"Get a job"

By Rob Beschizza

Many compare Occupy protestors to protestors from the 1960s, which allows for well-rehearsed arguments to run their course, over and over again. Here's a conservative example, from Newt Gingrich, as quoted by Reuters:

They take over a public park they didn’t pay for, to go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they they don’t want to pay for, to obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park so that they can self-righteously explain that they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything”

“Go get a job,” he said. “Right after you take a bath.”

To see why "Get a Job" is so mean-spirited, one only has to compare the unemployment rate in the late 1960s (3-4 percent) to 2011's (9-10 percent, and much higher for the young).

It was a demand made by a society that saw itself as prosperous, directed by authority at rebels who, in their view, had never had it so good--and who could have even more, if only they got with the program and worked for it. It at least made sense, according to some view of what society's goals should be.

In the bolded line, however, Newt's formulation does more than transpose 1968's unemployment rate. He also echoes that era's ridicule of youngsters who claim to make virtuous choices in rejecting an age of plenty's norms and values. And this is where the anachronism of hippie-occupy comparisons really kicks in.

Earth to Newt: the Occupy movement is not about those things, because 2011 is not an age of plenty. There is little prosperity sloshing around, and no virtue to gain by condemning those of their generation who accept it. They want a cut, and they want to work. The kids are not dropping out. They have been excluded.

That's what makes "Get a Job" not only clueless, but cruel, when issued to students who have little hope of getting work. They indebted themselves to follow the gameplan for prosperity that Newt Gingrich's generation gave them, and that generation just screwed them.

L.A. Hospital Denies Liver Transplant to Medical Marijuana User Despite Prescription from Its own Doctor

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles is refusing to grant a liver transplant to a cancer patient because he used medical marijuana, which not only is legal under California law but also was prescribed by a Cedars doctor.

Diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer in 2009, Norman B. Smith, 63, has been treated at Cedars-Sinai by oncologist Steven Miles, who approved medicinal marijuana in part to help his patient cope with the effects of chemotherapy. Smith became eligible for a liver transplant last year, but was removed from the list in February after testing positive for marijuana.

Hospital officials are insisting that Smith stop using marijuana for at least six months, undergo random drug testing, and participate in weekly substance-abuse counseling before they will consider putting him back on the list.

Americans for Safe Access (ASA), a medical marijuana advocacy group, publicly urged Cedars-Sinai to re-list Smith for a liver transplant and to alter its transplant eligibility policy.

“Denying necessary transplants to medical marijuana patients is the worst kind of discrimination,” said ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford. “Cedars-Sinai would not be breaking any laws, federal or otherwise, by granting Norman Smith a liver transplant, and it’s certainly the ethical thing to do.”

Other medical marijuana patients in need of transplants have been denied by Cedars-Sinai and other hospitals in the U.S., according to ASA.

UCDavis incident - four perspectives

Use of police force draws fierce condemnation

For UC Berkeley graduate student Alex Barnard, the most disempowering moment of Wednesday night was not when he was repeatedly hit with a police baton, cracking one of his ribs. Instead, the most disturbing moment of his experience came afterward, when he says an officer told him he had “no rights.”

According to Barnard, who was arrested along with 31 others as part of Wednesday night’s Occupy Cal demonstration, after he was handcuffed with a zip tie and taken into Sproul Hall, a police officer asked him for identifying information. Rather than immediately answering, Barnard said he asked the officer about his rights and when he would be allowed to speak to a lawyer. It was then that the officer told him he had no rights and, after Barnard disputed the statement, said he would be recorded as “uncooperative” on his police forms, according to Barnard.

“You didn’t have a voice,” Barnard said.

The experience described by Barnard and his fellow protesters’ violent treatment at the hands of the police — supported by video footage taken at the demonstration — has led to widespread condemnation of the police response. Critics ranging from campus student groups to members of the UC Berkeley faculty and even the national media have spoken out against the police officers’ use of force.

According to a campuswide email sent by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and other top campus administrators, the campus Police Review Board will investigate whether police used excessive force given the circumstances.

According to UCPD Capt. Margo Bennett, the identification process Barnard described is completely different from any kind of interview or interrogation process and is not involved with the right to have an attorney present. She said she was not aware of the exchange described by Barnard but said it is not the kind of exchange the department wants officers and arrestees to have.

Bennett added that the police force’s objective was to remove the encampment because it posed a threat to public safety.

“We already knew that if an encampment got started on the campus we were going to have health and safety issues, we were going to have public safety issues (and) we were going to have an element on the campus that does not fit with the academic business that is conducted,” she said. “Once we began moving towards the tents, the level of resistance from the students is what generated the arrests. It was the willful obstruction of the officers: the body-blocking, the pushing, the yelling, a couple times things were thrown … those were the kinds of things that prompted the arrests of individuals.”

Celeste Langan, a campus associate professor of English and one of the protesters arrested Wednesday afternoon, said in an email that she knew that what she was doing by participating in the human chain was a form of nonviolent resistance, knew that she was disobeying the police order to disperse and knew that her participation made her subject to arrest. But, she said, she expected the police would arrest the protesters “in a similarly nonviolent manner.”

“Rather than take my wrist or arm, the police grabbed me by my hair and yanked me forward to the ground, where I was told to lie on my stomach and was handcuffed,” Langan said in the email. “They could have taken the time to arrest us for refusal to disperse without violence … Since the tents posed no immediate threat to public safety, their haste and level of force were unwarranted.”

But in their campuswide email, Birgeneau and other administrators said the protesters’ actions — linking arms to form a human chain and obstructing police officers — did not constitute nonviolent civil disobedience.

“We regret that, given the instruction to take down tents and prevent encampment, the police were forced to use their batons to enforce the policy,” the email reads.

Taro Yamaguchi-Phillips, a junior at UC Berkeley and one of the 32 arrested Wednesday night, said the police response was excessive and protesters were completely nonviolent.

“I am sure there were many other tactics they could have used,” he said. “Their first response was violence.”

As of press time, an open letter to the campus administration penned by three campus associate professors condemning the police response had been signed by 808 campus instructors.

“(We) are outraged by the unnecessary and excessive use of violence by the police and sheriff’s deputies against peaceful protesters,” the letter reads.

Bennett said she could not make a statement on whether the police use of force was justified until an internal operational review about the event is conducted.

Similar stands of solidarity with the protesters were made by the systemwide UC Student Association, the campus student government and commentators across the country.

Langan said in her email that the complaint she plans to file with UCPD will in part address the arrest procedure. According to Langan, though she was arrested Wednesday afternoon, she was not released until about 1:30 a.m. Thursday morning.

License plate readers: A useful tool for police comes with privacy concerns

By Allison Klein and Josh White

An armed robber burst into a Northeast Washington market, scuffled with the cashier, and then shot him and the clerk’s father, who also owned the store. The killer sped off in a silver Pontiac, but a witness was able to write down the license plate number.

Police figured out the name of the suspect very quickly. But locating and arresting him took a little-known investigative tool: a vast system that tracks the comings and goings of anyone driving around the District.

Scores of cameras across the city capture 1,800 images a minute and download the information into a rapidly expanding archive that can pinpoint people’s movements all over town.

Police entered the suspect’s license plate number into that database and learned that the Pontiac was on a street in Southeast. Police soon arrested Christian Taylor, who had been staying at a friend’s home, and charged him with two counts of first-degree murder. His trial is set for January.

More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.

With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.

“It never stops,” said Capt. Kevin Reardon, who runs Arlington County’s plate reader program. “It just gobbles up tag information. One of the big questions is, what do we do with the information?”

Police departments are grappling with how long to store the information and how to balance privacy concerns against the value the data provide to investigators. The data are kept for three years in the District, two years in Alexandria, a year in Prince George’s County and a Maryland state database, and about a month in many other suburban areas.

“That’s quite a large database of innocent people’s comings and goings,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union’s technology and liberty program. “The government has no business collecting that kind of information on people without a warrant.”

But police say the tag readers can give them a critical jump on a child abductor, information about when a vehicle left — or entered — a crime scene, and the ability to quickly identify a suspected terrorist’s vehicle as it speeds down the highway, perhaps to an intended target.

Having the technology during the Washington area sniper shootings in 2002 might have stopped the attacks sooner, detectives said, because police could have checked whether any particular car was showing up at each of the shooting sites.

