Monthly Archives: July 2013

07.14.13
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Reason.com: Nevada Cops Commandeer Private Homes, Arrest Residents for Objecting

Henderson police arrested a family for refusing to let officers use their homes as lookouts for a domestic violence investigation of their neighbors, the family claims in court.

Anthony Mitchell and his parents Michael and Linda Mitchell sued the City of Henderson, its Police Chief Jutta Chambers, Officers Garret Poiner, Ronald Feola, Ramona Walls, Angela Walker, and Christopher Worley, and City of North Las Vegas and its Police Chief Joseph Chronister, in Federal Court.

Henderson, pop. 257,000, is a suburb of Las Vegas.

The Mitchell family’s claim includes Third Amendment violations, a rare claim in the United States. The Third Amendment prohibits quartering soldiers in citizens’ homes in times of peace without the consent of the owner. …

“Although plaintiff Anthony Mitchell was lying motionless on the ground and posed no threat, officers, including Officer David Cawthorn, then fired multiple ‘pepperball’ rounds at plaintiff as he lay defenseless on the floor of his living room. Anthony Mitchell was struck at least three times by shots fired from close range, injuring him and causing him severe pain.” (Parentheses in complaint.)

Officers then arrested him for obstructing a police officer, searched the house and moved furniture without his permission and set up a place in his home for a lookout, Mitchell says in the complaint.

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Click below for the full article.

http://reason.com/24-7/2013/07/04/nevada-cops-commandeer-private-homes-arr

07.13.13
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Reuters: Hackers convention ask government to stay away over Snowden

Member of the DHS Advisory Committee Jeff Moss speaks at the Reuters Global Media and Technology Summit in New York, June 12, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

The annual Def Con hacking convention has asked the U.S. federal government to stay away this year for the first time in its 21-year history, saying Edward Snowden’s revelations have made some in the community uncomfortable about its presence.

“It would be best for everyone involved if the Feds call a ‘time-out’ and not attend Def Con this year,” conference founder Jeff Moss said in an announcement posted Wednesday night on the convention’s website.

An irreverent crowd of more than 15,000 hackers, researchers, corporate security experts, privacy advocates, artists and others are expected to attend the Las Vegas convention, which begins on August 2.

Moss, who is an advisor on cyber security to the Department of Homeland Security, told Reuters it was “a tough call,” but he believed the Def Con community needs time to make sense of recent revelations about U.S. surveillance programs.

“The community is digesting things that the Feds have had a decade to understand and come to terms with,” said Moss, who is known as The Dark Tangent in hacking circles. “A little bit of time and distance can be a healthy thing, especially when emotions are running high.”

He said the move was designed to defuse tension.

“We are not going on a witch hunt or checking IDs and kicking people out,” he said.

The conference has attracted officials from agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigations, Secret Service and all branches of the military.

Last year, four-star General Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, was a keynote speaker at the event, which is the world’s largest annual hacking conference.

The audience was respectful, gave modest applause and also asked about secret government snooping. Alexander adamantly denied the NSA has dossiers on millions of Americans, as some former employees had suggested before the Snowden case.

“The people who would say we are doing that should know better,” Alexander said. “That is absolute nonsense.”

Alexander is scheduled to speak in Las Vegas on July 31 at Black Hat, a smaller, two-day hacking conference that Moss also founded, but sold almost eight years ago. It costs about $2,000 to attend Black Hat, which attracts a more corporate crowd than the $180 Def Con.

Black Hat General Manager Trey Ford said that the NSA has confirmed that Alexander will speak at his conference, which is owned by UBM Plc, a global media company. Security will be heightened and Alexander will take questions from the audience, Ford said.

An NSA spokeswoman confirmed Alexander would attend, but did not elaborate or comment on Def Con’s request that the Federal government not attend.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/11/us-hackers-feds-idUSBRE96A08120130711

07.12.13
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EFF: Whether High School or College, Students’ Speech Rights Are Being Threatened Online

Attention, high school and college students: Your online speech is not nearly as private as you think. And no, we’re not talking about the National Security Agency. The threat to student speech comes from a far more local and immediate source: the prying eyes of school administrators apparently unaware of their students’ rights. All too often, students face unwarranted punishment for online communications.

Examples abound.

