Archive for the ‘Fear your government’ Category

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It’s about damn time!

May 20, 2016

Let’s hope the congressmens’ bill actually does something about this problem. Something like requiring a conviction before forfeiture would be a good start but it doesn’t look like this bill does that. (I’ve only read Issa’s press release, not the bill itself.)

Rep. Issa, Colleagues Introduce Bill To Rein In Civil Forfeiture Abuse

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and 12 of his colleagues introduced legislation to rein in civil forfeiture abuse, signing on as an original cosponsor of the DUE PROCESS Act of 2016. The bill makes several important changes to the nation’s federal civil forfeiture program to help curb recent abuses and prevent Americans from having their property taken away by law enforcement without due process. […]

As a reminder of just how much asset forfeiture has in common with highway robbery, this example is just about perfect. (My emphasis below.)

Arkansas Trooper Steals $20,000, Because Nobody Innocent Carries That Much Cash
Prosecutors tried to drop the forfeiture case, but the judge would not let them.

The story of how cops stole $20,000 from Guillermo Espinoza, a construction worker with no criminal record, is sadly familiar in most respects: In July 2013, while driving through Arkansas on his way to Texas, Espinoza was pulled over by a state trooper who discovered a large amount of cash in the car, which he viewed as inherently suspicious. The money was seized and eventually forfeited based on vague allegations of drug-related activity. But there’s a twist: There was so little evidence of such activity that local prosecutors decided to drop the forfeiture case. The judge would not let them, and last week a state appeals court declined to review that astounding decision because Espinoza had missed a filing deadline.

It’s not clear why Arkansas State Police Sgt. Dennis Overton decided to stop Espinoza, who was traveling with his girlfriend, Priscila Hernandez. The legal justification for pulling Espinoza over was missing from the state’s September 2013 forfeiture complaint, which referred without explanation to “the traffic stop,” and from Circuit Court Judge Chris Williams’ September 2014 order authorizing permanent confiscation of the money, which said only that the stop was “proper.” In his response to the forfeiture complaint, Espinoza argued that the stop was illegal, so it would be nice to know what the rationale for it was. […]

After the stop, Judge Williams said, a “State of Arkansas drug dog was transported to the site in order to conduct a search of the vehicle.” […] But according to Williams, “It is obvious from the tape [of the traffic stop] that the dog did not alert on the vehicle at the scene of the stop.”

Undeterred, Overton asked for permission to search the car, which Espinoza supposedly granted — a pretty suspicious sequence of events. Why bother bringing in a drug dog to justify searching a car if the driver is willing to give his consent? In any case, Williams said, “the dog alerted on a computer bag,” inside which Overton found $19,894 in cash, mostly wrapped in $1,000 bundles. Overton found no contraband, drug paraphernalia, or any other sign of illegal activity. But as far as he was concerned, the cash itself was conclusive evidence that Espinoza was involved in drug trafficking.

“I’ve worked this interstate for the last eight years,” Overton told Espinoza, according to the transcript of the dashcam video, which Williams appended to his order. “Half of my career I’ve spent out here. OK? Nobody — nobody — carries their money like that but one person. OK? People that deal with drugs, and deliver drugs. That’s it. Nobody else. Nobody.” In other words, Overton always treats people who carry large amounts of cash as criminals, which proves that only criminals carry large amounts of cash. […]

Read the whole thing: it’ll make yer blood boil.

I guess the big difference between cops and highwaymen is that cops and judges are more orderly. The cops don’t (generally) approach you with weapons already drawn (I gather). And then when you get to court, you can count on the court minding its p’s & q’s about procedures and deadlines — the justice of the ruling being a minor consideration.

But at least it’s all done in a nice, orderly way.

Posted in Civil asset forfeiture, Fear your government | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

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The State is not your friend

May 9, 2016

Here’s ten minutes of video about an FDA case (that I’d never heard of) against Vascular Solutions. I’ll bet most people haven’t heard about this case.

It’s a little long, but listen to the comments from Vascular Solutions’ employees and the letter that Mr. Root received from a juror after the trial.

Posted in Fear your government, Free markets | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

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So what happened to "livin’ right and bein’ free"?

April 26, 2016

Here’s an e-mail I got today from Scott Bullock with the Institute for Justice. You gotta love what the IJ does — and they don’t fool around.

Yesterday, IJ won our fastest victory ever. Just hours after we launched our latest civil forfeiture case with an exclusive feature in The Washington Post, the government agreed to drop all charges against our clients and returned every cent that it had wrongfully seized.

This case involves one of the most outrageous forfeiture actions we’ve seen yet. During a routine traffic stop for a broken tail light, the Muskogee, Oklahoma, sheriff’s department seized more than $53,000 from our clients—a church and a Burmese Christian band on tour in the U.S. trying to raise funds for charity. The full Washington Post story is here, and you can find more information about the case, including IJ’s video, on our website.

