Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations, immune from open records laws

By Radley Balko

As part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response.

As it turns out, a number of SWAT teams in the Bay State are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. These LECs are funded by several police agencies in a given geographic area and overseen by an executive board, which is usually made up of police chiefs from member police departments. In 2012, for example, the Tewksbury Police Department paid about $4,600 in annual membership dues to the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC. (See page 36 of linked PDF.) That LEC has about 50 member agencies. In addition to operating a regional SWAT team, the LECs also facilitate technology and information sharing and oversee other specialized units, such as crime scene investigators and computer crime specialists.

Some of these LECs have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests. Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

From the ACLU of Massachusetts’s report on police militarization in that state:

Approximately 240 of the 351 police departments in Massachusetts belong to an LEC. While set up as “corporations,” LECs are funded by local and federal taxpayer money, are composed exclusively of public police officers and sheriffs, and carry out traditional law enforcement functions through specialized units such as SWAT teams . . .

Due to the weakness of Massachusetts public records law and the culture of secrecy that has infected local police departments and Law Enforcement Councils, procuring empirical records from police departments and regional SWAT teams in Massachusetts about police militarization was universally difficult and, in most instances, impossible . . .

Police departments and regional SWAT teams are public institutions, working with public money, meant to protect and serve the public’s interest. If these institutions do not maintain and make public comprehensive and comprehensible documents pertaining to their operations and tactics, the people cannot judge whether officials are acting appropriately or make needed policy changes when problems arise . . .

Hiding behind the argument that they are private corporations not subject to the public records laws, the LECs have refused to provide documents regarding their SWAT team policies and procedures. They have also failed to disclose anything about their operations, including how many raids they have executed or for what purpose . . .

METROLEC, one of the largest of the law enforcement councils covering the metropolitan Boston area, operates a range of specialized resources, including a Canine Unit, Computer Crimes Unit, Crisis Negotiation Team, Mobile Operations Motorcycle Unit, and Regional Response Team, in addition to its SWAT force. The organization maintains its own BearCat armored vehicle, as well as a $700,000 state of the art command and control post. In 2012, METROLEC reportedly used its BearCat 26 times, mostly for drug busts, and applied to the Federal Aviation Administration to obtain a drone license.

The North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC) similarly operates a SWAT team, as well as a Computer Crime Unit, Motorcycle Unit, School Threat Assessment & Response System, and Regional Communications and Incident Management Assistance Team. Its SWAT team members are trained and equipped to “deal with active shooters, armed barricaded subjects, hostage takers and terrorists,” and they dress in military-style gear with the words “NEMLEC SWAT” emblazoned on their uniforms. Given this training, it is not surprising that the NEMLEC SWAT team has over the past decade led numerous operations that involved armored vehicles, flash-bang devices, and automatic weapons.

(Note: In addition to the LEC SWAT teams, the ACLU notes that at least 25 other Massachusetts cities and towns have their own SWAT-like units, along with the state police and the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority.)

Massachusetts also has a long history of accountability and excessive force problems with SWAT teams. A few examples:

• In 1988, Boston Det. Sherman Griffiths was killed in a botched drug raid later revealed to have been conducted based on information from an informant a subsequent investigation revealed that the police had simply made up.
• Six years later, the Rev. Accelyne Williams died of a heart attack during a mistaken drug raid on his home. The Boston Globe found that three of the officers involved in that raid had been accused in a 1989 civil rights suit of using fictional informants to obtain warrants for drug raids. In testimony for that suit, one witness testified that after realizing they’d just raided the wrong home, a Boston police officer shrugged, apologized and said, “This happens all the time.” The city settled with the plaintiffs.
• In 1996, the Fitchburg SWAT team was already facing a lawsuit for harassing a group of loiterers when it burned down an apartment complex during a botched drug raid. The SWAT team subsequently faced a number of other allegations of recklessness and misconduct.
• In January 2011, a SWAT team raided the Framingham, Mass., home of 68-year-old Eurie Stamps at around midnight on a drug warrant. Oddly, it had already arrested the subject of the warrant — Stamps’s 20-year-old stepson — outside the house. But because he lived in Stamps’s home, the team went ahead with the raid anyway. When the team encountered Stamps, it instructed him to lie on the floor. He complied. According to the police account, as one officer then moved toward Stamps to check for weapons, he lost his balance and fell. As he fell, his weapon discharged, sending a bullet directly into Stamps’s chest, killing him.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Jessie Rossman, a staff attorney for the Massachusetts ACLU, told me in a phone interview. “The same government authority that allows them to carry weapons, make arrests, and break down the doors of Massachusetts residents during dangerous raids also makes them a government agency that is subject to the open records law.”

In some states, police agencies can claim exemptions from open records legislation for certain types of requests, such as for internal personnel files, or investigation documents that could reveal the identities of witnesses or informants. In some parts of the country, like the Virginia suburbs of Washington, police agencies have broadly interpreted open records laws to allow them to turn down just about every request. But this claim in Massachusetts is on a whole different scale.

“They didn’t even attempt to claim an exception,” Rossman says. “They’re simply asserting that they’re private corporations.”

The ACLU is now suing NEMLEC. It’s worth noting that in addition to receiving taxpayer funding from its 51 member police agencies, NEMLEC has also received significant federal funding over the years, particularly from the Byrne Grant program. In fact, just last April, NEMLEC made a series of drug busts across the state in an investigation funded at least in part with Byrne Grants. (NEMLEC seems to be involved in a lot of drug raids.) In 2010, NEMLEC received an $800,000 Byrne Grant earmarked by then-Sen. John F. Kerry.

Interestingly, in 2009, NEMLEC had to pay out $200,000 “to settle allegations that it made false claims related to the use of Justice Department grant funds” — specifically, funds obtained through the Byrne Grant program. That sounds like an agency that could use a little oversight.

The argument that the LECs in Massachusetts are private corporations and therefore immune to the state open records law was made by Jack Collins, the general counsel for the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. I have contacted his office to request an interview but haven’t yet heard back.

Family Asked To Leave Southwest Flight After Tweet

Jennifer Mayerle

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A Twin Cities man is upset about the way his family was treated on a Southwest Airlines flight because of a tweet.

Duff Watson says he was asked to de-board a flight from Denver to Minneapolis with his two kids on Sunday after an agent didn’t like a tweet he wrote about her service.

Watson and the agent had a disagreement before boarding initially.

“I was left, you know, very upset, very embarrassed, very humiliated,” Watson said.

He’s an “A-List” passenger, which means he gets priority boarding. But a gate agent wouldn’t let his 6-year-old and 9-year-old board with him — so they’d all have to wait to board later.

“In leaving I said, you know, ‘Real nice way to treat an A-list. I’ll be sure to tweet about it,’” he said.

And that’s just what Watson did.

“Something to the effect of, ‘Wow, rudest agent in Denver. Kimberly S, gate C39, not happy @SWA,’” he said.

Soon after getting to their seats, the family of three was asked to leave the plane.

“[She said] her safety feels threatened at this point because of what I tweeted,” Watson said.

Watson’s daughter, Lucy, said she feared for her father.

“She said ‘I’m going to call the cops,’” Lucy said. “I like thought something bad was going to happen, like my dad being in jail.”

Watson says at that point, his children started to cry. He doesn’t understand why his family was targeted.

“There was no use of profanity, there were no threats made. There was nothing other than, you know, a terse exchange between a customer service agent and a customer,” he said.

Watson says he was forced to delete the tweet.

“She said, ‘You can’t board the plane unless you delete that tweet,’” Watson said.

Southwest Airlines sent a statement which confirmed that a customer was removed for a short time and continued on to Minneapolis. They also said the incident is under review.

In an email to Watson, Southwest apologized for the incident. Because of confidentiality concerns, they could not disclose any disciplinary actions taken.

Watson says he’s not satisfied with their response. All three received $50 vouchers, but Watson says he won’t fly Southwest Airlines again.

Colombian Student Faces Prison Charges for Sharing an Academic Article Online

In many parts of the developing world, students face barriers to access academic materials. Libraries are often inadequate, and schools and universities are often unable to pay dues for expensive, specialized databases. For these students, the Internet is a vital tool and resource to access materials that are otherwise unavailable to them. Yet despite the opportunities enabled by the Internet, there are still major risks to accessing and sharing academic resources online.

A current situation in Colombia exemplifies this problem: a graduate student is facing four to eight years in prison for sharing an academic article on the Internet. He wasn't making a personal profit from sharing the article—he simply intended for other scientists like him to be able to access and cite this scientific research.