Just this past May at Cicero-North Syracuse High School in upstate New York, senior Pat Brown was suspended for three days for creating a Twitter hashtag about a school budget controversy. Brown created the “#shitCNSshouldcut” hashtag to suggest ways his school could save money after voters rejected a $144.7 million budget plan, joking that laying off the school’s principal or getting rid of the “anime club” might help alleviate budget strains. Unfortunately, the principal wasn’t amused; CNN and The Huffington Post reported that Brown was accused of “harassing the principal” and “inciting a social media riot that disrupted the learning environment.”

Also this past May, Heights High School (Wichita, Kansas) senior class president Wesley Teague was suspended and barred from attending graduation after posting a tweet that the school deemed offensive to HSS’s student athletes. Teague wrote that “‘Heights U’ is equivalent to WSU’s football team,” referring to the school’s athletic program and nearby Wichita State University, which eliminated its football program in 1986. Teague was scheduled to give the commencement speech at graduation, but the school sent Teague and his parents a letter stating that Teague’s initial tweet and a few subsequent tweets “acted to incite a disturbance” within school and “aggressively [disrespected] many athletes.”

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Click below for the full article.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/whether-high-school-or-college-students-speech-rights-are-being-threatened-onlin-0

07.11.13
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Reuters: Tired of helping the CIA? Quit Facebook, Venezuela minister urges

A man uses an iPad with a Facebook app in this photo illustration in Sofia January 30, 2013. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov

A Venezuelan government minister on Wednesday urged citizens to shut Facebook accounts to avoid being unwitting informants for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, referring to recent revelations about U.S. surveillance programs.

Edward Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor who is stuck in a Moscow airport while seeking to avoid capture by the United States, last month leaked details about American intelligence agencies obtaining information from popular websites including Facebook.

“Comrades: cancel your Facebook accounts, you’ve been working for free as CIA informants. Review the Snowden case!” wrote Prisons Minister Iris Varela on her Twitter account.

Venezuela has offered to provide asylum for Snowden, but he has not responded and appears unable to leave the transit zone of Sheremetyevo International Airport.

He exposed a program known as Prism that relied on customer data supplied by major technology companies.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/11/us-usa-security-venezuela-facebook-idUSBRE96A01120130711

07.10.13
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Outrage Over Highway Body Cavity Search

Two women are suing the Texas DPS after getting body cavity searches during a traffic stop.

“The male officer, his words verbatim were, ‘We’re gonna get familiar with your womanly parts,'” Brandy Hamilton said.

That officer, Nathaniel Turner, claimed to smell marijuana in Hamilton and Alexandria Randle’s car when he pulled them over for speeding on Memorial Day 2012. He called a female trooper to search their genitalia for drugs on the side of Highway 288 in Brazoria County.

“You’re going to go up my private parts?” Hamilton said. Brandy Hamilton and Alexandria Randle have filed a lawsuit against Brazoria County for invasion of privacy after they were searched on the side of a highway on Memorial Day 2012. KVUE

“Yes, ma’am,” trooper Jennie Bui said matter-of-factly.

The entire stop was recorded on the state troopers’ dash camera, including Hamilton’s horrified face at the moment of insertion.

“She pretty much forced my legs open because I wouldn’t even open my legs,” Hamilton said.

07.06.13
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Happy Fourth of July America: Video: 4th of July DUI Checkpoint – Drug Dogs, Searched without Consent, Rights Taken Away, while Innocent

A man was pulled over and searched by police on the 4th of July at a DUI checkpoint in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Although the man repeatedly exercised his constitutional rights to not be searched and followed the law, the officers bullied him and forced him out of the vehicle despite committing no crime. The motorist’s car was then searched by a K-9 unit who was given a false alert signal by the police officer in order to search the vehicle for drugs.

From the video:

Tennessee State Trooper AJ Ross orders me to pull over and get out of my car, bullies me around, gets the drug sniffing K-9, lies about me having “Illegal Drugs” in the car, searches without consent, and tells me that it is ok to take away my freedom. All while not being detained. All this harassment because my window was not lowered enough to his preference. I broke no laws whatsoever. All of this on a day that we are supposed to be celebrating freedom and liberty. This checkpoint was in Murfreesboro, TN.

07.05.13
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Times Dispatch: Commit any felonies lately?

Elizabeth Daly went to jail over a case of bottled water.

