Pair jailed for Edinburgh's Central Mosque bacon attack

A teenage girl and 39-year old man who desecrated an Edinburgh mosque by attacking it with strips of bacon have both been jailed.

Chelsea Lambie, 18, from Paisley, was sentenced to 12 months and Douglas Cruikshank, from Galashiels, to nine months.

They attached bacon to door handles and threw strips inside Edinburgh's Central Mosque on 31 January 2013.

Cruikshank pled guilty. Lambie was found guilty after denying the charges.

Sheriff Alistair Noble, at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, said: "It does not seem to me there is any way to deal with this case other than by custody."

During an earlier trial, the court heard a Blackberry mobile phone was found in Lambie's clothing when she was arrested at her boyfriend's house.

Messages sent on 31 January included: "Going to invade a mosque, because we can go where we want."

A text to the phone asked: "What you do last night?" The reply was: "Went to the mosque in Edinburgh and wrapped bacon round the door handles, opened the door and threw it in ha ha ha."

Google searches on the phone were for the location of the mosque, addresses for taxis and "Edinburgh mosque bacon search".

A security guard at the mosque told the trial of the offence the bacon would have caused to Muslims.

Usman Mahmood said: "I was surprised if a person did it for a joke. It is against our culture and religion.

"We do not eat pork or even touch it. I felt very bad seeing this meat in my sacred place.

"It hurt my feelings when I saw this meat hanging inside the mosque in the worshipping area. It was very disturbing."

The court heard that during a police interview Lambie had admitted being a member of the Scottish Defence League.

The pair were accused of behaving in a threatening or abusive manner likely to cause fear and alarm.

Cruickshank changed his plea to guilty after racial aggravation was deleted from the indictment.

A third person involved in the attack, Wayne Stilwel from Gorebridge, pled guilty in August 2013 to a religiously aggravated attack on the mosque and was sentenced to 10 months.

Sentencing Lambie, Sheriff Noble said he accepted she was a mother with a very young child, but she had continued to deny her guilt for the offence.

He accepted that Cruikshank had tried for many months to plead guilty and told him that if he had been found guilty at trial he would have sentenced him to 13 months in prison. Given his plea to the amended charge, he reduced that to nine months.

Kindergartner accused of sexual misconduct

by Tanya Mendis

SURPRISE, Ariz. -- A 5-year-old boy in Surprise is accused of sexual misconduct for pulling his pants down on the playground.

The mother of Eric Lopez says back in April, her son was on the playground at Ashton Ranch Elementary School when another student told him to pull his pants down or else he would do it for him.

Erica Martinez’s son complied, pulling down his pants and underwear in front of several other students.

When teachers saw what happened, they hauled Eric into the principal’s office where he was forced to sign a document that labeled his actions “sexual misconduct.” Eric received detention as punishment.

Martinez says she was not present for the meeting and not notified about the incident until after the fact.

“He’s a 5-year-old," Martinez said, angrily. “He does not know right from wrong yet.”

Martinez showed 3TV documentation confirming that she tried to appeal the label in her son’s permanent file.

“My son is not a sexualized minor,” Martinez said.

The school responded in a letter saying it followed proper procedures and protocols.

Dysart Unified School District policy labels indecent exposure as a form of sexual misconduct. Under the district rules, administrators must present the student with the accusations, but they are not required to have a parent present for the meeting unless a student specifically asks for his or her parent to be there.

Martinez said her kindergartner did not know he had the right to do that and signed the documents because school administrators told him to.

She wants the documentation removed from her son’s file or amended to eliminate the “sexual misconduct" language.

“I’m just heartbroken,” Martinez said. “That’s not my son.”

Mom gets investigated by social workers after advocating marijuana reform

Branden, Renee, and Rachel Petro
LITHIA, FL — A child-abuse investigation has been launched on a Florida mom after she made some public statements in support of medical freedom. Social workers intruded into her life in order to look for excuses to seize her children.

This is the situation that Renee Petro is facing. She is the mother of a boy with a terrible illness. Branden, age 12, has been diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy which results in uncontrolled seizures and can be fatal. Her desperate quest to save him is also what has drawn the scornful eye of the state.

A Perplexing Illness


Renee and Branden when the illness began.

