Brindle

Has no one explained to Donald Trump how the Streisand Effect works yet? His campaign has apparently been sending laughably ridiculous threat letters to various TV stations that have been airing an advertisement put together by a group called Priorities USA, criticizing the President's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The ad highlights Trump's repeated statements playing down the virus and insisting that he had things under control, even as the numbers of infected started to rise exponentially. It's a pretty effective ad. You can see it here.

Priorities also posted the ad to Twitter, and according to a Fox News article, the campaign has also asked Twitter to "flag a nearly identical ad... but the social media giant refused."

The letter is amazing in three separate, but equally dumb ways. First, it focuses solely on just one of the lines that the ad quotes Trump saying: "this is their new hoax." He did say that -- as the letter from his campaign readily admits. Their complaint is that the statement is out of context, and that what Trump was calling a hoax was actually the politicization of the virus response efforts. As the letter notes, here's the statement in full context, that Trump made on February 28th:

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs, you say, “How’s President Trump doing?”, “Oh, nothing, nothing.” They have no clue, they don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, “Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.” That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since he got in. It’s all turning, they lost. It’s all turning, think of it, think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We have 15 people in this massive country and because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that.

So, here's the problem. He absolutely said that "this is their new hoax" which he is quoted as saying. The fact that he's referring to the politicization rather than the virus itself is not nearly enough for the ad to violate any possible law. Even in context, it's a problematic statement, as what he's complaining about is the fact that many people were raising alarm bells and he was trying to play down that the whole issue was a problem. As such, it's still pretty damning.

But the fact that the letter literally spends three pages whining about just the "hoax" line, while not mentioning any of the rest of the ad is them totally conceding all of the other moronic stuff the President has said. Indeed, one of the lines -- the "15 people" line -- is also in the ad, and the Trump campaign apparently has no problem with you knowing that he completely downplayed how many people were going to be impacted by COVID-19.

The second dumb thing about the letter, of course, is that the campaign just called a shit ton of attention to it. The ad got some attention, but now it's getting way way way more attention. And even if you took out the hoax line, it's a pretty damning account of a President who refuses to take responsibility or to recognize the seriousness of what has happened under his watch.

The third dumb thing about it is that this is the Trump campaign. They're famous for posting and highlighting selectively edited videos of people they dislike. Hell, at around the same time they were apparently sending this letter, the campaign's Twitter feed posted a heavily edited video of Joe Biden, presenting his recent TV appearances much more out of context than anything in the Priorities ad. Hilariously, the letter cites a bunch of fact checking sites -- including The Washington Post, a company that the campaign itself is currently suing, and which Trump himself regularly accuses of publishing fake news about him. And, yet, if we were to look through the fact check sites quoted in the letter, we'd find that they regularly claim that Trump himself is spewing false information -- and that's never ever stopped Trump, so why should it stop his opponents?

And that's not even getting into why the threat is legally nonsensical -- claiming that failing to take down this add "could put your station's license in jeopardy." This is just silly. Airing political ads that contain false information has been controversial, but is mostly legally protected. Attempts to put in place legal requirements for "truth" in political advertising have been regularly struck down. Notably, the letter from the Trump campaign ignores that, and focuses entirely on cases regarding truth in commercial advertising. But not political advertising.

Also, threatening a TV station that you will have its license to broadcast removed for airing a political opponent's ad is just, in general, a really bad look. It seems likely that most TV stations will dump this letter in the garbage bin where it belongs, but in the meantime, the Trump Campaign has just Streisanded this ad into a ton more views.

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Time to start sending out some customer satisfaction surveys to New York City residents. After all, they're the ones paying for this. (via Boing Boing)

New York City taxpayers spent a whopping $230 million to pay off 6,472 lawsuits settled against the NYPD in the last fiscal year, according to an annual report released Monday by Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office.

The amount reflects settlements made from July 2017 through June 2018, and marks a 32% decrease from the prior year, when the city paid out $335 million for lawsuits against the police department.

This is the work of New York's Finest -- a police department that figures it's the FBI, CIA, and NSA rolled into one. When not bumptiously interloping as the East Coast wing of Team America World Police, the NYPD is busy back home violating rights and blowing off public records requests.