Law enforcement nationwide continues to use civil forfeiture to steal property and hard-earned cash from innocent owners. But with your support, we were able to act quickly and marshal resources across time zones—and, in this case, continents—to come to their defense. Despite its short duration, this case involved a great deal of work and hustle by IJ attorneys. Indeed, I suspect this is the first time anyone has had to chase down notaries in Burma, rural Thailand, Omaha, and Dallas all on the same day. This victory brings us one step closer to our goal of abolishing forfeiture, and we are grateful to you for making it possible.

My, what a contrast to Merle Haggard’s song Okie from Muskogee. I wonder what Merle (may he rest in peace) would make of this story?

It sounds to me like some of those Okies aren’t doing right and the rest of ’em may not be too free.

Here’s the IJ’s page about this case: Highway robbery in Muskogee.

Posted in asset forfeiture, Fear your government | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Phones, privacy, and network security

April 23, 2016

Just last night at dinner I was wondering aloud what Apple (and Apple iPhone owners) thought of the FBI’s claims that someone had hacked the phone used by Farook & Malik in San Bernadino. It wasn’t a concern to me since I don’t own an iPhone, but if I did own one I’d be wondering whether (a) the FBI really had hacked the phone and, if so, (b) what that implied about security on my iPhone.

And speak of the Devil… today’s Wall Street Journal ran this article about a newer case. (It’s behind their paywall, of course).

Same stuff, different day.

Federal Prosecutors Drop Court Case to Force Apple to Unlock iPhone

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department on Friday night dropped a court case trying to force Apple Inc. to help authorities open a locked iPhone, adding new uncertainty to the government’s standoff with the technology company over encryption.

In a one-page letter filed with a Brooklyn federal court Friday night, the government said an individual had recently come forward to offer the passcode to the long-locked phone. The filing means that in both of the high-profile cases pitting the Justice Department against Apple, the government first said it couldn’t open the phone, only to suddenly announce it had found a way into the device as the case proceeded in court. […]

The case involves an iPhone 5s that was seized from suspect Jun Feng as part of a 2014 drug investigation in New York. Mr. Feng pleaded guilty last year, but both sides agreed the legal dispute surrounding the phone still needs to be resolved.

After he was arrested, Mr. Feng told agents that he didn’t remember the phone’s passcode, leading investigators eventually to seek Apple’s help. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Mr. Feng only recently learned his phone had become an issue in a high-stakes legal fight between prosecutors and Apple. Mr. Feng, who has pleaded guilty and is due to be sentenced in the coming weeks, is the one who provided the passcode to investigators, according to people familiar with the matter. […]

Earlier this week, James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told a London security conference audience that the government paid more than $1 million for an unidentified third-party to help open the San Bernardino work phone of Syed Rizwan Farook.

Mr. Farook and his wife killed 14 people and wounded 22 in a Dec. 2 shooting rampage at a holiday gathering of county employees, before being killed later that day in a shootout with police.

Earlier this week I ran across this video on Darrell Issa’s Twitter feed.

It makes the point about security on network devices pretty well, I think. The question’s not as simple as people putting their privacy ahead of the common good (as the FBI and politicians would have it). It’s not just about Snapchat and Twitter. It’s about all the data on what have become our personal computers — the bank passwords, or the business data that you don’t want made public, or your Ashley Madison account maybe.

So that makes this an issue about introducing weaknesses in devices on an open network that already has its share of security risks. Anyone work for the OPM? Do you think the Feds should dictate security measures for everyone?

But getting back to what I was wondering about, I couldn’t find that there’d been any answer to that question. Here’s a three-week-old article in the Los Angeles Times.

Apple wants the FBI to reveal how it hacked the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone

Apple Inc. refused to give the FBI software the agency desperately wanted. Now Apple is the one that needs the FBI’s assistance.

The FBI announced Monday that it managed to unlock an iPhone 5c belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters without the help of Apple. And the agency has shown no interest in telling Apple how it skirted the phone’s security features, leaving the tech giant guessing about a vulnerability that could compromise millions of devices.

“One way or another, Apple needs to figure out the details,” said Justin Olsson, product counsel at security software maker AVG Technologies. “The responsible thing for the government to do is privately disclose the vulnerability to Apple so they can continue hardening security on their devices.”

But that’s not how it’s playing out so far. The situation illuminates a process that usually takes place in secret: Governments regularly develop or purchase hacking techniques for law enforcement and counterterrorism efforts, and put them to use without telling affected companies.

I’d be very surprised if Mr. Olsson’s suggestion that the government disclose its method to Apple ever happens.