Branden was perfectly healthy until 2010, when he fell suddenly ill during a visit to Renee’s home country of Jordan. An unexplainable swollen lump on Branden’s neck was followed by fever, then periods of lethargy and fatigue. Within a week Branden had his first seizure.

Branden was then put through countless tests, doctors, and pharmaceutical drugs. His family took him for treatments in Jordan and then in Germany. Doctors were at a loss to explain or solve the problem. They put him into a medically-induced coma.

“No one could figure out what was wrong with him,” Renee told Ladybud Magazine. “They brought in infectious disease specialists and numerous neurologists. They did an MRI, a CAT Scan, tested for meningitis, tried all these different seizure drugs. I kept thinking, let’s just rewind, this can’t really be happening.”

Branden’s medically-induced coma lasted a month, and the doctors had administered a battery of harsh pharmaceutical drugs, including Phenobarbital, Topamax, Dilantin, Depakote, Lamectal, and high doses of steroids.


Renee tends to Branden during his prolonged hospital stay.

Despite all the drugs, the seizures continued after the coma ended. Worse, his mind was obviously being altered by the drugs. He growled and hissed like an animal, and was having hallucinations of bugs crawling all over the room. He had to re-learn to eat and walk.

“I wondered, how could this be?” Renee recalled tearfully to Ladybud. “A month ago he was swimming, playing, being normal, and now he’s in this hospital hallucinating… I was like, what did you do to my son?”

The Petro family then traveled back to the United States. Branden endured numerous more doctors, tests, and drugs. Finally, one doctor diagnosed Branden with a disease that had only been classified 2 years earlier: Febrile Infection Related Epilepsy Syndrome (FIRES).

In Search of a Treatment

With no known cure and no proven treatment plan, doctors could only offer haphazard attempts to treat Branden using dangerous and unpredictable methods. Harsh pharmaceutical drugs and a nerve-stimulating implant failed to stop the seizures. Branden’s condition left him with partial paralysis and severe learning disabilities. He also was overcome with suicidal depression, “talking about killing himself constantly,” which his mom attributes to the pharmaceuticals.

When he was prescribed a drug that is known to cause blindness, Renee says she thought, “there had to be another way.”


Branden Petro before falling ill.

The desperate mom began to research and look for alternatives, since doctors had no real viable treatments to offer. She was inspired when she discovered the story of an epileptic boy from California had been successfully treated with medical marijuana. Six-year-old Jayden David suffered from debilitating seizures and had been prescribed 22 pharmaceutical drugs that left him suffering and immobilized. After switching to treatments of medical marijuana, Jayden was running, playing, and climbing, and off of nearly every one of his former drugs.

Jayden’s story was very encouraging to Renee. She had no previous interest in marijuana but was becoming quite convinced that it should be a legal option for patients to choose from. However, in a strange irony, a natural plant like cannabis is prohibited for any reason while dangerous pharmaceutical drugs are readily prescribed.

Renee Petro became a vocal advocate for reforming marijuana laws. She organized rallies and spoke to the media. Her family’s desperate situation had made it evident that man-made drugs could not solve every problem. There was no justification for the government to prohibit the fruits of nature.

“I just want my son back,” Renee said in an interview with the Tampa Tribune. She felt that cannabis treatments, which have been used successfully to treat epilepsy in numerous cases, may be Branden’s last hope for survival.

Renee became a public figure in the fight to make marijuana legal for medical use in Florida. She traveled to Tallahassee to testify before a state legislative committee. She described Branden’s desperate condition and advocated legal reform.

When asked if she would she would commit a crime for her children, Renee said, “I think these medications are criminal,” gesturing to Branden’s prescribed medications. “It’s criminal that they give these to our children, knowing what they do, and won’t look outside the box.”

State Retaliation

Shortly after Renee went publicly before lawmakers for the cause of medical freedom, the Petro home was intruded upon by state bureaucrats who had launched an investigation on the family.


Renee and Branden.

The Department of Children and Families (DCF) interrogated the Petro’s children on March 25th, looking for reasons to break up the family.

“I was scared,” explained Renee’s daughter Rachel. ” She [the social worker] asked me, like, ‘Do you like living in this house? Does anyone scare you? Does my mom give Branden illegal drugs?’”