Diego Gomez, 26, is a Master's student who has been researching biodiversity and working on the conservation of reptiles and amphibians for several years in the South American region. Throughout his young career, the biggest obstacle he faced was in accessing academic resources that existed on global research databases. As a student at a small university in Armenia, the availability of research papers was so limited that he often had to save money to make trips to Bogotá to access biological collections, articles, and databases only available to him at natural history museums and libraries at the capital city.

Over time, he increasingly came to depend on the Internet. It enabled him to read relevant research, share documents, and communicate with others in his field. Despite the online resources that were available, there were still major barriers that prevented him from accessing the plethora of research that existed. So when he and others came across papers that were crucial to their work, they often shared it online for other researchers to access. Gomez says:

The important thing is to make a correct citation, attributing researchers’ work by indicating their name and year of publication and, of course, not claiming the work of another researcher, but to recognize it and value it. Therefore, what we usually do is to reference the findings and make them available to those who need them.

One day a couple of years ago, he came across a paper that was especially useful to his field work. He then later shared the research online on the site, Scribd. The author of the paper then filed a lawsuit over the “violation of [his] economic and related rights.” Under the allegations of this lawsuit, Gomez could be sent to prison for up to eight years and face crippling monetary fines.

The Criminal Charges

He is being sued under a criminal law that was reformed in 2006, following the conclusion of a free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States. The new law was meant to fulfill the trade agreement's restrictive copyright standards, and it expanded criminal penalties for copyright infringement, increasing possible prison sentences and monetary fines.

Colombian digital rights organization, Fundación Karisma, is supporting Gomez in his case to fight against these excessive criminal charges. Carolina Botero, staff attorney at Fundación Karisma writes (translated from Spanish):

The rationale is the potential damage that "piracy" in the industry generates. Without prejudice to the pending debate on the subject, it should be clear that the actions of users, non-profit activities, and sharing, are not crimes. […] In a society that has a disruptive technology like the Internet, the exercise of the rights to education, access to science and culture, and respect for freedom of expression must be respected.

Colombia does not have flexible fair use system like in the United States. It has a closed list of exceptions and limitations to the rights of authors (derecho de autor). This list was issued more than 20 years ago and are narrowly tailored to some specific situations that are not at all applicable to the digital age. Therefore none of these will apply directly to his case even if it was done for educational purposes.

Fortunately, Gomez still has a strong legal defense against these exorbitant penalties. Under Colombian criminal law, there are two main issues that the court will also need to consider. The first is mens rea, which weighs the malicious intent behind the action. Clearly, Gomez had no intention of violating copyright for personal gain. Which gets us to the second important legal consideration, called antijurídica: whether there was actual harm against the economic rights of the author. Initially the article was posted on Scribd and was available for download without a fee. But at some point afterwards, the website changed its terms of use to require unregistered users to pay five dollars to download documents. When Gomez realized this, he took down the article immediately. The author of the paper may have believed that Gomez was attempting to profit in light of Scribd's new fee system, but Gomez did not make anything off of the work nor did he intend to do so.

There is a Supreme Court ruling that further weighs this legal consideration in his favor. In 2008, the highest Colombian court ruled that an infringing activity can only be criminal if there was intention to profit from the copyrighted work. The decision was partially based on international law—the Berne Convention, which carries an exceptions and limitations framework called the three-step test. This test is a way of determining whether a certain use is legal as long as it doesn't conflict with the “normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.” Since Gomez was clearly not sharing academic articles for personal profit, there is firm ground to assert that his actions were not criminal. Botero of Fundación Karisma comments on this point:

In 2011, Diego published on the Internet a thesis that was defended in 2006. The fact that a scholar author believes that after 5 years someone who spreads his scientific findings is harming his economic interests totally ignores the importance of science in development, in this case, in the conservation of the biodiversity in Colombia, the second most biologically diverse country in the world.

This case exemplifies the real life harm of overreaching restrictions due to excessive laws that protect the “economic rights” of authors. Gomez only wanted to share these articles to further his life mission to protect native wildlife and to allow others with a similar passion to access this research. He is only one of countless thousands who risk themselves every day to push against the prohibitive restraints of copyright. We need major reform of our laws, both internationally and domestically, to ensure that people are not made criminals for promoting scientific progress and exercising their creative expression. In other words, for doing exactly what authors' rights laws are allegedly intended to do.

9/11 Commission's '10 Years Later' Report: The Only Problem With US Counterterrorism Efforts Is The General Public

by Tim Cushing

The 9/11 Commission has released a followup to its original report, detailing the government's activity in response over the past decade. Unfortunately, those who feel the 9/11 attacks ushered in a new era of government overreach and diminished civil liberties will be hard-pressed to see anything encouraging in this report's concerns and recommendations.

Some of the Commission's findings are unsurprising. Yes, terrorist groups and tactics have evolved since 9/11 and yes, the government's counterterrorism efforts seem largely focused on preventing stuff that already happened (this being the TSA's particular area of "expertise"). But the report also warns that our efforts to prevent terrorist attacks are in danger of faltering due to "fatigue" and a "waning sense of urgency," while failing to point out that the government itself is largely to blame.

Many Americans think that the terrorist threat is waning—that, as a country, we can begin turning back to other concerns. They are wrong. The absence of another major attack on the homeland is a success in itself but does not mean that the terrorist threat has diminished. The threat remains grave, and the trend lines in many parts of the world are pointing in the wrong direction. We cannot afford to be complacent—vigorous counterterrorism efforts are as important as ever. Without public support, the government will not be able to sustain the robust capabilities and policies needed to keep Americans safe.

The government has repeatedly attempted to portray the nation as being under the constant threat of attack. While there are certainly threats out there, the danger posed has been overstated -- and the Commission echoing this only makes it worse. This "fatigue" will only intensify if the Commission's suggestions are acted on. To date, the NSA has been unable to point to much evidence that its broad collection efforts have actually reduced the terrorist threat, much less prevented any attacks. The FBI, whose main focus shifted to counterterrorism shortly after 2001, has been even worse. The terrorist plots "disrupted" by the investigative agency have almost exclusively been handcrafted by the FBI itself.

The Commission's "one page summary" (which in true bureaucratic fashion is actually two pages) is a good place to start to get some idea of how many bad ideas are espoused in the 40+ page report, like calling for CISPA/CISA-esque legislation, giving the government even more access to private companies' data in the name of fighting cyberterrorism.

Congress should enact cybersecurity legislation to enable private companies to collaborate with the government in countering cyber threats. Companies should be able to share cyber threat information with the government without fear of liability. Congress should also consider granting private companies legal authority to take direct action in response to attacks on their networks.

Other suggestions aren't nearly as bad. For one, the Commission suggests an overhaul of DHS oversight, something that is currently handled (in one way or another) by 92 committees and subcommittees. It also encourages more transparency, something the two administrations involved in the post-9/11 "War on Terror" have thoroughly avoided.

The National Archives and the administration should work expeditiously to make all remaining 9/11 Commission records available to the public.

National security leaders must communicate to the public—in specific terms—what the state of the threat is, how the threat is evolving, and what measures are being taken to address it.

But when the Commission begins discussing what it finds the US has handled well post 9/11, the wheels start to come off. Dubious statistics are deployed to portray the terrorist threat as constant and growing. The number of people currently on the government's "no-fly list" is presented without the faintest trace of incredulity, as if "20k+" splashed in bold, colorful text actually means the TSA is keeping 20,000 dangerous individuals from entering US airspace.

The report also cites the State Dept.'s statistics showing that terrorist attacks around the world increased 43% from 2012 to 2013. While it acknowledges this increase was almost completely relegated to regions where terrorist attacks have always been common (Pakistan, Iraq, etc.), the Commission goes on to claim this doesn't indicate a decreased threat to the US and cites in support… attacks in Libya and Kenya. While there's no doubt certain terrorists still harbor plenty of enmity towards the US, the likelihood of them succeeding in an attack on American soil still remains where it was on Sept. 10, 2011, Sept. 11, 2001 and every day since then: exceedingly minimal.

The report takes a turn for the ridiculous when discussing cyberattacks, going from warning against complacency and inadequate national security measures to praising the US for its highly symbolic, hypocritical and politically dangerous indictment of five Chinese military officers for hacking US companies' computers.

The Department of Justice’s May 2014 indictment of five Chinese military officers for hacking into the systems of large American companies has helped bring attention to this problem, but the American people remain largely unaware of the magnitude of the cyber threat. That needs to change. Senior leaders in the executive branch and Congress must describe to the American people, in terms as specific as possible, the nature of the threat and the tools they need to combat it.

Things go to completely absurd in the next sentence, which attempts to bring the cyberwar home by quoting copyright industry talking points.

Former NSA Director General Keith Alexander has described the ongoing cyber theft of American companies’ intellectual property (IP) as “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.” According to the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, the annual losses from IP theft are over $300 billion—approximately the amount of U.S. exports to Asia. This ongoing plunder will harm American competitiveness, depress job creation, and ultimately reduce the U.S. standard of living.