Update 4/26/16

Well, that easy prediction was quickly confirmed. Here’s more news from today’s Wall Street Journal (and behind its paywall, naturally). My emphasis below.

FBI Plans to Keep Apple iPhone-Hacking Method Secret

The FBI is preparing to send a formal notification to the White House in the coming days saying that while the agency bought a hacking tool from a third party to unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, officials aren’t familiar with the underlying code that runs it.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t plan to tell Apple Inc. how it cracked a San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist’s phone, said people familiar with the matter, leaving the company in the dark on a security vulnerability on some iPhone models.

The FBI knows how to use the phone-hacking tool it bought to open the iPhone 5c but doesn’t specifically knows how it works, allowing the tool to avoid a White House review, the people said, The FBI plans to notify the White House of this conclusion in the coming days, they added.

Any decision to not share details of the vulnerability with Apple is likely to anger privacy advocates who contend the FBI’s approach to encryption weakens data security for many smartphone and computer owners in order to preserve options for federal investigators to open locked devices. […]

And if you believe the FBI’s claim that it "doesn’t specifically know how it works" then please call me about the bridge I have for sale.

While it’s a Federal crime for us to lie to Federal law enforcement agents, it’s not a crime (of any sort) for them to lie to us.

Update 5/19/16

Here’s probably the most persuasive response to the government’s demands for backdoors in phone security. If a government has access, it will be abuse that access sooner or later.

Apple vs the FBI, a Dispute as Seen From the Cuban Prism

14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Washington, 5 March 2016 — When they returned his mobile phone all his contacts had been erased and the card with the photos was gone. Stories like this are repeated among activists who have been detained, over whom an iron vigilance is maintained with the complicity of the Telecommunications Company (ETECSA), the technology arm of repression in Cuba. An entity that should take note of the rebuff Apple has dealt the FBI in the United States, by refusing to access its clients’ data.

For decades, Cuban society has become accustomed to the government’s failing to respect individuals’ private spaces. The state has the power to delve into personal correspondence, to display medical records in front of the cameras, to air private messages on television, and to broadcast phone conversations between critics of the system. In such a framework, intimacy doesn’t exist, one’s personal space has been invaded by power.

People see as “normal” that the phones are tapped and that in the homes of opponents hidden microphones capture even the smallest sigh. It has become common practice for ETECSA to cut off dissidents’ phone service during certain national events or visits from foreign leaders, and to block the reception of messages whose contents upset them. This Orwellian situation has gone on for so long, that few take note any more of the illegality involved and the violation of citizens’ rights it entails.

Posted in Fear your government, Geekery | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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Sounds like a conspiracy to me

April 11, 2016

Last week, Megan McArdle wrote about a group of attorneys general and about one in particular, who had served a subpoena to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Subpoenaed Into Silence on Global Warming

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is getting subpoenaed by the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands to cough up its communications regarding climate change. The scope of the subpoena is quite broad, covering the period from 1997 to 2007, and includes, according to CEI, “a decade’s worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI’s work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information.”

My first reaction to this news was “Um, wut?” CEI has long denied humans’ role in global warming, and I have fairly substantial disagreements with CEI on the issue. However, when last I checked, it was not a criminal matter to disagree with me. It’s a pity, I grant you, but there it is; the law’s the law. […]

Speaking of the law, why on earth is CEI getting subpoenaed? The attorney general, Claude Earl Walker, explains: “We are committed to ensuring a fair and transparent market where consumers can make informed choices about what they buy and from whom. If ExxonMobil has tried to cloud their judgment, we are determined to hold the company accountable.”

That wasn’t much of an explanation. It doesn’t mention any law that ExxonMobil may have broken. It is also borderline delusional, if Walker believes that ExxonMobil’s statements or non-statements about climate change during the period 1997 to 2007 appreciably affected consumer propensity to stop at a Mobil station, rather than tootling down the road to Shell or Chevron, or giving up their car in favor of walking to work.

State attorneys general including Walker held a press conference last week to talk about the investigation of ExxonMobil and explain their theory of the case. And yet, there sort of wasn’t a theory of the case. They spent a lot of time talking about global warming, and how bad it was, and how much they disliked fossil fuel companies. They threw the word “fraud” around a lot. But the more they talked about it, the more it became clear that what they meant by “fraud” was “advocating for policies that the attorneys general disagreed with.” […]

No matter how likely you may think catastrophic global warming might be (and Ms McArdle thinks it more likely than I), I’m hoping you’ll think this move by the group of A.G.s sets a bad precedent. And that’s a point McArdle makes later in her column.