The department is infamous for its suspicionless surveillance of Muslims, its suspicionless searches of hundreds of thousands of young black men, and the occasional homicide.

The NYPD's spokeswoman apparently has only read the parts of the report she likes. Sgt. Jessica McRorie says the 32% reduction in claims shows the NYPD is serious about deterring officer misconduct. But the overall drop in claims is counteracted by the NYPD's 100% increase in police misconduct settlement payments over the past decade.

Roughly $108 million was related to allegations of police misconduct like false arrests and excessive force, more than doubling the $48 million paid out for such issues a decade ago.

No matter what spin is applied, the numbers speak for themselves. Since the middle of 2017, the city has paid out a half-billion dollars in settlements in lawsuits against the NYPD. The spokeswoman's cheery spin on $233 million in settlements as an indication of officers behaving $100 million better than last year doesn't say much about the force in general.

Granted, the amount of settlements will never reach $0, no matter the length of the timeline. But if the NYPD is serious about reducing misconduct and improving its relationship with the public, it can't keep allowing things like this:

[Peter] Valentin, a hard-charging Bronx narcotics detective whose online handle is "PistolPete," has been sued a stunning 28 times since 2006 on allegations of running slash-and-burn raids that left dozens of lives in ruins while resulting in few criminal convictions.

The city has paid out $884,000 to settle cases naming the stocky, 36-year-old detective, but he doesn't seem too concerned.

"I'm not aware of that," he scoffed at a Daily News reporter when told of his claim to shame. "Once it goes to court, I don't follow it."

This 2014 report showed 55 NYPD officers have been sued 10 or more times. If Valentin's shrug of indifference is indicative of the NYPD's collective mindset, lawsuits are no deterrent to misconduct. And neither are NYPD officials, even when they're claiming otherwise when issuing statements or holding press conferences. The same people who defend misconduct by saying it's just "bad apples" are the same people refusing to remove the bad apples from the barrel.

Being a repeat offender is bad news in every part of the criminal justice system except the component that initiates the process. Three strikes laws proliferate, exponentially increasing sentences for criminal violators. Meanwhile, those policing the streets are barely policed at all. Those that do manage to create enough headaches for their departments that they're terminated can usually find steady law enforcement work at another agency.

The message being sent to the public by the NYPD isn't the one its spokesperson is offering. It's actually saying it doesn't care how much of the public's money it has to spend to keep bad cops employed.

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Oh, guess what? The NSA has ended another third party data collection -- one it hopefully ended right after the Supreme Court's Carpenter decision was released. Spencer Ackerman fills in the details at the Daily Beast.

U.S. intelligence agencies have stopped collecting cell-phone location data without a warrant on people inside the United States, the office of the director of national intelligence has affirmed.

Sounds good. Sounds like the NSA probably doesn't have a legal way to continue this warrantless collection now that the Supreme Court has ruled historical cell site location info is covered by the Fourth Amendment. It's been nearly 18 months since this decision was released. The letter sent to Ron Wyden by the ODNI indicates the Intelligence Community abandoned its harvesting of CSLI shortly after that ruling.

But, as Ron Wyden points out, the ODNI isn't willing to state publicly that the Supreme Court's decision was a contributing factor to its mothballing of the CSLI collection.

“The Intelligence Community has now publicly revealed that, since the Supreme Court decision more than a year ago, it hasn’t used Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to track Americans,” Wyden said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. “At the same time, the government is hedging its bets by not formally acknowledging that the Supreme Court case applies to intelligence surveillance…"

This is another of the NSA's Section 215 collections. The most famous collection under Section 215 was the one exposed by the first Snowden leak: phone call metadata. This collection was retooled by the USA Freedom Act, which forced the IC to approach telcos with targeted orders supported by reasonable suspicion. The NSA was apparently so used to just collecting it all, it couldn't manage to find a way to obtain this data without violating the law. It was abandoned and the NSA recommended to have it shut down forever. The FBI doesn't like that idea, though, and wants Congress to give the phone metadata collection -- along with everything else harvested under Section 215 -- a permanent reauthorization.

