Friedman hopes that the emergence of seasteads could make it possible for people to experiment with new political systems.

Obviously, it's a grandiose vision, and the handful of past efforts to create new nations at sea have been unsuccessful. We asked Marty what makes his company different.

"A lot of seasteading projects in the past lacked a business model that made what they're doing work," he said. "We're solving a very specific and very big problem."

He also expressed a desire to avoid antagonizing the US government. Some past seasteading proposals involved activities, such as gambling and prostitution, that are not permitted in most of the United States and "would not be seen favorably" here. Marty says Blueseed will be different, and will discourage such activities from occurring onboard. "Everyone who comes on board will have to be checked," he said. "There are certain things we don't want on board." He hopes that such policies will earn the company goodwill with government officials and help with any immigration issues that may arise.

Bootstrapping

Of course, none of these concerns will matter if Blueseed can't get its unusually ambitious business plan off the ground. A typical Silicon Valley startup needs an office, servers, and enough capital to pay salaries for a handful of employees until the company's product gains traction. Blueseed will need a lot more than that before it gets its first paying customer.

The firm is currently conducting an environmental impact study. When that's completed, the firm will need to acquire or lease a large ship. Then they'll need to retrofit it for use as a floating apartment and office complex. They'll need to hire a crew with a variety of skills—cooks, doctors, psychologists, lawyers, security officers, and many more. The company estimates they'll need 200-300 crew members in total.

Planned Blueseed location

The firm must arrange for regular ferry service; it hopes to offer two or three trips per day. And obviously, Internet service will be essential. They're still researching options, but the tentative plan is for a high-speed fixed wireless connection with a satellite backup.

Then they'll need to attract paying customers. Marty envisions the Blueseed ship as a floating incubator. They'll charge rent, but also take a small equity stake in each startup that comes on board. He hopes to cultivate a network of investors to help identify promising entrepreneurs. Blueseed will also accept applications directly from would-be entrepreneurs. Marty says they've already had expressions of interest from around the world.

The firm will also need considerable legal advice to navigate these uncharted waters of immigration law. Blueseed has already begun consulting with a few immigration attorneys as they plan their venture (the lawyers they're working with get high marks from Siskind) but they'll presumably need a small army of legal advisors to advise hundreds of would-be entrepreneurs as they make plans to join the vessel. It's likely the firm will need the services of lobbyists and PR professionals to make sure it stays on the US government's good side.

Needless to say, this is too much for Blueseed's three-member staff to handle by itself. Marty says the company plans to delegate as much of the work as possible to more knowledgeable third parties. He plans to draw heavily on established maritime firms to handle the logistical details.

"There are people out there who do the management and operations of maritime businesses," Marty said. "They manage bringing in supplies. They'll even manage the cooking staff on board, manage the maintenance of the ship, and insurance issues."

Blueseed estimates that rents will range from $1,200 per month for the smallest rooms to $3,000 for the largest—figures Marty says are comparable to what entrepreneurs would pay for an apartment and office in Silicon Valley.

"A real shame"

Blueseed's business model seems like a long shot. Buying, outfitting, staffing, and filling a 1,000-person ship seems like a tall order for even the most talented three-person team. But most startups are long shots, and we'd love to be proven wrong.

Still, Siskind argues the real problem is that such a project is even necessary. He believes that our immigration system has been costing Americans jobs for years. He pointed to Microsoft's decision to open a new Vancouver office in 2007 as an example. He said the decision to open the facility, which could eventually have as many as 5,000 employees, was motivated by the difficulty of getting visas for foreign workers.

"They chose Vancouver because they wanted to be relatively close to Seattle," Siskind says. The decision to locate in Vancouver "was a real shame because out of those 5,000 jobs, at least 4,000 were going to be for American workers." Now most of those jobs will go to Canadians, and Microsoft will be able to bring in non-Canadian workers under Canada's less onerous immigration system.

Whether it succeeds or not, Blueseed is going to spark a conversation about America's flawed immigration system. Perhaps a decade from now, international waters near the California coastline will be dotted with floating incubators. But we'd rather see Congress put Blueseed out of business by allowing anyone who wants to start a business in Silicon Valley to do so.

US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

By Nate Anderson

After a series of one-sided hearings, luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and transfer them all to US-based registrar GoDaddy. The judge also ordered "all Internet search engines" and "all social media websites"—explicitly naming Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google—to "de-index" the domain names and to remove them from any search results.

The case has been a remarkable one. Concerned about counterfeiting, Chanel has filed a joint suit in Nevada against nearly 700 domain names that appear to have nothing in common. When Chanel finds more names, it simply uses the same case and files new requests for more seizures. (A recent November 14 order went after an additional 228 sites; none had a chance to contest the request until after it was approved and the names had been seized.)

How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit. The other 225 sites were seized based on a Chanel anti-counterfeiting specialist browsing the Web.

That was good enough for Judge Kent Dawson to order the names seized and transferred to GoDaddy, where they would all redirect to a page serving notice of the seizure. In addition, a total ban on search engine indexing was ordered, one which neither Bing nor Google appears to have complied with yet.

Missing from the ruling is any discussion of the Internet's global nature; the judge shows no awareness that the domains in question might not even be registered in this country, for instance, and his ban on search engine and social media indexing apparently extends to the entire world. (And, when applied to US-based companies like Twitter, apparently compels them to censor the links globally rather than only when accessed by people in the US.) Indeed, a cursory search through the list of offending domains turns up poshmoda.ws, a site registered in Germany. The German registrar has not yet complied with the US court order, though most other domain names on the list are .com or .net names and have been seized.

The US government has made similar domain name seizures through Operation In Our Sites, grabbing US-based domains that end in .com and .net even when the sites are located abroad. Such moves by themselves would seem to do little to stop piracy in the long-term; they simply teach would-be miscreants to register future domain names in other countries.

Why wait for SOPA?

Lawyer Venkat Balasubramani, writing about the case yesterday, sums it up eloquently: "Wow."

"I'm sympathetic to the 'whack-a-mole' problem rights owners face, but this relief is just extraordinarily broad and is on shaky procedural grounds," he writes. "I'm not sure how this court can direct a registry to change a domain name's registrar of record or Google to de-list a site, but the court does so anyway. This is probably the most problematic aspect of the court's orders."

Rightsholders have asked Congress to write these provisions (and a few more) into law, and they have pushed for government seizures like those from Operation In Our Sites (which just seized another batch of new domains this last weekend). But as Balasubramani points out, cases like Chanel's show that rightsholders can already get what they want from judges, and they can go after far more sites more quickly than the government.

"The fight against SOPA [the Stop Online Piracy Act] may be a red herring in some ways," he notes, "since IP plaintiffs are fashioning very similar remedies in court irrespective of the legislation. Thus, even if SOPA is defeated, it may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory—opponents may win the battle but may not have gained much as a result."