“It’s a perfect example of how they’d be useful,” said Lt. T.J. Rogers, who is responsible for the 26 tag readers maintained by the Fairfax County police. “We see a lot of potential in it.”

The plate readers are different from red-light or speed cameras, which issue traffic tickets and are tools for deterrence and enforcement. The readers are an investigative tool, capturing a picture of every license plate that passes by and instantly analyzing them against a database filled with cars wanted by police.

Police can also plug any license plate number into the database and, as long as it passed a camera, determine where that vehicle has been and when. Detectives also can enter a be-on-the-lookout into the database, and the moment that license plate passes a detector, they get an alert.

It’s that precision and the growing ubiquity of the technology that has libertarians worried. In Northern Virginia recently, a man reported his wife missing, prompting police to enter her plate number into the system.

They got a hit at an apartment complex, and when they got there, officers spotted her car and a note on her windshield that said, in essence, “Don’t tow, I’m visiting apartment 3C.” Officers knocked on the door of that apartment, and she came out of the bedroom. They advised her to call her husband.

A new tool in the arsenal

Even though they are relatively new, the tag readers, which cost about $20,000 each, are now as widely used as other high-tech tools police employ to prevent and solve crimes, including surveillance cameras, gunshot recognition sensors and mobile finger­print scanners.

License plate readers can capture numbers across four lanes of traffic on cars zooming up to 150 mph.

“The new technology makes our job a lot easier and the bad guys’ job a lot harder,” said D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier.

The technology first was used by the postal service to sort letters. Units consist of two cameras — one that snaps digital photographs and another that uses an optical infrared sensor to decipher the numbers and letters. The camera captures a color image of the vehicle while the sensor “reads” the license plate and transfers the data to a computer.

When stored over time, the collected data can be used instantaneously or can help with complex analysis, such as whether a car appears to have been followed by another car or if cars are traveling in a convoy.

Police also have begun using them as a tool to prevent crime. By positioning them in nightclub parking lots, for example, police can collect information about who is there. If members of rival gangs appear at a club, police can send patrol cars there to squelch any flare-ups before they turn violent. After a crime, police can gather a list of potential witnesses in seconds.

“It’s such a valuable tool, it’s hard not to jump on it and explore all the things it can do for law enforcement,” said Kevin Davis, assistant chief of police in Prince George’s County.

The readers have been used across the country for several years, but the program is far more sophisticated in the Washington region. The District has 73 readers; 38 of them sit stationary and the rest are attached to police cars. D.C. officials say every police car will have one some day.

The District’s license plate cameras gather more than a million data points a month, and officers make an average of an arrest a day directly from the plate readers, said Tom Wilkins, executive director of the D.C. police department’s intelligence fusion division, which oversees the plate reader program. Between June and September, police found 51 stolen cars using the technology.

Police do not publicly disclose the locations of the readers. And while D.C. law requires that the footage on crime surveillance cameras be deleted after 10 days unless there’s an investigative reason to keep it, there are no laws governing how or when Washington area police can use the tag reader technology. The only rule is that it be used for law enforcement purposes.

“That’s typical with any emerging technology,” Wilkins said. “Even though it’s a tool we’ve had for five years, as it becomes more apparent and widely used and more relied upon, people will begin to scrutinize it.”

Legal concerns

Such scrutiny is happening now at the U.S. Supreme Court with a related technology: GPS surveillance. At issue is whether police can track an individual vehicle with an attached GPS device.

Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who has been closely watching the Supreme Court case, said the license plate technology probably would pass constitutional muster because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on public streets.

But, Kerr said, the technology’s silent expansion has allowed the government to know things it couldn’t possibly know before and that the use of such massive amounts of data needs safeguards.

“It’s big brother, and the question is, is it big brother we want, or big brother that we don’t want?” Kerr said. “This technology could be used for good and it could be used for bad. I think we need a conversation about whether and how this technology is used. Who gets the information and when? How long before the information is deleted? All those questions need scrutiny.”

Should someone access the database for something other than a criminal investigation, they could track people doing legal but private things. Having a comprehensive database could mean government access to information about who attended a political event, visited a medical clinic, or went to Alcoholics Anonymous or Planned Parenthood.

Maryland and Virginia police departments are expanding their tag reader programs and by the end of the year expect to have every major entry and exit point to the District covered.

“We’re putting fixed sites up in the capital area,” said Sgt. Julio Valcarcel, who runs the Maryland State Police’s program, which now has 19 mobile units and one fixed unit along a major highway, capturing roughly 27 million reads per year. “Several sites are going online over the winter.”

Some jurisdictions store the information in a large networked database; others retain it only in the memory of each individual reader’s computer, then delete it after several weeks as new data overwrite it.

A George Mason University study last year found that 37 percent of large police agencies in the United States now use license plate reader technology and that a significant number of other agencies planned to have it by the end of 2011. But the survey found that fewer than 30 percent of the agencies using the tool had researched any legal implications.

There also has been scant legal precedent. In Takoma Park, police have two tag readers that they have been using for two years. Police Chief Ronald A. Ricucci said he was amazed at how quickly the units could find stolen cars. When his department first got them, he looked around at other departments to see what kind of rules and regulations they had.

“There wasn’t much,” Ricucci said. “A lot of people were using them and didn’t have policies on them yet.”

Finding stolen cars faster

The technology first came to the Washington region in 2004 as a pilot program. During an early test, members of the Washington Area Vehicle Enforcement Unit recovered eight cars, found 12 stolen license plates and made three arrests in a single shift. Prince George’s police bought several units to help combat the county’s crippling car theft and carjacking problem. It worked.

“We recover cars very quickly now. In previous times that was not the case,” said Prince George’s Capt. Edward Davey, who is in charge of the county’s program. “Before, they’d be dumped on the side of the road somewhere for a while.”

Now Prince George’s has 45 units and is likely to get more soon.

“The more we use them, the more we realize there’s a whole lot more on the investigative end of them,” Davey said. “We are starting to evolve. Investigators are starting to realize how to use them.”

Arlington police cars equipped with the readers regularly drive through the parking garage at the Pentagon City mall looking for stolen cars, checking hundreds of them in a matter of minutes as they cruise up and down the aisles. In Prince William County, where there are 12 mobile readers, the units have been used to locate missing people and recover stolen cars.

Unlike in the District, in most suburban jurisdictions, the units are only attached to police cars on patrol, and there aren’t enough of them to create a comprehensive net.

Virginia State Police have 42 units for the entire state, most of them focused on Northern Virginia, Richmond and the Tidewater area, and as of now have no fixed locations. There is also no central database, so each unit collects information on its own and compares it against a daily download of wanted vehicles from the FBI and the state.

But the state police are looking into fixed locations that could capture as many as 100 times more vehicles, 24 hours a day, with the potential to blanket the interstates.

“Now, we’re not getting everything — we’re fishing,” said Sgt. Robert Alessi, a 23-year veteran who runs the state police’s program. “Fixed cameras will help us use a net instead of one fishing pole with one line in the water waiting to get a nibble.”

Beyond the technology’s ability to track suspects and non-criminals alike, it has expanded beyond police work. Tax collectors in Arlington bought their own units and use the readers to help collect money owed to the county. Chesterfield County, in Virginia, uses a reader it purchased to collect millions of dollars in delinquent car taxes each year, comparing the cars on the road against the tax rolls.

Police across the region say that they are careful with the information and that they are entrusted with many pieces of sensitive information about citizens, including arrest records and Social Security numbers.

“If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re not driving a stolen car, you’re not committing a crime,” Alessi said, “then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

Copyright isn't working, says European Commission

By David Meyer

Communication Breakdown

Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
People have come to see copyright as a tool of punishment, Europe's technology chief has said in her strongest-yet attack on the current copyright system.

Digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes said on Saturday that the creative industries had to embrace rather than resist new technological ways of distributing artistic works. She added that the existing copyright system was not rewarding the vast majority of artists.

"Is the current copyright system the right and only tool to achieve our objectives? Not really," Kroes said in a speech to the Forum D'Avignon thinktank. "Citizens increasingly hear the word copyright and hate what is behind it."

"Sadly, many see the current system as a tool to punish and withhold, not a tool to recognise and reward," Kroes added.

The commissioner said online distribution and cloud computing offered a "totally new way of purchasing, delivering and consuming cultural works", and suggested that the existing legal framework around copyright was not flexible enough to take advantage of this evolution.