At least that's not going to happen. It looks like the phone metadata collection will now become the only thing that's truly forever: dead.

A forthcoming bill from the House judiciary and intelligence committees will reauthorize three other surveillance measures set to expire, but will not permit the Call Detail Records program to survive. With expiration set for Dec. 15, whatever the Senate does the Call Detail Records program, barring some eleventh-hour legislative chicanery, looks like the rarest of birds: a post-9/11 surveillance activity on course for extinction.

You can draw a straight line from the Snowden leaks to the death of this collection. The Patriot Act gave the NSA a handy way to spy on Americans. 14 years later, the USA Freedom Act scaled back that power, altering the program enough that the NSA couldn't seem to find a way to collect these records without violating the law. Five years after this minor surveillance reform effort, the program will be put out of its misery.

But the NSA has plenty of other collection authorities that will remain unchanged and mostly unexamined. Even this Section 215 collection -- which seemingly violates Supreme Court precedent -- hasn't received much public discussion. It seems clear warrantless collection of cell site location info is now illegal, but until more details head Wyden's way, we probably should assume the Office of Legal Counsel is trying to assemble a rationale that allows the Intelligence Community to route around the Carpenter roadblock.

But, if nothing else, the phone metadata collection is dead. Forever. And that's worth celebrating.

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At Techdirt, we've been writing about the problems of electronic voting for just about our entire existence. I believe the first time we wrote about the problematic nature of electronic voting was in June of the year 2000, a few months before the controversy over "hanging chads" in the 2000 election in Florida. Over the years, we've continued to write about electronic voting and its myriad problems dozens upon dozens of times -- and to this day I remain amazed at how little companies and election officials have taken this space seriously. Part of the issue is that there is no easy solution. There isn't a "good" solution, there are only options that are "less bad" than others. The problem is that many places use solutions that are obviously bad when there are at least better options on the table.

So it's great to see John Oliver step in and explain the problems with voting machines in a way that only he can:

If you've followed this space for some time (as, apparently, we have), you won't find much that's surprising in the piece, but it does such a good job of highlighting just how ridiculous the discussion currently is around voting machines, and how little politicians and voting machine companies seem inclined to do anything about it all.

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It's no secret that the Chinese government is no friend to free speech. While that statement must seem painfully obvious, the entire world is getting an education into just how thin-skinned Beijing is with the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. While those protesters are chiefly demonstrating for their own civil rights, the Chinese government has apparently made it its business to police the rest of the world's speech while holding the second largest economy on the planet as a hostage to its own hurt feelings.

And American sporting companies are failing this values test. And failing it badly. We'll start with the NBA. Days ago, Daryl Morey, the GM for the Houston Rockets, tweeted out an image that included the text, "Fight for freedom, Stand with Hong Kong." It's the kind of thing literally anyone could have sent, except that the NBA, and the Rockets in particular, are insanely popular in China. Much of that has to do with Yao Ming having played for the Rockets years ago. Ming now runs the Chinese Basketball Association.

The reaction to all of this was swift. The CBA cut ties with the Rockets. Chinese broadcasters announced they would no longer broadcast NBA pre-season games. A pre-season game that is supposed to be played in China in mere days is up in the air as to whether the game will even be played. And Chinese run media ran with it all, with one article stating:

Daryl Morey, general manager of the NBA team the Houston Rockets, has obviously gotten himself into trouble. He tweeted a photo saying “fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong” on Saturday while accompanying his team in Tokyo. The tweet soon set the team’s Chinese fans ablaze. It can be imagined how Morey’s tweet made them disappointed and furious. Shortly afterward, CCTV sports channel and Tencent sports channel both announced they would suspend broadcasting Rockets’ games. Some of the team’s Chinese sponsors and business partners also started to suspend cooperation with the Rockets.

Here's the thing: Twitter isn't officially available in China. It's therefore tough to understand just how these Chinese fans became "ablaze" and "furious" without ever being able to see the tweet, had the Chinese government not decided to feed this whole thing through its well-developed outrage machine. Between that and the simple fact that Morey's tweet was about as anodyne as one could be on the topic of Hong Kong, you would have thought the NBA would be willing to show at least a little spine. Instead, it issued an apology for offending its Chinese fans, while Morey deleted the tweet entirely.

