Police Release Attack Dog on 88-yr-old Sleeping Woman

RIVERSIDE – It was around midnight on January 23rd when Katharina Lambert, an 88-yr-old disabled woman, was sound asleep in bed as usual.

She never expected to be woken up and mauled by a large animal coming into her bedroom.


The animal immediately lunged on to her as she laid in bed wearing nothing but sleeping garments.

It “relentlessly” attacked her, according to reports, biting as hard as it could into her skin. The animal caused painful puncture wounds around her body.

It turns out that the animal was a police K-9 unit, trained to attack humans in ways that are much more painful and rabid than average dogs.

It happened because three police officers broke into Katharina’s home while she was sleeping — because, they claim, her silent burglar alarm was activated.

They did not make it known to Katharina that they were there, and they had no warrant to enter.

Officer Echevarria brought the attack dog inside with him.

They then released the dog into Katharina’s home without warning her.

“Echevarria knew, when he entered, that the dog was trained to bite hard, and to bite anywhere it could on a person’s body,” she claims.

The dog went straight to her bedroom and began biting her.

The attack was so relentless that officer Echevarria eventually had to come to the room and physically remove the dog in order to get it to stop.

With her body wounded and punctured, the officers then delayed medical care for Katharina unnecessarily, according to court documents.

She blames the police department and says that the officers are not properly disciplined.

She added that the department has created an assumption among officers that “it is permissible to unlawfully enter a person’s home, deploy a police K-9 to attack innocent people, refuse to accommodate a disabled person, and delay prompt medical care.”

She is now suing over unlawful entry, excessive force, municipal liability, supervisor liability, Americans with Disabilities Act violations, strict liability, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence.

On the importance of the right to offend

By Kenan Malik

The Jesus & Mo image tweeted by Maajid Nawaz and later censored on Channel 4 News

‘Thank you @Channel4News you just pushed us liberal Muslims further into a ditch’. So tweeted Maajid Nawaz, prospective Liberal Democratic parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, last night. He had every right to be incandescent. Channel 4 News had just held a debate about the Jesus and Mo cartoons and about the campaign to deselect Nawaz for tweeting one of the cartoons, not finding them offensive. Channel 4 decided that they were offensive and could not be shown. It would have been bad enough had the channel decided simply not to show the cartoon. What it did was worse. It showed the cartoon – but blanked out Muhammad’s face (and only Muhammad’s face). In the context of a debate about whether Nawaz had been right to tweet the cartoon in the first place, or whether his critics were right to hound him for ‘offending’ Muslims, it was an extraordinary decision. The broadcaster had effectively taken sides in the debate – and taken the side of the reactionaries against the liberal.

There has been something quite surreal about the whole controversy over Maajid Nawaz and his refusal to be offended by the Jesus and Mo cartoons. A one-time Islamist turned anti-extremist campaigner, Nawaz is a founder of the Quilliam Foundation, dedicated to combating Islamic extremism, and Liberal Democrat PPC for Hampstead and Kilburn. Two weeks ago he took part in the BBC’s Big Questions programme, in which there was a debate about religious offence. The programme discussed an incident at the LSE Fresher’s Fair when two students from the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society were forced to cover up the ‘Jesus and Mo’ t-shirts they had been wearing. (The LSE later apologized to the students for its heavy-handed reaction.) For those who don’t know, Jesus and Mo is a cartoon strip featuring Jesus and Muhammad sharing a house and discussing religion, philosophy and politics, with each other and sometimes with an atheist barmaid down the pub. It is clever, witty and, of course, irreverent

Nawaz insisted on the show that he found nothing offensive about the cartoons. ‘I’m sure God is greater than to feel threatened by it’, he observed. Astounded by the fact that BBC had refused to show the cartoons on air, Nawaz later tweeted an image of one to once again make the point that there was nothing offensive about it. At which point all hell broke lose.

Fellow Liberal Democrat Mohammed Shafiq organized an international campaign to hound Nawaz for causing ‘immense offence and disrespect to the religious beliefs and sentiments’ of Muslims. A petition was set up calling for Nawaz’s deselection. The activist, ‘community leader’ and prolific tweeter Mohammed Ansar joined the campaign against Nawaz, urging people to sign the petition (though absurdly he also insists that he neither finds the cartoons offensive nor necessarily wants Nawaz sacked; that apparently is ‘nuance’). Nawaz has received a torrent of abuse on social media and a sackful of death threats.

There is something truly bizarre (and yet in keeping with the zeitgeist of our age) that someone should become the focus of death threats and an international campaign of vilification for suggesting that an inoffensive cartoon was, well, inoffensive.

From the Rushdie affair to the controversy over the Danish cartoons, from the forcing offstage of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti to the attempt this week by members of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to shut down the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s production of The Bible: The Complete Word Of God (a decision thankfully later reversed), reactionaries have often used campaigns against ‘offence’ as a political weapon with which to harass opponents and as a means of bolstering their community support. The anti-Nawaz campaign is no different. Mohammed Shafiq and Mohammed Ansar both have had public spats with Nawaz, and both are cynically exploiting the claim of ‘offensiveness’ to reclaim political kudos.

What gives the reactionaries the room to operate and to flex their muscles is, however, the pusillanimity of many so-called liberals, their unwillingness to stand up for basic liberal principles, their fear of causing offence, their reluctance to call so-called community leaders to account. This is why Channel 4’s stance was so obnoxious. The broadcaster’s role is not to take sides in these debates. It is to tease out the arguments, and to stand by basic journalistic principles, including the principle of free speech. What Channel 4 did was the very opposite. It abandoned its journalistic principles, refused to stand up for free speech and took sides with the reactionaries. The Liberal Democrats themselves have been equally spineless. Though some have publicly defended Nawaz, leading figures have been noticeably reluctant to stick their necks out. It took almost a week before party leader Nick Clegg put out a statement, and then a relatively bland one, urging both sides to play nicely.

Such backsliding liberals need reminding of some basic points about liberalism, free speech and the giving of offence:

1 There is a right to free speech. There is no right not to be offended

People have the right to say what they wish, short of inciting violence, however offensive others may find it. Others have the right not to listen or to watch. Nobody has the right to be listened to. And nobody has the right not to be offended.

2 It is minority communities who most suffer from censorship

Many people argue that while free speech may be a good, it must necessarily be less free in a plural society. For diverse societies to function and to be fair, so the argument runs, we need to show respect not just for individuals but also for the cultures and beliefs in which those individuals are embedded and which helps give them a sense of identity and being. This requires that we police public discourse about those cultures and beliefs, both to minimise friction between antagonistic groups and to protect the dignity of those individuals embedded in them. As the sociologist Tariq Modood has put it, that ‘If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism.’

In fact, it is precisely because we do live in a plural society that we need the fullest extension possible of free speech. In such a society, it is both inevitable and important that people offend the sensibilities of others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. Almost by definition such clashes express what it is to live in a diverse society. And so they should be openly resolved than suppressed in the name of ‘respect’ or ‘tolerance’.

But more than this: the giving of offence is not just inevitable, it is also important. Any kind of social change or social progress means offending some deeply held sensibilities. Or to put it another way: ‘You can’t say that!’ is all too often the response of those in power to having their power challenged. To accept that certain things cannot be said is to accept that certain forms of power cannot be challenged.

The notion of giving offence suggests that certain beliefs are so important or valuable to certain people that they should be put beyond the possibility of being insulted, or caricatured or even questioned. The importance of the principle of free speech is precisely that it provides a permanent challenge to the idea that some questions are beyond contention, and hence acts as a permanent challenge to authority. This is why free speech is essential not simply to the practice of democracy, but to the aspirations of those groups who may have been failed by the formal democratic processes; to those whose voices may have been silenced by racism, for instance. The real value of free speech, in other words, is not to those who possess power, but to those who want to challenge them. And the real value of censorship is to those who do not wish their authority to be challenged. Once we give up on the right to offend in the name of ‘tolerance’ or ‘respect’, we constrain our ability to challenge those in power, and therefore to challenge injustice.

3 What is often called offence to a community is actually a debate within that community

People often talk about ‘offence to a community’. More often than not what they actually mean is ‘debate within a community’. Some Muslims find the Jesus and Mo cartoons offensive. Other Muslims – Maajid Nawaz among them – do not. Some found The Satanic Verses offensive. Others did not. Some Sikhs found Behzti offensive. Others did not. It is because what is often called ‘offence to a community’ is in reality a ‘debate within a community’ that so many of the flashpoints over offensiveness have been over works produced by minority artists – Salman Rushdie, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, Hanif Kuresihi, Monica Ali, Sooreh Hera, Taslima Nasrin, MF Hussain, and so on.