Rights-holders have long complained about the damage done to their industry by online copyright infringement. Governments and courts in countries including the UK have responded by blocking access to websites that help people unlawfully share music, videos, games and software.

Some countries, such as New Zealand and France, also threaten repeat infringers with suspension or disconnection of their broadband services.

Kroes's speech was not the first time the creative industries have been taken to task for not sufficiently adapting to the digital age. The commissioner herself has said she intends to overcome the content industry's failure to agree pan-EU licensing deals, and the fact that countries such as the UK tax e-books more highly than they do physical books.

According to Kroes, in one large EU country 97.5 percent of artists earn less than €1,000 (£856) a month from the copyright system. "This is a devastatingly hard way to earn a living," she said.

The commissioner did not provide any definitive answers as to what should replace the current copyright system, apart from saying it those advocating new business models should get a fairer hearing than they do at present.

"In times of change, we need creativity, out-of-the-box thinking: creative art to overcome this difficult period and creative business models to monetise the art," Kroes said. "New ideas which could benefit artists are killed before they can show their merit, dead on arrival. This needs to change."

EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration

Brussels bureaucrats were ridiculed yesterday after banning drink manufacturers from claiming that water can prevent dehydration.

By Victoria Ward and Nick Collins

EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, tere was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact.

Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.

Last night, critics claimed the EU was at odds with both science and common sense. Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: “This is stupidity writ large.

“The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true.

“If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project then this is it.”

NHS health guidelines state clearly that drinking water helps avoid dehydration, and that Britons should drink at least 1.2 litres per day.

The Department for Health disputed the wisdom of the new law. A spokesman said: “Of course water hydrates. While we support the EU in preventing false claims about products, we need to exercise common sense as far as possible."

German professors Dr Andreas Hahn and Dr Moritz Hagenmeyer, who advise food manufacturers on how to advertise their products, asked the European Commission if the claim could be made on labels.

They compiled what they assumed was an uncontroversial statement in order to test new laws which allow products to claim they can reduce the risk of disease, subject to EU approval.

They applied for the right to state that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration” as well as preventing a decrease in performance.

However, last February, the European Food Standards Authority (EFSA) refused to approve the statement.

A meeting of 21 scientists in Parma, Italy, concluded that reduced water content in the body was a symptom of dehydration and not something that drinking water could subsequently control.

Now the EFSA verdict has been turned into an EU directive which was issued on Wednesday.

Ukip MEP Paul Nuttall said the ruling made the “bendy banana law” look “positively sane”.

He said: “I had to read this four or five times before I believed it. It is a perfect example of what Brussels does best. Spend three years, with 20 separate pieces of correspondence before summoning 21 professors to Parma where they decide with great solemnity that drinking water cannot be sold as a way to combat dehydration.

“Then they make this judgment law and make it clear that if anybody dares sell water claiming that it is effective against dehydration they could get into serious legal bother.

EU regulations, which aim to uphold food standards across member states, are frequently criticised.

Rules banning bent bananas and curved cucumbers were scrapped in 2008 after causing international ridicule.

Prof Hahn, from the Institute for Food Science and Human Nutrition at Hanover Leibniz University, said the European Commission had made another mistake with its latest ruling.

“What is our reaction to the outcome? Let us put it this way: We are neither surprised nor delighted.

“The European Commission is wrong; it should have authorised the claim. That should be more than clear to anyone who has consumed water in the past, and who has not? We fear there is something wrong in the state of Europe.”

Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water.

He said: “The EU is saying that this does not reduce the risk of dehydration and that is correct.

“This claim is trying to imply that there is something special about bottled water which is not a reasonable claim.”

UCDavis... it never ends... "SHAME on you"

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

The Stop Online Piracy Act: A Blacklist by Any Other Name Is Still a Blacklist

During the past week, momentum against the House’s draconian copyright bill has gained steam, as venture capitalists, Internet giants and major artists have denounced it for handing corporations unprecedented power to censor countless websites and stifle free speech. In response, the bill’s big-pocketed supporters have gone on the offensive, attempting to mislead the public about the bill’s true reach. In a particularly egregious example, the Chamber of Commerce posted an attack on its website insisting that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is not a “blacklist bill."

Before they even saw the House bill, they started calling it the “New Internet Blacklist Bill.” Blacklist? That sounds pretty bad. But before we get carried away, let’s take a look at the actual language of the actual legislation. Can YOU find a blacklist? No? Can you find a list of ANY kind? No?

Of course the word “blacklist” does not appear in the bill’s text—the folks who wrote it know Americans don’t approve of blatant censorship. The early versions of PROTECT-IP, the Senate’s counterpart to SOPA, did include an explicit Blacklist Provision, but this transparent attempt at extrajudicial censorship was so offensive that the Senate had to re-write that part of the bill. However, provisions that encourage unofficial blacklisting remained, and they are still alive and well in SOPA.

First, the new law would allow the Attorney General to cut off sites from the Internet, essentially “blacklisting” companies from doing business on the web. Under section 102, the Attorney General can seek a court order that would force search engines, DNS providers, servers, payment processors, and advertisers to stop doing business with allegedly infringing websites.

Second, the bill encourages private corporations to create a literal target list—a process that is ripe for abuse. Under Section 103 (cleverly entitled the “market based” approach), IP rightsholders can take action by themselves, by sending notices directly to payment processors—like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal—demanding that they cut off all payments to the website. Once notice is delivered to the payment processor, that processor has only five days to act.1 The payment processor, and not the rightsholder, is then responsible for notifying the targeted website. So by the time Visa or Mastercard—who will no doubt be receiving many of these notices—processes the notice, informs the website, and the website decides whether to file a counter notice, the five days will almost certainly have elapsed. The website will then be left without a revenue source even if it did nothing wrong.

Third, section 104 of SOPA also allows payment processors to cut websites off voluntarily—even if they haven’t received a notice. Visa and Mastercard cannot be held accountable if they cease processing payments to any site, as long as they have a “reasonable belief” that the website is engaged in copyright violations of any kind. Hmm, wonder how long it will take big media to publicly post a list of allegedly infringing sites, and start pressuring payment processors to cut them off? As long the payment processors are willing to comply, the rightsholders can essentially censor anyone they see fit. Even well-meaning payment processors might do this to avoid liability down the road.

The potential for rampant abuse is obvious—whether it’s a frivolous claim that wouldn’t withstand the scrutiny of the official process or an attempt to put an emerging competitor at an extreme disadvantage.

Clearly, contrary to the Chamber of Commerce’s rhetoric, SOPA gives rightsholders many ways to blacklist a website: they can hope the attorney general acts, they can cut off a website with a notice, or they can give notice unofficially and let the payment processors do their dirty work for them. Please help keep the Internet free and take action to help stop this bill!

Warner Bros. Admits Sending HotFile False Takedown Requests

Hollywood movie studio Warner Bros. has admitted to a federal court that it removed files from the file-hosting site Hotfile without owning the copyrights. Some of the false takedowns were the result of failing filtering software but Warner also admitted that one of its employees deleted Open Source software that could speed up downloads.

In September the Florida-based file-hosting service Hotfile sued Warner Bros. for fraud and abuse.

The file-hoster alleged that after giving Warner access to its systems, the studio wrongfully took down files including games demos and Open Source software without holding the copyrights to them. The false takedowns continued even after the movie studio was repeatedly notified about the false claims.

“Not only has Warner (along with four other major motion picture studios) filed this unfounded and contrived litigation against Hotfile employing overly aggressive tactics, Warner has made repeated, reckless and irresponsible misrepresentations to Hotfile falsely claiming to own copyrights in material from Hotfile.com,” the company wrote in its complaint.

Yesterday Warner Bros. responded to Hotfile’s allegations, admitting that it indeed removed materials for which they don’t hold the copyrights. In addition, the movie studio states that it removed many titles based merely on keywords and without verifying their actual content.

“Warner further admits that, given the volume and pace of new infringements on Hotfile, Warner could not practically download and view the contents of each file prior to requesting that it be taken down through use of the SRA tool,” Warner writes.

Most of the false takedowns appear to be the result of an overbroad filter. Warner used this tool to find links that it could then remove via the anti-piracy takedown tool (SRA) Hotfile had built for them.