The NBA issued a statement in English on Sunday, saying it was “regrettable” that Morey’s tweet “deeply offended” legions of Chinese fans.

There are reports that the Chinese version of the apology went much, much further in its groveling. This set off a public firestorm in America and elsewhere, with the NBA appearing to bow at the altar of Beijing's manufactured hurt feelings. It got bad enough that Commissioner Adam Silver finally came out and issued the statement he should have issued to begin with.

Values of equality, respect and freedom of expression have long defined the NBA — and will continue to do so. As an American-based basketball league operating globally, among our greatest contributions are these values of the game¬

It is inevitable that people around the world — including from America and China — will have different viewpoints over different issues. It is not the role of the NBA to adjudicate those differences. However, the NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way.

The statement led to even more backlash from China, with sponsorships being pulled, and the broadcast and hosting of NBA games now in serious perpetual doubt. Still, it's worth noting that it took a severe public backlash to get the NBA to the proper stance, in which it protects and backs the speech rights of its employees.

Whereas Blizzard fully rolled over for Beijing when it yanked the prize money and banned a professional Hearthstone player for making statements similar to Morey's.

Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai, a pro Hearthstone player from Hong Kong, ended a stream earlier this week with a statement of support for those engaged in months-long protests against local police and government. As a result of this, Blizzard has ruled that he violated competition rules, and have handed out a heavy punishment.

In the stream, part of the broadcast of the Asia-Pacific Grandmasters, Blitzchung wore a mask (similar to those worn by protesters) and said “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age!”

As with the NBA, the Chinese government complained. Unlike the NBA, however, Blizzard seems to have permanently misplaced its spine. The company claimed that the official competition rules were violated, specifically:

Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms.

It feels easy to argue that Blizzard's "sole discretion" has been severely miscalculated. The rather tame voice of support by Blitzchung for Hong Kong protests are absolutely the sort of thing the thin-skinned Chinese government deems a problem, but that same analysis should not be reached by an American company. Banning and taking prize money from the competitor in this way is about as stupid as it gets. For one, the American market is important to Blizzard as well, and this sure as hell is not going to play well here. For another, the precedent has now been etched into stone and you can bank that the Chinese government, and others, will see just how far they can slam open this door that Blizzard decided to crack.

It would be better if Blizzard, now as much an eSports company as anything else, along with the NBA, could simply stand up for some basic civil rights and values. Money is good, sure. But selling your soul to an authoritarian government doesn't seem like a good long term strategy.

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Screen protectors are these films of plastic or glass that we put on top of our phone’s displays to protect them from getting scratched or damaged. Some of these screen protectors are dirt cheap, while others are ridiculously expensive, and sometimes you have to wonder why on earth would anyone pay $20 for a screen protector when a $3 seems to be more than capable of getting the job done?

Well, we’ll tell you why. It turns out that Samsung’s flagship smartphones for 2019, the Galaxy S10 and the Galaxy Note 10, are susceptible to getting hacked, and this isn’t through some complex malware or technique, but rather through a cheap screen protector that is being sold for about $3.

According to a report from BleepingComputer, it seems that a couple from the UK discovered a weird bug in which when they applied this screen protector on their Samsung phone, it allowed anyone to unlock their phone even with the fingerprint sensor turned on. As you might know, the Samsung Galaxy S10 and Note 10 come with in-display fingerprint sensors.

As such, not all screen protectors are compatible with it as some might cause issues when trying to read the user’s fingerprints, but we never thought that it would actually result in a case where the fingerprint sensor could actually be bypassed this way. Samsung has since said that they will be investigating this issue, and in the meantime, the company recommends that customers use authorized accessories.

Source: BleepingComputer

You've got to be a special kind of law enforcement officer to have two lawsuits filed against you in the same day. Hamilton County Deputy Daniel Wilkey is that kind of special. The Tennessee law enforcement officer managed to violate rights against enough people that two of them retained lawyers. This suggests Deputy Wilkey violates rights on a regular basis, but maybe not egregiously enough to merit a lawsuit in every case.