The trouble is, that every time one of these controversies comes along only the conservative, reactionary figures are seen as the authentic voices of minority communities. So the critics of The Satanic Verses were seen as authentic Muslims, but not Salman Rushdie. The campaigners against Behzti were seen as authentic Sikhs, but not Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti. And so on. Salman Rushdie and Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti (and Maajid Nawaz) are regarded as too Westernized, secular or progressive to be truly of their community. To be a proper Muslim, in other words, is to be offended by the Jesus and Mo cartoons or The Satanic Verses, to be a proper Sikh is to be offended by Behzti. The argument that offensive talk should be restrained is, then, both rooted in a stereotype of what it is to be an authentic Muslim or a Sikh and helps reinforce that stereotype. It plays into the racist view of minority communities. That is why it is important to challenge the campaign against Maajid Nawaz not simply as free speech campaigners but as anti-racist campaigners too.

4 There can be no freedom of religion without the freedom to offend

Freedom of worship is another form of freedom of expression – the freedom to believe as one likes about the divine and to assemble and enact rituals with respect to those beliefs. You cannot protect freedom of worship without protecting freedom of expression. Take, for instance, the Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders’ attempt to outlaw the Qur’an in Holland because it ‘promotes hatred’. Or the attempt by Transport for London to ban a Christian anti-gay poster because it is ‘offensive to gays’. Both Wilders and TfL are wrong, just as Channel 4 is wrong. Believers have as much right to offend liberal sensibilities as liberals have the right to offend religious ones. Freedom of speech requires that everyone has the right to cause offence. So does freedom of religion.

How police could soon be able to turn cars off remotely 'at the flick of a switch' under secret new EU plans

Secretive committee agreed to develop 'remote stopping' device by 2020
Device 'to be fitted to all cars' and allow police to shut off fuel and ignition
Critics slam 'draconian' decision by 'unaccountable secretive clique'

By Martin Robinson

'Draconian': EU plans to allow police to shut off any car at will using a device fitted as standard has been criticised today

A secretive EU body has agreed to develop a device to be fitted to all cars allowing police to cut off any engine at will, it emerged today.

Leaked paperwork has revealed the 'remote stopping' technology could be activated by a switch in a control room, shutting off the fuel and cutting the ignition.

The device, which could be imposed within a decade, would also allow police to track a vehicle's movements as well as immobilise it.

The plans were immediately labelled as 'draconian' by critics, who questioned whether the Government would be liable if remote kill-switches caused collisions.

According to The Daily Telegraph a group of senior EU officials, including several Home Office mandarins, have signed off the proposal at a secret meeting in Brussels.

'Cars on the run can be dangerous for citizens,' the document reportedly says.

'Criminal offenders will take risks to escape after a crime. In most cases the police are unable to chase the criminal due to a lack of efficient means to stop the vehicle safely.

'The project will work on a technological solution that can be a "build in standard" for all cars that enter the European market.'

The European Network of Law Enforcement Technologies (Enlets) has proposed a timetable to ensure the technology is fully developed by 2020.

It was described as a 'key objective', and would allow officers to end dangerous high speed chases.

The network is an offshoot of the EU's influential Standing Committee on Operational Cooperation on Internal Security, also known as Cosi.

MPs have reacted with fury about the 'incredible' and 'draconian' proposal.

Some have said that at high speed using this system could be more dangerous than a chase.

Tory MP for Clacton Douglas Carswell said: 'The price we pay for surrendering our democratic sovereignty is that we are governed by an unaccountable secretive clique.'

Fellow Conservative David Davis added: 'I would be fascinated to know what the state's liability will be if they put these devices in all vehicles and one went off by accident whilst a car was doing 70mph on a motorway with a truck behind it resulting in loss of life.'

UKIP leader Nigel Farage said: 'This is an incredible power grab by the EU. It is appalling they are even thinking of it.

'The EU is opposed to a free society, and wants surveillance and control, not only of countries’ economies and laws but as this move shows, even down to the power to stop a person’s car'.

A Department for Transport spokesman said: 'We have no plans to introduce automatic stopping devices in cars', while a Home Office source said Enlets is not funded by them are carrying out a 'wide range' of 'research projects'.

Government punishes 11-year-old girl for selling cupcakes without permission

No freedom is too innocent to be crushed by the police state.

TROY, IL — An 11-year-old entrepreneur recently learned a lesson about the economics of living in a police state when her home-based cupcake business was closed-down by local bureaucrats.

When people started noticing young Chloe Stirling’s cake decorating skills, they started requesting she bake them orders for birthdays and holidays. Her clever designs quickly turned into a childhood business venture, as her eager customers gave her money in exchange for birthday cakes and baked goods.

She’s created some 3-dimensional designs with her cakes, including a soccer-ball cake filled with pudding and cupcakes shaped like high-heels. Her largest order topped out at 220 cupcakes. She has also donated batches to charity fundraisers.

With twelve satisfied year-round clients, she began saving the money she made with the hope of buying her first car when she turns sixteen.

In the long term, she hopes to open her own bakery with the money she saves.

At least, she was, until the local county bureaucrats got wind of her creative spirit. When a local newspaper ran a favorable article about her cupcake decorating, the conscienceless regulators decided to seek out the child and quash her business.

No Cupcakes For You

The Madison County Health Department demanded that the girl stop selling cupcakes or face legal consequences. Chloe had to cancel a number of orders and was left broken-hearted.

In order to sell cupcakes, another kitchen must be constructed in her family’s home, she must pay fees, and follow a number of arbitrary regulations. Or, she could acquire an expensive storefront, and be burdened with the costs of renting commercial property, buying equipment, and of course paying taxes and other assorted fees.

She must obtain a permit from the government and allow inspectors to monitor her operation in order to avoid the wrath of county food controllers and abide by the Illinois State Food Sanitation Code.

“A rule is a rule,” squawked spokeswoman Amy Yeager to KMOV.

How Could Anyone Be Against Safety?

Ms. Stirling’s plight is far from unique. While it is particularly infuriating when a child is crushed under the proverbial government boot, the fact is that the law oppresses everyone.

Onerous requirements for commercial-grade kitchens, legal compliance, inspections, taxes, fees, and the like are all designed to keep the “little guy” (or girl) out of the market.

Big name retailers hate competition, and therefore lobby to make the business start-ups extremely expensive and difficult. And while most Americans sheepishly believe that such regulations are there to keep them safe and healthy, the practical reality is that they simply serve to crush free enterprise and help create favorable market conditions for the existing giants a given market — be it cupcakes or manufactured goods or financial services.
Eating inspector-approved cupcakes cannot taste nearly as sweet as the freedom to do things without constantly needing permission.

The system is designed to keep innovators like Chloe working for someone else — not competing with the powers that be. With all the artificially-imposed hassles and hurdles, working for an established company starts to seem much easier, cheaper, and less stressful. An honest start-up business has everything working against it.

Anyone with economic literacy will acknowledge that this phenomenon is harmful to the economy and the employment rate. The government makes it illegal to work outside a narrow band of regulated actions. As restrictive as California is, the state recently demonstrated that loosening homemade food regulations created over one thousand new local businesses the first year.

The idea that a government bureaucracy can keep people safe is a delusion. People get sick even from the most highly-regulated food sources. The red tape and regulation creates a false sense of security at best, and a crushing burden at worst. Eating inspector-approved cupcakes cannot taste nearly as sweet as the freedom to do things without constantly needing permission.

A “Mental Health” Assault on the Second Amendment… by Executive Order

by Jay Syrmopoulos

A few weeks ago on January 3rd, 2014, the Obama administration quietly announced two new executive orders regarding gun control policy. With these pronouncements President Obama, after failing to gain public support, and a failed attempt to push legislation through Congress, has made absolutely clear his intention of now unilaterally imposing his gun control mandates.

These new executive orders would allow the federal database access to mental health records by offering an exemption to existing laws that protect patient privacy, essentially overriding the Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule protections, in place for individual’s medical records.

States that were once required by law to protect personal medical information will now be required to submit their patient’s private and confidential records into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

These types of provisions are likely to draw fire from constitutionalists as well as gun rights activists who respectively note that the Second and Fourth Amendments offer no such exceptions, but simply state that the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed”, and that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated”.

The justification for these blatant privacy rights violations are, “an express permission to submit to the background check system the limited information necessary to help keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands,” according to the White House statement.

The executive order claims to “clarify”, that citizens that are involuntarily committed to inpatient or outpatient facilities can be prohibited from owning a firearm. To allay concerns, the administration goes on to state that seeking help for mental health issues doesn’t prohibit a person from firearm ownership. The White House states, “The proposed rule will not change the fact that seeking help for mental health problems or getting treatment does not make someone legally prohibited from having a firearm”.

Unfortunately, even prior to the executive orders currently applied, we have already seen government deceptively utilize this specific tactic to revoke legitimate gun ownership without due process.

Following the passage of the NY SAFE Act, New York gun owners were sent letters from the N.Y.P.D. demanding them to surrender their guns which have feeding capacities that violate the 5-round rule. Other gun owners in New York have had their fully legal firearms confiscated, after medical records, which detailed prescriptions, were shared with authorities. At the time, this was in direct violation of HIPAA as it was prior to the recent executive order and would seemingly have civil rights implications. The law is being applied and enforced as such, that being on anti-depressants or anxiety medication is reason to enough to revoke your Second Amendment rights without any recourse or due process of law.