“Warner admits that, as one component of its takedown process, Warner utilizes automated software to assist in locating files on the Internet believed to contain unauthorized Warner content,” the movie studio writes.

Hotfile pointed out that this automated process resulted in the removal of many files that do not belong to Warner. The movie studio admits this and confirms that while searching for ‘The Box (2009)’ many unrelated titles were removed.

“Warner admits that its records indicate that URLs containing the phrases ‘The Box That Changed Britain’ and ‘Cancer Step Outsider of the Box’ were requested for takedown through use of the SRA tool.”

But not all false takedowns were unintentional. Warner also says that one of their employees deleted Open Source software from Hotfile on purpose. Their rationale for this is that the software in question could speed up infringing downloads.

“Warner admits that a file requested to be removed by Warner was software that had been posted alongside infringing Warner content in order to facilitate the rapid downloading of the infringing Warner content, and that Warner was not the owner of the software itself,” they write.

This purposeful removal of third party Open Source software is a bold move, and it will be interesting to see how the court reviews these and the other false takedowns.

Warner, however, states that Hotfile’s claims should be dismissed. Among other things, the movie studio argues that the majority of the files that they wrongfully took down were in fact infringing and not authorized by the copyright owners to be distributed through or hosted on Hotfile.

While it is clear that Warner was not playing by the rules, the question of whether Hotfile is entitled to compensation for the DMCA “fraud and abuse” it claims Warner conducted is for the judge to decide.

Local Money: An American Tradition Is Reborn As Economy Weakens

Mira Luna

Ever since the crash several years ago, Americans have felt precarious about the nation's economy and the value of its currency. Money seems to take inconceivable, abstract, and even magical forms, traveling around the world at lightning speed with little oversight and obvious mismanagement.
We have little control over it -- the value of our currency is tied to conditions well beyond our control. It moves in directions that most of us are vehemently opposed to. We trusted that the banks, Congress, the Federal Reserve, corporations and Wall Street are managing money responsibly on our behalf, particularly retirement funds and mortgages, but lately that trust has been broken. In response, the concept of local currencies have drawn interest from Occupy and other economic resistance groups as an alternative to state-controlled money.

Since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 there has been a relative monopoly on money issuance by private banks through the Federal Reserve, which has drawn criticism from groups like the Monetary Reform Institute. But for most of America's history, citizens used local currencies to meet their needs through local business, which often produced their own money. Before the Civil War, there were thousands of local currencies, and during the Great Depression they made a comeback, with hundreds of currencies used by the unemployed in particular.

Local currencies generally develop for one of two reasons -- the desire for local economic control (for a variety of reasons, from democracy to sustainability to social justice,) and a scarcity of national currency. In the current situation, both reasons weigh heavy.

When designed well and appropriately for the specific context, local currencies can boost a local economy and reward important work that needs to be done. Where national currency is not available because of overall scarcity or there is not enough market value for the work, local currencies can create real, tangible wealth we can see and control. Investing in community currency means investing in your community's health for the long haul, and therefore your own security and happiness.

When money is spent in chain stores, national currency leaks out of the local economy electronically to their headquarters elsewhere. Community currencies prevent this leakage of resources and energy to entities beyond our control and recirculate local wealth through the multiplier effect an average of three times more wealth (45 cents on the dollar for local currencies compared to 15 cents on the dollar for federal currency recirculating). They support local business by providing more loyal customers, increasing local employment and buffering them from the shock of a boom-bust economy. While currency experts are working on interchangeable currency platforms on an international scale, alternative currencies function as complements to support the local economy, not competitors with the national currency, which is currently more ubiquitously useful.

While the economy remains in recession, poverty rises, and local businesses shut down, social innovators and social service organizations are inventing new kinds of currencies all over the world. Here are some of the most exciting examples:

In the tiny country of Switzerland, the WIR Bank is a nationally circulated complementary currency by a cooperative of Swiss small- and medium-sized businesses that issue credit to each other based on rating and collateral. With over 60,000 member businesses, WIR currency circulates the equivalent of 1.65 billion Francs annually, helping small business get off the ground or expand, and allowing them to compete with international businesses and make it through tough times. It provides loans when national currency has dried up. GETS is a similar mutual credit B2B currency, with much more versatility, coming out of the UK and spreading to business networks in the US, like Green America and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.

Across Europe and Africa, thousands of LETS (Local Employment Trading Systems) like Community Exchange Systems and Community Forge provide local businesses, the self-employed, the underemployed, the creatively employed, and many radical idealists with a digital currency to organize and lubricate the informal economy. LETS are similar to commercial bartering systems, but use complementary currencies in an almost immeasurable variance of forms and structures, designed and controlled by the local community to meet its needs without money. LETS often consist of an online directory of goods and services offered by individual members and businesses and an accounting system. LETS credits are more abundant form or currency as a member can earn as many credits as they have time to work for, rather than waiting for scarce dollars to be available from bank accounts. Greeks in the midst of economic crisis have adopted a LETS currency called TEM, which has a Craigslist like directory and a digital and check-like currency form.

One specific and popular variance of LETS in the US and UK is called a Timebank. Timebanks have special qualities that make them particularly useful to the poor and underprivileged. They value everyone's hours equally, intentionally fund community service and development work that it often unfundable, and they operate more like a relationship-driven gift economy than a currency, with generosity the rule. Some have a reputation system built in to encourage good behavior. Timebanks tend to share core values that everyone's life and work are valuable, that everyone should be cared for equally, and that reciprocity and caring are key to a healthy economy. Timebanks have proven superior to money in applications such as senior care, disabled peer support and childcare and nonprofit service provision.

In New York and Montpelier, Vermont, and St. Louis, Timebanks have received large government grants to facilitate mutual assistance care for the sick and elderly in a more economically sustainable than the government can facilitate, as well as creating community amongst socially isolated people. The Visiting Nurses of New York Timebank conducted a study demonstrating remarkable impact in facilitating new friendships across cultures and languages and improving self-reported mental and physical health. Timebanks in their modern form originated in the '80s, but only recently took off, now numbering in the hundreds. They were also popular during the Great Depression amongst hundreds of thousands of members of unemployed associations that created a self-sufficient parallel economy, getting most of their needs met and orchestrating manufacturing, education, and more through exchange of hour credits, like the UXA. International Timebank organizations include OS Currency, Timebanks USA, hOur World, and Time for the World.

Whereas Timebanks and LETS have not yet succeeded in capturing a significant portion of the formal economy, community paper scrips have stepped in to fill the need. Berkshares and Ithaca hours are two successful versions of local scrip invented in the U.S. to support local business. Berkshares are a discount community currency backed by $USD that are widely accepted by businesses and banks in the Berkshires region of Massachusetts. The scheme is similar to the German Chiemgauer, which is a regional paper currency with negative interest built in (through required expiration renewal stamps). The Chiemgauer has succeeded in encouraging local import replacement businesses, like apple production, driven by flood of local currency that businesses accumulate from customers and only spend at other local businesses. Ithaca hours are issued by a nonprofit for membership, providing the goods and services based on trust in community, as well as transportation - the hours are accepted by the local transit authority.

Other scrips or paper currencies are popping up across the country from Corvallis Hours, to Detroit Cheers, to the Washington D.C. Potomac and Sand Dollars (New Earth Exchange) in Santa Cruz, CA. Many can't get off the ground with out financial support, while other struggle along until their currency is worth valuable services or goods. Credit card forms of business-backed currency that function more like local business rewards or discount cards are gaining ground to compete with the modern efficiency of digital money, like Sonoma Go Local, Bernal Bucks and the City government initiative, the Oakland Acorn -- all in the progressive nexus of Northern California. Both Bernal Bucks and Sonoma Go Local are planning on using their reward funds to support local business development when conventional loans are unavailable or at too high interest. Many local currencies also make grants to nonprofits.

In Brazil, over 50 community banks have drastically reduced poverty by issuing their own paper and credit card currencies based on the Banco Palmas model. Palmas are issued into circulation to fund community and infrastructure development projects and as small business loans and personal loans, dispersed based on community reputation rather than capital or collateral. They are run by community-based organizations. Local businesses and nonprofits directly incubated from Palmas advance the lives of youth, women, the poor, and artists. Palmas type currencies now help many Brazilians meet most of their needs locally, and invigorate the local economy with a charge of currency and employment. Palmas have proven so successful in alleviating poverty that they are now supported by the Brazilian national government. Venezuela has been experimenting with the Palmas model and it is widely promoted by the Chavez government.