Both cases here are disturbing. And they're disturbing in very different ways. I've never read a civil rights lawsuit against an officer that included claims of a forcible religious experience, but here we are. (h/t Peter Bonilla)

The first lawsuit [PDF], filed by Shandle Riley, alleges that Deputy Wilkey followed her to a friend's house from a nearby gas station. Once he had (sort of) pulled her over, things got weird quick.

First, Deputy Wilkey claimed Riley was holding meth. To prove this, he engaged in a full body patdown. Then he ordered her to take off her bra and "shake her bra and shirt" to prove she hadn't stashed any meth there. Riley asked for a female officer to be present during this "search" but the deputy told her the law doesn't require female cops to search female citizens.

He then asked if she had anything illegal in her car. She said she had a marijuana roach stashed in a pack of cigarettes. At that point, Deputy Wilkey became verbally abusive. Then he decided to strike a deal with the alleged criminal. We'll go to the lawsuit for that because… well, it offers the driest recounting of a positively insane situation.

Wilkey then approached Plaintiff and asked her if she was "saved" and believed in Jesus Christ.

Plaintiff stated that she believed in Jesus Christ, but that she was not "saved" by her own choice.

Wilkey then told Plaintiff that God was talking to him during the vehicle search, and Wilkey felt the Lord wanted him to baptize the Plaintiff.

Wilkey further told Plaintiff that he felt "the spirit."

Um. Do what now?

These are words coming from the mouth of a sworn peace officer. And that's not the end of it. The option given to Riley was to participate in this highly-unconventional baptism presided over by an officer of the law or get thrown into the gaping maw of the criminal justice system with as much force as Deputy Wilkey could muster. If Riley agreed to a baptism, Wilkey said he would only cite her for marijuana possession and speak to the judge on her behalf. Riley complied with Wilkey's demands, which included grabbing towels from her friends house and following Wilkey's cruiser out to a nearby lake.

At the lake, Riley and Wilkey were joined by Deputy Jacob Goforth, who did nothing as Wilkey proceeded with the "baptism."

Wilkey told Plaintiff that Goforth was present because, in order for a baptism to be valid, a witness must "attest" to the ritual.

Wilkey then stripped nearly naked, with only his boxer shorts on.

Wilkey then gave Plaintiff the option to strip too, but Plaintiff declined.

Wilkey then lead Plaintiff into the near waist deep and frigid water, placed one hand on Plaintiff's back, and his other hand on Plaintiff's breasts, and completely submerged Plaintiff under the water.

Wilkey held Plaintiff under water for several moments, then with his hands still positioned on her back and breasts, raised Plaintiff from the cold water.

Plaintiff was shivering uncontrollably, and felt horribly violated.

Unfortunately for Riley, I doubt there's a case on point that will easily eliminate Wilkey's qualified immunity defense. But hopefully, the court will recognize this is batshit insane enough it doesn't need to find a case on point to find Wilkey violated her rights. To top it all off, Riley held up her end of the under-the-color-of-law bargain. Deputy Wilkey did not.

At no time did Wilkey ever [go to] court on Plaintiff's behalf and speak to the judge.

If that was the only thing Wilkey was being sued about, it would be enough to question his fitness for duty. But as you already know, this isn't the end of the accusations against the deputy.

The second lawsuit, filed in the same court on the same day, alleges Deputy Wilkey engaged in a suspicionless stop that turned into an impromptu roadside anal cavity search and the beating of a handcuffed man. And oh my god does it start with one of the dumbest things an officer has ever said to defend a pretextual stop. From the lawsuit [PDF]:

Wilkey followed Plaintiffs, and conducted a traffic stop of the Plaintiffs on the false claims of "window tint violation" and that he could smell the odor of marijuana as Wilkey followed the plaintiffs.

This assertion of Wilkey's exceptional olfactory senses is followed by a parade of brutalities inflicted on the passenger of the pulled-over vehicle at the hands of the deputy. Fortunately for the plaintiffs, this whole interaction was recorded.