And it’s a bad precedent regardless of your opinion about the CEI. Say that you think the CEI is a tool of greedy oil companies; it’s still true that the antidote to "bad speech" is free speech and not censorship.

Today, I ran across Glenn Reynolds’ column on the same topic. He puts a much finer point on the A.Gs’ actions and press conference.

Dear attorneys general, conspiring against free speech is a crime

Federal law makes it a felony “for two or more persons to agree together to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the Unites States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).”

I wonder if U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, or California Attorney General Kamala Harris, or New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have read this federal statute. Because what they’re doing looks like a concerted scheme to restrict the First Amendment free speech rights of people they don’t agree with. They should look up 18 U.S.C. Sec. 241, I am sure they each have it somewhere in their offices.

Here’s what’s happened so far. First, Schneiderman and reportedly Harris sought to investigate Exxon in part for making donations to groups and funding research by individuals who think “climate change” is either a hoax, or not a problem to the extent that people like Harris and Schneiderman say it is.

This investigation, which smacks of Wisconsin’s discredited Putin-style legal assault on conservative groups and their contributors, was denounced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Hans Bader as unconstitutional. Bader wrote:

Should government officials be able to cut off donations to groups because they employ people disparaged as “climate change deniers?” … Only a single-issue zealot with ideological blinders and a contempt for the First Amendment would think so. …

The First Amendment has long been interpreted as protecting corporate lobbying and donations, even to groups that allegedly deceive the public about important issues. … So even if being a “climate denier” were a crime (rather than constitutionally protected speech, as it in fact is), a donation to a non-profit that employs such a person would not be.

Nope, but conspiring to deprive “deniers” of their free speech rights would be. […]

But here’s what happened next: After Bader’s critique, Walker, the U.S. Virgin Islands attorney general, subpoenaed the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s donor lists. The purpose of this subpoena is, it seems quite clear, to punish CEI by making people less willing to donate.

This all takes place in the context of an unprecedented meeting by 20 state attorneys general aimed, environmental news site EcoWatch reports, at targeting entities that have “stymied attempts to combat global warming.” You don’t have to be paranoid to see a conspiracy here.

Not everyone believes that the planet is warming; not everyone who thinks that it is warming agrees on how much; not everyone who thinks that it is warming even believes that laws or regulation can make a difference. Yet the goal of these state attorneys general seems to be to treat disagreement as something more or less criminal. That’s wrong. As the Supreme Court wrote in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.” […]

If there was ever an example of a Chilling Effect, this is one on steroids.

Posted in Climate, Fear your government, US politics | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

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It’s no surprise at all

March 11, 2016

Last week I read Barr Eisler’s novel The God’s Eye View. It was a pretty good novel but I thought one of the best parts was Eisler’s closing notes where he talks about how there is, effectively, no longer much Congressional oversight over security agencies like the NSA.

The representatives and senators who oversee those agencies are often bound by secrecy agreements with those agencies to not discuss what they hear or learn even with other congressmen. In other words, the agencies demand secrecy in the name of national security even from those who should be controlling the agencies’ policies and procedures.

So when Paul sent a link to this column by Radley Balko, it really wasn’t much of a surprise. But, surprised or not, we should all be shocked at what’s happening.

Surprise! NSA data will soon routinely be used for domestic policing that has nothing to do with terrorism

A while back, we noted a report showing that the “sneak-and-peek” provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy. The ACLU of Massachusetts blog Privacy SOS explains why this is important:

What does this rule change mean for you? In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages. FBI agents don’t need to have any “national security” related reason to plug your name, email address, phone number, or other “selector” into the NSA’s gargantuan data trove. They can simply poke around in your private information in the course of totally routine investigations. And if they find something that suggests, say, involvement in illegal drug activity, they can send that information to local or state police. That means information the NSA collects for purposes of so-called “national security” will be used by police to lock up ordinary Americans for routine crimes. And we don’t have to guess who’s going to suffer this unconstitutional indignity the most brutally. It’ll be Black, Brown, poor, immigrant, Muslim, and dissident Americans: the same people who are always targeted by law enforcement for extra “special” attention.

This basically formalizes what was already happening under the radar. We’ve known for a couple of years now that the Drug Enforcement Administration and the IRS were getting information from the NSA. Because that information was obtained without a warrant, the agencies were instructed to engage in “parallel construction” when explaining to courts and defense attorneys how the information had been obtained. If you think parallel construction just sounds like a bureaucratically sterilized way of saying big stinking lie, well, you wouldn’t be alone. And it certainly isn’t the only time that that national security apparatus has let law enforcement agencies benefit from policies that are supposed to be reserved for terrorism investigations in order to get around the Fourth Amendment, then instructed those law enforcement agencies to misdirect, fudge and outright lie about how they obtained incriminating information — see the Stingray debacle. This isn’t just a few rogue agents. The lying has been a matter of policy. We’re now learning that the feds had these agreements with police agencies all over the country, affecting thousands of cases.