Free U.S. citizen Joe Gordon

Far too many Americans don't have jobs. But all of us still have a right to criticize whomever we choose.

Well, at least we have that right as long as we don't go to Thailand. In that distant realm, people from anywhere are apparently at risk of arrest if they say or write -- or have said or written -- anything negative about the king.

That's the fix Thai-born U.S. citizen Joe Gordon has found himself in since May, when he was arrested for lese-majeste ("crimes against sovereigns," in this ridiculous case the "crime" of "insulting the dignity" of King Bhumibol Adulyadej).

The alleged offense that could produce a 15-year prison sentence for Mr. Gordon? Translating -- while living in Colorado -- excerpts of a Thai-banned biography entitled "The King Never Smiles" and posting them online.

The Daily Mail reported that after being refused bail eight times, Mr. Gordon pleaded guilty Monday. The 55-year-old former car salesman, wearing handcuffs and ankle shackles, told reporters as he was taken from the courtroom that the process was "not fair," adding: "How can I fight?"

And how can the U.S. help him?

The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok registered "public disappointment" in August when prosecutors finally filed the formal charges against him -- three months after he was put behind bars. But as hope for a royal pardon lingers, our State Department should escalate from expressions of dismay to stern warnings that Thailand must release Mr. Gordon or risk the cessation of diplomatic relations and the imposition of economic sanctions.

Meanwhile, exercise our precious First Amendment freedom of speech -- and don't take it for granted.

Young jobseekers told to work without pay or lose unemployment benefits

People taking up work experience places – providing up to 30 hours a week of unpaid labour – face losing benefits if they quit

Britain's jobless young people are being sent to work for supermarkets and budget stores for up to two months for no pay and no guarantee of a job, the Guardian can reveal.

Under the government's work experience programme young jobseekers are exempted from national minimum wage laws for up to eight weeks and are being offered placements in Tesco, Poundland, Argos, Sainsbury's and a multitude of other big-name businesses.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) says that if jobseekers "express an interest" in an offer of work experience they must continue to work without pay, after a one-week cooling-off period or face having their benefits docked.

Young people have told the Guardian that they are doing up to 30 hours a week of unpaid labour and have to be available from 9am to 10pm.

In three such cases jobseekers also claim they were not told about the week's cooling-off period, and that once they showed a willingness to take part in the scheme they were told by their case manager they would be stripped of their £53- a-week jobseekers allowance (JSA) if they backed out.

The Guardian has also learned that lawyers are mounting a legal challenge to a separate work experience scheme known as mandatory work activity, which they argue represents a form of slavery under the Human Rights Act (HRA).

Cait Reilly, 22, is completing three weeks at Poundland, working five hours a day. Reilly, who graduated last year with a BSc in geology from Birmingham University, found herself with five other JSA claimants last week stacking and cleaning shelves at Poundland in south Birmingham.

She says there are about 15 other staff at the store but, unlike them, she will receive no remuneration for her work. "It seems we're being used as some free labour, especially in the runup to Christmas."

Reilly says she told her local jobcentre in King's Heath, Birmingham, that she did not need the experience in the store as she had already done plenty of retail work.

Despite DWP rules, Reilly says she was told by the jobcentre that she would lose her benefits if she did not take the Poundland placement. The DWP says jobseekers should be told about the cooling-off period but was unable to comment on individual cases without being given personal details."I was told [the work experience placement] was mandatory after I'd attended the [retail] open day," she said.

She said she felt she had to do it because "without my JSA, I would literally have nothing".

The work experience programme, which is separate from a multitude of other programmes designed to get people back into work, was advertised in January as voluntary after the time spent volunteering was increased from two to eight weeks.

However, the DWP has clarified that there is a clause which allows jobcentre case workers around the country to force unemployed people into placements. The DWP says that once people "express an interest", including verbal consent, in doing work experience they will lose their JSA if they pull out after their first week into the placement.

One big superstore told the Guardian it thought the entire scheme was voluntary and that people could pull out whenever they wanted without fear of penalty.

Under the scheme, there is no guarantee of a job, only an interview. Multiple jobseekers can work in one store at the same time, cleaning or stacking shelves and competing against each other for a potential offer of paid work.

The DWP has no overall figure for the numbers involved, so it is not known how many hundreds or thousands of young people are working without pay for months.

But including similar schemes such as mandatory work activity, sector-based work academies and the work programme, which is mainly run by private companies, the government expects hundreds of thousands of young people to do weeks of unpaid and forced work experience for big companies.

Figures released on Wednesday reveal that youth unemployment stands at 1.016 million.

As part of her placement Reilly has been given training at another company, which will gives her a City and Guilds qualification in retail.

The DWP says Reilly is likely not to be on the work experience scheme but on another placement called a sector-based work academy, which was announced this October.

The scheme is different from straight work experience in that it has a defined training element, but Reilly says that it was only ever told that she was doing work experience and that her work at King's Heath branch of Poundland has been very unstructured.

"No one really knew what we were supposed to be doing. We were just put on the shop floor and told to tidy shelves," she said.James Rayburn has just spent seven weeks working for Tesco doing, he says, the same work as other paid employees.

He said he had gone to the jobcentre in search of employment, and the manager there had told him that Tesco was looking for staff.

"I thought, that's quite handy because I knew a friend who used to work there and it sounds like quite good fun."

Like Reilly, Rayburn, 21, said that he had little instruction from the store in Warfield, Berkshire. "I didn't actually have much support …They were getting on with their own jobs … they left me to it," he said. "They said, 'Good work today, Joe'. That was it, everyday."

Rayburn, who was also told by his jobcentre he would lose his benefits if he did not work without pay, said he spent almost two months stacking and cleaning shelves and sometimes doing night shifts.

"They said [my JSA] would be cut off if I didn't do it."

Asked if he thought he should have been paid, he said: "I reckon they should have paid me … I was basically doing what a normal member of staff does for Tesco. I had the uniform and I was in the staff canteen. I obviously got access to the food and drinks in the staff canteen … that's what they let you do … but I got nothing else apart from that."

" I was there doing it as if I walked into the store and said, 'Look I'll help'."

In April, Tesco filed pre-tax profits of £3.5bn.

Like Reilly, Rayburn was not told that he had a week to refuse the placement. He was working at Tesco with two other young unemployed people who did get a job at the end of their placement.

Other large stores including Sainsbury's, Argos and Asda have been confirmed as providing work experience placements.

Solicitors from Public Interest Lawyers in Birmingham acting on behalf of two clients involved in the mandatory work activity programme have told the Guardian that they are seeking a judicial review of the scheme, arguing their clients were being forced to work against their will, amounting to a breach of their human rights under article 4 (2) of the HRA, which states: "No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour."