According to the Charlottesville Daily Progress, shortly after 10 p.m. April 11, the University of Virginia student bought ice cream, cookie dough and a carton of LaCroix sparkling water from the Harris Teeter grocery store at the popular Barracks Road Shopping Center. In the parking lot, a half-dozen men and a woman approached her car, flashing some kind of badges. One jumped on the hood. Another drew a gun. Others started trying to break the windows.

Daly understandably panicked. With her roommate in the passenger seat yelling “Go, go, go!” Daly drove off, hoping to reach the nearest police station. The women dialed 911. Then a vehicle with lights and sirens pulled them over, and the situation clarified: The people who had swarmed Daly’s vehicle were plainclothes agents of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The agents had thought  the sparkling water was a 12-pack of beer.

Did the ABC’s enforcers apologize? Not in the slightest. They charged Daly with three felonies: two for assaulting an officer (her vehicle had grazed two agents; neither was hurt) and one for eluding the police. Last week, the commonwealth’s attorney dropped the charges.

The agents’ excessive display of force is outrageously disproportionate to the offense they mistakenly thought they witnessed: an underage purchase of alcohol. But in a sense, Daly got off easy. A couple of weeks after her ordeal, a 61-year-old man in Tennessee was killed when the police executed a drug raid on the wrong house. A few weeks later, in another wrong-house raid, police officers killed a dog belonging to an Army veteran. These are not isolated incidents; for more information, visit the interactive map at www.cato.org/raidmap.

They are, however, part and parcel of two broader phenomena. One is the militarization of domestic law enforcement. In recent years, police departments have widely adopted military tactics, military equipment (armored personnel carriers, flash-bang grenades) — and, sometimes, the mindset of military conquerors rather than domestic peacekeepers.

The other phenomenon is the increasing degree to which civilians are subject to criminal prosecution for noncriminal acts, including exercising the constitutionally protected right to free speech.

Last week, A.J. Marin was arrested in Harrisburg, Pa., for writing in chalk on the sidewalk. Marin was participating in a health care demonstration outside Gov. Tom Corbett’s residence when he wrote, “Governor Corbett has health insurance, we should too.” Authorities charged Marin with writing “a derogatory remark about the governor on the sidewalk.” The horror.

This follows the case of Jeff Olson, who chalked messages such as “Stop big banks” outside branches of Bank of America last year. Law professor Jonathan Turley reports that prosecutors brought 13 vandalism charges against him. Moreover, the judge in the case recently prohibited Olson’s attorney from “mentioning the First Amendment, free speech,” or anything like them during the trial.

In May, a Texas woman was arrested for asking to see a warrant for the arrest of her 11-year-old son. “She spent the night in jail while her son was left at home,” reports Fox34 News. The son never was arrested. Also in Texas, Justin Carter has spent months in jail — and faces eight years more — for making an admittedly atrocious joke about shooting up a school in an online chat. Though he was plainly kidding, authorities charged him with making a terrorist threat.

Federal prosecutors also recently used an anti-terrorism measure to seize almost $70,000 from the owners of a Maryland dairy. Randy and Karen Sowers had made several bank deposits of just under $10,000 to avoid the headache of filing federal reports required for sums over that amount. The feds charged them with unlawful “structuring.” Last week, they settled the case. Authorities kept half their money to teach them a lesson.

“I broke the law yesterday,” writes George Mason economics professor Alex Tabarrok, “and I probably will break the law tomorrow. Don’t mistake me, I have done nothing wrong. I don’t even know what laws I have broken. … It’s hard for anyone to live today without breaking the law. Doubt me? Have you ever thrown out some junk mail that … was addressed to someone else? That’s a violation of federal law punishable by up to five years in prison.” Tabarrok notes that lawyer Harvey Silverglate thinks the typical American commits “Three Felonies a Day” — the title of Silverglate’s book on the subject.

As The Wall Street Journal has reported, lawmakers in Washington have greatly eroded the notion of mens rea — the principle that you need criminal intent in order to commit a crime. Thanks to a proliferating number of obscure offenses, Americans now resemble the condemned souls in Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” — spared from perdition only by the temporary forbearance of those who sit in judgment.

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Click below for  the full article.

http://mobi.timesdispatch.com/richmond/db_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=A0157ha4&full=true#display