Elsewhere, the Commission congratulates the TSA on a job well done, never acknowledging the fact that the agency's efforts are largely useless and mainly focused on reacting to the last threat that escaped their pre-boarding processes. (Shoe bomber, eh? Everyone start taking your shoes off!, etc.)

Senior leaders agree that America’s layered approach to homeland defense, which recognizes that no single security measure is foolproof, has improved our security. Each layer is effective in its own right, and each is supported by other layers of security. The system begins with intelligence gathered overseas and at home about individuals and organizations who may intend to do us harm. It includes screening systems that prevent suspects from boarding planes or entering the country via other means. At its best, a layered system integrates the capabilities of federal, state, and local government agencies.

More bizarrely, the same Commission that pointed out that the failure to share data between agencies allowed the 9/11 terrorists to reenter the country undetected now praises the "response" to the Boston Bombing as an example of "learning the lessons" of 9/11. The Commission glosses over the fact that the same sort of mistakes were made (info not passed along to other agencies, certain intel ignored) that could have prevented the attack.

America’s resilience has improved as well. Federal, state, and local authorities have absorbed and applied the lessons of 9/11 over the last decade. For example, joint federal, state, and local exercises staged in Boston over the last several years paid dividends in the well-executed response to the Boston Marathon bombings. Years of investment and planning helped ensure that the consequences of a terrible tragedy were dealt with in a controlled and systematic way.

The Commission also plays directly into the intelligence/national security narrative in its choice of language. While pressing for greater transparency and a larger emphasis on safeguarding civil liberties (in hopes of bringing Americans "back on board" with expensive, invasive counterterrorism efforts), the Commission poisons the well with these sentences.

Since 2004, when we issued the report, the public has become markedly more engaged in the debate over the balance between civil liberties and national security. In the mid-2000s, news reports about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs caused only a slight public stir. That changed with last year’s leaks by Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor who stole 1.7 million pages of classified material. Documents taken by Snowden and given to the media revealed NSA data collection far more widespread than had been popularly understood. Some reports exaggerated the scale of the programs. While the government explained that the NSA’s programs were overseen by Congress and the courts, the scale of the data collection has alarmed the public.

With this tone established, the Commission calls for greater oversight of the NSA, which it does need. But its brief nod towards protecting civil liberties doesn't even rise to the level of lip service. The Commission seems to feel that if the NSA/administration just talk about surveillance programs more openly, the American public will be more receptive. In summary: Americans just need to be told why their civil liberties are being violated and they'll be cool with it.

Senior leaders must now make this case to the public. The President must lead the government in an ongoing effort to explain to the American people—in specific terms, not generalities—why these programs are critical to the nation’s security. If the American people hear what we have heard in recent months, about the urgent threat and the ways in which data collection is used to counter it, we believe that they will be supportive. If these programs are as important as we believe they are, it is worth making the effort to build a more solid foundation in public opinion to ensure their preservation.

More transparency and specificity would be appreciated, but a "discussion" on national security isn't one small but powerful group telling everyone else how it's going to be, no matter how many details are included.

There are many more troubling assertions and suggestions scattered throughout the report. The Commission revisits the TSA, again praising the no-fly list and making a blatantly false statement in its defense.

Before September 11, there were only 16 names on the no-fly list. Today, there are more than 1,000 times that many, along with a redress process to correct mistakes.

Bigger isn't always better and the redress process is such a joke that a judge has declared it to be unconstitutional. The Commission also calls for faster implementation of REAL ID and biometric databases. So much for the civil liberties concerns, apparently.

With the REAL ID Act gradually being implemented by the states, the country is poised to fulfill our recommendation that the federal government “set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as drivers licenses.” But another key recommendation, a biometric exit-tracking system, has still not been implemented, and there is no end in sight.

In total, the Commission's report is everything the DHS/NSA/FBI, etc. could have hoped for. It calls for more of the same, only faster, harder and with bigger budgets. Very little of what has sprung in place as the result of hasty post-attack legislation is questioned. The ongoing farce that is the TSA is given a solid thumbs-up. The only problem with the DHS is that it answers to too many masters. The major problem, it seems, is that the American public isn't nearly as comfortable with a no-rules, by-any-means-necessary "War on Terror" as it was in the wake of the September 11th attacks. The Commission believes the only thing really missing is a governmental voice persuasive enough to talk the public out of its civil liberties in exchange for some shiny "safety" baubles.

El Paso Releases Video of Cop Executing Handcuffed Man — Where’s the Anger?

By Natasha Lennard

An execution video has become a morbid feature of this week’s news cycle. On screens across the country, click after click, a “graphic” warning gives way to grim curiosity. Viewers see a man whose arms are cuffed behind him. He struggles with officers and squirms on the floor. The executioner draws his gun and shoots. The body bleeds, convulses, and eventually lies still.

In Iraq and Syria, ISIS militants are masters of execution and know the value of a viral death video. But I’m not referring to Iraq or Syria — I’m referring to El Paso, Texas. This week, in compliance with an open records request order, the El Paso police released video of what can only be described as a summary execution. Officer Jose Flores shot Daniel Saenz, a 37-year-old bodybuilder, while Saenz was on the ground and in police custody.


The video released by the El Paso Police Department. The sequence ahead of the shooting begins around 18:00.

Saenz had been arrested for reportedly assaulting an off-duty officer and staff at a local medical center on March 8, 2013. Flores and a prison guard were transporting Saenz — shirtless, handcuffed, and struggling — from the city jail to a hospital to treat a self-inflicted injury. Flores fired the fatal shot with a Glock semiautomatic handgun as he and the prison guard wrestled with Saenz outside of the jail.

The bullet went through Saenz’s left shoulder and into his chest, piercing his heart. The authorities called it an accident. They said that the guard knocked Flores as he pointed his drawn weapon, causing it to fire. They said that Saenz could have moved his cuffs to the front of his body and, with his strength, use them as a weapon. They said a taser would not suffice to subdue him.

But the video speaks for itself. The bodybuilder was executed.

When BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant dead as he lay face down on the platform at Oakland’s Fruitvale Station in 2009, he was also caught on video (by the camera phones of onlookers). As the footage spread, the streets erupted. Protesters and rioters left smashed windows and burning cars in their wake.

The video released by the city of El Paso, however, has provoked no such response. The streets are quiet. Of course, the differences in context between the two shootings are vast and multifaceted. It is merely my humble opinion that seeing a cop shoot an unarmed man dead should produce a collective rage so strong that the police can feel it, see it, and smell it.

Officer Flores was not indicted. A New York Daily News report said that “it was not clear whether Flores was still on the force.” It went on to note that “Flores is also the El Paso cop who became the focus of national attention after giving a pair of boots and socks to a homeless man in January 2013.” The Daily News story ends with this reference to the cop’s good deed. The indeterminacy over whether he is or is not on active duty after killing a handcuffed detainee is tucked between paragraphs.

I am reminded of the 2012 story of an NYPD officer pictured giving boots and socks to a barefoot homeless man on a wintery New York tonight. Hundreds of thousands of Facebook users “liked” the image posted online by the police department.

“The NYPD has been on a warpath against the homeless, going back decades,” Jean Rice, a long-time civil rights campaigner and homeless advocate with the nonprofit organization Picture the Homeless, told me at the time. “The kindness of one individual officer is a drop in the ocean of the NYPD’s pattern and practice of violating homeless people’s civil rights.”

In the case of Flores we are confronted with the fact that a kind cop can be a killer cop too. It might appear inconsistent of me to urge a distrust of cops based on incidents of brutality but not urge an appreciation of them based on incidents of charity and kindness. If this is bias, it is empirically grounded in response to a structure of criminal justice in which a cop can shoot dead a handcuffed, unarmed man and not even face an indictment. A cop can kill a young black man prone on a train platform and face little more than a year in prison for involuntary manslaughter. A cop can kill an unarmed Bronx teen after he runs into his grandmother’s bathroom and have his indictment thrown out by a judge.

“That’s how they work,” said the weeping mother of this slain teen, Ramarley Graham, as fellow cops cheered for their colleague in court. “You see it every day.”

The mother’s use of “they” was appropriate. Anti-police sentiment is regularly met with ripostes like, “But they are people too,” or, “What if that officer has a family?” To such comments I respond that whenever we talk about a cop we’re not dealing with an individual but an institution — the uniform and weaponry indicate as much. Not all cops give warm socks and boots to homeless citizens. Not all cops shoot unarmed detainees. But all cops are part of a violent system of policing, colored by harassment and drenched in impunity. Yes, all cops.