Jim Duffy from PIL said: "Forcing jobseekers to work for free may benefit big business but does nothing to break the cycle of unemployment and poverty. Instead it amounts to exploitation, decided at the whim of a Jobcentre Plus adviser."

Tesco said 150 people had carried out placements at its stores in the past two months. However, it told the Guardian it was under the impression that work experience placements were totally voluntary.

It said it would not be offering placements over Christmas, adding: "These placements are not a substitute for full-time employees."

Poundland also confirmed the practice but said it did not have exact numbers.

Sainsbury's said: "Following an approach from their local Jobcentre Plus and in the belief that they were doing the right thing, a small number of stores have recruited colleagues under this new initiative.

"We have since reminded our stores that they must continue our normal work placement policy, which means they will take on candidates only when there is a chance of a permanent role at the end of the placement."

The employment minister, Chris Grayling, has defended the scheme, saying: "Our work experience scheme is proving to be a big success with over half of young people leaving benefits after they have completed their placement. It is not mandatory but, once someone agrees to take part, we expect them to turn up or they will have their benefits stopped.

"Work experience will give young people a real taste of the work environment and act as a stepping stone into a career. And it's working.

"Jobcentre Plus is working with major multinationals and smaller businesses to offer thousands of opportunities for young people so that they can start to get on the job experience whilst enabling them to keep their benefits."

Oxford taxi conversations to be recorded, council rules

Campaigners have called Oxford City Council's decision to record all conversations in taxis "a staggering invasion of privacy".

By April 2015 it will be mandatory for all of the city's 600 plus cabs to have cameras fitted to record passengers.

The council said the cameras would run continuously, but only view footage relating to police matters would be reviewed.

Big Brother Watch said it was "a total disregard for civil liberties". Video and audio

The civil liberties campaign group intends to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) over the scheme, which includes both black cabs and private-hire vehicles.

An ICO spokeswoman said the plans were "highly intrusive and unlikely to be justified".

She added: "Licensing authorities must take account of people's right to privacy when deciding whether to impose CCTV as a licence condition for taxi drivers."

A council spokeswoman said the "video and audio would run all the time within the vehicle".

She said police would only locate footage, stored on a CCTV hard drive for 28 days, if it was needed for a police investigation.

She added: "The risk of intrusion into private conversations has to be balanced against the interests of public safety, both of passengers and drivers."

Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles said: "Given that one rail route to Witney [David Cameron's constituency] is through Oxford, we'll be letting the prime minister know that his staff might want to avoid using Oxford cabs."

The necessary equipment must be installed by taxi drivers licensed for the first time by 6 April 2012. A panic button must also be fitted.

Cabs already registered will have until April 2015 to get the kit fitted, the council said.

DOJ: Lying on Match.com needs to be a crime

by Declan McCullagh

The U.S. Department of Justice is defending computer hacking laws that make it a crime to use a fake name on Facebook or lie about your weight in an online dating profile at a site like Match.com.

In a statement obtained by CNET that's scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, the Justice Department argues that it must be able to prosecute violations of Web sites' often-ignored, always-unintelligible "terms of service" policies.
 
The law must allow "prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider," Richard Downing, the Justice Department's deputy computer crime chief, will tell the U.S. Congress tomorrow.

Scaling back that law "would make it difficult or impossible to deter and address serious insider threats through prosecution," and jeopardize prosecutions involving identity theft, misuse of government databases, and privacy invasions, according to Downing.

The law in question, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, has been used by the Justice Department to prosecute a woman, Lori Drew, who used a fake MySpace account to verbally attack a 13-year old girl who then committed suicide. Because MySpace's terms of service prohibit impersonation, Drew was convicted of violating the CFAA. Her conviction was later thrown out.

What makes this possible is a section of the CFAA that was never intended to be used that way: a general-purpose prohibition on any computer-based act that "exceeds authorized access." To the Justice Department, this means that a Web site's terms of service define what's "authorized" or not, and ignoring them can turn you into a felon.

On the other hand, because millions of Americans likely violate terms of service agreements every day, you'd have a lot of company.

A letter (PDF) sent to the Senate in August by a left-right coalition including the ACLU, Americans for Tax Reform, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and FreedomWorks warns of precisely that. "If a person assumes a fictitious identity at a party, there is no federal crime," the letter says. "Yet if they assume that same identity on a social network that prohibits pseudonyms, there may again be a CFAA violation. This is a gross misuse of the law."

Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department computer crime prosecutor who's now a professor of law at George Washington University, says the government's arguments are weak.

Kerr, who is also testifying tomorrow before a House Judiciary subcommittee, told CNET today that:
The Justice Department claims to have an interest in enforcing Terms of Use and computer use policies under the CFAA, but its examples mostly consist of cases in which the conduct described has already been criminalized by statutes other than the CFAA. Further, my proposed statutory fix (see the second proposal in my testimony) would preserve the government's ability to prosecute the remaining cases DOJ mentions while not raising the civil liberties problems of the current statute.

Kerr's testimony gives other examples of terms of service violations that would become criminal. Google says you can't use its services if "you are not of legal age to form a binding contract," which implies that millions of teenagers would be unindicted criminals. Match.com, meanwhile, says you can't lie about your age, criminalizing the profile of anyone not a model of probity.

"I do not see any serious argument why such conduct should be criminal," Kerr says.

The Justice Department disagrees. In fact, as part of a broader push to rewrite cybersecurity laws, the White House has proposed (PDF) broadening, not limiting, CFAA's reach.

Stewart Baker, an attorney at Steptoe and Johnson who was previously a Homeland Security assistant secretary and general counsel at the National Security Agency, has suggested that the administration's proposals to expand CFAA are Draconian. Uploading copyrighted YouTube videos twice "becomes a pattern of racketeering," with even more severe criminal penalties, "at least if Justice gets its way," Baker wrote.

In a kind of pre-emptive attack against Kerr's proposed fixes, the Justice Department's Downing says the CFAA properly criminalizes "improper" online activities.

"Businesses should have confidence that they can allow customers to access certain information on the business's servers, such as information about their own orders and customer information, but that customers who intentionally exceed those limitations and obtain access to the business's proprietary information and the information of other customers can be prosecuted," Downing's prepared remarks say.

Update, November 18, 8 p.m. PT: A Justice Department representative contacted us today and sent over a transcript from the congressional hearing. Here's an excerpt:

Mr. Downing: There have been a lot of characterizations of what the Department of Justice's position is on the 1030(a)(2) question, and that it exceeds authorized access.

Let me be very clear that the DOJ is in no way interested in bringing cases against the people who lie about their age on a dating site or anything of the sort. We don't have time or resources to do that. And in fact, no court has in fact ruled that that's an appropriate use of the statute, and quite to the contrary, the one case that's addressed it ruled that it is not an appropriate use, and the government has not brought any further cases. So we're a little bit concerned whether this is truly a problem.