Still in use today, Argentina's grassroots currency initiative, called the Red de Trueque, emerged to provide a third of the country with a means of exchange for basic needs during its economic crash in 1999, when large banks frozen resident's accounts and fled the country with currency. Woergl, Austria provides a brief but inspiring example of a municipal issued currency that pulled the city out of an economic crisis during the Great Depression. It functioned by spending into circulation depreciating local currency backed by public works, providing a dramatic 30% unemployment relief rate in in one year. It was crushed for its wild success by the national government as a grassroots threat to the national currency.

Instead of placing faith in the "economic experts," these currency projects are built on faith in community and the creation of real wealth. When carefully designed, they can be a source of community empowerment, prioritizing caring relationships and community values ahead of profit as well as and generating meaningful employment at local businesses. As shops shut down around us, municipal governments cut services, and the unemployed fall through the widening crevices in our economic system, perhaps its time we take our economy into our own hands. As these projects demonstrate, democratically controlled local money can be a powerful tool in shifting economic power and transforming the economy into a more loving and sustainable one.

Google lawyer: Why the patent system is broken

James Temple

Google stands at the center of the escalating mobile patent wars, as the developer of the Android operating system that triggered scores of lawsuits and countersuits.

Depending on whom you ask, the company is either the high-minded adult in the debate du jour over intellectual property - or a blatant patent thief.

In an interview with The Chronicle, Google's patent counsel, Tim Porter, argues that the system itself is broken.

For too long, the patent office granted protection to broad, vague or unoriginal ideas masquerading as inventions. That inevitably led to the legal dramas now unfolding, he said.

There's certainly no question that the Mountain View online giant's smart-phone software has been hugely successful. By offering a free operating system, it enabled companies like HTC, Motorola and Samsung to deliver devices that could compete with Apple's breakthrough gadgets.

Android now claims 43 percent of the smart-phone operating system market, compared with 28 percent for the iPhone and 18 percent for RIM's BlackBerry, according to a recent Nielsen report.

But companies including Oracle, Apple and Microsoft all claim that Android is built on technology protected by their patents. Oracle sued Google outright. Apple and Microsoft have gone after the companies using the software, demanding injunctions against selling devices or licensing fees.

More recently, the battlefront shifted to patent portfolios, as the major players scrambled to buy up intellectual-property holdings of companies like Novell and Nortel. Google was dramatically outbid on the Nortel portfolio by a group including Apple, Microsoft and RIM.

That deal prompted regulatory scrutiny - and excoriation from Google.

In an unusually heated blog post, the company claimed that its competitors were "banding together" to impose a "tax" on Android with "dubious patents." More broadly, it argued that intellectual property is now being used to squelch rather than promote innovation.

In the interview, Porter explained that the perpetual wrangling is sucking up time and resources that would otherwise go toward pushing this technology forward and developing the next disruptive inventions.

Q: Let's talk about Microsoft. They sued at least one of your Android partners and have pressured others into licensing agreements, arguing that they have patents that cover critical parts of the software. What do you make of that?

A: Unfortunately, the way it works is you don't know what patents cover until courts declare that in litigation. What that means is people have to make decisions about whether to fight or whether to reach agreements.

This is a tactic that Microsoft has used in the past, with Linux, for example. When their products stop succeeding in the marketplace, when they get marginalized, as is happening now with Android, they use the large patent portfolio they've built up to get revenue from the success of other companies' products.

Q: Google has said these lawsuits and tactics are a threat to innovation. Do you think the uptake or development of Android has slowed because of these issues?

A: I don't think we've seen that happen yet. But the concern is that the more people get distracted with litigation, the less they'll be inventing.

You can look at the development of the software industry and see a point when (software wasn't being patented) and it was a period of intense innovation. You didn't see Microsoft's first software patent until 1988. By that time it had come out with Word, not to mention DOS.

So there's just no question you can look back and see that innovation happens without patents. It's also true that since there weren't patents, there wasn't software patent litigation.

Q: The obvious next question is: Do you think software should be patentable?

A: I think the question is whether the current system makes sense. During the period I talked about, software was protected by copyright and other legal protections. There are certainly arguments those are more appropriate.

But I think what many people can agree on is the current system is broken and there are a large number of software patents out there fueling litigation that resulted from a 10- or 15-year period when the issuance of software patents was too lax.

Things that seemed obvious made it through the office until 2007, when the Supreme Court finally said that the patent examiners could use common sense.

Patents were written in a way that was vague and overly broad. (Companies are) trying to claim something that's really an idea (which isn't patentable). There are only so many ways to describe a piston, but software patents are written by lawyers in a language that software engineers don't even understand.

They're being used to hinder innovation or skim revenue off the top of a successful product.

Q: Apple has also sued some of your partners, including HTC and Samsung. Back in September, Google sold a handful of patents to HTC, which it turned around and used to sue Apple. Was that use part of Google's rationale for the sale?

A: We've said in the past that we aggressively stand behind our partners and want to defend the Android ecosystem. I think that transaction was definitely part of that.

Q: So where should the line be drawn? How, in legal terms, do we define what's an innovation worth protection and what's just fodder for patent trolling?

A: Really, the challenge that's facing the courts and patent office and all of us is to put some teeth (in the law) and use common sense, like the Supreme Court said in 2007. The legal system should say you shouldn't patent something that's obvious.

What we have to do is have real standards for what is patentable. Patents are supposed to be a form of property. The property system doesn't work if you don't have clear boundaries.

Also, at the end of the day, damages, injunctions and remedies have to be proportional to the value of the invention. Very often, what is fueling patent-troll lawsuits is the ability to go into court and seek astronomical damages based on what any rational person would consider a minor component of the product.

Q: In my recent interview with Horacio Gutiérrez, Microsoft's patent attorney, he characterized the current tangle of lawsuits as unfortunate, but a normal historic event that follows disruptive technologies. What's your take on that?

A: Microsoft was our age when it got its first software patent. I don't think they experienced this kind of litigation in a period when they were disrupting the established order. So I don't think it's historically inevitable.

The period of intense patent assertions (against things like the steam engine) resulted in decades-long periods of stagnation. Innovation only took off when the patents expired.

So what I think we're hoping to avoid is this intense focus on litigation to the degree that we all stop innovating.

Q: Google has attempted to buy a few patent portfolios, including Nortel's. Can you talk about the goal of these sorts of acquisitions? Has this become a sort of nuclear standoff, where you can only prevent getting blown up when there's mutually assured destruction?

A: It's fair to say that one of the most effective ways to respond to a threatened patent assertion is to be able to assert patents of your own.

Google is a relatively young company, and we have a smaller patent portfolio than many others. So it's certainly true that part of our intent in buying these portfolios is to increase our ability to protect ourselves when people assert patents against us or our partners.

Journalists, legal observers kettling themselves to seek safety, then they're arrested

British student fights extradition to US over TVShack link site

By Timothy B. Lee

Richard O'Dwyer, the 23-year-old British college student behind the TVShack website, appeared in court Thursday to fight extradition to the United States. His attorney argued that O'Dwyer should not be sent to the United States because operating a "link site," which links to copies of copyrighted movies but does not actually host them, is not a crime under British law.

When we last wrote about O'Dwyer's case, we noted that his case is almost unprecedented. Only a handful of people have faced extradition to the United States for crimes committed entirely online, and most of those have involved computer hacking or direct distribution of copyrighted material.

The legality of "linking sites" in the UK is disputed. Last year, a judge dismissed a case against a similar linking site, called TV-Links, ruling that its actions did not constitute a crime.

O'Dwyer's attorney argued that his client's website was no different than Google or Yahoo!: it merely linked to content copied by others. He emphasized that O'Dwyer didn't charge users for access to his website. Instead, like Google and Yahoo he relied on advertising revenues.

But the US government disagreed, arguing that O'Dwyer had deliberately promoted links to content he knew to be copyright infringing. "TVShack had the top films listed on the home page so it wasn't merely a search engine," said government attorney John Jones.

Julia O'Dwyer, Richard's mother, told Ars that she's confident the court will agree that her son's actions are not a crime under British law. She also said there were key inaccuracies in the government's case.