In another recent case a Pennsylvania State Superior Court ruled that a state trooper who had 7 years earlier been hospitalized for depression wouldn’t be allowed to own a firearm off-duty, but would be allowed to carry a firearm while on-duty.

Judge Kate Ford Elliott declared, “A present clean bill of health is no guarantee that a relapse is not possible.” The Superior Court found there is no way for Keyes to have the record of his involuntary mental health commitment expunged. That means Keyes can never surmount the federal ban on his having a gun off-duty. She went on to state, “We see an important government interest in controlling the availability of firearms for those who have ever been adjudged mentally defective or have ever been committed to a mental institution but are now deemed to be cured.”

The biggest irony comes from the fact that Elliott also ruled that Keyes should still be allowed to have a firearm while on-duty as a state trooper, with the implication that government officials have special status above that of private citizens.

Both the media and administration’s explicit failure to consider these numerous abuses, systematically justified by the accessing of private mental health records, reveals a model of how these executive orders will most likely be carried out. With the façade of a mental health fix, the same power structures that pushed dangerous prescription drugs onto an unassuming American public will now use them against law-abiding Americans to usurp their constitutional guarantees.

Many fear, and rightly so, that these new rules targeting those with mental health issues might serve as a very slippery slope as such rules open the door for the federal government to decide who is “mentally healthy” enough to own a firearm, using metrics such as what medications one takes to base decisions on, similarly to what we have seen take place in New York since the NY SAFE Act went into effect.

The ever-increasing number of cases in which law-abiding citizens are being stripped of their constitutional rights without due process is alarming. With the destruction of privacy protections and increased scrutiny for those who have been committed to receive help, or who even get a prescription for anxiety medication, many citizens will likely become extremely reluctant to seek any type of mental health help due to the danger of having their Second Amendment rights revoked.

Should citizens be stripped of their Second Amendment rights under the Constitution simply because they are prescribed a medication for anxiety or mild depression by a licensed medical professional, due to state legislation or an executive order by a President? That is what is happening in NY, and if any indication, most likely what is coming down the pipe nationally with this executive order.

Three charged with stealing food from skip behind Iceland supermarket

Crown Prosecution Service claims there is 'significant public interest' in prosecuting men arrested for taking discarded food

 Amelia Gentleman


Paul May and his two fellow defendants will appear before magistrates charged under an obscure section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act. Photograph: Martin Godwin


A man will stand trial next month after being caught taking some tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese from the dustbins behind a branch of Iceland.

It is expected Paul May, a freelance web designer, will argue that he was taking the food because he needed it to eat and does not consider he has done anything illegal or dishonest in removing food destined for landfill from a skip.

The case will require magistrates to scrutinise the phenomenon of "skipping" – taking discarded supermarket waste to cook and eat, and will highlight the issue of how much supermarket food is discarded, despite long campaigns to reduce the waste. It will also focus attention on a group of people taking radical steps to feed themselves as they struggle with the rising cost of living in London.

May, 35, along with Jason Chan and William James, all residents of a squat in north London, were arrested on 25 October, just before midnight, after a member of the public called the police to report three men climbing over a wall at the back of Iceland in Kentish Town .

Police arrested the men as they left the area with a holdall and trolley containing food. The total value of the items taken allegedly amounted to £33 and they were of low value, consisting of tomatoes, mushrooms, cheese and Mr Kipling cakes.

Initially arrested for burglary, the three men were charged under an obscure section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, after being discovered in "an enclosed area, namely Iceland, for an unlawful purpose, namely stealing food".

Police returned the items to the Iceland store. The men were held in a police cell for 19 hours before being released, May said.

Lawyers for the three men have asked the Crown Prosecution Service to consider dropping the case, but the CPS responded this month that the case would go ahead, because "we feel there is significant public interest in prosecuting these three individuals".

Deep Dive into First Unitarian Church v. NSA: Why Freedom of Association Matters

One of the many ways EFF is fighting illegal NSA spying is in our lawsuit First Unitarian Church v. NSA.  In this case, we represent 24 organizations that want to protect their freedom of association.  We filed a major brief in this case over the weekend detailing how the NSA’s mass collection of phone records has resulted in decreased calls to and from these organizations – an unconstitutional violation of their First Amendment rights.  Our filing came just after the Executive Branch’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) reached the same conclusion, specifically describing the organizations’ injuries as “entirely predictable and rational.”

But what is this “freedom of association” anyway?  The debate over the NSA spying often focuses on the deep and disturbing privacy violations, but as First Unitarian Church v. NSA shows, there are critically important free speech issues involved as well.  Here’s a deep dive on the issue to explain why freedom of association is so vital to our freedom of speech, and how the NSA’s phone surveillance violates that right.

Privacy in Group Association

In 1956, the State of Alabama accused the local chapter of the NAACP of operating in the state without the proper license.  As part of its lawsuit, the State required the NAACP to turn over its membership list.  The NAACP refused, explaining that if it could not assure its members a meaningful degree of privacy, then people would be discouraged from being members.  The dispute went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which agreed with the NAACP.
The Supreme Court explained that:

“Effective advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association, as this Court has more than once recognized by remarking upon the close nexus between the freedoms of speech and assembly. It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the ‘liberty’ assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech. . . . This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations. . . . Inviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.”

In later cases, the Supreme Court explained that this freedom of association was a First Amendment right derived both from the freedom of speech and the freedom to peaceably assemble.

The NSA’s First Amendment Violations

The NSA’s phone records dragnet interferes with this “privacy in one’s associations” in the same way as Alabama’s attempt to force the NAACP to disclose its membership list – it reveals who associates with groups such as People for the American Way, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Council on American Islamic Relations, and Calguns, a California gun owners organization.
The government, in opposing our lawsuit, was completely tone-deaf to the fact that people do not want the government to know who they call and who calls them, and especially not if this information is gathered and searched over a long period of time like the five years the government currently keeps our telephone records.  The government simply refused to acknowledge that its program was capable of harming the freedom of association.  Instead, it claimed its dragnet was harmless. After all, the government argued, it was only collecting phone numbers, not identities.  So they want us to pretend that the NSA and the FBI don't have access to whitepages.com and many other widely available reverse lookup directories.  The government also claimed that there is no harm in collecting the phone records of millions of innocent Americans because a human did not “access or review” the records.  But the records (and necessarily all of them) are reviewed through multiple computer searches. Finally, the government claimed that people couldn't reasonably be nervous about the potential for the government to misuse the records. Apparently the NSA and the FBI want us to forget the misuse of past secret surveillance programs, such as the illegal COINTELPRO programs that included the wayward investigations of Martin Luther King and John Lennon.

Dozens of Organizations Harmed

In our brief, we highlighted the actual harms that the organizations have suffered:

“The government’s mass collection program has resulted in a decrease in the communications that plaintiffs’ members and associates are willing to have with them, has burdened plaintiffs’ and their members’ abilities to communicate with each other and has removed the prospect of having the existence of those communications remain unknown to the federal government. The mass collection program has thus interfered, for example, with plaintiffs’ abilities to offer anonymous hotline services and has caused them to alter the way in which they fulfill their missions and provide services to their associates, often rendering it impossible for them to do so without incurring significant expense. Plaintiffs are receiving fewer telephone calls from their members and others who they serve as a result of the program. Plaintiffs can no longer assure those who wish to associate with them that the fact of their telephone communications with plaintiff will remain a secret from the government. This inability is especially damaging to the missions of those organization that advocate for privacy rights and for those organizations in which dissident communities associate. At least one plaintiff has experienced a decline in membership attributable to the collection of its call detail records. Many plaintiffs have had to communicate less and less efficiently and effectively with those persons who wish to associate with them, and vice-versa.”

We gave specific examples, too:

“As plaintiff Council for American-Islamic Relations explained, ‘When communications to which we are a party trigger additional government scrutiny, our organizational mission is undermined. The Associational Tracking Program makes it more difficult for CAIR to effectively accomplish its mission of defending the civil liberties of American Muslims.’ The CAIR plaintiffs have explained that one of their programmatic services is to provide advice to those suspected of being terrorists.  They thus inevitably receive calls from those on a terrorist watch list.  Because the NSA analyzes all calls made and received by those who receive calls from suspected terrorists, and then, as a third 'hop,' all calls made and received by those persons, one who calls CAIR or is called by CAIR faces a very high probability that her phone records will be analyzed by the NSA.  As set forth in the CAIR declarations, this creates a very strong disincentive for members to call CAIR or for CAIR to reach out to its constituents."
“California NORML experienced an abrupt drop in the number of hotline calls we received after revelation of NSA’s phone surveillance program in late June.  Prior to then, we received an average of about 15-20 calls daily on our hotline; afterwards, calls dropped to 5-10 per day.  This data supports our belief that the NSA program had a chilling effect on our constituents’ willingness to communicate with us.  Moreover, several of our members expressed similar concerns in this regard.” Patient Privacy Rights saw calls to its hotline halved form 40 calls a month to 20 after the phone records dragnet became public.  Phone calls to the Franklin Armory dropped 70 percent after the program became public.  Phone calls to Students for Sensitive Drug Policy were also halved, from 6 to 3 per day.
The Charity & Security Network explained that "'We have been forced to expend time and resources on exploring new technologies that may protect the privacy of our communications, although we cannot be sure that they will actual ensure confidentiality.  Some activities are delayed until in-person meetings can be arranged.  On an ongoing basis, the surveillance program inhibits the ability of staff and membership to communicate about sensitive factual and strategic issues. This hampers our ability to effectively carry out our work.'”
Human Rights Watch noted increased concerns about their confidentiality from its stakeholders and believes that some individuals have refrained from reporting human rights abuses to it because of the phone record dragnet.