Cop Forces Drunk Man to Move his Car, When He Bumps Other Cars, the Cop Shot Him Dead

Matt Agorist

The taxpayers of Baton Rouge will be shelling out close to a half million dollars because of the negligent actions of BRPD officer, Christopher Magee.

Carlos Harris was out with his friend, Ryan Dominique, when police were called to the scene on reports of Dominique driving recklessly in the parking lot of Club Insomnia on Florida Blvd.

Dominique was subsequently arrested at which point officer Magee asked Harris to move his friend’s car.

When asked to move the car, Harris told Magee he was drunk and did not wish to do so. According to witness Aisha Loliss, Magee then “commanded him to move the car.”

More than 50 cameras, including multiple police dashcams, captured the various angles of what happened next. The videos show Harris driving the car into a police unit, pull forward and hit another car, then crash into the police car again.

The car was traveling forward away from him when Magee shot Harris from behind. One of the three shots Magee fired also hit a woman nearby in the wrist.

Harris was killed as a result of the shots. A toxicology report also showed that his blood alcohol level was .089 making his claim of being intoxicated true.

Harris’ family sued Baton Rouge police for negligence because they believe Harris should have never been instructed to get behind the wheel. The family also contests Dominique’s car had a defect and was difficult to drive, which could explain the reason for ramming the other cars.

Magee was cleared of all wrongdoing, was never disciplined for his actions, and remains on the force today.

Sheffield reporter threatened with arrest under anti-terrorism laws

Alex Evans ordered by rail staff not to film pensioners’ Freedom Ride protest against cuts to free travel at city train station

A reporter was threatened with arrest under anti-terrorism laws and forced to erase potentially important video evidence after filming a protest in Sheffield.

The editor of the Sheffield Star has demanded an explanation as to why his reporter, Alex Evans, was warned off filming a protest against cuts to free travel provision for pensioners and disabled people by railway staff officers on Monday.

Evans claims he was ordered to erase footage he’d recorded on his phone because he did not have permission to film on private property inside Sheffield station. When he initially resisted the request and continued to film, he says he was told he could be arrested under terror laws.

Shortly after he stopped filming, British transport police officers handcuffed and bundled away two men. The arrested men, aged 64 and 65, were taking part in the Freedom Ride, a long-running protest against cuts to free travel provision in South Yorkshire.

James Mitchinson, editor of the Star, said on Tuesday: “What happened to our reporter Alex Evans yesterday was absolutely unacceptable and we will be seeking a full explanation of why he was treated in such a heavy-handed, threatening manner. To cite anti-terror laws is clearly nonsense. We have a right to report the news, and the Star will always fight for that right. Our readers expect nothing less.

“But this case illustrates just how difficult it can be to report the news, on the spot when, increasingly, authorities are seeking to ‘manage’ it.

“We’re well aware that Sheffield Station is, like all stations, technically private property, and ordinarily we’d need to seek permission to film there. But this wasn’t a PR stunt, it was an extraordinary event that couldn’t have been predicted and it was very much in the public interest that people were made aware of what was going on. As the local paper and website that’s our job, and it’s a job that people expect us to do.”

Evans claims British transport police told him the officer who asked him to delete his footage was part of Northern Rail’s rail response team. Northern Rail said it was trying to establish who made the request.

Though the reporter was prevented from filming the scuffles, members of the public managed to capture the arrests on their own phones.

The “rough” manner of the arrests have been criticised by organisers of the Freedom Ride demonstrations, which involve large groups of protesters all attempting to board the same train without buying a ticket.

Jen Dunstan, of Sheffield Disabled People Against the Cuts, told the Star: “Dozens of elderly and disabled people have been left with bruising. Some have cuts where their skin has broken from being pushed and shoved.

“A placid and calm gentleman was roughly manhandled. I am angry and shocked. The police are meant to protect elderly people.”

Northern Rail said in a statement: “Members of the media must have written permission from the train operator which manages the station before undertaking any filming on station property. Under no circumstances are Northern Rail employees to be filmed without prior agreement from the Northern Rail press office.”

A spokesman for British Transport Police said: “We were called upon to assist rail staff dealing with issues relating to an ongoing protest.

“As a result two people were arrested – on suspicion of travel fraud and obstructing a police officer – and the investigation into these alleged offences is ongoing.

“A number of separate incidents arising from these arrests, and involving police, have been brought to our attention. We are in the process of fully investigating these and will speak to all those involved.”

George Arthur, aged 64, and Tony Nuttall, 65, have been charged with failure to pay and obstructing police.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@theguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.

Theresa May: There is no surveillance state

"There is no programme of mass surveillance and there is no surveillance state," Home Secretary Theresa May has said.

Speaking at the Lord Mayor's Defence and Security Lecture at Mansion House, in the City of London, Mrs May dismissed recent criticism of the activities of the security services.

Privacy campaigners have accused surveillance agency GCHQ of using "unlawful hacking" to spy on citizens.

But Mrs May said this was "nonsense".

The government has defended its use of surveillance powers since documents leaked by former Central Intelligence Agency technical worker Edward Snowden were first published by the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers in 2013.

Campaign group Privacy International has said the documents had detailed the many ways that GCHQ was spying on people, accusing the UK intelligence services of violating the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees a right to privacy and to freedom of expression. 'Life and death'

Charles Farr, the director general of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, said last week that GCHQ can legally snoop on British use of Google, Facebook and web-based email without specific warrants because the firms are based abroad.

"Unrestrained, unregulated government spying of this kind is the antithesis of the rule of law and government must be held accountable for their actions” Eric King Privacy International

But Mrs May said: "Some people have alleged that GCHQ is exploiting a technical loophole in legislation that allows them to intercept external communications - that is, communications either sent or received outside the UK - at will and without authorisation. This is... nonsense."

She also denied that the security services were able to ask "their counterparts overseas to undertake activity that would be unlawful if they conducted it themselves".

Surveillance powers were only ever used "when they are necessary and proportionate", she said.

But Mrs May warned that it would be "cavalier and reckless" to let the public know details of which terrorist plots had been thwarted by the security services.

"Considerable" threats to UK security were developing with the emergence of militant group Isis, the collapse of Syria, the activities of Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the "expanding scope" of cyber crime, the home secretary said.

She concluded by renewing a call to change the law to hand the security services more powers to scrutinise online communication - a bid that has previously been blocked by the Liberal Democrats.

"We have to make sure that the capabilities can only be used with the right authorisation and with appropriate oversight," she said.

"But this is quite simply a question of life and death, a matter of national security. We must keep on making the case until we get the changes we need."

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which monitors whether the UK's spying laws are being observed, is currently investigating claims put to it by Privacy International.

The group argues that programmes by GCHQ and its US counterpart NSA, uncovered by Mr Snowden, let the agencies listen in on the public via computer microphones, watch through webcams and scoop up detailed web browsing histories.

Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, said the surveillance was the modern equivalent of the government entering someone's house and reading their diary, correspondence and journals.

The freedom GCHQ and the NSA had to carry out surveillance was equivalent to "covert, complete, real-time physical and electronic surveillance", he said.

"Arbitrary powers such as these are the purview of dictatorships, not democracies," he said. "Unrestrained, unregulated government spying of this kind is the antithesis of the rule of law and government must be held accountable for their actions."

Children Exposed To Religion Have Difficulty Distinguishing Fact From Fiction, Study Finds

By Shadee Ashtari

Young children who are exposed to religion have a hard time differentiating between fact and fiction, according to a new study published in the July issue of Cognitive Science.

Researchers presented 5- and 6-year-old children from both public and parochial schools with three different types of stories -- religious, fantastical and realistic –- in an effort to gauge how well they could identify narratives with impossible elements as fictional.

The study found that, of the 66 participants, children who went to church or were enrolled in a parochial school were significantly less able than secular children to identify supernatural elements, such as talking animals, as fictional.

By relating seemingly impossible religious events achieved through divine intervention (e.g., Jesus transforming water into wine) to fictional narratives, religious children would more heavily rely on religion to justify their false categorizations.

“In both studies, [children exposed to religion] were less likely to judge the characters in the fantastical stories as pretend, and in line with this equivocation, they made more appeals to reality and fewer appeals to impossibility than did secular children,” the study concluded.

Refuting previous hypotheses claiming that children are “born believers,” the authors suggest that “religious teaching, especially exposure to miracle stories, leads children to a more generic receptivity toward the impossible, that is, a more wide-ranging acceptance that the impossible can happen in defiance of ordinary causal relations.”

According to 2013-2014 Gallup data, roughly 83 percent of Americans report a religious affiliation, and an even larger group -- 86 percent -- believe in God.

More than a quarter of Americans, 28 percent, also believe the Bible is the actual word of God and should be taken literally, while another 47 percent say the Bible is the inspired word of God.