"Richard has challenged the accuracy of the US skeleton argument," she said, "and so the US prosecution is now flapping around to get a response together which they couldn't do in time for today."

Her son is due back in court on November 22.

Army veteran injured in Oakland clashes with police

By Noel Randewich

(Reuters) - A former U.S. Army Ranger and Occupy Oakland protester was in intensive care on Friday after a veterans group said he was beaten by police during clashes with demonstrators this week.

The veteran, identified as Kayvan Sabeghi, was the second former American serviceman during the past two weeks to be badly hurt in confrontations between anti-Wall Street protesters and police in Oakland.

The group Iraq Veterans Against the War said Sabeghi was detained during disturbances that erupted late on Wednesday in downtown Oakland and was charged with resisting arrest and remaining present at the place of a riot.

Highland General Hospital confirmed that Sabeghi was a patient in the intensive care unit there.

Brian Kelly, who co-owns a brew pub with Sabeghi, said his business partner served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Sabeghi told him he was arrested and beaten by a group of policemen as he was leaving the protest to go home.

"He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him," Kelly said. "They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours."

The Oakland Police Department did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Sabeghi's name was listed by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office as one of more than 100 people arrested that night.

The veterans group said in a statement that police struck Sabeghi with nightsticks on his hands, shoulders, ribs and back, and that in addition to a lacerated spleen he suffered from internal bleeding.

Clashes between police and demonstrators broke out in the early morning hours of Thursday in downtown Oakland following a day of mostly peaceful rallies and marches citywide against economic inequality and police brutality.

The Port of Oakland was forced to shut down during those demonstrations, sparked in part by the severe injury of another former serviceman, ex-Marine Scott Olsen, during a confrontation with police last week.

Olsen's injury became a rallying cry for the anti-Wall Street protest movement nationwide

It’s Time to Stop Talking About Copyright

I inaugurated this column in 2008 with an editorial called ‘‘Why I Copyfight’’, which talked about the tricky balance between creativity, culture, and the relationship between audiences and creators. These have always been hard subjects, and the Internet has made them harder still, because the thing that triggers copyright rules – copying – is an intrinsic part of the functioning of the Internet and computers. There’s really no such thing as ‘‘loading’’ a web-page – you make a copy of it. There’s really no such thing as ‘‘reading’’ a file off a hard-drive – you copy it into memory.

The story of modern Internet regulation and copyright goes back (at least) to 1995 and Al Gore’s National Information Infrastructure hearings, where Bruce Lehman, Bill Clinton’s copyright czar, pushed for expansive new copyright rules for the net. These proposals were pretty bonkers, so Gore sent him packing, and he scurried off to Geneva, to the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization, where he instigated the WIPO Copyright Treaty, which became US law in 1998, as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

We’ve been arguing about copyright and the Internet for at least 16 years now, and the arguments keep going back and forth over well-defined ground, wearing deep grooves in the discourse.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century: copyright policy ceased to exist. Because every copyright policy that we make has a seismic effect on the Internet, and because you can’t regulate copying without regulating the Internet.

For example, take the matter of ‘‘intermediary liability,’’ the kind of abstract subject that was once the exclusive purview of genuine copyright nerds. In law, intermediary liability is the liability borne by service providers and other entities that transmit or host material that infringes copyright. One of the major questions that’s burned up the copyright debate for 16 years is whether ISPs, web-hosting companies and other ‘‘intermediaries’’ can be found liable for their users’ infringements, and if so, under what circumstances.

But this isn’t a copyright policy. Intermediaries carry plenty of material that has nothing to do with the copyright wars – political videos during election season, first-hand accounts of war crimes, private videos of kids playing in the bath, emails between doctors and patients (or attorneys and clients), and much more besides.

Viacom, in its billion-dollar copyright lawsuit against YouTube, asked the court to declare that intermediaries should be forced to disable privacy features on their services so that every hosted file could be examined by its copyright enforcement bots. If the Internet consisted of nothing but entertainment content, that might make sense, but entertainment’s the Internet’s sideshow, while the main event is everything else we do online.

Various record industry legal theories have asked courts to hold that universities and colleges should be held liable for students’ illegal music downloads unless they install network spyware that snoops on all the network’s communications to find the ‘‘bad stuff.’’ If campus networks were nothing but glorified TV and radio delivery systems this might make sense, but for universities, the main thing that the Internet enables is free intellectual inquiry, and the entertainment stuff is just a diversion between scholarly pursuits.

The disconnection laws that the entertainment industry has bought for itself in the UK, New Zealand and France provide for removing whole households from the Internet on the strength of their copyright accusations. If the net were just cable TV, this might make sense, but for families all over the world, the net is work, socialization, health, education, access to tools and ideas, freedom of speech, assembly and the press, as well as the conduit to political and civic engagement.

There just isn’t such a thing as ‘‘copyright policy’’ anymore. Every modern copyright policy becomes Internet policy – policy that touches on every aspect of how we use the net.

And as we make the transition from a world where everything we do includes an online component to a world where everything we do requires an online component, it’s becoming the case that there’s no such thing as ‘‘Internet policy’’ – there’s just policy.

I’m all for sorting out the rules that govern the entertainment’s supply chain, but let’s keep some perspective here: when we ‘‘solve’’ copyright problems at the expense of the Internet, we solve them at the expense of 21st-century society as a whole.

When musician Don Henley writes in USA Today in support of the proposed PROTECT-IP Act, which will establish a national Internet censorship regime in the USA, ostensibly to fight copyright infringement, he says that free speech doesn’t enter into it, because ‘‘piracy’’ isn’t a form of free speech.

This is why it’s time to stop talking about copyright and creativity and start talking about the Internet. Because someone can be as smart and talented as Don Henley and still think that you can establish nationwide networked surveillance and censorship and all you’re going to touch on is ‘‘piracy.’’

For so long as we go on focusing this debate on artists, creativity, and audiences – instead of free speech, privacy, and fairness – we’ll keep making the future of society as a whole subservient to the present-day business woes of one industry.

Arrested for asking why you're being arrested?

PORTLAND, ORE. — Early Tuesday morning, after reportedly consulting with decision makers in other parts of the country, Federal officials enlisted the help of Portland Police to remove Occupy Portland protesters from federally owned Terry D. Schrunk Plaza. The move came around 3:45 AM after most supporters had gone to sleep and news crews had left.

Look-outs for the protesters gave the camp warning about the coming officers using a drum signal, and the officers lined up on SW Madison Street, blocking protesters from exiting, then engaging them in dialogue. Shortly afterwards they arrested 10 people in the park, taking about 15 minutes to do so.

“The Federal government occupies 700 bases in 136 nations around the world,” Micaiah Dutt, a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and one of the protesters arrested in Schrunk Plaza, said after. “But they refuse to allow us to peacefully assemble in a Federal park? I allowed myself to be arrested in order to make a statement.”

One of the individuals who moved to the park mentioned that they didn’t believe there was a valid Federal law to arrest them under, mentioning they were a law student. By late Sunday evening, people involved with Occupy Portland decided to set up tents in Schrunk Plaza due to the lack of available space in Chapman & Lownsdale Squares.

“We were running out of space at camp,” Illona Trogub, a protester who observed the arrests, commented. “Newly arriving politically-minded folk are unable to find a tent spot, which prevents committees from being refreshed by new energy and enthusiasm.”

Many Occupiers were skeptical about what Federal law was being violated. When asked directly, no enforcement agency or representative was able to provide an answer, leaving it an open question. The arrestees were given a citation for “failing to comply with a lawful direction” and released without any other action taken.

“Does that mean that they were arrested for not doing what they were told instead of for violating a law?” Jordan LeDoux wondered afterward. “That’s not the sort of thing you expect in this country.”

The situation is further muddled by the recent decision of a Federal Judge in Nashville, TN, to issue a restraining order against a curfew ordinance. Judge Aleta Trauger said she issued the order because the curfew was a “clear prior restraint on free speech rights.”

“The didn’t give a Miranda warning, nor did they tell us why we were being arrested,” Former U.S. Marine Sgt. Micaiah Dutt recounted. “They said, ‘because you were being blatantly illegal, there was no need for explanation.’ After that we were taken to Hatfield Courthouse.”

The arrestees found out their charge when they were handed their citation, and were told that their court date was set for January.