Oversight Board Agrees

In last week’s report, the PCLOB agreed that these harms are indeed real, and rejected the government’s claim that the NSA’s dragnet is innocuous:

“These accounts describe changes in behavior on the part of journalists, sources, whistleblowers, activists, dissidents, and others upon learning that the government maintains a comprehensive and daily updated repository of call detail records on their telephone calls. The Board believes that such a shift in behavior is entirely predictable and rational. Although we cannot quantify the full extent of the chilling effect, we believe that these results — among them greater hindrances to political activism and a less robust press — are real and will be detrimental to the nation. . .
“With such vast numbers of telephone records readily subject to review, it would not be speculative for these individuals to fear that their own records may be culled from the NSA’s collection repository and subject to review by government analysts.”

The government will file its final papers in about a month.  A hearing will be held April 25.

Counties taking extra step on concealed carry

Gun-free zone signs appear at the Kane County Judicial Center. The state's new concealed carry law prohibits anyone other than law enforcement officials from carrying concealed handguns in public buildings.

By Madhu Krishnamurthy

Some of the largest employers in the suburbs — county governments — may ban their employees from carrying concealed handguns in public, despite a new state law allowing it.

Cook, DuPage, McHenry, Kane and Lake are considering policies restricting non-law enforcement employees from carrying concealed handguns while on duty outside of public buildings, even if they have a valid state permit. Officials say they are concerned employees packing guns increases the counties' risk and liability.

Such a ban would include building inspectors, health workers, planning and zoning officials, coroner's office employees, and any other employees who interact with the public.

The state's concealed carry law allows no one except law enforcement officials to bring concealed weapons into public buildings, including courthouses and municipal buildings.

Illinois State Police reported nearly 10,000 people in the Chicago area have applied for concealed carry permits since Jan. 5, when applications became available under the new law. Of the more than 23,000 applications statewide, Cook County received more concealed carry license applications than DuPage, Lake, McHenry and Kane counties combined. State police have 90 days to approve or reject applications.

Cook County, the largest in the state employing 22,000 people including roughly 5,600 sworn sheriff's officers, already prohibits employees from possessing unauthorized weapons at work.

The county plans to expand that policy to include concealed carry handguns and may even consider restricting employees from having the guns while acting in their official capacity in the field, said Kristen Mack, spokeswoman for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

Prohibiting employees from carrying handguns is no different from other restrictions imposed to regulate employee conduct while on duty, said John Labaj, deputy county administrator for McHenry County.

"You can't smoke in your cars. You can't use profane language. You can't use cellphones now (while driving) without hands-free," said Labaj, adding that McHenry County adopted the cellphone restriction for employees before state law took effect.

Roughly 350 county employees are allowed to use personal vehicles for work.

"We have a lot of employees that are in the field," Labaj said. "We also have volunteers that do work in the field for our Emergency Management Agency. We were just trying to put in place some guidance about how concealed carry would operate. We didn't look at it as something we are taking away as a right of the employee."

Labaj said the county doesn't expect employees, such as a zoning inspector or code enforcement personnel, to deal with potentially threatening situations by pulling out guns in public.

"If they are in a dangerous situation, that's not in their job description to handle," Labaj said. In such cases, trained sheriff's deputies would accompany the employee "to handle those situations," he added.

Labaj said having a concealed carry policy would reduce the county's liabilities.

The county's management services committee recently rejected a draft version of a concealed carry policy, but administrators are working with the state's attorney's office to revise and re-present the policy.

"As staff we felt like we were being ahead of the game and frankly being proactive and responding to a recommendation by the Safety and Security Committee," McHenry County Administrator Peter Austin said. "In this instance, that maybe worked to our disadvantage because we couldn't draw on what some of the larger governments were doing."

The DuPage County Board also is likely to vote on an employee policy restricting concealed carry weapons next month, board member Grant Eckhoff said.

The state's attorney's office and the county's human resources department have been revising the employee handbook prohibiting any weapons, not just concealed carry guns, he said.

"Except for authorized people like security and sheriff's department, employees will be barred from having any weapons concealed carry or otherwise," Eckhoff said. "During business hours, it's not needed."

In Kane County, officials are trying to figure out how to regulate concealed carry on county property. Chief Judge Judith Brawka has suggested having gun lockers at the courthouse to prevent break-ins into cars where visitors or employees may have stashed concealed guns.

Members of the county's human services committee would like to explore whether the public or employees should even be allowed to carry concealed guns on public property. At a meeting earlier this week, several board members said the best policy may be to ban all weapons on county property for anyone other than law enforcement personnel.

Board members have not discussed whether to restrict employees from being able to carry concealed weapons off county property.

State's Attorney Joe McMahon said his office has banned employees from carrying concealed guns in their official capacity unless they are members of the investigative unit or are authorized law enforcement personnel.

Of the 130 employees at the state's attorney's office, only eight are investigators and not all are authorized to carry a firearm, he said.

"We started looking at the policy earlier, but the policy became effective at the beginning of January 2014," McMahon said. "The concealed carry law is extensive. It has 23 different exceptions as to where a firearm cannot be carried, even if someone is issued a license."

Meanwhile, Lake County is just beginning to research the legalities of the matter. The county employs 2,500 people, 350 of whom are sworn law enforcement officials.

"There may be a liability impact with regard to non-law enforcement employees carrying concealed weapons," said Rodney Marion, director of human resources. "We need to get an idea of what those liabilities might be. We have to make sure we can legally apply any restrictions on employees, and if so, under what circumstances. We'll have to do something within the next few months."

Marion said another thing to consider is whether the county can force employees to disclose whether they have a concealed carry permit.

"Because the law is so new, it's really difficult to understand what you can and can't do," he added.

Drug cops want open access to your medical records

By Radley Balko

In response to a spike in overdoses on prescription painkillers, and a rash of media scare stories about ADHD drugs like Ritalin and Adderall, a number of politicians, pundits, and public health activists have demanded better monitoring of doctors and patients. The thinking is that by creating databases of patients taking controlled substances, we’ll be able to catch drug-dealing doctors and intervene on behalf of drug addicted patients.

I think many of the reports about accidental addicts and overdose deaths are either exaggerated or don’t tell the whole story, but that’s too much to get into here. (See the series I wrote on this issue for Huffington Post.) But this column by Christopher Moraff in central Pennsylvania’s Patriot-News warns of the consequences letting the government see what medication you’re taking:

With America united in collective outrage over revelations of widespread domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency, another federal branch – the Drug Enforcement Agency – has quietly set about dismantling the Fourth Amendment when it comes to accessing our private medical data.

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union joined the State of Oregon in federal court in Portland to challenge the DEA’s attempt to use warrantless “administrative subpoenas” to obtain information on patients from the state’s prescription drug monitoring database.

It’s unlikely the plaintiffs will prevail; while Oregon law prohibits state police from digging into patient prescription data without a search warrant, thanks to the gradual erosion of civil liberties under the “war on drugs,” the DEA does not require a court order to request such information in the course of an open investigation.

But at least Oregon is fighting for the privacy rights of its citizens. Pennsylvania, on the other hand, seems intent on giving them away.

Since September, three bills have been introduced in Harrisburg designed to expand the commonwealth’s own prescription monitoring system by establishing a database listing all prescriptions of controlled medications and the identities of the citizens who receive them.

The latest proposal was introduced in November by Sen. Pat Vance, R-Cumberland, and, unlike Oregon, would give state and federal law enforcement officials virtually unimpeded access to the prescription records of millions of Pennsylvanians who take Schedule II drugs.

These include not only narcotic painkillers like hydrocodone, oxycodone and morphine, but drugs like Ritalin and Adderall that are used to treat childhood ADHD.

Reggie Shuford, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, put it best when he said: “The privacy of the child who breaks his arm on his bike or who takes attention deficit medication is being sacrificed because someone across town is abusing these substances.”