Somewhere I have a picture that I took in Amsterdam a long while back (late 80s or early 90s). It was a pic of a large sign on a canal bridge, reading: Abuse of power comes as no surprise.

So don’t be surprised. Be vigilant in defense of your rights instead.

Update
Here’s Edward Snowden talking about the secrecy surrounding surveillance programs during a recent interview. Give it a listen from the 16:30 mark until the 19:05 mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8pkUTav0mk?t=16m30s

How can the people have any voice in a process with the deck stacked like that? I have to conclude that we no longer have a voice in those decisions. It’s the Omniscient State, citizen: love it or leave it.

Posted in Fear your government, US government | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

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How do we get these bozos off the bus?

January 13, 2016

Kevin Williamson writes about a new program at Fannie Mae (FNMA).

The Committee to Re-Inflate the Bubble strikes again.

In lieu of the usual complex regulation larded with special-interest favoritism, here is a simple mortgage rule that could and probably should be adopted: No federally regulated financial institution shall make a mortgage loan without the borrower’s making a down payment of at least 20 percent derived from his own savings.

Period, paragraph, next subject.

Instead of doing that, we are sprinting flat-out in the opposite direction, with government-sponsored mortgage giant Fannie Mae rolling out a daft new mortgage proposal that would allow borrowers without enough income to qualify for a mortgage to count income that isn’t theirs on their mortgage application.

The Committee to Re-Inflate the Bubble strikes again: We’ve just legalized mortgage fraud. […]

In his article, Williamson refers to an op-ed at Investor’s Business Daily that Jeff G passed along last week.

Fannie Mae Rolls Out Easy Mortgage, Catering To High-Risk Immigrants

Subprime 2.0: The White House is rolling out a new low-income mortgage program that for the first time lets lenders qualify borrowers by counting income from nonborrowers living in the household. What could go wrong?

The HomeReady program is offered through Fannie Mae, which is now controlled by Obama’s old Congressional Black Caucus pal Mel Watt. It replaces the bankrupted mortgage giant’s notorious old subprime program, MyCommunityMortgage.

In case renaming the subprime product fails to fool anybody, the affordable-housing geniuses in the administration have re-termed “subprime,” a dirty word since the mortgage bust, “alternative.”

So HomeReady isn’t a subprime mortgage program, you see, it’s an “alternative” mortgage program.

But it might was well be called DefaultReady, because it is just as risky as the subprime junk Fannie was peddling on the eve of the crisis.

At least before the crisis, your income had to be your own. But now, as a renter, you can get a conventional home loan backed by Fannie by claiming other people’s income. That’s right: You can use your apartment roommate’s paycheck to augment your qualifying income. Or your abuela.

You can even claim the earnings of people who are not occupants, such as your parents, under this program. […]

This program is brain dead. I don’t even rent to people with a 45% debt-to-income ratio; it’s too risky. And FNMA wants to write mortgages for them at that ratio? And with only 3% down? And based on income from who-knows-where?

I’d say this is some kind of spoof but it appears to be legitimate news. Ready for the next bail-out, bro?

I wonder who really said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Posted in Fear your government, Political economy, US politics | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

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Not much, I hope

January 9, 2016

Here’s some news that might be good news on the asset forfeiture front. We’ll see how permanent this policy change is.

What’s next for feds’ seizure program after local payments stopped?

Local law enforcement agencies will no longer reap any rewards from a controversial federal program that allows police to take money and property from individuals – and keep up to 80 percent of it – even if those individuals are never charged with any crime.

That’s because the Justice Department earlier this month suspended payments from the “equitable sharing” program that normally paid out 80 percent of those funds collected to local agencies, citing budget cuts.

The move prompted cheers from those trying to eliminate or reform such seizures and forfeitures, with some saying the action could eventually reduce the number of officers who perform such seizures. But it has also raised major concern among those local agencies and the law enforcement community nationwide about the drop in potential funding. […]

Posted in asset forfeiture, Fear your government | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

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Dear John

November 28, 2015

As I’ve mentioned earlier it’s not privacy that the government should respect: it’s anonymity. Your public actions & speech can’t be private, of course, but the government should treat them anonymously (unless you’re committing a crime).

Here’s some nasty news about Los Angeles and its license plate database which is a wonderful illustration of why anonymity’s important.

Because who knows what the next politician or bureaucrat will come up with?

Los Angeles Just Proposed the Worst Use of License Plate Reader Data in History.