The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/07/23/blacklisted/

Why it took Arizona nearly 2 hours to execute a prisoner

by German Lopez and Max Fisher

An execution in Arizona went horribly wrong on Wednesday afternoon. Joseph Wood, a convicted murderer, took nearly two hours to die after he was injected with an experimental chemical cocktail that was supposed to kill him quickly and painlessly. More than an hour after the execution started, Wood's lawyers filed for an emergency stay after it became clear it was not going as planned.

As in a previously botched execution in Oklahoma, Arizona was using an experimental, secret formula because pharmaceutical companies increasingly refuse to supply "safe" lethal injection chemicals. That's left capital punishment states to choose between executing inmates under dangerous conditions or not executing them at all. Many states have chosen to go ahead, and some have adopted secrecy laws that shield the chemical compounds used for the executions.
Drug companies stopped supplying the key lethal injection chemical in 2011

The key chemical in lethal injections is sodium thiopental, originally invented as an anesthetic. But US manufacturers of the drug have been increasingly refusing to sell it, either out of opposition to the death penalty or concern about association with executions. In 2011, the last US supplier, a company called Hospira, stopped making it.

Later that year, the European Union announced an export ban on sodium thiopental, in pursuit of its official goal of "universal abolition" of the death penalty. Belarus, a pro-Moscow dictatorship, is the only European country that retains the death penalty; ending capital punishment worldwide is a major political issue in many European countries. Hospira may have shut down production in 2011 in part because it had come under pressure to do so from the government of Italy, where it has a plant.

Sodium thiopental has a shelf-life of only four years, meaning that it cannot be stockpiled beyond 2015. The result is that states are running out of the key ingredient for lethal injections.

Capital punishment states had to find another way to make lethal injections

State governments that wanted to continue using lethal injections were left with few options. Some imported sodium thiopental illegally from Europe, but federal and European officials appear to have shut down those trades. Some tried importing them from other exporters, but there is not a lot of overlap between countries that produce complex anesthetics and countries that retain the death penalty. One of the few, India, sold a few batches to South Dakota and Nebraska before Indian officials banned the sales.

That left capital punishment states with two final options: they could mix legally available drugs themselves, creating their own ad hoc lethal injections, or they could pay compounding pharmacies to do it for them (compounding pharmacies combine or mix custom drugs, and face little government regulation for small-batch jobs). In effect, they wanted to make up new lethal injection cocktails. But without a way to do rigorous testing before using the drugs, the execution room effectively became the test lab; death row inmates were also lab rats.

The new lethal injections opened states up to legal challenges

The US constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment. The legal standard this sets for the death penalty, under current US law, is that an execution method has to be "safe," which means that it does not inflict too much pain.

The problem with using untested drug combinations invented by loosely regulated compound pharmacies or by a state doctor's guesswork is that the state cannot prove that they won't cross this legal pain threshold. Exacerbating the problem, a series of botched lethal injections in 2011 and 2012 did fail to painlessly and immediately kill the inmate, causing an obviously high degree of pain in the process.

This allowed lawyers who defend death row inmates to argue that the new compounds crossed the "cruel and unusual" threshold. In some cases they won, courts ruled that the new combinations were unfit for executions. States had given anti-execution lawyers a new and often successful legal argument.

States tried to solve this problem by turning to secrecy

States such as Arizona and Oklahoma have responded to the legal challenges by passing secrecy laws that allow them to keep the details or origins of their lethal injections a secret. Some states have even passed laws requiring drug suppliers to keep secret about the sales. Officials in Oklahoma, for instance, have even taken to using petty cash when they purchase individual drugs for the cocktail in order to cover their tracks. The idea is to make it harder for lawyers to challenge the legality of their lethal injections by simply hiding the details.

The secrecy has, unsurprisingly, invited a whole new set of legal challenges. But the US Supreme Court allowed Wood's execution in Arizona to proceed despite the concerns.

This isn't the first time an execution recently went wrong

Arizona's case is far from unique. A staggering 7 percent of lethal injections are botched, often resulting in grisly incidents like that on Wednesday afternoon.

As stockpiles of sodium thiopental have thinned or expired, executions have decreased, but at the same time states have become more reliant on ad hoc cocktails and little-regulated compounding pharmacies to provide injections for the executions that do go ahead. Episodes like Wednesday night's are now just a feature of our continued use of capital punishment.

In January, Oklahoma used pentobarbital acquired from an officially secret source to inject death row inmate Michael Lee Wilson. "I feel my whole body burning," Wilson said during the procedure, before dying in apparent agony. That episode, like a later one in Oklahoma, provoked horror around the country and sparked a national debate about the growing problem of unsafe lethal injections. But that did not stop it from happening again.

Egypt court sentences Al Jazeera journalists

Network says jail terms for Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed defy "logic, sense, and semblance of justice".

Two Al Jazeera English journalists have been sentenced to seven years in jail and one to 10 years by an Egyptian court on charges including aiding the Muslim Brotherhood and reporting false news.

The guilty verdicts were announced by a judge on Monday against Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy, and Baher Mohamed.

Greste and Fahmy were sentenced to seven years in prison, while Baher Mohamed was sentenced to an additional three years for possession of ammunition. Mohamed was in possession of a spent bullet casing he had found on the ground during a protest.

Other Al Jazeera journalists who were tried in absentia, including Sue Turton and Dominic Kane, were sentenced to 10 years.

Al Jazeera has strenuously rejected the charges against its journalists and maintains their innocence.

Greste, Fahmy, and Mohamed were arrested in December in Cairo as they covered the aftermath of the army's removal of Mohamed Morsi from the presidency in July.

The prosecution said Greste, Al Jazeera's East Africa correspondent, and his Egypt bureau colleagues aided the Brotherhood and produced false news reports of the situation in Egypt.

The Brotherhood, which supported Morsi, was listed as a "terrorist" organisation by the interim Egyptian government shortly before the accused were arrested.

The prosecution produced a number of items as evidence including a BBC podcast, a news report made while none of the accused were in Egypt, a pop video by the Australian singer Gotye, and several recordings on non-Egyptian issues.

The defence maintained that the journalists were wrongly arrested and that the prosecution had failed to prove any of the charges against them.

'Absurd allegations'

Al Anstey, Al Jazeera English managing director, said the verdicts defied "logic, sense, and any semblance of justice".

"Today three colleagues and friends were sentenced, and will continue to be kept behind bars for doing a brilliant job of being great journalists. 'Guilty' of covering stories with great skill and integrity. 'Guilty' of defending people’s right to know what is going on in their world," Anstey said in a statement.

"Peter, Mohamed, and Baher and six of our other colleagues were sentenced despite the fact that not a shred of evidence was found to support the extraordinary and false charges against them. At no point during the long drawn out 'trial' did the absurd allegations stand up to scrutiny.

"There is only one sensible outcome now - for the verdict to be overturned, and justice to be recognised by Egypt."

Massachusetts Supreme Court says it can order you to decrypt your computer

BY Sean Buckley @seaniccus 19 days ago 173

Say you get arrested, your computer is seized and state wants to peek at the encrypted data hidden away on your machine's hard drive. Can it force you to decrypt your computer? Traditionally, the answer has been no: courts have previously ruled that ordering a defendant to decrypt their data was tantamount to self-incrimination -- a violation of their 5th amendments rights. The Massachusetts Supreme Court sees things differently, and has recently ordered a defendant to decrypt his machine because the pertinent data's presence on the computer was a "foregone conclusion." In other words, if the police already know the data they are looking for is there, it doesn't count as new testimony and is not protected by the 5th amendment.

The state's argument seems largely based on the defendant's own statements. When Leon Gelfgatt was arrested under suspicion of mortgage fraud he told state troopers that everything on his computers was encrypted and that "no one is going to get to it." He also explained that he was capable of decrypting this data, but refused to. According to the Supreme Court, this made the presence of encrypted data and the existence of a decryption key a "foregone conclusion," and won't tell the government anything it didn't already know. The ruling seems a little bit slippery though -- of course the government already knows that there are encrypted documents on the computer, but it doesn't know what those documents contain, which leaves proponents of digital privacy rights uncomfortable with the supreme court ruling.

While this ruling only applies to the state of Massachusetts, it's a major strike against privacy advocates. For the rest of the country, the burden of decrypting seized data still falls on the burden of of authorities, but the larger issue is still up for debate in the higher courts. This certainly won't be the last we hear of it.

Glendora couple receives warning for having a brown lawn

By Steve Scauzillo

In order to save water in a severe drought, Laura Whitney-Korte reduced watering her lawn to two times a week, turns off the shower to suds up and never leaves the faucet running while brushing her teeth.