Renee says her family was “violated” by the investigation. “I feel like they raped us. They’re taking advantage of the situation,” she said to FOX-13.

“I feel like our family was targeted, just because I’m doing what our beautiful country is built on: Freedom of Speech. I’m just trying to change and better the world that we live in,” Renee said to Ladybud.

“My daughter was terrified. She was afraid she was going to be taken away from our family,” Renee said.

Despite her advocacy of changing the laws, Mr. and Mrs. Petro insist they have never attempted to give Branden marijuana. Since the beginning, they have expressed their fear of the state’s ability to snatch children if they were to administer treatments that were not sanctioned by the government.
“My daughter was terrified. She was afraid she was going to be taken away from our family.”

They have faithfully given Branden his 5 daily prescription drugs, along with a legal supplement made from hemp extract.

“It hurts a lot that my son is suffering and people have taken it upon themselves to hurt us,” Renee said in an interview.

The bureaucrats claimed that they received an “anonymous tip” that the Petros had altered Branden’s treatment on their own accord. Taking such liberties would be all the grounds the state needs to seize the children. Renee pointed out that the questions being asked of the children were more of a personal inquisition of her mothering skills.

“I’ve never used Cannabis medicine for Branden,” says Renee. “I know fully well that Cannabis would help him, but because I live in an ‘illegal’ state we have never tried it. I have not broken any laws.”

“I would not do anything to jeopardize losing my child,” she said, but added that her resolve for changing the law was only strengthened.

“This isn’t going to stop me. This is only going to challenge me even more.”

Renee Petro says she has intentions of fleeing to the state of Colorado where she can legally seek treatment for her epileptic son. Frustration from the lack of results from the conventional medicines and the harassment from state agencies has made her consider what some call “medical marijuana refugees.” Petro says that she has been inspired by other moms who have successfully turned their sickly children into “normal” kids again. The family feels that they must act fast for the health and safety of Branden.

Florida Department of Children and Families
Phone: (850) 487-1111
Email: Contact Us
Facebook: Link

Rep. Latta Breaks New Ground In Introducing Anti-Net Neutrality Bill Where Almost Every Claim Is Laughably Wrong

Rep. Bob Latta achieved an impressive feat last week in introducing some legislation, which he claims is to make sure the internet remains "open and free." While we're big supporters of an "open and free" internet, what's most amazing here is that almost everything that Latta claims about the bill is not true -- including the whole "open and free" bits.

Congressman Bob Latta (R-OH) today introduced legislation to ensure the Internet remains open and free from government interference by limiting the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) authority to regulate broadband under Title II of the Communications Act.

So, first, he's saying "open and free" not in the way that internet users, innovators and entrepreneurs can set up businesses, but rather "open and free from government interference." This is, simply, bullshit. While I tend to lean on the "less regulation" side for many things, people claiming that net neutrality is a fight about "regulating the internet" are one (or more) of the following three things: (1) stupid (2) ignorant or (3) lying. The internet is already heavily regulated. The question around net neutrality is not "do we regulate or leave unregulated" -- it's what type of regulation makes the most sense.

Remember, telcos are happy to be classified under Title II for their fiber, because that's how they're able to get subsidized access to power poles and conduits (and the ability to dig up yards and bury new lines). They're also "regulated" in how they get spectrum for wireless communications. The broadband providers are thrilled to be regulated in these ways because it has made it easier and cheaper to build their networks and to keep out pesky competition.

The idea that broadband should be "open and free" from government interference is simply untrue. If the broadband providers really wanted that to be true, then they shouldn't be making use of rights of way access granted by the government. Somehow, I don't see Latta asking Verizon and AT&T to change that...

The legislation comes after the FCC released a proposal to reclassify broadband Internet access under Title II as a telecommunications service rather than an information service.

Except, of course, the FCC did no such thing. It, in fact, released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) which explicitly does not propose to reclassify broadband under Title II. It actually proposes to keep broadband as it was, preferring to put in place new rules under Section 706. The only thing on Title II is that, while making it clear the FCC is focused on Section 706, it asks the public to comment on what it thinks of Title II as an alternative. To outright claim that the FCC has proposed reclassifying is blatantly false.

Isn't it great that Congressional Representatives flat out lie to the public?