It’s easy to imagine how this could be abused, how patient data could get into the wrong hands. Imagine a law enforcement officer looking for ammunition in a divorce or custody dispute. Or perhaps a politician who takes the wrong position on police pensions or police accountability might see his painkiller scripts leaked to the press. (That sort of retaliation wouldn’t be unheard of.) Moraff points out that Virginia’s prescription database has already been accessed by hackers, who then threatened to release the records of 8 million people.

But Moffat also touches on another, less obvious problem—the chilling effect this will have on doctors. For example, one of the red flags federal investigators look for when looking for doctors to accuse of “drug dealing” is the overall number of prescriptions a given doctor writes for various controlled drugs. That means that as he’s deciding your course of treatment, or whether to prescribe opioids to improve your mother’s quality of life as she’s dying from terminal cancer, he’ll be thinking about how many scripts for those drugs he may have already written for other patients. It’s an intrusion on the doctor-patient relationship, and could influence a doctor’s decisions about a patient’s treatment with factors that have nothing to do what’s best for that particular patient.

This of course is how we fight the drug war. Because some people harm themselves with some drugs, we punish everyone, not only by restricting access to those drugs, but in this particular instance also by eroding privacy protections and trespassing on doctor-patient privilege.

Kansas court says sperm donor must pay child support

By Chandrika Narayan

(CNN) -- A Kansas sperm donor caught in the middle of a child support case says he wanted to help a lesbian couple when he made the donation nearly five years ago.

Instead, he may end up paying for his action.

A judge ruled Thursday that William Marotta must pay child support, even though he says he signed documents waiving his parental rights.

Shawnee County District Court Judge Mary Mattivi said Marotta failed to conform to Kansas law, which says a licensed physician must be involved in an artificial insemination process, court documents show.

The documents show that the lesbian couple whom Marotta helped conceive a child say they performed the artificial insemination procedure at home.

'I donated genetic material, and that was it'

This story begins on Craigslist in March 2009. That was when Marotta noticed an advertisement from the Topeka couple, seeking donated sperm.

"Intrigued" by the ad, he says, he delivered three cupfuls of his sperm -- gratis -- to the women.

One of the women gave birth to a daughter in December 2009, according to court documents.

"I donated genetic material, and that was it for me," he told CNN affiliate WIBW.

Or so he thought. That changed when the parents separated and one of the women stopped working because of illness and applied to the state for help, he said. The state contacted Marotta for child support.

Kansas officials were not persuaded by what Marotta says were agreements he signed, before making his donations, that he would assume no financial responsibility for the child, who is now 4 years old.

The Kansas Department for Children and Families said any agreement would not apply because a physician did not perform the insemination.

Marotta said that was news to him.

"I didn't know that there was no doctor involved," he said.

Lawyer blames political motivations

His lawyer, Ben Swinnen, accused the state, where same-sex marriage is not legal, of being politically motivated in its pursuit of his client.

"The cost to the state to bring this case far outweighs any benefit the state would get," said Swinnen, adding his client has no other children.

Swinnen said the state is asking for $4,000 to recoup the money it has spent. It is also asking Marotta to pay child support, which could run into tens of thousands of dollars, he said.

Swinnen said the Kansas court has failed to address many of the challenges brought forward by Marotta, under the guise of statutory interpretation of the law requiring the donor sperm to be provided to a licensed physician.

"From a very narrowly crafted statute, the court has made a very broad rule -- that is the issue," Swinnen said.

Swinnen said he planned to appeal the decision.

Marotta: "I'm not her parent"

Marotta said he met the child once -- a few months ago -- when he and his wife by chance crossed paths with one of the girl's parents at an area carnival.

He said he had no intention of assuming a paternal role. "I'm not her parent," he said.

But under Kansas law, he is her father. Had a physician carried out the insemination, that would not be the case, because Marotta would be able to document that he was a sperm donor and not the lover of the girl's mother, CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen said.

"For all they know, they were lovers," she said. "They need that documentation. He's the dad; he ought to be paying up."

Though a physician would have tested the sperm for sexually transmitted diseases and certain genetic disorders, there are disincentives associated with going through a physician.

A single attempt at artificial insemination costs about $3,000, and sometimes several tries are needed. "It's a lot cheaper to get someone to come on over with their donation, and then do it yourself at home," Cohen said.

Meanwhile, Marotta owes legal fees and has taken his story to the news media. "If enough noise gets made about it, at this point, maybe things will change for the better," he said.

Asked whether, knowing what he now knows, he would answer the advertisement again, Marotta said, "Probably not."

A different kind of fatherhood

Texas Shouldn't – BUT JUST DID – Execute a Mexican National

By Jamil Dakwar, Director, ACLU Human Rights Program

Yesterday, at 9:32 p.m., the state of Texas executed Edgar Arias Tamayo, a 46-year-old Mexican national. Injecting lethal drugs into Mr. Tamayo's bloodstream was a clear violation of the United States' international obligations, and yet the state of Texas wasn't deterred.

What's going on here? The short answer: a deadly combination of a blood-thirsty state and a stalled Congress.

Let's start with the state. Texas' death penalty system is notorious. Despite well-founded concerns about innocent people ending up on death row, racial bias, inadequate assistance of counsel, and a whole host of other problems, Texas has put 509 people to death in the last three decades. These executions continue despite the fact that six other states have repealed the death penalty in the last six years (and three other states – Delaware, Nebraska, and Colorado – have come close). Texas remains one of the reasons that the U.S. is an outlier among democratic nations, ranking 5th in the world in the number of executions, after China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

And now to our stalled Congress. In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Mr. Tamayo and 50 other Mexican death row prisoners in the United States were denied their right to contact their consular representatives upon their arrest and without delay. This denial violates the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which the United States ratified without reservations in 1969. The ICJ ordered the United States to provide effective "review and consideration" of their convictions and sentences in order to determine in each case if the denial of access to consular assistance was prejudicial. The problem is that the states have been given a free pass to violate this treaty, as Texas did in executing Mr. Tamayo.

Here's what happened. In 2008, the Supreme Court decided that the Vienna Convention Optional Protocol concerning the Compulsory Settlement of Disputes is not self-executing treaty that would have binding effect in the domestic courts and that the President did not have the authority to enforce the ICJ decision unilaterally. The Court decided that Congress needs to pass legislation in order to implement the ICJ judgment. Congress, unsurprisingly, has dragged its feet. The result: an illegal loophole states are exploiting to execute foreign nationals in violation of international law.

What Texas did last night was wrong. As long as Texas is part of the Union, it remains obligated to abide by U.S. international obligations, including ratified treaties, which are considered the law of the land under the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause.

But Texas is not the only one who has done something wrong. Just last week, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, harshly criticized the House of Representatives for rejecting a Senate provision in the 2014 Consolidated Appropriations Act that would have brought the U.S. into compliance with the Vienna Consular Convention. He made this powerful argument:

By not including this provision we jeopardize the essential right of consular assistance for Americans arrested in foreign countries, and weaken our credibility was a nation that respects the rule of law.

We couldn't agree more.

Next March, the United States' untenable position on the death penalty will be subject to a review by the United Nations Human Rights Committee, a body of independent experts that monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a treaty the United States ratified in 1992. In a shadow report to the committee, the ACLU highlighted the system's many flaws, including the fact that the death penalty is applied in arbitrary and discriminatory manner without affording vital due process rights, such as access to effective counsel and the right to remedy to halt executions - not to mention that methods of execution and death row conditions have been condemned as cruel, inhuman, or degrading.

The train has left the station. It is only a matter of time until all states join the evolving international consensus that rejects the legal and moral foundation of the death penalty. Unfortunately, it will be at higher human cost and unacceptable flouting of international law.

AMC movie theater calls FBI to arrest a Google Glass user

By: Julie Strietelmeier

A long time Gadgeteer reader contacted me today through Google Hangouts to tell me that he had a story that he thought I’d be interested in reading. He then forwarded me a long email with a story from a very good friend of his. It was such a surprising story that I asked if I could have permission to post it here on The Gadgeteer. I ended up communicating with the author of the story and have posted it here for everyone to read…

I have been using Google Glass for about 2 months now, and about 2 weeks ago I got prescription lenses for the glasses. So in the past two weeks I was wearing Google Glass all the time. There were no stories to write about, until yesterday (1/18/2014).

I went to AMC (Easton Mall, Columbus, OH) to watch a movie with my wife (non- Google Glass user). It is the theater we go to every week, so it has probably been the third time I’ve been there wearing Google Glass, and the AMC employees (guy tearing tickets at the entrance, girl at the concession stand) have asked me about Glass in the past and I have told them how awesome Glass is with every occasion.

Because I don’t want Glass to distract me during the movie, I turn them off (but since my prescription lenses are on the frame, I still wear them). About an hour into the movie (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), a guy comes near my seat, shoves a badge that had some sort of a shield on it, yanks the Google Glass off my face and says “follow me outside immediately”. It was quite embarrassing and outside of the theater there were about 5-10 cops and mall cops. Since I didn’t catch his name in the dark of the theater, I asked to see his badge again and I asked what was the problem and I asked for my Glass back. The response was “you see all these cops you know we are legit, we are with the ‘federal service’ and you have been caught illegally taping the movie”.