And what has she received for her water-saving efforts? A threatening letter from the city of Glendora’s code enforcement team saying that her brown lawn could be a “potential public nuisance problem” that may cost her $100-$500 in fines and possible criminal action.

“Despite the water conservation efforts, we wish to remind you that limited watering is still required to keep landscaping looking healthy and green,” read the letter, which said maintaining this appearance is part of keeping Glendora beautiful and keeping up city’s “Pride of the Foothills” image.

The letter, with the city seal and the police department seal, contained three pictures: a dead lawn with a red line through it, a weedy lawn also crossed out and a lush, green lawn with a sprinkler running in the daytime, apparently the positive example.

“It is telling me I’d better get my lawn green and I have 60 days to do it,” said Laura Whitney-Korte.

Whitney-Korte and her husband, Michael, are caught in a squeeze. On one hand, they said they want to obey Gov. Jerry Brown’s call to reduce water consumption 20 percent because California is in the third year of record low rainfall with some communities running out of water.

In fact, the governor’s call was strengthened Tuesday — the same day the couple received the letter — when the State Water Resources Control Board gave local agencies the power to hand out $500 fines for overwatering lawns.

Now, the couple says they are trying to avoid paying fines to City Hall for having an unkept front and side lawn, which they say ironically will require watering every day to remedy.

“It seems like you’ll be fined if you overwater but we will be fined no matter what,” said Laura, during an interview inside the couple’s 1946, post-war bungalow in south Glendora.

Glendora City Manager Chris Jeffers said the couple has not been cited and called it a friendly letter prompted by a neighbor’s complaint. But he said the city is abiding by the governor’s call and has reduced overall water consumption 11 percent from 2008 to 2013.

“We are consistently telling people conserve,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “But I don’t think the state is saying we have to have dirt or unlandscaped property. You have to make a community appearance so property values don’t plummet.”

Though the couple have not heard back from the city about what exactly they’re supposed to do, Laura said she has a plan to cover the dead California crabgrass with plastic sheeting, kill the roots, cover it with mulch and re-seed it with a heartier, less water intensive grass.

They say the city doesn’t appear to be sending a conservation message. For example, Michael and Laura said the sprinklers at nearby Big Tree Park go on every night and send water flowing into the gutters, a violation under the state water board emergency regulations.

“Obviously, the right thing to do is not water and observe we are in a drought,” said Michael Korte.

He waters for 20 minutes in four to five spots twice a week. Despite their actions, water usage at the address has gone up slightly, according to the city.

Jeffers suggested they apply for the city’s turf removal program, which pays $4 per square foot, twice as much as offered by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. But leaving only dirt is unacceptable, he said.

“We are trying to balance that thin line between water conservation and neighborhood integrity,” Jeffers said.

UN Report Says Mass Surveillance May Violate International Law

The good folks over at the EFF have a detailed overview of a new report from the UN, which has basically found that mass surveillance, similar to that which is carried out by the NSA and GCHQ can often violate international law. The full report is just 16 pages, but the EFF version highlights some of the key lines. The biggest is the report's rejection of the whole "collect the haystack" approach to mass surveillance. The UN report makes it clear that this is not a reasonable approach, especially when it is not shown to be "necessary and proportionate."

Where there is a legitimate aim and appropriate safeguards are in place, a State might be allowed to engage in quite intrusive surveillance; however, the onus is on the Government to demonstrate that interference is both necessary and proportionate to the specific risk being addressed. Mass or “bulk” surveillance programmes may thus be deemed to be arbitrary, even if they serve a legitimate aim and have been adopted on the basis of an accessible legal regime. In other words, it will not be enough that the measures are targeted to find certain needles in a haystack; the proper measure is the impact of the measures on the haystack, relative to the harm threatened; namely, whether the measure is necessary and proportionate.

It further finds that many countries do not effectively limit who has access to such bulk data collections, which exacerbates the problem:

One factor that must be considered in determining proportionality is what is done with bulk data and who may have access to them once collected. Many national frameworks lack “use limitations”, instead allowing the collection of data for one legitimate aim, but subsequent use for others. The absence of effective use limitations has been exacerbated since 11 September 2001, with the line between criminal justice and protection of national security blurring significantly. The resulting sharing of data between law enforcement agencies, intelligence bodies and other State organs risks violating article 17 of the Covenant, because surveillance measures that may be necessary and proportionate for one legitimate aim may not be so for the purposes of another

It also finds requirements for data retention to be problematic:

Concerns about whether access to and use of data are tailored to specific legitimate aims also raise questions about the increasing reliance of Governments on private sector actors to retain data “just in case” it is needed for government purposes. Mandatory third-party data retention -- a recurring feature of surveillance regimes in many States, where Governments require telephone companies and Internet service providers to store metadata about their customers’ communications and location for subsequent law enforcement and intelligence agency access – appears neither necessary nor proportionate.

The report condemns the pernicious use of "secret interpretations" of the law, something that has become all too common in the US:

Consequently, secret rules and secret interpretations – even secret judicial interpretations – of law do not have the necessary qualities of “law”. Neither do laws or rules that give the executive authorities, such as security and intelligence services, excessive discretion; the scope and manner of exercise of authoritative discretion granted must be indicated (in the law itself, or in binding, published guidelines) with reasonable clarity. A law that is accessible, but that does not have foreseeable effects, will not be adequate. The secret nature of specific surveillance powers brings with it a greater risk of arbitrary exercise of discretion which, in turn, demands greater precision in the rule governing the exercise of discretion, and additional oversight.

While reports like this may not directly impact the US's practices, it adds to the growing understanding and recognition both of what the NSA (and others) does, but also why it's totally unacceptable.

Photoshopping of adult porn nets man 10-year child-porn conviction

Ruling protects minors from "significant harms associated with morphed images."

by David Kravets

A federal appeals court upheld Thursday the child pornography conviction and accompanying 10-year prison term handed to a Nebraska man who superimposed the image of an underaged girl's face onto a picture of two adults having sex.

The 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected (PDF) claims from 28-year-old Jeffrey Anderson that his actions were protected by the First Amendment. Anderson sent the doctored image to his 11-year-old half-sister via Facebook, resulting in the charge of distributing child pornography. Anderson had superimposed the half sister's face onto the photo, the court said.

Among other defenses, Anderson argued that because no minor engaged in sex, he should not have been charged.

The St. Louis-based appeals court agreed that "no minor was sexually abused in the production" of the image. However, the child, known in court documents as "M.A.," was abused in another way, the court concluded. She was falsely portrayed as engaging in sexual activity.

Anderson argues that the law as applied here is not narrowly tailored because it encompasses an image that clearly depicts adult bodies and because it punishes 'private' distribution of a morphed image. But the harm a child suffers from appearing as the purported subject of pornography in a digital image that is distributed via the Internet can implicate a compelling government interest regardless of the image's verisimilitude or the initial size of its audience. Anderson's distribution targeted M.A. through her Facebook account, and the image suggested her involvement in sexual intercourse as an eleven-year-old child. There was no less restrictive means for the government effectively to protect this child from the exploitation and psychological harm resulting from the distribution of the morphed image than to prohibit Anderson from disseminating it.

The Sickening Reason Why All Those Federal Agents Suddenly Swarmed a Small Illinois Town

Zach Noble

When agents from the Homeland Security Department, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and other federal agencies descended in force on a tiny town in Illinois on Thursday, residents (and the rest of the country) were baffled.

We didn’t have to wait long to find out why the agents were there — it was for a child porn bust.

Robert E. Godsey, 34, was charged Friday in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis with a slew of child pornography offenses, the Belleville News Democrat reported.

The federal agents, backed up by local law enforcement, assembled at the Livingston, Illinois elementary school and at a second location nearby before storming Godsey’s home on Thursday.

They reportedly recovered roughly 600 videos and more than 1,000 images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct from Godsey’s home.

Godsey told authorities he had been collecting child pornography since he was 17, before he was legally an adult, the Belleville News Democrat reported.

So why did one child pornography bust require so much manpower?

“It’s better to be over-prepared,” said Jim Porter, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois.

He declined to comment further on the massive use of force that briefly overwhelmed the town of Livingston, population: 850.

The best of capitalism is over for rich countries – and for the poor ones it will be over by 2060

Populations with access to technology and a sense of their human rights will not accept inequality

Paul Mason

One of the upsides of having a global elite is that at least they know what's going on. We, the deluded masses, may have to wait for decades to find out who the paedophiles in high places are; and which banks are criminal, or bust. But the elite are supposed to know in real time – and on that basis to make accurate predictions.

Just how difficult this has become was shown last week when the OECD released its predictions for the world economy until 2060. These are that growth will slow to around two-thirds its current rate; that inequality will increase massively; and that there is a big risk that climate change will make things worse. Despite all this, says the OECD, the world will be four times richer, more productive, more globalised and more highly educated. If you are struggling to rationalise the two halves of that prediction then don't worry – so are some of the best-qualified economists on earth.