“In light of the FCC initiating yet another attempt to regulate the Internet, upending long-standing precedent and imposing monopoly-era telephone rules and obligations on the 21st Century broadband marketplace, Congress must take action to put an end to this misguided regulatory proposal,” said Latta.

Except, again, the internet has always been regulated in some form, this request for comments has upended no long-standing precedent, and broadband providers have long made use of those very same "monopoly-era telephone rules and obligations" to get government subsidies to install their broadband infrastructure. Oh, and again, the proposal does not actually suggest what he claims it's suggesting.

So, both the reasons and the overall claim of the proposal are simply wrong. Who elected this guy?

“The Internet has remained open and continues to be a powerful engine fueling private enterprise, economic growth and innovation absent government interference and obstruction. My legislation will provide all participants in the Internet ecosystem the certainty they need to continue investing in broadband networks and services that have been fundamental for job creation, productivity and consumer choice.

Yes, the internet has remained mostly open and is a powerful engine of private enterprise at the service level by keeping the network level free from discrimination. And the FCC claims to be looking for a way to keep that in place, while the telcos who are supporting Latta's proposal are looking to do the exact opposite: to limit private enterprise by allowing the infrastructure players to discriminate against services they don't like. Latta's legislation does not provide "certainty" to anyone other than Verizon, AT&T and Comcast -- all of whom will get to double-charge and increase profits.

Instead, it will create massive uncertainty for basically every other business that uses the internet. It will devastate investment into internet startups, because those with great new ideas will know that they'll have to pay extra just to reach people online. It will entrench big companies who already have the power to pay, while cutting off upstarts and innovators. It will take away the incentives for the big broadband providers to actually invest in infrastructure, because when their networks get clogged, they can charge more to internet companies. That means, the US will fall even further behind on the internet.

It makes you wonder why Rep. Latta is so against small businesses and innovation.

Oh, no, there's no reason to wonder. We already know. Latta is bankrolled by the big broadband companies with AT&T, NCTA, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, American Cable Assocation and Centurylink among his top campaign supporters. Because, of course they are.

Yes, we know that politicians mislead the public, but this is to an egregious level. Nearly everything about the reasons, the intent and the impact of Latta's legislation are completely incorrect. There are reasonable debates to be had about whether or not reclassifying broadband under Title II makes sense. But you won't get that from this bill. Thankfully, Latta can't find any other politician willing to co-sponsor his ridiculous bill, so it appears that even many other politicians heavily funded by the broadband companies recognize how totally dishonest this particular bill is.

What does mass surveillance do to Human Rights?

Elspeth Guild

There is on-going interest and surprise at the extent of mass surveillance which various governments, the US in the form of the NSA, the UK in the form of GCHQ and others, have been carrying out.

The confirmations by both the US and UK governments that everything has been carried out in accordance with their national law has only resulted in profound questions regarding the nature of the laws which permit these activities and whether they actually conform to internationally recognised standards of certainty and accountability which any government act must have in order to qualify as a law.

The Snowden revelations regarding mass surveillance have not only had very substantial political repercussions over 2013 and into 2014, but have also raised profound legal questions as a result. So many of these are issues and questions of great importance for democracies. A former member of the European Parliament commented at a conference in Brussels on April 3, 2014 that every candidate in the May 2014 European Parliament elections is conscious of the chilling effect that mass surveillance has had on them personally.

The fact that every email they have sent, every photo they have forwarded by email, is available to the intelligence service of a foreign country has a chilling effect on freedom of expression. Who can be sure that something which they casually put into a personal email could not be used to contradict one of their election promises, or some photo that they sent could not be used to compromise their probity as representatives? We cannot afford to underestimate the impact of mass surveillance on the correct operation of democracy.

Two interconnected but separate human rights issues arise as regards mass surveillance. The first, which is the most fundamental but the most frequently ignored, is the right of every person to respect for his or her private and family life. The second, which is generally the subject of more substantial political and media noise is the duty of states to protect personal data. Those political actors who have an interest in promoting the legality of mass surveillance usually put forward two arguments. The first is that national and international security is always an exception to both the duty of every state to respect people’s privacy and the duty to protect personal data. This is the most trenchantly defended of arguments as when this one falls away, those actors seeking to justify mass surveillance find themselves on very weak legal ground indeed. The second is that states’ obligations to protect personal data are subject to very different rules and requirements according to the political preferences of different states. Thus as there is no harmonization of the specific rules as to what is acceptable data protection internationally, states which are exercising their national and international security prerogatives only need to fulfil their own national data protection rules.