As with Jamison Square, Occupy Portland believes that the First Amendment provides people with legal protection to peacefully assemble in political protest at any time of the day in any public space. The vagueness of the charges and the lack of specific statutes being violated lends some credibility to that position, at least in the Federal park.

At Occupy Albany, NY, the police refused an order to arrest from the Governor and the Mayor on the grounds that it was a violation of law, and that it was necessary to public safety.

“Freedom to assemble was put into our Constitution so that people could come together and talk about what’s wrong, then figure out solutions,” Ms. Trogub said. “How does an anti-camping ordinance supersede that right? If we don’t have that right, how are the people supposed to participate? How do we fix anything?”

Our Leaders and Where They Stand

Air Space

The sunset on the flight from Reykjavík to Seattle is among air travel's most beautiful sights. Though Keflavík Airport is covered with clouds and rain, the people's spirits there are usually jovial.

The Iceland Air lounge has helpful staff—the welcome desk offers helpful tips on avoiding airport hassles and even provides free internet access. They'll help you read your boarding pass and even answer questions about all its confusing symbols. Should one ever be in the unfortunate position of having the dreaded 'SSSS' marked upon it, the help desk will suggest you wait until the exact boarding time before even approaching customs. They'll even apologize, as if they had any hand in the process.

And that was their recommendation to me, when I had it clearly printed on mine. It was not my lucky day.

I took the lounge employee's advice and left precisely when she suggested. My ticket was purchased by the Swedish government, which invited me to Stockholm to speak at its event on the internet and democratic change. It was upsetting that Sweden's government flew me over, and then the U.S. government—my government—used the Icelandic government to harass me on the way back. I have previously filed DHS requests for redress. Even after it promised to leave me alone, I am still subject to systemic harassment.

Outside of the lounge, the exit customs checkpoint is split into two parts. The first is an occasionally long and winding line, with a couple of officers stationed for passport stamping and various document-checking processes. They generally do not scan the passports handed to them by passengers. Their computers fully support every fancy security technology known to border control agents the world over. It is uncommon, as a light-skinned American or European passport holder, to even receive a single question when entering or exiting Iceland. After the passport is stamped, usually by request, passengers walk through a sliding glass door and into the second part of the customs checkpoint. This door is like a mantrap: it only opens when people approach it from one side. Once through, there is no turning back.

The second part of the checkpoint is another winding line that ends at a small podium. It is generally staffed by two women. The line splits in two thanks to the guidance of those little nylon barriers, familiar to anyone who has flown in the last decade. When a passenger reaches the podium, they pass their documents to whichever agent is free. The staff are quite pleasant, and they smile even when they notice a passenger that carries a mark of danger. It's the relaxed and calm Icelandic way; kind and friendly, with genuine warmth.

"You've been selected for security screening," the agent said to a passenger on the right side of the split. She handed the passenger a slip of paper marked with black text. The passenger was to follow the agent to an escalator, then escorted downstairs and out of sight. The passenger didn't question this process, and followed without comment. Three passengers in front of me passed the remaining agent without issue.

★ ★ ★

The system is not functional in the way that the security experts hoped it would be, and airports are often the worst in terms of pointless security theatrics. Millions of people the world over are constantly delayed, harassed and irradiated in the pursuit of some idea of security. Asking questions about the process is shut down by security agents, who claim they're just following orders. It is common to hear that secrecy is required for these processes, and that if one has to ask, one is not part of the privileged class that is welcome to an answer.

What would be fitting rewards for the people who design security checkpoints? The security industry has already received billions of dollars. Perhaps a Sisyphean reliving of their own work: but instead of pushing stones up hills, they must endure what millions of people now must undergo simply to move about the planet. After discussing this with other passengers, I often hear the joke that it wouldn't work unless they were also marked for extra special treatment. After discussing it with airline staff, they usually joke about a harsher punishment, but leave it unspecified.

Flight and detailed passenger information is sent to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for each passenger that flies to the U.S.; this happens even on a journey that has multiple stops in Europe. The Transportation Security Agency (TSA) is the arm of the DHS makes that makes these specific selections according to the agent who examined my boarding pass. The 'SSSS' marking on a boarding pass is part of a largely undisclosed process, with little transparency. "For security," you'll be told, if you ask. Whose security? The security of the people who can't design a transparent security system that passes a giggle test, that's who.

This culture of secrecy, endemic to most government security, is part of the reason that it's such an abysmal failure when faced with real security threats. For example, there's an interesting de-synchronization issue between the customs checkpoint and the top of the escalators. The guards at the podium are not trained as well as customs agents to spot false documents. Even if they were, they do not check against any real-time systems—handing them a different passport or simply a modified boarding pass would be a trivial task. An electronic document checking system wouldn't really change the fundamental problems with this kind of security processing.

★ ★ ★

With a forty-person line snaking behind me and only a single agent now checking documents, I felt guilty knowing other passengers were about to be delayed. I stepped forward. The agent warmly greeted me, then took my ticket and passport. She looked for the tell of how I was to be handled—is this person a dangerous terrorist? Is this person a security threat of some kind?

My security agent informed me of my unlucky pick of the random security straws, handed me the same half-sheet of paper, and instructed me that I should follow her. As I left, the man behind me—a friendly fellow American—asked what I'd done. I wanted to express my discomfort about his unfamiliarity with the process. I wanted to ask what he hadn't been doing. I felt like a jerk. It felt like blame-shifting.

Instead, I apologized for the delay and said nothing more. I already know it's not random. I already know that it is connected to a decade-long wave of authoritarianism—the same thing happened the last time I flew from Iceland to the United States and on many prior occasions. It happens to thousands of people every day—probably tens of thousands.

Unlike on one earlier occasion, however, I was not traveling with a member of Icelandic parliament. My only witnesses were strangers. I felt a pang of stress as we headed to the escalator; every passenger waited behind us, in the now-unattended line, for someone to return and to tell them they could cross an invisible barrier. It was my second time being detained in Iceland, and after more than a dozen detentions at the request of the U.S. government, I have to admit that I've been conditioned to take things in stride. Some people don't take to it as well. It's entirely understandable.

About halfway down the escalator, the agent apologised and let me know that I'd have to wait in the room until someone from the airline came to retrieve me. She also let me know that I wouldn't be allowed to shop, and another security check was now required. I knew this was going to happen and so had bought the new Bjork album, Biophilia, in anticipation of this entire security process. I highly endorse it—the new album, that is.

The two security agents, who were usually at the podium, crossed paths in opposite directions as we left. My escort let the other agent know that the line was waiting for her return. She smiled at me, then hurried up the escalator to the station.

Now, pretend for a moment that someone stuck in this process is actually a terrorist who wants to cause harm. How well is this system really going to work? It isn't going to work at all. The TSA responds to yesterday's threats today and then they tell other agencies what to do. Iceland is getting the short end of the stick here, and I'm just getting the stick.

After I confirmed my familiarity with their security process, my agent asked if I'd experienced this previously. I said that I was very acquainted with the process behind the glass doors ahead. She knocked on the door and an Icelandic man in his fifties greeted us.

After the glass door, there's a 2m-high wall not unlike a cubicle. Inside is where all of the security agents wait to search incoming passengers. A sign explains that this area is off-limits for photography. I inquired if I might photograph inside, but they said that it wasn't possible because of the rules. I also asked if I might write a review, and they said that would be fine, but only outside of the security screening area.

Two women stood behind a desk to the right. Four additional tables, two on the left and two against the far wall, took up most of the cube's remaining space. The right-most table held a machine where gloves and other objects are sampled for traces of chemicals such as as explosives. I've often wondered if these machines might also detect the cocaine rumored to be on a substantial amount of American money. I've experienced similar machines raise the alarm over black and white film in the past —always a joy.

I'm quite fond of Iceland. Even their security screening and detention areas are well done. The people running this secondary detention were hands down the friendliest of all security agents that I've ever encountered. I mean that. They're nice people, very calm, and not at all heavy-handed or rude. It's easy to see how the detainment here differs from one in Canada or the United States; perhaps the difference is that the only American in the process is the Suspected Terrorist.

Icelandic people have long memories, and this specially-locked and spacious room was filled with friendly and familiar faces. I placed my carry-on luggage on a flat metal table against the back wall and took off my overcoat. I was given a thorough, professional frisking. It's always awkward to talk about sensitive and private body piercings with a total stranger. The older agent frisking me understood my request that he not be too rough around my nipples. Luckily for me, I'd met most of these security agents previously and in a strange way, I felt like they weren't strangers at all. Is it possible to find oneself in a kind of Stockholm syndrome without constant exposure to your captors? Friendly faces and nothing to hide: what isn't to like about the process?