World growth will slow to 2.7%, says the Paris-based thinktank, because the catch-up effects boosting growth in the developing world – population growth, education, urbanisation – will peter out. Even before that happens, near-stagnation in advanced economies means a long-term global average over the next 50 years of just 3% growth, which is low. The growth of high-skilled jobs and the automation of medium-skilled jobs means, on the central projection, that inequality will rise by 30%. By 2060 countries such as Sweden will have levels of inequality currently seen in the USA: think Gary, Indiana, in the suburbs of Stockholm.

The whole projection is overlaid by the risk that the economic effects of climate change begin to destroy capital, coastal land and agriculture in the first half of the century, shaving up to 2.5% off world GDP and 6% in south-east Asia.

The bleakest part of the OECD report lies not in what it projects but what it assumes. It assumes, first, a rapid rise in productivity, due to information technology. Three-quarters of all the growth expected comes from this. However, that assumption is, as the report states euphemistically, "high compared with recent history".

There is no certainty at all that the information revolution of the past 20 years will cascade down into ever more highly productive and value-creating industries. The OECD said last year that, while the internet had probably boosted the US economy by up to 13%, the wider economic effects were probably bigger, unmeasurable and not captured by the market. The veteran US economist Robert Gordon has suggested the productivity boost from info-tech is real but already spent. Either way, there is a fairly big risk that the meagre 3% growth projected comes closer to 1%.

And then there's the migration problem. To make the central scenario work, Europe and the USA each have to absorb 50 million migrants between now and 2060, with the rest of the developed world absorbing another 30 million. Without that, the workforce and the tax base shrinks so badly that states go bust.

The main risk the OECD models is that developing countries improve so fast that people stop migrating. The more obvious risk – as signalled by a 27% vote for the Front National in France and the riotous crowds haranguing migrants on the California border – is that developed-world populations will not accept it. That, however, is not considered.

Now imagine the world of the central scenario: Los Angeles and Detroit look like Manila – abject slums alongside guarded skyscrapers; the UK workforce is a mixture of old white people and newly arrived young migrants; the middle-income job has all but disappeared. If born in 2014, then by 2060 you are either a 45-year-old barrister or a 45-year-old barista. There will be not much in-between. Capitalism will be in its fourth decade of stagnation and then – if we've done nothing about carbon emissions – the really serious impacts of climate change are starting to kick in.

The OECD has a clear messagefor the world: for the rich countries, the best of capitalism is over. For the poor ones – now experiencing the glitter and haze of industrialisation – it will be over by 2060. If you want higher growth, says the OECD, you must accept higher inequality. And vice versa. Even to achieve a meagre average global growth rate of 3% we have to make labour "more flexible", the economy more globalised. Those migrants scrambling over the fences at the Spanish city of Melilla, next to Morocco, we have to welcome, en masse, to the tune of maybe two or three million a year into the developed world, for the next 50 years. And we have to achieve this without the global order fragmenting.

Oh and there's the tax problem. The report points out that, with the polarisation between high and low incomes, we will have to move – as Thomas Piketty suggests – to taxes on wealth. The problem here, the OECD points out, is that assets – whether they be a star racehorse, a secret bank account or the copyright on a brand's logo – tend to be intangible and therefore held in jurisdictions dedicated to avoiding wealth taxes.

The OECD's prescription – more globalisation, more privatisation, more austerity, more migration and a wealth tax if you can pull it off – will carry weight. But not with everybody. The ultimate lesson from the report is that, sooner or later, an alternative programme to "more of the same" will emerge. Because populations armed with smartphones, and an increased sense of their human rights, will not accept a future of high inequality and low growth.

Thomaston man charged with threatening after stabbing watermelon

By Isaac Avilucea

BANTAM >> A Thomaston man is accused of stabbing a watermelon with a butcher knife and leaving it in the kitchen for a woman to see, in what police describe as a “passive aggressive” swipe that landed him in custody. She was unnerved by what she perceived to be a menacing gesture directed at her and reported it to police.

On Monday, Carmine Cervellino, 49, of 126 Hickory Hill Road, was arraigned in Bantam Superior Court on charges of second-degree threatening and disorderly conduct. He is at liberty after posting a $500 bond and had his case referred to Family Services.

The woman said she felt Cervellino was resorting to “passive aggressive” tactics to “intimidate her because he is angry at her,” Thomaston Officer Keith Koval wrote in a report.

Initially, the woman came to police headquarters the morning of July 4 to report finding a plastic bag of marijuana and a pill container — with her name — which had Percocet and an unidentified blue pill inside. It was hidden in Cervellino’s tool box, she told police.

She snatched them up, took pictures with a cell phone camera and stowed them away in her room. Later, when the woman returned home, she found the drugs missing, she claims, but she showed police the photos. Cervillino is not facing any drug charges.

The woman returned a second time and was greeted by the sight of a watermelon, pierced by Cervillino’s large butcher knife, sitting on the kitchen counter top, police said.

Cervillino walked in seconds later, and without saying anything, began slicing pieces of the watermelon. The woman snapped a picture of the knife and turned it over to police.

The Robot Economy and the Crisis of Capitalism: Why We Need Universal Basic Income

Thomas Wells

The material prosperity that capitalism has wrought is the product of technology, as well as markets (and social norms and state institutions).

Markets enhance the efficiency of allocation of resources - such as human labour - between competing projects, while technological innovations enhance the productivity of our use of those resources, the ability to produce more with less.

As Keynes prophesised in his famous essay, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" (1930), the seemingly relentless trend of rising productivity promises finally to end the "economic problem" - the struggle to overcome scarcity that has characterised the human condition since our beginning. Finally, we can turn as a society to considering what our enormous wealth can do for us, rather than what we must do to get it.

But this is not a time for complacency. Unless we intervene, the same economic system that has produced this astonishing prosperity will return us to the Dickensian world of winners and losers that characterised the beginning of capitalism, or worse.

The problem is this: how will ordinary people earn a claim on the material prosperity of the capitalist economy if that economy doesn't need our labour anymore?

The crisis

The original industrial revolution was basically an energy revolution which replaced puny human brawn with fossil fuel powered machines that were orders of magnitude faster and stronger. Human workers were displaced into the new jobs created by this prosperity, some managing and servicing the machines that made actual things, but most into "services," producing intangible goods such as education by cognitive efforts that the technological revolution in productivity couldn't reach.

We are now living through a second industrial revolution that is replacing puny human brains with machine intelligence. Any kind of work that can be routinised can be translated into instructions for computers to do, generally more cheaply and reliably than human employees can. That includes increasingly sophisticated cognitive labour like driving, law, medicine and document translation. Even university lecturers are at risk of being replaced by technology, in the form of Massive Open Online Courses, while the digital cloning of actors promises to allow filmmakers to cheaply manufacture whatever cast they please.

Just like the original industrial revolution, this is creating large numbers of losers whose skills are no longer valued by the market. But this time it is not clear that new jobs will appear for these people to move into, for this time the machines can follow us nearly anywhere we try to go. This time technological unemployment may become a permanent fact that we have to deal with by changing how capitalism works. Our birthright as humans - the ability to produce things by our labour that others find valuable - may become economically worthless.

According to some economists, automation is already erasing white collar jobs from the economy, a process that accelerates in recessions like this one leading to jobless recoveries and an ever-widening hole in the middle of the labour market. At the bottom, increasing numbers of people will compete for low status low paid jobs like cleaning and fast-food preparation - things that machines are not yet able to do, or not able to do cheaply enough. At the top will be a new creative class of knowledge workers who develop and service the machines on behalf of the capitalists who own them. In between, the jobs will be most cost-effectively done by robots.

Thus, on the output side of our new robot economy, we have material abundance undreamed of by earlier generations. But on the production side, we have an economy increasingly independent of human labour and so unwilling to pay for it. Hence the crisis.

For under capitalism as we know it, the labour market is the central mechanism for distributing claims on the economy's productivity. The welfare systems we have developed are designed to complement it, for example providing education to improve children's employability as adults, and social insurance "safety nets" for the disabled and temporarily unemployed. Employment is also highly moralised - people are understood to have a moral duty to seek paid work and are held responsible for their failure to get it. (Indeed, cultivating this norm was clearly understood to be essential to the global institutionalisation of capitalism, along with legal innovations like limited liability corporations. The nineteenth century colonial powers deliberately set out to convert subsistence economies into profitable ones by coercing peasants into waged labour.)

None of this is sustainable in a robot economy. We need something new.