Before engaging directly with the arguments and examining how political actors dissatisfied with them have responded, let us very briefly clarify the relationship of the right to respect for privacy with that of data protection. The right to respect for a person’s privacy is an overarching international human right. It is found in Article 12 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and its legal form is found in the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966). Any interference with the privacy of a person must first and foremost be subject to the consent of that person. The right to consent or refuse use of personal data belongs to the individual not the state.

Where the state seeks to interfere with that right and to collect and use personal data which constitutes an intrusion into the privacy of the person concerned, such an interference must be justified by the state authorities. First it must be permitted by law and that law must be sufficient clear and public that everyone can know what it is and how to adjust their behaviour accordingly. Any exception permitted by law to a human right must be interpreted narrowly. It must have a legitimate objective and be necessary to achieve that objective only. There must be no alternative, which would be less intrusive into the life of the person which could instead be used. There must be judicial oversight of any state interference and a person affected by an interference must have access to justice to challenge that interference.

Mass surveillance by its very nature is not targeted at any person specifically, thus the possibility to justify the interference with the privacy of any person individually is an exceedingly difficult task. Where such mass, weakly targeted surveillance techniques have been used in Europe, the Human Rights Court has found them inconsistent with the right to respect for privacy. Mass surveillance is by definition arbitrary.

States’ duty to protect data arises from the person’s right to respect for his or her privacy. Where states interfere with people’s privacy, they must fulfil strict rules to justify that interference. This gives rise to the obligation of data protection. The duty to protect personal data arises when personal data is being used by state or private actors and is designed to ensure that the use is consistent with the individual’s right to respect for his or her privacy. It is for this reason that there are many different types of regime of data protection depending on the country one examines. How states go about protecting data is for them to determine: the key is that personal data must be protected because the individual has a right to respect for his or her privacy. The content of the human right to respect for privacy of the person is not variable.

The political struggle

Moving then from the state of human rights to the political struggle regarding mass surveillance, clearly the US authorities are faced with a dilemma in international human rights law, an area of which they have always been rather wary. The 1950s approach to international human rights law was to claim that the instruments do no more than set out 'principles' and are not ‘real’ law in any significant way and are certainly not available for people to rely upon. This political position has been undermined by the development of very precise international obligations, the establishment of Treaty Bodies with jurisdiction to receive and adjudicate on complaints by individuals regarding alleged breaches of their international human rights and the embrace of international human rights law by national courts. The 'principles' approach to international human rights law is no longer tenable. It is a figleaf deployed occasionally by states seeking to act arbitrarily.

As the Snowden revelations rose up the scale of international issues, a number of states, primarily led by the Brazilian and German authorities began to address the issue of how to deal with US mass surveillance and the interception of communciations. There was much discussion about bilateral negotiations and unilateral action (for instance, building new cables which avoid US territory) etc. However, it rapidly became evident that bilateral and unilateral approaches were not going to be satisfactory. In Europe, the fact that the UK authorities were carrying out mass surveillance for their US counterparts and others (the so-called Five Eyes) yet were not only members of the Council of Europe but also of the European Union, was only one example of the problem of unilateral or bilateral approaches. Clearly, only multilateral efforts were likely to bring results, where the weight of the USA and some of its collaborators could be counterbalanced by a loose alliance of other states. As soon as the issue is defined in this way, the obvious venue to commence a response is at the UN General Assembly and the territory on which to prepare the response is international human rights obligations – the prohibition of arbitrary interference with people's privacy.

This is the road which the Brazilian and German authorities have followed. By August 2013, moves were afoot for a resolution of the General Assembly. Five non-governmental organizations were closely linked with the efforts, Access, Amnesty International, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch and Privacy International also applied pressure for a strongly worded resolution. The Brazilian and German authorities were by no means alone in their efforts to achieve agreement over a UN General Assembly Resolution. Many smaller states, most notably Austria, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland but also others, very strongly supported the work from the beginning, even seconding staff to assist with the workload. The matter was assigned to the General Assembly’s Third Committee and it is there that the tense negotiations on the wording of the Resolution took place. A text was adopted on 26 November in the Third Committee and on 18 December 2013 it was adopted without a vote in the General Assembly of the UN.