I was surprised by this and as I was obviously just having a nice Saturday evening night out with my wife and not taping anything whether legally or illegally, I tried to explain that this is a misunderstanding. I tried to explain that he’s holding rather expensive hardware that costed me $1500 for Google Glass and over $600 for the prescription glasses. The response was that I was searched and more stuff was taken away from me (specifically my personal phone, my work phone – both of which were turned off, and my wallet). After an embarrassing 20-30 minutes outside the movie theater, me and my wife were conducted into two separate rooms in the “management” office of Easton Mall, where the guy with the badge introduced himself again and showed me a different ID. His partner introduced herself too and showed me a similar looking badge. I was by that time, too flustered to remember their names (as a matter of fact, now, over 30 hours later I am still shaking when recounting the facts).

What followed was over an hour of the “feds” telling me I am not under arrest, and that this is a “voluntary interview”, but if I choose not to cooperate bad things may happen to me (is it legal for authorities to threaten people like that?). I kept telling them that Glass has a USB port and not only did I allow them, I actually insist they connect to it and see that there was nothing but personal photos with my wife and my dog on it. I also insisted they look at my phone too and clear things out, but they wanted to talk first. They wanted to know who I am, where I live, where I work, how much I’m making, how many computers I have at home, why am I recording the movie, who am I going to give the recording to, why don’t I just give up the guy up the chain, ’cause they are not interested in me. Over and over and over again.

I kept telling them that I wasn’t recording anything – my Glass was off, they insisted they saw it on. I told them there would be a light coming out the little screen if Glass was on, and I could show them that, but they insisted that I cannot touch my Glass for the fear “I will erase the evidence against me that was on Glass”. I didn’t have the intuition to tell them that Glass gets really warm if it records for more than a few minutes and my glasses were not warm. They wanted to know where I got Glass and how did I came by having it. I told them I applied about 1000 times to get in the explorer program, and eventually I was selected, and I got the Glass from Google. I offered to show them receipt and Google Glass website if they would allow me to access any computer with internet. Of course, that was not an option. Then they wanted to know what does Google ask of me in exchange for Glass, how much is Google paying me, who is my boss and why am I recording the movie.

Eventually, after a long time somebody came with a laptop and an USB cable at which point he told me it was my last chance to come clean. I repeated for the hundredth time there is nothing to come clean about and this is a big misunderstanding so the FBI guy finally connected my Glass to the computer, downloaded all my personal photos and started going though them one by one (although they are dated and it was obvious there was nothing on my Glass that was from the time period they accused me of recording). Then they went through my phone, and 5 minutes later they concluded I had done nothing wrong.

I asked why didn’t they just take those five minutes at the beginning of the interrogation and they just left the room. A guy who claimed his name is Bob Hope (he gave me his business card) came in the room, and said he was with the Movie Association and they have problems with piracy at that specific theater and that specific movie. He gave me two free movie passes “so I can see the movie again”. I asked if they thought my Google Glass was such a big piracy machine, why didn’t they ask me not to wear them in the theater? I would have probably sat five or six rows closer to the screen (as I didn’t have any other pair of prescription glasses with me) and none of this would have happened. All he said was AMC called him, and he called the FBI and “here are two more passes for my troubles”. I would have been fine with “I’m sorry this happened, please accept our apologies”. Four free passes just infuriated me.

Considering it was 11:27pm when this happened, and the movie started at 7.45, I guess 3 and a half hours of my time and the scare my wife went through (who didn’t know what was going on as nobody bothered to tell her) is worth about 30 bucks in the eyes of the Movie Association and the federal militia (sorry, I cannot think of other derogatory words). I think I should sue them for this, but I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with “who is my boss – they don’t want me, they want the big guy” again, so I just spilled the beans on this forum, for other to learn from my experience.

I guess until people get more familiar with Google Glass and understand what they are, one should not wear them to the movies. I wish they would have said something before I went to the movies, but it may be my mistake for assuming that if I went and watched movies two times wearing Glass with no incident the third time there won’t be any incident either. As for the federal agents and their level of comprehension… I guess if they deal with petty criminals every day, everybody starts looking like a petty criminal. Again, I wish they would have listened when I told them how to verify I did nothing illegal, or at least apologize afterwards, but hey… this is the free country everybody praises. Somewhere else might be even worse.

Crazy huh? His story read like something out of the Jack Ryan movie that he and his wife had gone to see. Are there any other Google Glass users out there that have been treated badly just for your wearable tech? If not, are you reconsidering wearing a pair to the next movie you attend?

Oxfam: 85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world

As World Economic Forum starts in Davos, development charity claims growing inequality has been driven by 'power grab'


Graeme Wearden

The world's wealthiest people aren't known for travelling by bus, but if they fancied a change of scene then the richest 85 people on the globe – who between them control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together – could squeeze onto a single double-decker.

The extent to which so much global wealth has become corralled by a virtual handful of the so-called 'global elite' is exposed in a new report from Oxfam on Monday. It warned that those richest 85 people across the globe share a combined wealth of £1tn, as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world's population. Source: F. Alvaredo, A. B. Atkinson, T. Piketty and E. Saez, (2013) ‘The World Top Incomes Database’, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/ Only includes countries with data in 1980 and later than 2008. Photograph: Oxfam

The wealth of the 1% richest people in the world amounts to $110tn (£60.88tn), or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world, added the development charity, which fears this concentration of economic resources is threatening political stability and driving up social tensions.

It's a chilling reminder of the depths of wealth inequality as political leaders and top business people head to the snowy peaks of Davos for this week's World Economic Forum. Few, if any, will be arriving on anything as common as a bus, with private jets and helicopters pressed into service as many of the world's most powerful people convene to discuss the state of the global economy over four hectic days of meetings, seminars and parties in the exclusive ski resort.

Winnie Byanyima, the Oxfam executive director who will attend the Davos meetings, said: "It is staggering that in the 21st Century, half of the world's population – that's three and a half billion people – own no more than a tiny elite whose numbers could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus."

Oxfam also argues that this is no accident either, saying growing inequality has been driven by a "power grab" by wealthy elites, who have co-opted the political process to rig the rules of the economic system in their favour.

In the report, entitled Working For The Few (summary here), Oxfam warned that the fight against poverty cannot be won until wealth inequality has been tackled.

"Widening inequality is creating a vicious circle where wealth and power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, leaving the rest of us to fight over crumbs from the top table," Byanyima said.

Oxfam called on attendees at this week's World Economic Forum to take a personal pledge to tackle the problem by refraining from dodging taxes or using their wealth to seek political favours.

As well as being morally dubious, economic inequality can also exacerbate other social problems such as gender inequality, Oxfam warned. Davos itself is also struggling in this area, with the number of female delegates actually dropping from 17% in 2013 to 15% this year.
How richest use their wealth to capture opportunities

Polling for Oxfam's report found people in countries around the world - including two-thirds of those questioned in Britain - believe that the rich have too much influence over the direction their country is heading.

Byanyima explained:

"In developed and developing countries alike we are increasingly living in a world where the lowest tax rates, the best health and education and the opportunity to influence are being given not just to the rich but also to their children.

"Without a concerted effort to tackle inequality, the cascade of privilege and of disadvantage will continue down the generations. We will soon live in a world where equality of opportunity is just a dream. In too many countries economic growth already amounts to little more than a 'winner takes all' windfall for the richest."

The Oxfam report found that over the past few decades, the rich have successfully wielded political influence to skew policies in their favour on issues ranging from financial deregulation, tax havens, anti-competitive business practices to lower tax rates on high incomes and cuts in public services for the majority. Since the late 1970s, tax rates for the richest have fallen in 29 out of 30 countries for which data are available, said the report.

This "capture of opportunities" by the rich at the expense of the poor and middle classes has led to a situation where 70% of the world's population live in countries where inequality has increased since the 1980s and 1% of families own 46% of global wealth - almost £70tn.

Opinion polls in Spain, Brazil, India, South Africa, the US, UK and Netherlands found that a majority in each country believe that wealthy people exert too much influence. Concern was strongest in Spain, followed by Brazil and India and least marked in the Netherlands.

In the UK, some 67% agreed that "the rich have too much influence over where this country is headed" - 37% saying that they agreed "strongly" with the statement - against just 10% who disagreed, 2% of them strongly.

The WEF's own Global Risks report recently identified widening income disparities as one of the biggest threats to the world community.

Oxfam is calling on those gathered at WEF to pledge: to support progressive taxation and not dodge their own taxes; refrain from using their wealth to seek political favours that undermine the democratic will of their fellow citizens; make public all investments in companies and trusts for which they are the ultimate beneficial owners; challenge governments to use tax revenue to provide universal healthcare, education and social protection; demand a living wage in all companies they own or control; and challenge other members of the economic elite to join them in these pledges.