Last month, when I spoke on a panel called “Spying in Public: Policy and Practice” at the 25th Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in Washington, DC, we were embroiled in a discussion of license plate readers. As a law enforcement technologist, and a working police detective, I generally support the use of license plate readers. I discussed at the conference a child pornography case in which the suspect (now indicted) had fled the city and the police located him using the technology.

From the back of the room came the comment, “The issue is the potentially chilling effect that this technology has on freedom of association and freedom of transportation.”

That’s literally the phrase that leapt into my mind when I read the monumentally over-reaching idea posed by Nury Martinez, a 6th district Los Angeles city councilwoman, to access a database of license plates captured in certain places around the city, translate these license plates to obtain the name and address of each owner, and send to that owner a letter explaining that the vehicle was seen in, “an area known for prostitution.” […]

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to ask the office of the District Attorney for their help implementing the plan.

Have Ms. Martinez and the Los Angeles City Council taken leave of their senses? This scheme makes, literally, a state issue out of legal travel to arbitrary places deemed by some — but not by a court, and without due process — to be “related” to crime in general, not to any specific crime.

There isn’t “potential” for abuse here, this is a legislated abuse of technology that is already controversial when it’s used by police for the purpose of seeking stolen vehicles, tracking down fugitives and solving specific crimes. […]

All your license plate numbers are belong to them.

Posted in City government, Fear your government, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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Kozinski on the justice system

November 24, 2015

Radley Balko posts five short (90 – 120 second) videos made when the Charles Koch Institute interviewed Judge Alex Kozinski.

Federal appeals court judge speaks out on police militarization, redemption for convicts, false confessions, criminal justice reform

As part of its push for criminal justice reform, the Charles Koch Institute (yes, that Charles Koch) has just posted a series of interviews with Alex Kozinski, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

Kozinski is often tagged as a conservative, but he has become one of the loudest, most eloquent and most consistent critics of the criminal justice system on the federal bench, both in his opinions and in his writing outside of court.

Here’s one of the clips.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUpEPrCGdiE

I don’t known a lot about the judge but I admire the things he’s been writing and saying in the last few years. He seems to actually give a damn about the people who get caught up in the justice system.

Posted in Fear your government | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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Expensive insurance

November 21, 2015

Here’s an interesting post at Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution:

Can this be true?

Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, making this 35% of the entire number of assets collected from 1989 to 2010 in a single year. According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals [emphasis added].

That is from Martin Armstrong, via Noah Smith and Michael Hendrix. While private sector robberies are underreported by a considerable amount, this is nonetheless a startling contrast.

This seems to be the source for Cowen’s post.

I have no idea whether this is true. But if it is then police protection is turning into pretty expensive insurance, eh?

Via CoyoteBlog

Posted in Civil asset forfeiture, Fear your government, Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

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What we’ve forgotten

November 19, 2015

Here’s a history lesson about the Tenth Amendment.

217th Anniversary of Signing of Kentucky Resolution of 1798: What We’ve Forgotten

On this day, November 16, 217 years ago, Governor James Garrard of Kentucky signed into law the first of two landmark pieces of legislation known to history as the Kentucky Resolutions.

The first bill was passed by tthe Kentucky state House on November 10, 1798 and by the Senate on November 13. The bill was then signed into law by Governor Garrard three days later.

As is widely known, the Kentucky Resolution of 1798 was authored by Thomas Jefferson (shown), while a companion measure introduced in the Virginia state assembly was written by his frequent collaborator, James Madison.

The measures were reactions by the two first-tier Founders to the enactment by President John Adams of the Alien and Sedition Acts during the summer of 1798. […]

For reference, the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Via USMP of Kentucky

Posted in Fear your government | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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The beginning of the end?

November 9, 2015

Ireland, Mexico, Canada Defect from the War on Drugs

On November 3, Ohio voters rejected a flawed plan to legalize marijuana, even though most Ohioans are in favor of legalization. The measure would have amended the state constitution to legalize the sale of cannabis, but only through a state-sanctioned drug cartel of ten licensed dealers.

But there are other encouraging signs that the War on Drugs is losing steam.

On November 4, Canada’s newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was sworn into office. Trudeau and the Liberal Party promise to legalize marijuana in Canada, which would make it only the second country to formally legalize the sale and consumption of cannabis. (Uruguay became the first, in 2013 — contrary to popular belief, pot is not technically legal in the Netherlands, but it is tolerated).

On November 3, the Irish government announced decriminalization of not just marijuana but also heroin and cocaine. The chief of Ireland’s National Drugs Strategy told the papers there was a “strong consensus that drugs across the board should be decriminalised.” […]

Decriminalization is a far cry from legalization — it’s still a crime to make, sell, or “profit from” drugs — but users and addicts would no longer be locked up for their personal consumption. The results from Portugal’s decriminalization of all drugs in 2001 have been extremely extraordinary: deaths, addiction, and HIV infections from drugs have all dropped precipitously.