The Resolution is based on the right to respect for privacy in the Universal Declaration and the ICCPR with specific reference to the prohibition on arbitrary interference. It ties the right to privacy to the right to freedom of expression – if people are subject to mass surveillance they are no longer able to express themselves freely. The preamble to the Resolution insists on the negative impact that surveillance and the interception of communications, including extraterritorial surveillance and interception, on a mass scale, has on the exercise and enjoyment of human rights. The Resolution calls upon states to respect the right to privacy and prevent violations; to review their procedures, practices and legislation regarding the surveillance of communications, their interception and collection of personal data, including mass surveillance, interception and collection with a view to upholding the right to privacy and ensuring the full and effective implementation of all their obligations under international human rights law and to establish or maintain independent, effective domestic oversight mechanisms capable of ensuring the transparency and accountability of a state’s actions.

Most importantly, the Resolution directs the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to present a report on the protection and promotion of the right to privacy in the context of domestic and extraterritorial surveillance and/or interception of digital communications and collection of personal data, including on a mass scale and to report to the Human Rights Council in its twenty-seventh Session, in September 2014. The current High Commissioner, Navi Pillay, a South African jurist with a very impressive human rights career, was appointed to the post in 2008. She is no stranger to the problem of the right to privacy and mass surveillance, having already spoken on the subject at the Council in September.

The UN Human Rights Council (composed of 47 states elected by the General Assembly) has also already engaged with the issue. The matter was on the agenda of the twenty-fourth Session of the Council held in September 2013. The High Commissioner noted, at that meeting, that the threat which mass surveillance poses to human rights is among the most pressing global human rights situations today. Many state representatives present at that session had regard to the report of UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue on freedom of expression in the internet age (16 May 2011) which had already outlined many dangers of state surveillance and its impact on free speech.

What is perhaps surprising is that the September 2013 meeting of the Human Rights Council received so little press coverage. The meeting was well attended by state representatives and the discussions were incendiary in the condemnation of mass surveillance and interception of communications. Many state representatives attended the meeting with statements of condemnation of mass surveillance and interception of communications already prepared and agreed with neighbouring states on whose behalf they were mandated to speak.

While one might well expect the German representative to present a text on behalf of Austria, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, it is perhaps less obvious that Pakistan, speaking on behalf of Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Ecuador, Russia, Indonesia, Bolivia, Iran, and China, would also present an agreed text condemning the practices. While the counter move particularly in respect of this second set of countries is usually to attack them on the basis of their internal practices of surveillance and suggest, if not accuse, them of hypocrisy, the fact of the intervention nonetheless must be noted and the possibility that a group of states with serious disagreements among themselves would choose common ground on this subject.

The next step will be for the High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare and present her report to the Human Rights Council in September 2014. Undoubtedly, her team will be presented with substantial amounts of information, evidence and legal argument to assist in the writing of the report.

In the meantime, our data continues to be hoovered up in industrial quantities. Private sector actors tell us that it is now cheaper to store data than to delete it – a potentially game-changing factor in the economics of mass surveillance. The compatibility of mass surveillance with human rights is already a matter of urgent concern. It is in all our interests that the UN continues its review of the compatibility of these practices with internationally agreed human rights standards.

U.S. Marshals Seize Cops’ Spying Records to Keep Them From the ACLU

By Kim Zetter

A routine request in Florida for public records regarding the use of a surveillance tool known as stingray took an extraordinary turn recently when federal authorities seized the documents before police could release them.

The surprise move by the U.S. Marshals Service stunned the American Civil Liberties Union, which earlier this year filed the public records request with the Sarasota, Florida, police department for information detailing its use of the controversial surveillance tool.

The ACLU had an appointment last Tuesday to review documents pertaining to a case investigated by a Sarasota police detective. But marshals swooped in at the last minute to grab the records, claiming they belong to the U.S. Marshals Service and barring the police from releasing them.