Given all that, however, we recognize that this is an issue and we are very much interested in working with the committee to resolve this question in a way that's proper for all. What we do need to be careful about is to make sure that as we do that, that we don't harm the ability to bring cases that everyone in the room would agree are proper and appropriate ones, and so that as we think about what sort of solution might be available here, that we do it in a way that isn't going to cause other harm and actually harm our ability to create deterrents in this area, which is so important.

An Explosion of Opposition to the Internet Blacklist Bill

On the eve of the House Judiciary Committee's hearing on the Stop Internet Piracy Act—where five witnesses will appear in favor of the bill to just one against—a broad group of tech companies, lawmakers, experts, professors, and rights groups have come out against the bill.

The statements, written by people from a variety of backgrounds and political persuasions, incorporate many of the same broad themes: SOPA will threaten perfectly legal websites, stifle innovation, kill jobs, and substantially disrupt the infrastructure of the Internet.  Here is a small sample of what they had to say:

A veritable Who's Who of tech giants—including Facebook, Google, Twitter, eBay, Yahoo, AOL and Mozilla—explicitly came out against both SOPA and PROTECT-IP in a letter to the ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees:

Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of web sites. We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity. We cannot support these bills as written…

A bipartisan group of ten Congress members, including Republican Presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul and Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren, signed a letter expressing their opposition to the bill:

The impact on new businesses and startups, particularly small businesses, will be…detrimental. For example, venture capitalists will be hesitant to invest in new Internet-based businesses if they fear their money will be tied up in litigation…At a time of continued economic uncertainty, this legislation will result in fewer new businesses, few new investments, and fewer new jobs.”

A group of over 100 distinguished Intellectual Property law professors updated their original letter from earlier this year about PROTECT-IP and expressed that the SOPA would not only hurt the economy, but is unconstitutional:

SOPA is a dangerous bill. It threatens the most vibrant sector of our economy—Internet commerce. It is directly at odds with the United States’ foreign policy of Internet openness, a fact that repressive regimes will seize upon to justify their censorship of the Internet. And it violates the First Amendment.

The American Civil Liberties Union wrote a detailed letter to the Judiciary Committee outlining their objections to each provision of SOPA and expressing the significant free speech concerns. They concluded:

[T]he bill is severely flawed and will result in the takedown of large amounts of non- infringing content from the internet in contravention of the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution…. SOPA enables law enforcement to target all sites that contain some infringing content – no matter how trivial – and those who “facilitate” infringing content. The potential for impact on non-infringing content is exponentially greater under SOPA than under other versions of this bill.

Dozens of groups from the international human rights community signed onto a letter to the House Judiciary Committee explaining how SOPA would destroy Internet Freedom worldwide:

Through SOPA, the United States is attempting to dominate a shared global resource. Building a nationwide firewall and creating barriers for international website and service operators makes a powerful statement that the United States is not interested in participating in a global information infrastructure. Instead, the United States would be creating the very barriers that restrict the freeflow of information that it has vigorously challenged abroad.

The Global Network Initiative, a diverse coalition of organizations ranging from human rights groups to academics, investors, and technologists, urged Congress to re-examine the bill with an eye towards balancing infringement prevention against surveillance and censorship concerns:

It is critically important that Congress avoid measures that could erode free expression norms in a way that would set dangerous precedent for other countries considering similar measures, and make it more difficult for companies everywhere to resist surveillance and censorship demands that infringe upon individual rights. 

The Consumer Electronics Association, which comprises over 2,000 American technology companies, delivered a straightforward message about the disastrous consequences of failing to properly tailor the scope of the bill:

Our message today is simple: Don’t kill the Internet with SOPA. We strongly oppose counterfeiting and piracy. But solutions must be smart and targeted to get the bad guys without ensnaring legitimate innovators. 

Another letter, signed by many public interest groups including EFF, Public Knowledge, and New America, notes that SOPA represents a major step backwards, from the perspective of user privacy and security:

Current enforcement mechanisms were designed to avoid the countervailing harms of conscripting intermediaries into being points of control on the Internet and deciding what is and what is not copyright-infringing expression. As drafted, SOPA radically alters digital copyright policy in ways that will be detrimental to online expression, innovation, and security.

Please make your voice heard alongside this diverse coalition: Oppose the Internet Blacklist Bills!

Militarization Of Campus Police

Yesterday, police at UC Davis attacked seated students with a chemical gas.

I teach at UC Davis and I personally know many of the students who were the victims of this brutal and unprovoked assault. They are top students. In fact, I can report that among the students I know, the higher a student's grade point average, the more likely it is that they are centrally involved in the protests.

This is not surprising, since what is at issue is the dismantling of public education in California. Just six years ago, tuition at the University of California was $5357. Tuition is currently $12,192. According to current proposals, it will be $22,068 by 2015-2016. We have discussed this in my classes, and about one third of my students report that their families would likely have to pull them out of school at the new tuition. It is not a happy moment when the students look around the room and see who it is that will disappear from campus. These are young people who, like college students everywhere and at all times, form some of the deepest friendships they will have in their lives.
This is what motivates students who have never taken part in any sort of social protest to "occupy" the campus quad. And indeed, there were students who were attacked with chemical agents by robocops who were engaging in their first civic protest.

Since the video of the assault has gone viral, I will assume that most of you have seen the shocking footage. Let's take a look at the equally outrageous explanations and justifications that have come from UC Davis authorities.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi sent a letter to the university last night. Chancellor Katehi tells us that:

The group was informed in writing... that if they did not dismantle the encampment, it would have to be removed...  However a number of protestors refused our warning, offering us no option but to ask the police to assist in their removal.

No other options? The list of options is endless. To begin with, the chancellor could have thanked them for their sense of civic duty. The occupation could have been turned into a teach-in on the role of public education in this country. There could have been a call for professors to hold classes on the quad. The list of "other options" is endless.

Chancellor Katehi asserts that "the encampment raised serious health and safety concerns." Really? Twenty tents on the quad "raised serious health and safety concerns?" Has the chancellor been to a frat party lately? Or a football game? Talk about "serious health and safety concerns."

How about this for another option: three years ago there was a very similar occupation of the quad at Columbia University in New York City by students protesting the way the expansion of the university was displacing residents in the neighborhood. There was a core group of twenty or thirty students there around the clock. At the high points there were 200-300. The administration met with the students and held serious discussions about their concerns. And after a couple of weeks the protest had run its course and the students took the tents down. The most severe action that was even contemplated on the part of the university was to expel students who were hunger striking, under a rule that allows the school to expel students who are considered a threat to themselves. But no one was actually expelled.
Remember when universities used to expel students instead of spray them with chemical agents?
We should also note that at Columbia, a private university, the campus police carry no arms and no pepper spray. This is what Columbia University police look like when arresting students:


This is what the police at Davis, a public university, looked like yesterday:

It is worth noting that in the Columbia photo, the one without helmets, guns, or chemical assault weapons, the student is being arrested for selling cocaine. In the Davis photo the students were defending public education.