We discussed the TSA-approved locks on my bag; it was hilarious, in a frustrating sort of way. These locks, widely sold in stores and online, can be opened two different ways. There's a combination tumbler and a standardized lock, for which the TSA issues skeleton keys to security agents. Unfortunately, it turns our that while the TSA trusts foreign airports enough to rely on them to catch suspected terrorists, it does not trust them enough to provide them with these keys.

I asked the security agent if they had the key to the lock on my suitcase, and pointed out that I didn't. The agent was baffled by the idea of a lock whose owner did not have a key: Sir, isn't that your suitcase? Why yes, it is mine, but I don't travel with the keys, which means that security screeners have access to my belongings and I do not. The TSA, after all, reserves the right to search your luggage outside of your presence. If it were not for the approach to security embodied by the locks, I might suffer some property damage at the whim of some government agent when I'm not looking.

The Icelandic security agent explained that they just solve this problem by only searching luggage with the passenger present—no need for anything more complicated.

Thinking about the keys is a reminder to me of the futility and blindness encompassing the security process. I could fashion a set of keys from my very own lock should I be so inclined, as could anyone with some extra time or money. I find this even stranger than the all too obvious markings on my ticket. Does the TSA trust the Icelandic security process or not?

After that confusion was cleared up, my luggage was efficiently searched.

★ ★ ★

One might guess that the TSA thinks that this keeps the locks safer and limits problems caused by their poor security decisions. But that guess implies that the TSA thinks rationally about security. While there's no question that there are people involved who are rational, the institution is less than the sum of its parts. It is not a person, and as a body it is incapable of thinking in a cohesive manner. It is ruled by emotions rather than rationality. It offers little to no transparency and little to no accountability. It is a race to the bottom. But most of all, it is the embodiment of the deepest American fears about security failures.

That sting, as it is said by Tarantino, "is pride fucking with you." This is wrong and everyone knows it. Why do we persist with this nonsense? Why does America bully everyone else into following our flawed and stupid lead?

I don't believe that any meaningful statistics about this are published by the DHS. Only a few numbers are released to the press, through anonymous sources. The DHS certainly won't tell you about their tactics, though I'd be happy to tell you all about them. Their secrecy is not safe with me.

Certainly not after the number of times they've denied me a lawyer or a bathroom, or had to listen to inferences about prison rape suffered by people in my position. That class act is the face of our nation, as the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) wing of the DHS likes to say. Here, however, I was in another nation, and its face is quite different, even when executing the same useless gameplan.

★ ★ ★

I have to admit being happy to see another older gentleman I had spoken with during my last detainment in Iceland. He remembered me and we discussed how we'd met the last time. He asked how I'd been, and I was relieved to speak with him; he understood all too well the big picture behind what I was experiencing. Previously, he'd explained my situation to the aforementioned member of the Icelandic parliament. The layout of the detention room was explained to me again. He patted me on the back and was all smiles. I hope he gets a promotion.

After processing, one exits at the far left corner of the cube. There, a walkway guides travelers past twin bathrooms to the detention area—smooth sailing if a passenger makes it this far.

It is, hands down, the most welcoming detention area someone might visit, lacking any kind of nationalist propaganda. This is more than one can say about other airport detention facilities, such as Toronto Pearson's pre-clearance area. Operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Canadian soil, it's covered in flags and giant eagles. Everyone has a firearm.

I've met just a single nice person in half a dozen detainments in that airport. Those guys are also just following orders, but man, what a bunch of jerks. The small detention area in Reykjavík, by comparison, is downright relaxing. There are free bottles of water in a fridge, and usually a plate or four of cookies, snacks and condiments. There's even a nice little espresso machine, with a button that might produce an alright café latté. I've never managed to get this machine to make anything more than black coffee, but I admit that I didn't want to trouble the staff.

Frankly, I find it rather frustrating to do much other than apologize to them for how my country, the United States of America, imposes its own security politics onto an otherwise reasonable country.

I usually feel pretty depressed by the time I've collected a coffee and found a seat. On the other hand, one might see the entire process as not unlike a first-class lounge. High-priority people with some kind of Very Important Person status get to wait here. If you're in the room, you're somebody.

One of the people I met in the waiting area rationalized our mutual detention just so. I asked what he was "in for" and he laughed. It's gallows humor, but without the condemned man's relief at knowing the answer, or any information about a possible answer. He expressed concern about missing his flight and hoped that they would come to collect us soon. It was his first time.

I tried to comfort him by explaining the familiar process, only to feel horrible for rationalizing our experience in the framework of everything being OK. We were doing what we were told, we would make our flight, and we'd be fine when it was all over.

If anything, however, the process is proof of the opposite. Though we'd manage to leave the room, we could not leave the system that produced that room. In fact, the system that put us here wasn't in the process of ending at all. Quite the opposite—after boarding the plane, we'd fly towards at least two more checkpoints, more bag searches, more paperwork, and perhaps more frisking. We were headed straight into a modern surveillance state and were lucky to be getting free cookies at the halfway mark.

The friendly Icelandic security agent walked in my field of view. I asked him how his day was going, and invited him for a coffee. He declined the coffee but sat down between the two of us. Half a dozen other people, and a small child, were in the room. Each person passed the time in their own way. The agent and I had a brief chat. He asked how my Icelandic friends were, and if everything was alright with me. The angst-afflicted guy, sat closest to us, seemed dismayed at our conversation. I thanked the agent and he patted me on the back. Part of me feels entirely crushed by the kindness of people who are trapped in a machine that forces them to follow orders, even when they know better than the process. How could anyone be upset with them? They have a job, it's just part of their job, and they're doing the best that they possibly might hope to do. Part of me feels some hope that at least this process still has humans who think and feel—people who empathize and who are not overcome by the culture of fear.

When the Iceland Air representative came for us, the "first class" service continued. He called out for Seattle-bound passengers. We lined up in silence. The security agents lined the path to the door like a gauntlet, and as I exited the older gentleman reached out to shake my hand. I awkwardly fumbled my coffee and my bag around to free up a hand. He wished me good luck on my trip and with my life.

Holding up the line again, I thought.

Our little line made our way to the gate, escorted by security. At the ticket counter before the entrance to the jetway, we each handed over our boarding passes and passports. As expected, a small alarm on the computer rang out and I stole a glance at the screen. I'm not the fastest reader but I noticed that it said my name and that there was a "high priority comment" waiting for the gate agent. I asked what the comment was and if it was any trouble at all. Having never met these agents in the past, they were quite skeptical of speaking with me. The shame of the 'SSSS' marking reared its head again. They said that it was merely a way for them to know that I was already boarded; it was as if they had scanned my boarding pass a second time by mistake, the gate agent explained. As usual I was not informed about the reasons for any of this special treatment and as usual, I was not given an opportunity to correct information about myself in the system that controls my movements.

It doesn't feel good to watch someone make up utter nonsense on a whim, and yet that was the system's final manifestion. I was handed my boarding pass and passport and instructed to board the airplane.

I settled in and filled out my customs form, noting everything I'd purchased and reporting on my private life as the forms demand: where I'd been, where I would be staying, how much money I'd spent, why I had been traveling, and other questions that are no-one's business but my own. If I failed to do this perfectly, I'd be bothered more on a technicality. It is absolutely ridiculous.

My entire flight "home" was filled with stressful and negative thoughts. I wonder if I'll ever be able to land in my own country without a sense of anxiety. Will I ever have closure or clarification on more than a year of extended harassment, detainments, threats and even property seizure?

★ ★ ★

People often say to me "well, don't you know why this is happening to you?" and I reply that while we may all speculate, I have been refused official answers. The little official correspondence I received said it was probably a mistake. It took months and they assure me that things will be better someday, probably. I've been detained multiple times since that letter, both in the U.S. and abroad. The DHS won't share a copy of my files with me or my lawyers. It says that I have no right to know what is in them.

The redress letter suggests that even though nothing is wrong, I'll still be selected for "random" screenings. Consider what they tell us of safety and justice, and ask yourself: is it possible that a system full of such obvious and casual dishonesty will provide it?