ACLU staff attorney Nathan Freed Wessler called the move “truly extraordinary and beyond the worst transparency violations” the group has seen regarding documents detailing police use of the technology.

“This is consistent with what we’ve seen around the country with federal agencies trying to meddle with public requests for stingray information,” Wessler said, noting that federal authorities have in other cases invoked the Homeland Security Act to prevent the release of such records. “The feds are working very hard to block any release of this information to the public.”

Stingrays, also known as IMSI catchers, simulate a cellphone tower and trick nearby mobile devices into connecting with them, thereby revealing their location. A stingray can see and record a device’s unique ID number and traffic data, as well as information that points to its location. By moving a stingray around, authorities can triangulate a device’s location with greater precision than is possible using data obtained from a carrier’s fixed tower location.

The records sought by the ACLU are important because the organization has learned that a Florida police detective obtained permission to use a stingray simply by filing an application with the court under Florida’s “trap and trace” statute instead of obtaining a probable-cause warrant. Trap and trace orders generally are used to collect information from phone companies about telephone numbers received and called by a specific account. A stingray, however, can track the location of cell phones, including inside private spaces.

The government has long asserted it doesn’t need a probable-cause warrant to use stingrays because the device doesn’t collect the content of phone calls and text messages, but instead operates like pen-registers and trap-and-traces, collecting the equivalent of header information. The ACLU and others argue that the devices are more invasive than a trap-and-trace.

Recently, the Tallahassee police department revealed it had used stingrays at least 200 times since 2010 without telling any judge because the device’s manufacturer made the police department sign a non-disclosure agreement that police claim prevented them from disclosing use of the device to the courts.

The ACLU has filed numerous records requests with police departments around the country in an effort to uncover how often the devices are used and how often courts are told about them.

In the Sarasota case, the U.S. Marshals Service claimed it owned the records Sarasota police offered to the ACLU because it had deputized the detective in the case, making all documentation in the case federal property. Before the ACLU could view the documents Sarasota had put aside for them, the agency dispatched a marshal from its office in Tampa to seize the records and move them to an undisclosed location.

The U.S. Marshals Service declined to comment, saying it “does not discuss pending litigation.”

Florida public records law requires that even if a dispute over records occurs, the Sarasota Police Department was legally obligated to hold onto the records for at least 30 days once it had received the ACLU’s request. That period would have given the ACLU a chance to argue its case in court to obtain the records.

“We’ve seen our fair share of federal government attempts to keep records about stingrays secret, but we’ve never seen an actual physical raid on state records in order to conceal them from public view,” the ACLU wrote in a blog post today.

The ACLU filed an emergency motion seeking a temporary injunction preventing the police department from releasing additional files to the marshals. The motion also asks the court to find the department in violation of state law for allowing the U.S. Marshals Service to seize the documents. The ACLU wants the court to order the police department to retrieve the documents. Because the issue is a state matter and the ACLU filed the motion in a state court, the judge cannot directly order the U.S. Marshal Service, a federal agency, to return the documents.

Dad goes to jail for 4-year-old daughter’s drawing

Jessie Sansone was arrested at his daughter's school after the 4-year-old drew a picture of a gun

It was a kindergarten class piece of art that Jessie Sansone probably won’t want to hang on the refrigerator anytime soon.

After Jesse Sansone’s 4-year-old daughter drew a picture of a gun, cops handcuffed the clueless father and dragged him off to jail. It was there that the dad was stripped of his clothes and searched by the authorities. Sansone was never charged with a crime.

Sansone wasn’t expecting to be greeted by police when he went to pick up his three children from school last week. Faculty there had become concerned, however, after the man’s 4-year-old daughter drew an image last Wednesday that they thought warranted investigation. It was a picture of a man holding a gun, and when teachers asked the girl to explain it, she said it was a depiction of her father.

“He uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters,” teachers say the girl explained.

The father says he doesn’t own a gun. Nor does he kill monsters.

“I’m picking up my kids and then, next thing you know, I’m locked up,” Sansone, 26, tells The Record out of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

“I was in shock. This is completely insane. My daughter drew a gun on a piece of paper at school,” he says.