Could Chancellor Katehi please explain what "serious health and safety concerns" were posed at Davis that were absent at Columbia? The only thing that involved a "serious health and safety concern" at Davis yesterday was the pepper spray. I just spoke with a doctor who works for the California Department of Corrections, who participated in a recent review of the medical literature on pepper spray for the CDC. They concluded that the medical consequences of pepper spray are poorly understood but involve serious health risk. As with chili peppers, some people tolerate pepper spray well, while others have extreme reactions. It is not known why this is the case. As a result, if a doctor sees pepper spray used in a prison, he or she is required to file a written report. And regulations prohibit the use of pepper spray on inmates in all circumstances other than the immediate threat of violence. If a prisoner is seated, by definition the use of pepper spray is prohibited. Any prison guard who used pepper spray on a seated prisoner would face immediate disciplinary review for the use of excessive force. Even in the case of a prison riot in which inmates use extreme violence, once a prisoner sits down he or she is not considered to be an imminent threat. And if prison guards go into a situation where the use of pepper spray is considered likely, they are required to have medical personnel nearby to treat the victims of the chemical agent.

Apparently, in the state of California felons incarcerated for violent crimes have rights that students at public universities do not. 

Amazingly, UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza attempted to justify this crime.

If you look at the video you are going to see that there were 200 people in that quad. Hindsight is 20-20 and based on the situation we were sitting in, ultimately that was the decision that was made.

Yes, there were about 200 people in the quad. It is a piece of grass that was placed by the designers of the campus to be an open, central meeting place for the university community. But somehow, 200 students in the quad has become a problem. A huge problem. A problem so big that, well, yeah it was too bad those kids got pepper sprayed, but hey, there were 200 people in the quad.

Like the chancellor, Chief Spicuzza justified the assault by saying that the protest was "not safe for multiple reasons," none of which she specified.

How is it that non-violent student protest has suddenly become "unsafe" in the United States?
Just to jolt us back to reality for a moment, remember Amy Carter, daughter of former President Jimmy Carter. In 1985 she was arrested in an anti-apartheid demonstration at the South African Embassy in Washington. Like the Davis students, she was arrested when she refused an order to disperse. But she wasn't sprayed with a chemical weapon, or bodyslammed to the ground. She was handcuffed and led to a police car, telling reporters, ''I'm proud to be my father's daughter.'' The following year she was arrested again, this time at the University of Massachusetts protesting CIA recruitment there.

In short, Amy was just the sort of student that the administration of the UC is panicked about. She moved from place to place. She was arrested multiple times. She was not a student at UM at the time of her arrest there. She was a sophomore at Brown. This is the big fear the UC leadership keeps raising about today's campus protests: the protests can't be allowed because they might involve "outside agitators" who are not students. Well, the former president's daughter was just such an outside agitator. She even brought Abbie Hoffman to get arrested with her at a university where she was not a student! The sky didn't fall. No one was injured. No weapons were used. And Amy was acquitted of all charges, successfully arguing in court that CIA involvement in Central America and elsewhere was equivalent to trespassing in a burning building.

Now fast forward to today. Last week, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau issued a statement justifying the brutal use of police batons on student protesters like this:

It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience... the police were forced to use their batons.

Perhaps the Chancellors of Davis and Berkeley have never seen this photo of people with linked arms. It is an iconic image of non-violent civil disobedience in this country.

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau thus joins the likes of Bull Connor, the notorious segregationist and architect of the violent repression of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama, as some of the very few people who view the non-violent tactics of Martin Luther King as violent.
Most people disagree, which is why King was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

Throughout my life I have seen, and sometimes participated in, peaceful civil disobedience in which sitting and linking arms was understood by citizens as a posture that indicates, in the clearest possible way available, protestors' intent to be non-violent. If example, if you look through training materials from groups like the Quakers, the various pacifist organization and centers, and Christian organizations, it is universally taught that sitting and linking arms is the best way to de-escalate any confrontation between police and people exercising their first amendment right to public speech.
Likewise, for over 30 years I have seen police universally understand this gesture. Many many times I have seen police treat protestors who sat and linked arms when told they must disperse or face arrest as a very routine matter: the police then approach the protestors individually and ask them if, upon arrest, they are going to walk of their own accord or not the police will have to carry them. In fact, this has become so routine that I have often wondered if this form of protest had become so scripted as to have lost most of its meaning.

No more.

What we have seen in the last two weeks around the country, and now at Davis, is a radical departure from the way police have handled protest in this country for half a century. Two days ago an 84-year-old woman was sprayed with a chemical assault agent in Seattle in the same manner our students at Davis were maced. A Hispanic New York City Councilman was brutally thrown to the ground, arrested, and held cuffed in a police van for two hours for no reason at all, and was never even told why he was arrested. And I am sure you all know about former Marine Lance Cpl. Scott Olsen, who suffered a fractured skull after police hit him with a tear gas canister, then rolled a flash bomb into the group of citizens trying to give him emergency medical care.

Last week, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper published an essay arguing that the current epidemic of police brutality is a reflection of the militarization (his word, not mine) of our urban police forces, the result of years of the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror. Stamper was chief of police during the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, and is not a voice that can be easily dismissed.

Yesterday, the militarization of policing in the U.S. arrived on my own campus.

These issues go to the core of what democracy means. We have a major economic crisis in this country that was brought on by the greedy and irresponsible behavior of big banks. No banker has been arrested, and certainly none have been pepper sprayed. Arrests and chemical assault is for those trying to defend their homes, their jobs, and their schools.

These are not trivial matters. This is a moment to stand up and be counted. I am proud to teach at a university where students have done so.

An Open Letter to the Winter Patriot

By Mitch Green

The following letter reflects my view on the subject of civil disobedience…I offer my opinion as an Army veteran, student of the economy, and critic of an ongoing effort to wage economic war on the vast majority the population. If these words move you, I urge you to consider honestly the consequences if you decide to act.


As the Occupy movement continues to grow in defiance of the heavy-handed police action determined to squelch it, a natural question emerges: What point will the military be summoned to contain the cascade of popular dissent? And if our nation’s finest are brought into this struggle to stand between the vested authority of the state and the ranks of those who petition them for a redress of grievance, what may we expect the outcome to be?