Here's the lawsuit's description of those events:

Wilkey handcuffed James, and the individual Defendants took James to the front of one of their police vehicles.

Wilkey then began to grab James' genitals. When James told Wilkey that James had an untreated and large hernia and that Wilkey's actions were causing James pain, Brewer and Wilkey jerked James' arms high above his back, and slammed James face-down onto the hot engine hood, causing injury to James.

Wilkey and Brewer then beat James with fists, knees, and feet, slammed James to the ground, and continued their brutalization of James.

Wilkey and Brewer then removed James' pants and shoes, while still beating James.

Wilkey and Brewer then forced James' face back onto the hot hood of the same police vehicle and continued to jerk his arms high above his back, and beat James.

While Brewer continued to force James' face back onto the hot hood of the same police vehicle and jerk his arms high above his back Wilkey donned a set of gloves, pulled down James' underwear, and conducted an anal cavity search of James.

The lawsuit goes on to note that James suffered numerous injuries including "tearing of his anus" and an aggravation of his existing hernia. The charges brought against James (the deputies discovered drugs in his underwear) were all dropped after the dashcam video was made public.

Deputy Wilkey has been suspended, but it's the nice kind that means he'll be paid to do nothing while the Sheriff's Office decides what to do with him. It would seem obvious he's too expensive to keep around.

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The official channels don't work. That's the message Snowden sent -- one that was countered by multiple high-level government officials who'd never had the whistle blown on them.

Government entities protect their own. Whistleblowers who attempt to bring things through the proper channels are deterred almost every step of the way. The few times they manage to get their reports to someone who might actually be able to do something about it -- like Congressional oversight or the various Inspector General offices -- those affected by the report will do everything they can to silence it.

The New York Times discusses what happened when the whistleblower report about President Trump's phone call to the president of Ukraine was routed through the official channels. The whistleblower (who the NYT questionably outed as a CIA officer) used a third party to bring the complaint to the CIA's counsel. The CIA's top lawyer needed to find out whether the allegations about the content of the phone call were accurate. So, she called the White House to get the transcript of the call.

You can see where this is going. The New York Times fills in the details, showing why doing things the way the government wants you to do them seldom results in blown whistles. (This is taken from the NYT's podcast transcript, which is why it doesn't read like a NYT article.)

[I]t turns out that the lawyers in the White House have apparently also heard rumblings about the July 25 call. They don’t know how serious it is, but there are a series of calls on the week of August 5 between the C.I.A.‘s lawyers and the White House lawyers. And they’re trying to figure out what’s going on. And very quickly, they learn that a number of people within the White House have concerns about this July 25 call.

The White House took it seriously as well. Seriously enough to start trying to track down the whistleblower. The whistleblower decided to take his complaint directly to the Intelligence Community's Inspector General since it appeared the White House was more interested in silencing the whistleblower than addressing the complaint.

The IG's office started questioning people, alerting even more members of the administration about the severity of the complaint. And once the CIA's counsel arrived at the conclusion that this was a serious allegation, the CIA's legal office informed the Director of National Intelligence. The DNI then decided to contact the DOJ, since the normal process involves bringing it directly to the President -- something that's not really an option when the complaint involves the president.

[B]ecause the Department of Justice has gotten a heads up about this through the C.I.A. complaint, when this official more formal, supposedly independent whistle-blower complaint arrives, the people inside the Department of Justice, they know what they’re going to do. And what they’re going to do is basically say, there’s nothing to see here, this ends here.

If the CIA officer had solely utilized the proper channels, the CIA's office would have brought it to the administration's attention and the administration would have buried it. Utilizing the Inspector General helped prevent this burial from happening, but even the DNI's office stood in the way of the report being brought to Congress, at least temporarily.

Nothing about this works well, if at all, if there's enough people in power interested in making a report disappear. This one managed to make its way to the public due to actions taken by the House Oversight Committee. Without the public being informed a whistleblower report containing serious allegations was being hidden from it by the DNI, the DNI and DOJ would have swept it under the rug. And then the administration would have gone after the whistleblower, much like Trump has threatened to do already.