After seeing the image in question, the school’s staff became shocked as well. So much so, in fact, that they rang up child welfare officials and local law enforcement and arranged for them to meet the girl’s father at the end of the school day. By that evening, Sansone had been handcuffed, whisked away to jail and forced to remove his clothes so he could be subjected to a strip search.

Authorities took all three of Sansone’s children and dragged them to Family and Children’s Services to be interviewed. His wife, Stephanie Squires, tells The Record that authorities never explained themselves.

“He had absolutely no idea what this was even about. I just kept telling them. ‘You’re making a mistake,’ ” she says.

Despite her pleas, the ordeal went on for hours. Sansone says he was scared and was told he would be charged with possession of a firearm. The problem was, he says, that he doesn’t own a gun. After being held for hours, Sansone was eventually freed from jail and was asked to authorize a search of his home. Though he didn’t have to comply, he says he did so anyway.

Authorities did not recover any weapons in their search (or monsters). His wife says they knew they wouldn’t. The police, she says, acted on an assumption and nothing else.

“The way everything happened was completely unnecessary, especially since we know the school very well. I don’t understand how they came to that conclusion from a four-year-old’s drawing,” she says.

The girl’s father was pretty surprised the school acted that way, as well. Only last year, he says, the principal offered him a job as a counselor there. Sansone is a licensed personal support worker that educates children in classrooms across the region. The principal, Steve Zack, tells The Record that it was the welfare agency’s decision to involve the authorities.

“Police chose to arrest Jessie here. Nobody wants something like this to happen at any time, especially not at school. But that’s out of my hands,” Zack explains.

Sansone and his family are left wondering why the investigation carried out as far as it did, however. When The Record followed up on the story days later, Waterloo Regional Police Inspector Kevin Thaler told them, “We had every concern, based on this information that children were in danger.” The information is now being called into question after Thaler adds that investigators never saw the drawing. Neither has Sansone or the school’s superintendent.

Police add that the strip-search was necessary since it was a firearms-related incident.

Indian court asked to rule on whether Hindu guru dead or meditating

Indian court has been asked to rule on whether a revered Hindu guru is dead or alive – and whether it is a matter of religious faith or scientific fact

By Dean Nelson

The family and followers of one of India's wealthiest Hindu spiritual leaders are fighting a legal battle over whether he is dead or simply in a deep state of meditation.

His Holiness Shri Ashutosh Maharaj, the founder of the Divya Jyoti Jagrati Sansthan religious order with a property estate worth an estimated £100 million, died in January, according to his wife and son.

However, his disciples at his Ashram have refused to let the family take his body for cremation because they claim he is still alive.

According to his followers, based in the Punjab city of Jalandhar, he simply went into a deep Samadhi or meditation and they have frozen his body to preserve it for when he wakes from it.

His body is currently contained in a commercial freezer at their Ashram.

The late – or living – guru, who was in his seventies, established his sect in 1983 to promote "self-awakening to global peace" and to create a world "wherein every individual becomes an embodiment of truth, fraternity and justice through the eternal science of self-realisation".

Today the group has thousands of followers around the world and owns dozens of large properties throughout India, the United States, South America, Australia, the Middle East and Europe, including its British headquarters in Hayes, Middlesex.

While he is thought to have died from a heart attack, his devotees believe he has simply drifted into a deeper form of the meditation he promotes as a pathway to self-realisation.

A statement on the group's website reads: "His Holiness Shri Ashutosh Maharaj ji has been in deep meditative state (Samadhi) since 29th January 2014."

According to one of his aides, who asked not to be named, "Maharaj has been in deep meditation. He has spent many years meditating in sub-zero temperatures in the Himalayas, there is nothing unusual in it. He will return to life as soon as he feels and we will ensure his body is preserved until then", he said.

His body is held in a guarded room in a deep freezer on his 100 acre retreat in Nurmahal, Jalandhar, where only a few elders and sect doctors are allowed to enter.

Although Punjab Police initially confirmed his death, the Punjab High Court later dismissed its status report and local governmental officials said it was a spiritual matter and that the guru's followers cannot be forced to believe he is dead.

Now his wife and son have filed a court application calling for an investigation into the circumstances of his death and for his body to be released for cremation.

His son Dilip Jha, 40, claims his late father's followers are refusing to release his body as a means of retaining control of his vast financial empire.