If history is our guide then we know that story all too well. Behind a thin veil of red, white and blue stands a nation that has used its military might to respond forcefully to any public contempt for the very institutions which bind us in exclusion from the liberty those colors evoke. Just as a training collar keeps a dog in check, a highly militarized police force responds mercilessly, sharply, and without hesitation with an array of chemical warfare and thuggish brutality. And where they fail, divisions of soldiers stand ready to deliver a serious and painful lesson to all who demonstrate their unwillingness to wait for democracy.

This has been the history of democracy in America. The ink on the pages that chronicle the use of state violence towards an unruly citizenry is dry. We cannot rewrite them. We read them in lament. But for each new day history waits; at the dawn of each morning we are presented with the gift of creation. The prevailing thought woven into the fabric of our society today, threaded through both patterns of conservative and liberal ideology, remains the recognition that something is very wrong with the world. Naturally, we form the question: Can we do things differently? Once we animate that thought and present it to society as a question demanding an answer, we begin to sketch out our draft of the world in the pages of history.

I call upon my brothers and sisters in the armed forces to ink their pens and help us write these next few, and most important pages in the history of our social life. Soon, it is quite likely that you will be mobilized to aid the police in their effort to contain or disperse what their bosses see as an imminent threat to the sanctity of their authority. As that day draws near, I remind you of these familiar words:

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Those that take this oath seriously are faced with a terrible conflict. You must battle internally between the affirmation that you will place your body between the social contract embedded in the Constitution and those that seek its destruction, while maintaining your loyalty to the government you serve and the orders issued by its officers. Sadly, society has placed a twin tax upon you by asking that you sacrifice both your body and your morality. This tax has been levied solely upon you overseas, and soon they’ll come to collect domestically. Your government in its expression of corporate interests relies upon your tenacity to endure, and your relentless willingness to sacrifice. And so you do.

Now, more than ever we need your sacrifice. But, I’m asking you to soldier in a different way. If called upon to deny the people of their first amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievance, disregard the order. Abstain from service. Or if you are so bold, join us. Make no mistake: The consequences for such decisions are severe. You will be prosecuted under the full extent of the law. But sacrifice is your watch word.
 
Thomas Paine wrote in 1776:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Today we are faced with a new revolution. This time we are fighting to preserve our democracy, rather than to establish a new one. And just as a grateful nation relied upon the Winter Soldier to deliver us from the colonial yoke of oppression, we ask that you aid us in our struggle to be free from the bonds of debt peonage and false representation. In return we will stand in your defense as the elite, who have gained so much from your service, attempt to strip you of your hard won honor.

Why Do Police Officers Use Pepper Spray?

By Brandon Keim

When pepper spray became a mainstream law enforcement tool in the 1990s, it was hailed as a relatively peaceful alternative to harsh physical violence.

But as demonstrated by the routine spraying of Occupy Wall Street activists, culminating in the horrific assault at the University of California, Davis, pepper spray can too easily become a tool of first and excessive resort.

“I can’t get into the head of people using it in New York and Davis and around the country, but it seems that rather than turning to other tactics, they turn to the simple tool,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina. “There’s an overreliance on technology.”



The incident at UC Davis, where campus police officers sprayed Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream directly into the faces and mouths of sitting students, provoked both moral disgust and a renewed attention to the physical dangers of pepper spray. Far from being what one Fox News pundit called a “food product,” pepper is a dangerous and sometimes deadly weapon.

Receiving relatively less attention is the psychology underlying pepper spray use, which hasn’t been studied much but parallels the use of Tasers. Like pepper sprays, Tasers were supposed to be tools of intermediate physical force, an alternative to hitting a resisting suspect with batons or grappling them to the ground. But Tasers also became alternatives to less-violent tactics and were used in situations where suspects had not physically resisted arrest.

Rather than talking, police too often go straight to the electricity — and the same may also happen with pepper spray.

“When you have something that is readily available to you, something that’s on your belt like pepper spray, and you have a confrontation in front of you — the first thing you’re going to do, because you’re human, is use whatever is right there,” said Ana Yáñez-Correa, executive director of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, a non-partisan group that has successfully lobbied to make pepper spray less readily available to law enforcement officers in that state’s youth correctional system.

“All of the training that you might use, anything that allows you to use your other skills, goes out the door,” Yáñez-Correa added. “The first thing you do is say, ‘I’m going to pepper-spray that kid.’ That’s a natural response.”
‘The use of spray may not necessarily be an alternative to force, but provides officers with options to use more force — perhaps unnecessarily. In other words, if it is there, they will use it.’

Indeed, while law enforcement scholars unanimously acknowledge that, on a per-violent-incident basis, pepper spray results in fewer injuries than direct physical violence, research suggests that having pepper spray could lead to higher numbers of violent incidents.

In one analysis, criminologists found that police use of force rose by 33 percent in Concord, North Carolina following the approval of pepper spray as a law enforcement tool. After an arrestee died in custody after being sprayed, pepper spray use was restricted; use-of-force incidents then fell by 57 percent, even though arrest rates rose by almost 4 percent.

“This suggests that the use of spray may not necessarily be an alternative to force, but provides officers with options to use more force — perhaps unnecessarily. In other words, if it is there, they will use it,” wrote that study’s co-authors, criminologists Paul Friday and Richard Lumb of the University of North Carolina.

That the number of times police used force seemed disconnected from threats to public order led Friday and Lumb to hypothesize that having pepper spray could change how officers behaved.

“Do officers become more assertive in suspect confrontational situations when they are ‘armed’ with an additional tool? Does the possession of OC spray unreasonably increase the sense of self-confidence and security and thereby create a self-fulfilling prophecy of threat?” they wondered. “While OC spray, when used, reduced injuries, does its mere possession increase the potential for physical force being used?”

Two studies conducted in the Netherlands showed that pepper spray was useful for subduing violent subjects, but actually caused non-violent situations to escalate into violence — and about 10 percent of all uses were carried out against non-threatening subjects.

In a 2010 Police Quarterly review of Taser use and safety, Alpert and University of Miami criminologist Roger Dunham recommend rigorous studies of how carrying Tasers changes threat perception in police. The same studies could also be carried out on pepper spray.

Understanding the psychology of policing is also very important, said Dunham.

“In their culture, it’s important to have authority. Most policemen will say that the only thing they have to protect them is authority, and they’re very sensitive to people who do not respect their authority,” he said. “When an officer gets on the scene, the number-one thing they’re supposed to do is take control” — and that dynamic is heightened when they know that other police will judge their actions.

“If you’re sitting there, and I give you a lawful order to move, and you lock arms, is that an act of resistance? I don’t see it that way. Some people do,” said Alpert.

In light of that dynamic, departmental recommendations against using pepper spray on nonviolent arrestees may be needed. About 45 percent of U.S. police agencies now allow pepper spray to be used in response to passive resistance, like that seen at UC Davis.