• Research Now questioned 1,166 adults in the UK for Oxfam between October 1 and 14 2013.

The Sign About the Police That Got One Man Arrested

Dave Urbanski

When Ron Martin stood in the Eldorado Parkway median holding aloft a sign warning passing motorists of “Police Ahead,” he insisted his aim was to help officers by getting drivers to slow down before hitting an upcoming speed trap.

Despite Martin’s stated desire to pitch in, his actions led cops in Frisco, Texas — a Dallas suburb — to cuff and arrest him, an incident he recorded on his cell phone last October.

As the officer cuffed Martin, he said, “I told you it’s a violation of city ordinance to be a human sign.” Check out the arrest below:

Martin was charged with violating the city’s sign ordinance, which says a person holding a sign has to be on private property; Martin said it doesn’t apply to him because he’s not a business. He’s just started fighting the charge in court this week, reported WFAA-TV in Dallas.

Besides, he added, it’s a free-speech issue.

“Ultimately, we’re trying to do the exact same thing,” Martin noted to WFAA in regard to his actions and police duties. “I just don’t wear a uniform. I’m the same thing as a speed limit sign, just reminding people that there is a limit here.”

Is Martin opposed to the speed traps? “Absolutely not,” he told WFAA. “I think it’s absolutely important for officers to be on the streets and enforce laws.”

Martin made his first court appearance on the misdemeanor charge Wednesday; he pleaded not guilty and asked for a February 21 trial date.

Frisco Police indicated that they’ve seen Martin holding signs at least twice before, and this time an officer “observed a couple cars drive by traveling westbound waving at us,” according to Martin’s arrest report, which tipped off cops that Martin may be in the area.

Frisco police said they won’t address the case publicly until court proceedings are completed.

Border Patrol Agent is Cool

...but... people have every right to treat cops like shit if the cops interrupt their day or their travel. you're paying their salary, don't put up with shit from them.

Cop Fatally Shoots A Suicidal Man For Refusing To Drop Two Knives

Fifth Amendment Prohibits Compelled Decryption, New EFF Brief Argues

Encryption is one of the most important ways to safeguard data from prying eyes. But what happens when those prying belong to the government? Can they force you to break your own encryption and provide them with the information they want?

In a new amicus brief, we explain that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination prohibits the government from forcing someone to decrypt their computer when they're suspected of a crime.

Leon Gelfgatt was charged with forgery and the government, with a search warrant, seized a number of his electronic devices. Law enforcement couldn't break the encryption that protected the devices, so it went to court, asking a judge to order Gelfgatt to decrypt the devices for them. The Fifth Amendment protects a person from being forced to testify against themselves and so the government promised not to look at the encryption key—the "testimony" in their eyes—but nonetheless wanted the ability to use the unencrypted data against Gelfgatt. The judge denied the government's request, ruling that forcing Gelfgatt to decrypt the devices would violate the Fifth Amendment.

The government appealed that decision and the case is now before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, where we filed an amicus brief with the ACLU and the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Our brief argues that the lower court got it right. The Fifth Amendment protects a person from being forced to reveal the "contents of his mind" to the government, allowing law enforcement to learn facts it didn't already know. When it comes to compelled decryption, the Fifth Amendment clearly applies because the government would be learning new facts beyond simply the encryption key. By forcing Gelfgatt to translate the encrypted data it cannot read into a readable format, it would be learning what the unencrypted data was (and whether any data existed). Plus, the government would learn perhaps the most crucial of facts: that Gelfgatt had access to and dominion and control of files on the devices.

It's not the first time we've made this argument in court; we've filed amicus briefs in other cases involving forced decryption, and won big last year in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed with us that the act of decrypting a computer is protected by the Fifth Amendment.

At a time when the recent public disclosures have suggested the government has been undermining cryptography, we hope the court understands the importance of having strong technological safeguards to protect our privacy and find that our constitutional protections prohibit what the government is trying to do here.

Oral argument in the case is set for Nov. 5, 2013 in Boston.

Cops Beat a Deaf Man for Seven Minutes Because He didn’t Respond to Their Yelling

Pearl Pearson is a 64 year-old diabetic deaf driver who resides in the Oklahoma City area. On the evening of January 3rd, Pearl crossed paths with the wrong cops.



The following is the story according to Pearl Pearson and family of what happened that night:

What’s the story?

At this time, only limited details can be provided since this case is under investigation.

1. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol pulled Pearl over late in the evening on January 3, 2014. Pearl pulled over as he should.

2. Pearl’s driver’s license indicates he is Deaf. He also has a placard in his driver’s door that says, “Driver is deaf”.

3. Pearl pulled over and rolled down his window, expecting an officer to ask for this identification. An officer struck him in the face before Pearl had the chance to do anything. As you can see, he was struck multiple times.

4. An interpreter was never provided while Pearl was under the care of law enforcement. Not during the booking, hospital, or time at the jail was an interpreter provided, even through Pearl requested one.

5. Pearl was left wondering “why” the the entire time. He has no clue why he was beat. Pearl and his family are still not sure, but are ready for some answers.

6. Pearl’s own son is a police officer, as was his son-in-law, who is now a deputy sheriff. He respects law enforcement and knows how to respond when pulled over. There is no reason for someone like Pearl to be hurt like this by those who are meant to protect and serve.

Yelling at a deaf man to put up his hands will not do much, except aggravate an already aggressive police officer. This is a tragic scenario of ignorance and needless escalation of violence.

Eric Foster and Kelton Hayes were the two OHP officers that were involved in what an affidavit claims was a 7 minutes altercation.

Where is the dash cam footage from the units of Eric Foster and Kelton Hayes? Wouldn’t this clear up any inconsistencies in this story?

The two officers have been suspended with pay while the investigation into this incident continues.

How Every Part of American Life Became a Police Matter

From the workplace to our private lives, American society is starting to resemble a police state.

—By Chase Madar

If all you've got is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail. And if police and prosecutors are your only tool, sooner or later everything and everyone will be treated as criminal. This is increasingly the American way of life, a path that involves "solving" social problems (and even some non-problems) by throwing cops at them, with generally disastrous results. Wall-to-wall criminal law encroaches ever more on everyday life as police power is applied in ways that would have been unthinkable just a generation ago.

By now, the militarization of the police has advanced to the point where "the War on Crime" and "the War on Drugs" are no longer metaphors but bland understatements. There is the proliferation of heavily armed SWAT teams, even in small towns; the use of shock-and-awe tactics to bust small-time bookies; the no-knock raids to recover trace amounts of drugs that often result in the killing of family dogs, if not family members; and in communities where drug treatment programs once were key, the waging of a drug version of counterinsurgency war. (All of this is ably reported on journalist Radley Balko's blog and in his book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop.) But American over-policing involves far more than the widely reported up-armoring of your local precinct. It's also the way police power has entered the DNA of social policy, turning just about every sphere of American life into a police matter.

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

It starts in our schools, where discipline is increasingly outsourced to police personnel. What not long ago would have been seen as normal childhood misbehavior—doodling on a desk, farting in class, a kindergartener's tantrum—can leave a kid in handcuffs, removed from school, or even booked at the local precinct. Such "criminals" can be as young as seven-year-old Wilson Reyes, a New Yorker who was handcuffed and interrogated under suspicion of stealing five dollars from a classmate. (Turned out he didn't do it.)

Though it's a national phenomenon, Mississippi currently leads the way in turning school behavior into a police issue. The Hospitality State has imposed felony charges on schoolchildren for "crimes" like throwing peanuts on a bus. Wearing the wrong color belt to school got one child handcuffed to a railing for several hours. All of this goes under the rubric of "zero-tolerance" discipline, which turns out to be just another form of violence legally imported into schools.

Despite a long-term drop in youth crime, the carceral style of education remains in style. Metal detectors—a horrible way for any child to start the day—are installed in ever more schools, even those with sterling disciplinary records, despite the demonstrable fact that such scanners provide no guarantee against shootings and stabbings.

Every school shooting, whether in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, or Littleton, Colorado, only leads to more police in schools and more arms as well. It's the one thing the National Rifle Association and Democratic senators can agree on. There are plenty of successful ways to run an orderly school without criminalizing the classroom, but politicians and much of the media don't seem to want to know about them. The "school-to-prison pipeline," a jargon term coined by activists, is entering the vernacular.

Go to Jail, Do Not Pass Go

Even as simple a matter as getting yourself from point A to point B can quickly become a law enforcement matter as travel and public space are ever more aggressively policed. Waiting for a bus? Such loitering just got three Rochester youths arrested. Driving without a seat belt can easily escalate into an arrest, even if the driver is a state judge. (Notably, all four of these men were black.) If the police think you might be carrying drugs, warrantless body cavity searches at the nearest hospital may be in the offing—you will be sent the bill later.

Air travel entails increasingly intimate pat-downs and arbitrary rules that many experts see as nothing more than "security theater." As for staying at home, it carries its own risks as Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates found out when a Cambridge police officer mistook him for a burglar and hauled him away—a case that is hardly unique.