Perhaps the most heartening news comes from Mexico, where the drug war has raged for decades. On November 5, the criminal chamber of the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the country’s ban on marijuana was unconstitutional and found that individuals have a right to grow, possess, and use marijuana.

DEA delenda est!

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What I want to know

October 25, 2015

Here’s a pretty grim report about what the Khmer Rouge did to Cambodians.

Wikipedia has this to say about the Khmer Rouge:

The organization is remembered especially for orchestrating the Cambodian genocide, which resulted from the enforcement of its social engineering policies.[1] Its attempts at agricultural reform led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, even in the supply of medicine, led to the death of thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria. Arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978, are considered to have constituted genocide.[2]

It was all the usual communist agrarian nonsense again, as though the world hasn’t seen that tragedy played out enough yet.

The narrator wonders whether Hitler or Pol Pot would have pursued their policies had they witnessed the results first-hand.

But the question that interests me is this: Where do all the eager gunmen and thugs come from? Murderous dictators don’t kill people personally – instead they always have lots of other people who’re ready to kill and torture at their command.

I want to know why there are always so many people willing to do that. Why is there never a lack of people who enable murderous sociopaths by doing their dirty work? Are many of our fellow citizens ready to do the same, given the chance?

Could Hitler have pursued his racial purity nonsense without the assistance of many Germans? Could Stalin have waged his war against the Ukranian kulaks without the active help of a lot of Russians? Could the Kim family have impoverished North Korea in its pursuit of Juche without all the North Koreans who enforce its policies? Could Pol Pot have committed the Cambodian genocide without a group of Cambodians ready to smash babies against trees?

And why do the people never collectively say, "F**k a bunch of this nonsense!"? Are we collectively suicidal?

Sometimes I think humanity deserves to suffer – for its sins against itself.

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Know yer rights

October 10, 2015

I don’t know why, but I got a couple of links from Paul B this week related to rights when dealing with police officers in the US. (I hope this doesn’t mean that someone he knows has been busted.)

First he sent a link to this Fifth Amendment Flowchart by Nathaniel Burney. I’d never thought a lot about the topic — I haven’t needed to, luckily — but it surprised me how complicated dealing with the police could get when Miranda warnings and the Fifth Amendment are involved.

Then yesterday Paul sent a link to some podcasts made by folks at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. They’re a surprising resource to find. I hope their legal accuracy is as good as their convenience.

Continuing the 5th Amendment bit, I listened to the podcast titled Self Incrimination Roadmap. Not to take anything away from Mr. Burney’s excellent flowchart but I found the podcast a little easier to follow.

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‘Land of the free,’ he reminded himself

October 4, 2015

Paul sends links to two accounts about the mayor of Stockton, CA being detained by Homeland Security.

This account is from SFGate: Stockton mayor was briefly detained on return flight from China.

And here’s another from TechDirt:

Homeland Security Detains Stockton Mayor, Forces Him To Hand Over His Passwords
from the home-of-the-free dept

Anthony Silva, the mayor of Stockton, California, recently went to China for a mayor’s conference. On his return to San Francisco airport he was detained by Homeland Security, and then had his two laptops and his mobile phone confiscated. They refused to show him any sort of warrant (of course) and then refused to let him leave until he agreed to hand over his password:

A few minutes later, DHS agents confiscated all my electronic devices including my personal cell phone. Unfortunately, they were not willing or able to produce a search warrant or any court documents suggesting they had a legal right to take my property. In addition, they were persistent about requiring my passwords for all devices,” Silva said.

Silva was not allowed to leave the airport until he gave his passwords to the agents, which the mayor’s personal attorney, Mark Reichel, claimed is illegal. […]

To some extent what the DHS told him is true. It’s not that unusual, but it’s not that common either. But forcing him to turn over the passwords is unusual, and not standard practice. […]

I think the American people should be extremely concerned about their personal rights and privacy,” he said. “As I was being searched at the airport, there was a Latino couple to my left, and an Asian couple to my right also being aggressively searched. I briefly had to remind myself that this was not North Korea or Nazi Germany. This is the land of the Free.

So they keep telling us.

On the one hand, this appears to be another case of random abuse. If Homeland Security had well-founded suspicions about the mayor, they should have produced a search warrant for his gear or taken him into custody straight away. If not, they should have left him alone.

Where’s the Fourth Amendment when you need it?

On the other hand, I think it’s great when elected officials get a good taste of the monsters the federal government has created. I doubt that Mayor Silva had anything to do with the creation of DHS – but maybe he’ll think about running for Congress now and doing something about acts like these.