Restrictions on pepper spray use could force police to fall back on less-violent tactics, such as verbal deescalation. Failing that, Alpert said the UC Davis police could have pressed on protesters’ pressure points or used batons to pry them apart.

“You don’t need the level of pain of a taser, hitting with a baton or pepper spray,” Alpert said. “In many ways, we should go back to some of the older, more traditional ways of dealing with people. If you can’t talk reason with them, and you have legitimate authority to use force, you can start slow and see what’s going to happen. Use brains, not brawn.”

Federal agents say 88-year-old Saratoga man's invention is being used by meth labs

By Sean Webby

Eighty-eight-year-old retired metallurgist Bob Wallace is a self-described tinkerer, but he hardly thinks of himself as the Thomas Edison of the illegal drug world.

He has nothing to hide. His product is packaged by hand in a cluttered Saratoga garage. It's stored in a garden shed in the backyard. The whole operation is guarded by an aged, congenial dog named Buddy.

But federal and state drug enforcement agents are coming down hard on Wallace's humble homemade solution, which he concocted to help backpackers purify water.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and state regulators say druggies can use the single ingredient in his "Polar Pure" water purifier -- iodine -- to make crystal meth.

Wallace says federal and state agents have effectively put him out of business, because authorities won't clear the way for him to buy or sell the iodine he needs for his purification bottles. He has been rejected for a state permit by the Department of Justice and is scheduled to appeal his case before an administrative judge in Sacramento next month.

Meanwhile, the exasperated Stanford University-educated engineer and his 85-year-old girlfriend said the government -- in its zeal to clamp down on meth labs -- has instead stopped hikers, flood victims and others from protecting themselves against a bad case of the runs.

Collateral damage

"This old couple, barely surviving old farts, and we're supposed to be meth dealers? This is just plain stupid," Wallace said, as he sat in the nerve center of his not-so-clandestine compound surrounded by contoured hiking maps, periodic tables and the prototypes of metal snowshoes he invented a few years ago. "These are the same knotheads that make you take your shoes off in the airport."

When asked about Wallace, the DEA -- which, in all fairness, does not provide security in airports -- responded in an email that some investigations revealed that methamphetamine labs were using Polar Pure.

"Methamphetamine is an insidious drug that causes enormous collateral damage," wrote Barbara Carreno, a DEA spokeswoman. "If Mr. Wallace is no longer in business he has perhaps become part of that collateral damage, for it was not a result of DEA regulations, but rather the selfish actions of criminal opportunists. Individuals that readily sacrifice human lives for money."

Wallace and his partner, Marjorie Ottenberg, came up with the idea about 30 years ago as they planned to scale the Popocatépetl volcano in Mexico.

Hoping to avoid Montezuma's revenge, Ottenberg, a chemist by trade, read an article in Backpacker magazine about two doctors who had been infected with Giardia and recommended treating water with crystalline iodine.

"We knew the water was questionable down there, so we stole their idea," Wallace said with an unapologetic grin.

So in 1983, the couple began selling their brown bottles with a small sprinkling of iodine crystals -- about a quarter of an ounce -- in the bottom.

Polar Pure was an instant, if modest, hit among backpackers and world travelers. It was effective, light and never expired, unlike many other products. One bottle can disinfect about 2,000 quarts of water.

But about four years ago, the DEA began to look closely at the product, even citing it in a position paper, and suggested that it was being used by cranksters as well as campers.

In 2007, federal regulations were passed strictly regulating the chemical. Wallace said the new rules mandated that he had to pay a $1,200 regulatory fee, get federal and state permits, keep track of exactly who was buying his product and report anyone suspicious.

Wallace ignored the fee. And if they wanted a list of his customers, he fumed, all they would get would be camping equipment store managers and wholesalers.

There have been two major spikes in demand for Polar Pure: One in 1999 on the eve of Y2K fears and another soon after the Japanese tsunami, when people were afraid that a radiation cloud would float across the Pacific and poison water. Wallace said he sold close to 24,000 bottles in his last few months of business at $6.50 a pop.

Special Agent Richard Camps, a San Jose-based state narcotics task force commander, said he received reports of suspicious buyers.

"Weird-looking people, 'Beavis and Butt-Head'-types, were coming into camping stores and buying everything they had on the shelves," Camps said. "Then they would take off into the mountains and try to cook meth with it." The DEA reported agents found Polar Pure at a meth lab they dismantled in Tennessee two years ago.

Seeking changes

At its height, Polar Pure was bringing in about $100,000 a year, Wallace said during an interview.

"We do?" Ottenberg said in surprise. "Why don't we go on more vacations?"

"Because we're too old to do anything any more," Wallace replied.

In May, his Oklahoma distributor -- warned by the DEA -- said he could no longer send Wallace iodine.

For Wallace to comply, the state Department of Justice fingerprinted the couple and told Wallace he needed to show them such things as a solid security system for his product. Wallace sent a photograph of Buddy sitting on the front porch.

"These guys don't go for my humor," Wallace said. "Cops are the most humorless knotheads on the planet." Even so, Marco Campagna, Wallace's lawyer, promised to strengthen security and make other improvements to allay the government's concerns.

Wallace is not against regulation per se, although he thinks the demand for a customer list is an invasion of privacy and a waste of time. He just feels that the feds should tweak the law to allow distributors to pay a reasonable fee: $10, for example.

Wallace does not live a Pablo Escobar-like life. He putters, invents and drives his 1978 Mercedes-Benz that runs on cooking oil to the De Anza College track, where he jogs a few times a week, barefoot. His "bling" consists of a tumbled collection of obsidian, limestone and mica in the backyard.

"Do I look like a mafia agent?" he said.

It's not so much the financial hardship, Wallace said. It's the irritation of being prevented by what he calls an over-restrictive government to do whatever his restless mind wants to do.

"What the (expletive) else am I going to do? I'm 88!" he said. "We have to do something."

Contact Sean Webby at 408-920-5003.

WHAT IS POLAR PURE?

Polar Pure contains a small sprinkling of iodine crystals, which disinfects water tainted with bacteria.

WHY DO DRUG AGENTS CARE ABOUT IT?

Federal drug agents suspected methamphetamine-makers were using the iodine to make drugs, and strict regulations on the chemical were approved.

WHAT does it all mean for WALLACE?

Wallace said the new rules ordered him to pay a fee, get permits, and keep track of buyers. But his iodine distributor -- warned by the DEA -- won't sell to him.

Halifax County man dies after being shot with stun gun

Scotland Neck, N.C. — A 61-year-old Halifax County man died Tuesday, a day after police shocked him with a stun gun while he was riding his bike, family members said.