Overcriminalization at Work

Office and retail work might seem like an unpromising growth area for police and prosecutors, but criminal law has found its way into the white-collar workplace, too. Just ask Georgia Thompson, a Wisconsin state employee targeted by a federal prosecutor for the "crime" of incorrectly processing a travel agency's bid for state business. She spent four months in a federal prison before being sprung by a federal court. Or Judy Wilkinson, hauled away in handcuffs by an undercover cop for serving mimosas without a license to the customers in her bridal shop. Or George Norris, sentenced to 17 months in prison for selling orchids without the proper paperwork to an undercover federal agent.

Increasingly, basic economic transactions are being policed under the purview of criminal law. In Arkansas, for instance, Human Rights Watch reports that a new law funnels delinquent (or allegedly delinquent) rental tenants directly to the criminal courts, where failure to pay up can result in quick arrest and incarceration, even though debtor's prison as an institution was supposed to have ended in the nineteenth century.

And the mood is spreading. Take the asset bubble collapse of 2008 and the rising cries of progressives for the criminal prosecution of Wall Street perpetrators, as if a fundamentally sound financial system had been abused by a small number of criminals who were running free after the debacle. Instead of pushing a debate about how to restructure our predatory financial system, liberals in their focus on individual prosecution are aping the punitive zeal of the authoritarians. A few high-profile prosecutions for insider trading (which had nothing to do with the last crash) have, of course, not changed Wall Street one bit.

Criminalizing Immigration

The past decade has also seen immigration policy ingested by criminal law. According to another Human Rights Watch report—their US division is increasingly busy—federal criminal prosecutions of immigrants for illegal entry have surged from 3,000 in 2002 to 48,000 last year. This novel application of police and prosecutors has broken up families and fueled the expansion of for-profit detention centers, even as it has failed to show any stronger deterrent effect on immigration than the civil law system that preceded it. Thanks to Arizona's SB 1070 bill, police in that state are now licensed to stop and check the papers of anyone suspected of being undocumented—that is, who looks Latino.

Meanwhile, significant parts of the US-Mexico border are now militarized (as increasingly is the Canadian border), including what seem to resemble free-fire zones. And if anyone were to leave bottled water for migrants illegally crossing the desert and in danger of death from dehydration, that good Samaritan should expect to face criminal charges, too. Intensified policing with aggressive targets for arrests and deportations are guaranteed to be a part of any future bipartisan deal on immigration reform.

Digital Over-Policing

As for the Internet, for a time it was terra nova and so relatively free of a steroidal law enforcement presence. Not anymore. The late Aaron Swartz, a young Internet genius and activist affiliated with Harvard University, was caught downloading masses of scholarly articles (all publicly subsidized) from an open network on the MIT campus. Swartz was federally prosecuted under the capacious Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for violating a "terms and services agreement"—a transgression that anyone who has ever disabled a cookie on his or her laptop has also, technically, committed. Swartz committed suicide earlier this year while facing a possible 50-year sentence and up to a million dollars in fines.

Since the summer, thanks to whistleblowing contractor Edward Snowden, we have learned a great deal about the way the NSA stops and frisks our (and apparently everyone else's) digital communications, both email and telephonic. The security benefits of such indiscriminate policing are far from clear, despite the government's emphatic but inconsistent assurances otherwise. What comes into sharper focus with every volley of new revelations is the emerging digital infrastructure of what can only be called a police state.

Sex Police

Sex is another zone of police overkill in our post-Puritan land. Getting put on a sex offender registry is alarmingly easy—as has been done to children as young as 11 for "playing doctor" with a relative, again according to Human Rights Watch. But getting taken off the registry later is extraordinarily difficult. Across the nation, sex offender registries have expanded massively, especially in California, where one in every 380 adults is now a registered sex offender, creating a new pariah class with severe obstacles to employment, housing, or any kind of community life. The proper penalty for, say, an 18-year-old who has sex with a 14-year-old can be debated, but should that 18-year-old's life really be ruined forever?

Equality Before the Cops?

It will surprise no one that Americans are not all treated equally by the police. Law enforcement picks on kids more than adults, the queer more than straight, Muslims more than Methodists—Muslims a lot more than Methodists—antiwar activists more than the apolitical. Above all, our punitive state targets the poor more than the wealthy and Blacks and Latinos more than white people.

A case in point: after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, a police presence, including surveillance cameras and metal detectors, was ratcheted up at schools around the country, particularly in urban areas with largely working-class black and Latino student bodies. It was all to "protect" the kids, of course. At Columbine itself, however, no metal detector was installed and no heavy police presence intruded. The reason was simple. At that school in the Colorado suburb of Littleton, the mostly well-heeled white families did not want their kids treated like potential felons, and they had the status and political power to get their way. But communities without such clout are less able to push back against the encroachments of police power.

Even Our Prisons Are Over-Policed

The over-criminalization of American life empties out into our vast, overcrowded prison system, which is itself over-policed. The ultimate form of punitive control (and torture) is long-term solitary confinement, in which 80,000 to 100,000 prisoners are encased at any given moment. Is this really necessary? Solitary is no longer reserved for the worst or the worst or most dangerous prisoners but can be inflicted on ones who wear Rastafari dreadlocks, have a copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War in their cell, or are in any way suspected, no matter how tenuous the grounds, of gang affiliations.

Not every developed nation does things this way. Some 30 years ago, Great Britain shifted from isolating prisoners to, whenever possible, giving them greater responsibility and autonomy—with less violent results. But don't even bring the subject up here. It will fall on deaf ears.

Extreme policing is exacerbated by extreme sentencing. For instance, more than 3,000 Americans have been sentenced to life terms without chance of parole for nonviolent offenses. These are mostly but not exclusively drug offenses, including life for a pound of cocaine that a boyfriend stashed in the attic; selling LSD at a Grateful Dead concert; and shoplifting three belts from a department store.

Our incarceration rate is the highest in the world, triple that of the now-defunct East Germany. The incarceration rate for African American men is about five times higher than that of the Soviet Union at the peak of the gulag.

The Destruction of Families

Prison may seem the logical finale for this litany of over-criminalization, but the story doesn't actually end with those inmates. As prisons warehouse ever more Americans, often hundreds of miles from their local communities, family bonds weaken and disintegrate. In addition, once a parent goes into the criminal justice system, his or her family tends to end up on the radar screens of state agencies. "Being under surveillance by law enforcement makes a family much more vulnerable to Child Protective Services," says Professor Dorothy Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania Law school. An incarcerated parent, especially an incarcerated mother, means a much stronger likelihood that children will be sent into foster care, where, according to one recent study, they will be twice as likely as war veterans to suffer from PTSD.

In New York State, the Administration for Child Services and the juvenile justice system recently merged, effectively putting thousands of children in a heavily policed, penalty-based environment until they age out. "Being in foster care makes you much more vulnerable to being picked up by the juvenile justice system," says Roberts. "If you're in a group home and you get in a fight, that could easily become a police matter." In every respect, the creeping over-criminalization of everyday life exerts a corrosive effect on American families.

Do We Live in a Police State?

The term "police state" was once brushed off by mainstream intellectuals as the hyperbole of paranoids. Not so much anymore. Even in the tweediest precincts of the legal system, the over-criminalization of American life is remarked upon with greater frequency and intensity. "You're probably a (federal) criminal" is the accusatory title of a widely read essay co-authored by Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit of the US Court of Appeals. A Republican appointee, Kozinski surveys the morass of criminal laws that make virtually every American an easy target for law enforcement. Veteran defense lawyer Harvey Silverglate has written an entire book about how an average American professional could easily commit three felonies in a single day without knowing it.

The daily overkill of police power in the US goes a long way toward explaining why more Americans aren't outraged by the "excesses" of the war on terror, which, as one law professor has argued, are just our everyday domestic penal habits exported to more exotic venues. It is no less true that the growth of domestic police power is, in this positive feedback loop, the partial result of our distant foreign wars seeping back into the homeland (the "imperial boomerang" that Hannah Arendt warned against).

Many who have long railed against our country's everyday police overkill have reacted to the revelations of NSA surveillance with detectable exasperation: of course we are over-policed! Some have even responded with peevish resentment: Why so much sympathy for this Snowden kid when the daily grind of our justice system destroys so many lives without comment or scandal? After all, in New York, the police department's "stop and frisk" tactic, which targets African American and Latino working-class youth for routinized street searches, was until recently uncontroversial among the political and opinion-making class. If "the gloves came off" after September 11, 2001, many Americans were surprised to learn they had ever been on to begin with.

A hammer is necessary to any toolkit. But you don't use a hammer to turn a screw, chop a tomato, or brush your teeth. And yet the hammer remains our instrument of choice, both in the conduct of our foreign policy and in our domestic order. The result is not peace, justice, or prosperity but rather a state that harasses and imprisons its own people while shouting ever less intelligibly about freedom.