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She’s been there and done that

September 2, 2015

Here’s a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post by Mirta Gutierrez.

IMO, a $15 minimum wage is great news for automation companies. But…

A $15 minimum wage would hurt entry-level workers

Living in poverty in Argentina was not easy. Like many Argentinians trapped at the bottom of the economy, I was determined to make something of myself. I pursued a degree in accounting, but I quickly discovered that even with an education in my country, I was on a path to a dead end. […]

After arriving in Washington, I learned at a job fair that an Angelo & Maxie’s restaurant was opening and hiring 300 people. I met the chef, and in very broken English I asked for an opportunity to prove myself. He agreed, reluctantly, to hire me as a dishwasher at $5.50 an hour. It was 2001. I watched everything, took mental notes and looked for every opportunity to try something new in the back of the house. […]

When Angelo & Maxie’s closed, I went to work at District ChopHouse near Verizon Center. In nine years, the general manager and executive chef taught me everything he knew about the restaurant business. Then, in a bittersweet moment, he told me, “It’s time for you to fly.”

I was hired as the executive sous chef at Rosa Mexicano, where I was able to apply the skills that I had learned over the years. Before long, restaurant executive Spike Mendelsohn asked for my help with kitchen management and bookkeeping for one of his restaurant concepts, Good Stuff Eatery, on Capitol Hill. Soon, I was recruited to be executive chef at Tortilla Coast, where I am today.

I am an immigrant who started at the bottom with nothing. I became an executive chef who understands the kitchen and an accountant who understands the numbers of running a business. […]

As a poor immigrant, would a $15 minimum wage have helped me? Absolutely not. No restaurant owner would hire someone without experience, skills or English at such a high wage. I would never have made it to that first rung on the career ladder. […]

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The real american civil liberties organisation

August 19, 2015

Actually, I’m a little surprised that Texas would be doing something so silly. But you find this type of nonsense everywhere, I suppose.

You’ve gotta love the IJ.

Via What We Think and Why

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Another example that value is subjective

July 31, 2015

I didn’t know a movie was being made about Kelo v City of New London.

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Better hope for good trigger discipline

July 29, 2015

Here’s an interesting editorial in The Washington Post about a guy who got swatted for, basically, leaving his apartment door ajar. But he was lucky.

In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

[…] I didn’t wake up until three police officers barged into my apartment, barking their presence at my door. They sped down the hallway to my bedroom, their service pistols drawn and leveled at me.

It was just past 9 a.m., and I was still under the covers. The only visible target was my head.

In the shouting and commotion, I felt an instant familiarity. I’d been here before. This was a raid.

I had done this a few dozen times myself, 6,000 miles away from my Alexandria, Va., apartment. As an Army infantryman in Iraq, I’d always been on the trigger side of the weapon. Now that I was on the barrel side, I recalled basic training’s most important firearm rule: Aim only at something you intend to kill. […]

My situation was terrifying. Lying facedown in bed, I knew that any move I made could be viewed as a threat. Instinct told me to get up and protect myself. Training told me that if I did, these officers would shoot me dead.

From Reason’s blog a story (with video) about someone who wasn’t so lucky. My emphasis here.

University of Cincinnati Cop Ray Tensing Indicted in Murder of Samuel Dubose

Ray Tensing, the University of Cincinnati police officer who shot and killed Samuel Dubose as the man drove away during a traffic stop over a missing front license plate, was indicted for murder today. The county prosecutor, Joe Deters said Tensing “purposely killed” Dubose in an “asinine” and “senseless” manner. Authorities say Tensing shot Dubose in the head as Dubose tried to drive away, with the county prosecutor saying it took “maybe a second” for Tensing to pull his gun and shoot. He played the body cam footage at the press conference announcing the indictment.

From the Post again, Radley Balko links to an encouraging article in the Alaska Dispatch News about how Alaska trains police.

Alaska’s police, troopers do best as guardians, not warriors

[…]There are many within policing who have questioned the warrior mindset since well before Ferguson ignited the recent national debate. To these officers, a warrior class of police is antithetical to a democracy and our Constitution. Lt. Chad Goeden, Commander of the Alaska Department of Public Safety Training Academy, is one of these. The academy trains every Alaska State Trooper recruit and many municipal and borough police recruits before they can become certified sworn law enforcement officers.

During Lt. Goeden’s nearly 20-year tenure with the Alaska State Troopers he’s worked all over the state. When he became the academy commander he hung a sign over his office door:

“The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.” – Sir Robert Peel, founder of modern policing

Lt. Goeden chose that quote because he’d observed some officers had lost a sense of connection to the community. He explained, “I thought it was important to remind myself, my staff and the recruits why it is we do what we do, who we serve, and who it is we are beholden to.”

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