Universal basic income

Universal basic income is the idea that governments should guarantee all their citizens an income sufficient for a decent standard of living. It is not a new idea - versions of it can be found in Thomas More's Utopia and Thomas Paine's pamphlet on Agrarian Justice - but it may be one whose time has come.

In the idealistic 1960s and 70s the idea enjoyed some political support and experiments were even carried out to see how it might work in practise. Yet the grip of the moral ideology of work made it politically unfeasible - even hard-nosed economists worried that paying people to do nothing would undermine the work ethic on which the economy depended, including the taxes needed to pay for the basic income itself.

More recently the idea of basic income has had a small revival. Some on the left see it not only as a just return of excess profits from capitalists to workers, but as a means of returning dignity to work - giving people the freedom not to have to take demeaning and low paid jobs just to survive. Some on the right focus on the efficiency and liberty gains of abolishing the bureaucracy of the present welfare system.

In the context of the robot economy, the case for a universal basic income becomes still more compelling. For it is no longer only an idealistic vision of a freer, more just society. It may also be our best chance to avoid a nightmare. Thus, even conservatives suspicious of dreamy progressives may come on board: we may have to commit to a radical ideal of a better world just to prevent the loss of the modicum of individual freedom and equality we currently have. Whether one seeks to transcend capitalism or merely save it, the path lies through something like basic income.

First, the material abundance being wrought by ever increasing automation makes the affordability and sustainability of a universal basic income more credible. The scourge of technological unemployment means that even if being paid a living wage to do nothing does dissuade lots of us from taking jobs and turns us into "surfer bums," that won't affect the tax base - since there will be few jobs left for humans to do anyway. Effects on the work ethic would be irrelevant.

Second, because the labour market mechanism for transferring claims on economic output from capital to labour has broken down, we will need a new way of providing people with the ability to consume goods, or else we will end up in an economic crisis of under-consumption amid over-production (such as Marx prophesised). In that case even, the capitalists who own the machines and the algorithms will be less well-off than they could be, for no matter how cheap their goods and services would be to produce, their profits depend on people being able to afford them.

As in a debt crisis, an economy will stop spinning and crash to the ground if the distribution of assets becomes too skewed. Most modern economists view the economy not as a moral drama in which it makes sense to talk of good and evil or right and wrong, but rather as a complex machine that can produce more or less of what we value depending on how it is set up and maintained. Thus, the capitalist way of solving a debt crisis is for the government to compulsorily transfer some assets back from creditors to debtors so that the economy can keep spinning.

The traditional "moralistic" way of solving a debt crisis is for creditors to take ownership of their debtors' last assets, themselves, which is why so many of the agrarian economies preceding capitalism were slave societies. By this same utilitarian reasoning, some version of a basic income - whether funded by corporate taxation, income taxes on the rich, or universal share ownership - seems necessary to transfer purchasing power back to ordinary consumers and prevent capitalism from collapsing into neo-feudalism.

Third, the welfare system as we have known it will have to be replaced. If we do not wish our material utopia to become a Dickensian dystopia or worse, with most of the population politically, socially and economically disenfranchised, we will have to build a new welfare system that isn't dependent on the labour market. The central issue here is human dignity. Most rich countries have already ended the scourge of old-age poverty with free healthcare and cost of living linked pensions entrenched as entitlement rights rather than charity. We long ago decide that old people should not be subjected to the horrors of penury, begging for alms and living on the streets. We should extend the same consideration to people in general.

Finally, and more positively, a basic income would allow us to take advantage of the liberation offered by material abundance. As the anthropologist David Graeber noted in a recent essay, "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs," when you look at the content of most of the work people do these days, "It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working." The cult of work has persisted long after it stopped really making sense and the material prosperity prophesied by Keynes came to pass. A great many people are trapped in jobs that are wholly or mostly pointless - Graeber has a particular go at corporate lawyers and university administrators - simply because they need to earn a claim on the productivity of the economy somehow, and automation has reduced the number of jobs in industries that make or do things that are actually useful, like growing food or building things.

Artificial intelligence would undermine most of those pseudo-jobs, to the extent that they are worth doing at all, while a basic income would provide us with the freedom as a society not to set out to create a new set of pointless jobs, as flunkies to the new upper-classes, say. Finally we would be able to stop wasting half our waking lives on activities that really don't matter whether we do them or not. Finally we would all have the right to the dignified leisure of the gentleman, not the hopeless and morally stigmatised inactivity of the unemployed. We would be able to live our lives for ourselves - though whether we would use that freedom to embark on noble projects and philosophical contemplation, or merely to watch more television and play golf is another matter.

***

For eating the forbidden fruit, the Abrahamic god cursed Adam to a life of endless labour: "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food" (Genesis 3:19). The rise of the machines has given humanity a wonderful opportunity to finally be free of that curse. Yet the end of labour also presents a crisis for capitalism.

The widely shared material prosperity that has been capitalism's greatest achievement depended upon a specific harmonious configuration of technology, markets, social norms and government which is now coming unstuck.

We have a decision to make between two futures. In one, we cleave to the institutions we have become accustomed to - the market for labour, the ideology of work and a welfare system focused on supporting and enforcing those. In that case, we are likely to end up back in a world divided between rich and poor, or worse, between lords and serfs. In the other future, we take control of our prosperity and make it work for us rather than we for it.

Prisoners Could Serve '1,000 Year Sentences In 8.5 Hours' In The Future

Rhiannon Williams

Future biotechnology could be used to trick a prisoner's mind into thinking they have served a 1,000 year sentence, a group of scientists have claimed.

Philosopher Rebecca Roache is in charge of a team of scholars focused upon the ways futuristic technologies might transform punishment. Dr Roache claims the prison sentence of serious criminals could be made worse by extending their lives.

Speaking to Aeon magazine, Dr Roache said drugs could be developed to distort prisoners' minds into thinking time was passing more slowly.

"There are a number of psychoactive drugs that distort people’s sense of time, so you could imagine developing a pill or a liquid that made someone feel like they were serving a 1,000-year sentence," she said.

A second scenario would be to upload human minds to computers to speed up the rate at which the mind works, she wrote on her blog .

"If the speed-up were a factor of a million, a millennium of thinking would be accomplished in eight and a half hours... Uploading the mind of a convicted criminal and running it a million times faster than normal would enable the uploaded criminal to serve a 1,000 year sentence in eight-and-a-half hours. This would, obviously, be much cheaper for the taxpayer than extending criminals’ lifespans to enable them to serve 1,000 years in real time."

Thirty years in prison is currently the most severe punishment available in the UK legal system.

"To me, these questions about technology are interesting because they force us to rethink the truisms we currently hold about punishment. When we ask ourselves whether it’s inhumane to inflict a certain technology on someone, we have to make sure it’s not just the unfamiliarity that spooks us," Dr Roache said.

"Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free? When we ask that question, the goal isn’t simply to imagine a bunch of futuristic punishments – the goal is to look at today’s punishments through the lens of the future."

Law Enforcement, DOJ Already Plotting How To Get Around Supreme Court's Warrant Requirement To Search Phones

Following this week's landmark ruling from the Supreme Court that says law enforcement must get a warrant to search mobile phones, law enforcement folks are clearly freaking out. A bunch of folks are quoted on how "awful" this ruling is, as they pretend that getting a warrant is such an incredible burden. Jim Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, points out that due process should be ignored when gangs are around:

Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the country's largest police union, imagined the police busting a drug deal with two suspects, one who gets cuffed and another who gets away.

The arresting officers “want to get into that phone and see if they can get the other guy,” he said in an interview. “Or gang situations. They communicate almost exclusively by phone. There's more at stake here than due process. It's public safety.”

Meanwhile, another police spokesperson overreacts by suggesting warrants are somehow difficult to get:

Besides the delay, one problem is such a warrant might not be approved, said Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, which counts about 240,000 rank-and-file police officers as members.

“You have to make that jump: I bet he's got a bunch of stuff on his phone. And that's not good enough,” he said. “The officers are really going to have to point to something specific that ties that phone or that suspect's use of phones to the commission of a crime.”

He makes that sound horrible, but that's what the Constitution says. Just because there may be bad stuff in someone's house the police don't get to just search it. They have to point to something specific. That's the 4th Amendment. Has Johnson never read it?

Meanwhile, at the DOJ, they're already plotting on ways to get around this ruling by seeing how far they can push the "exigent circumstances" exception:

Ellen Canale, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the agency would work with law enforcement to ensure "full compliance" with the decision.

"We will make use of whatever technology is available to preserve evidence on cell phones while seeking a warrant, and we will assist our agents in determining when exigent circumstances or another applicable exception to the warrant requirement will permit them to search the phone immediately without a warrant," Canale said.

Notice how the focus is on figuring out more ways to search phones, not more ways to make sure they obey the law. This doesn't make me feel any safer. Quite the opposite.