Scotland Neck Police Chief Joe Williams said they received a call Monday night about a man who fell off of his bicycle and injured himself in the parking lot of the BB&T bank, 1001 Main St. The caller was concerned that the man was drunk.

When Officer John Turner arrived, he saw Roger Anthony pedaling away along 10th Street. He followed Anthony in his patrol car, briefly put on his sirens and lights and yelled out of the window for him to stop, but Anthony continued to ride away, police said.

Williams said Turner then saw Anthony take something out his pocket and put it into his mouth. At that time, Turner got out of the car and yelled for Anthony to stop. When Anthony didn't stop, the officer used a stun gun on him, causing him to fall off of his bike.

Anthony was transported to Pitt County Memorial Hospital, where he was declared brain dead, his sister Gladys Freeman said. He was taken off of life support on Tuesday.

Freeman said her brother was disabled, suffered from seizures and had trouble hearing. She said he was riding his bike home from her house on Sunday night. Anthony lived alone in an independent living community.

Williams would not comment further on the incident, citing an ongoing investigation. Turner, who has been on the force for just over a month, has been placed on administrative leave.

Scotland Neck Mayor James Mills is calling for the State Bureau of Investigation to look into what happened.

"The best we've been able to determine is that he offered no threat," Mills said.

Milton Freeman said Anthony, his brother-in-law, used to smoke cigarettes, drink coffee and ride his bicycle around town. Anthony was nicknamed "Rabbit" because of his big ears.

"Why would you (use a stun gun on) a man on a bike? He didn’t do any crime. He wasn’t trying to escape. How (was) he going to escape on his bicycle?" Milton Freeman said.

Hope redux

Poet-Bashing Police

By ROBERT HASS

LIFE, I found myself thinking as a line of Alameda County deputy sheriffs in Darth Vader riot gear formed a cordon in front of me on a recent night on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is full of strange contingencies. The deputy sheriffs, all white men, except for one young woman, perhaps Filipino, who was trying to look severe but looked terrified, had black truncheons in their gloved hands that reporters later called batons and that were known, in the movies of my childhood, as billy clubs.

The first contingency that came to mind was the quick spread of the Occupy movement. The idea of occupying public space was so appealing that people in almost every large city in the country had begun to stake them out, including students at Berkeley, who, on that November night, occupied the public space in front of Sproul Hall, a gray granite Beaux-Arts edifice that houses the registrar’s offices and, in the basement, the campus police department.

It is also the place where students almost 50 years ago touched off the Free Speech Movement, which transformed the life of American universities by guaranteeing students freedom of speech and self-governance. The steps are named for Mario Savio, the eloquent undergraduate student who was the symbolic face of the movement. There is even a Free Speech Movement Cafe on campus where some of Mr. Savio’s words are prominently displayed: “There is a time ... when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part.”

Earlier that day a colleague had written to say that the campus police had moved in to take down the Occupy tents and that students had been “beaten viciously.” I didn’t believe it. In broad daylight? And without provocation? So when we heard that the police had returned, my wife, Brenda Hillman, and I hurried to the campus. I wanted to see what was going to happen and how the police behaved, and how the students behaved. If there was trouble, we wanted to be there to do what we could to protect the students.

Once the cordon formed, the deputy sheriffs pointed their truncheons toward the crowd. It looked like the oldest of military maneuvers, a phalanx out of the Trojan War, but with billy clubs instead of spears. The students were wearing scarves for the first time that year, their cheeks rosy with the first bite of real cold after the long Californian Indian summer. The billy clubs were about the size of a boy’s Little League baseball bat. My wife was speaking to the young deputies about the importance of nonviolence and explaining why they should be at home reading to their children, when one of the deputies reached out, shoved my wife in the chest and knocked her down.

Another of the contingencies that came to my mind was a moment 30 years ago when Ronald Reagan’s administration made it a priority to see to it that people like themselves, the talented, hardworking people who ran the country, got to keep the money they earned. Roosevelt’s New Deal had to be undealt once and for all. A few years earlier, California voters had passed an amendment freezing the property taxes that finance public education and installing a rule that required a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Legislature to raise tax revenues. My father-in-law said to me at the time, “It’s going to take them 50 years to really see the damage they’ve done.” But it took far fewer than 50 years.

My wife bounced nimbly to her feet. I tripped and almost fell over her trying to help her up, and at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines.

NONE of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning. We couldn’t have dispersed if we’d wanted to because the crowd behind us was pushing forward to see what was going on. The descriptor for what I tried to do is “remonstrate.” I screamed at the deputy who had knocked down my wife, “You just knocked down my wife, for Christ’s sake!” A couple of students had pushed forward in the excitement and the deputies grabbed them, pulled them to the ground and cudgeled them, raising the clubs above their heads and swinging. The line surged. I got whacked hard in the ribs twice and once across the forearm. Some of the deputies used their truncheons as bars and seemed to be trying to use minimum force to get people to move. And then, suddenly, they stopped, on some signal, and reformed their line. Apparently a group of deputies had beaten their way to the Occupy tents and taken them down. They stood, again immobile, clubs held across their chests, eyes carefully meeting no one’s eyes, faces impassive. I imagined that their adrenaline was surging as much as mine.

My ribs didn’t hurt very badly until the next day and then it hurt to laugh, so I skipped the gym for a couple of mornings, and I was a little disappointed that the bruises weren’t slightly more dramatic. It argued either for a kind of restraint or a kind of low cunning in the training of the police. They had hit me hard enough so that I was sore for days, but not hard enough to leave much of a mark. I wasn’t so badly off. One of my colleagues, also a poet, Geoffrey O’Brien, had a broken rib. Another colleague, Celeste Langan, a Wordsworth scholar, got dragged across the grass by her hair when she presented herself for arrest.

I won’t recite the statistics, but the entire university system in California is under great stress and the State Legislature is paralyzed by a minority of legislators whose only idea is that they don’t want to pay one more cent in taxes. Meanwhile, students at Berkeley are graduating with an average indebtedness of something like $16,000. It is no wonder that the real estate industry started inventing loans for people who couldn’t pay them back.

“Whose university?” the students had chanted. Well, it is theirs, and it ought to be everyone else’s in California. It also belongs to the future, and to the dead who paid taxes to build one of the greatest systems of public education in the world.

The next night the students put the tents back up. Students filled the plaza again with a festive atmosphere. And lots of signs. (The one from the English Department contingent read “Beat Poets, not beat poets.”) A week later, at 3:30 a.m., the police officers returned in force, a hundred of them, and told the campers to leave or they would be arrested. All but two moved. The two who stayed were arrested, and the tents were removed. On Thursday afternoon when I returned toward sundown to the steps to see how the students had responded, the air was full of balloons, helium balloons to which tents had been attached, and attached to the tents was kite string. And they hovered over the plaza, large and awkward, almost lyrical, occupying the air.