Just because this report ultimately ended up being made public does not mean the official channels work. That the House Intelligence Committee decided to do something rather than nothing when approached by the IC Inspector General is an anomaly, not the usual course of action. If the entity committing the alleged misconduct has enough power, the whole thing can be made to go away, along with the whistleblower and their career. And, in this case, there's still the question of whether it would have been done at all (Rep. Adam Schiff's decision to call public attention to the report) if it wasn't politically expedient. Stopped clocks are right twice a day. The official channels for whistleblowing need to be right a lot more often before they'll even approach that rhetorical low bar.

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This is a worthwhile video of evangelist Perry Stone warming up with some repetitious religious phrases, then proceeding to speak in tongues (Glossolalia) and moan while casually scrolling through his phone for a full minute during a recorded broadcast at the Omega Center International in Cleveland, Tennessee. That was definitely some pretty wild Holy Spirit action. I liked the guy with the giant cross/battle axe tattoo on his forearm wiping down the table. Also, what's up with that olive oil -- does he drink that straight? Now I hate to jump to conclusions, but I bet you anything he was just reading Geekologie comments out loud. Keep going for two versions of the video in case one doesn't work (the real phone use starts around 0:30) while I insist I can speak in Parseltongue even though I'm a Ravenclaw.

This video of a preacher checking his phone while speaking in tongues is my favorite video on the internet right now pic.twitter.com/I9iqZpCQmF

— 👻 mass extinction 👻 (@nuns_on_film) October 1, 2019

Thanks to Josh J, who agrees don't be jealous because you don't have the Holy Spirit in you.

Law enforcement agencies like to portray asset forfeiture as an important weapon in the Drug War arsenal -- one capable of toppling cartels and kingpins. Every so often, a large amount of cash and drugs is trotted out in front of reporters as evidence of this claim.

The reality is much, much different. For all intents and purposes, civil asset forfeiture is a government crime of opportunity. Any search that yields cash is a win for the agencies that profit from the seizure, even when there's no evidence the cash taken has any link to criminal activity. Pretextual traffic stops, knock-and-talks, stop-and frisk programs… all of these have the potential to turn everyday police work into something profitable.

WFPL's examination of the Louisville (KY) Metro PD's asset forfeiture paperwork shows the agency isn't really targeting drug traffickers and criminal organizations with its seizures. It's just lifting money from whoever it can, like people who've done nothing more than produced an offensive odor. (You are not misreading that sentence.)

Theron Carson and his friends were smoking weed and playing video games when the police showed up at his door.

It was 1 a.m., and the officers told Carson someone complained about the smell. The quickest resolution of the problem, they told Carson, was to allow them to search his Newburg apartment.

After police found his weed and his digital scale, they emptied his wallet. Then they charged him with drug trafficking.

Carson, now 24, says he is not a drug dealer. The $1,200 police took was earned legally, he said, and a mix of rent money, bill money and cash he and his girlfriend socked away in preparation for their daughter's birth.

Carson wanted the money back. Prosecutors offered him a deal that would allow him to plead to a misdemeanor… but only if he surrendered all of the cash.

This is standard operating procedure for the LMPD and the prosecutors it works with. Any cash seized is treated essentially as a bribe arrestees didn't know they were offering. In 25% of the cases examined, charges were dropped in exchange for the LMPD keeping the money.

Local prosecutors pretend the money is not a motivator. They're apparently putting alleged criminals back on the street (minus their cash) because they're just so great at prosecutorial discretion... I guess.

Jefferson County Commonwealth’s Attorney Thomas B. Wine said in an interview with KyCIR that losing cash is the “cost of doing business” if you’re caught with drugs and money, regardless of how the case is resolved.

“To somehow suggest that money is going to make a difference for any of us, at least here on the prosecution side, is ridiculous,” Wine said. “It’s not worth it for the prosecutors that I work with.”

So. Much. Discretion.

Wine estimates nearly 98 percent of cases his office prosecutes are settled with a plea deal.

But no profiting from cash grabs. No sir.

Kentucky law dictates that the police department keeps 85 percent of what it seizes, and the rest goes to the state’s prosecutors.

The LMPD seizes nearly $1 million in cash per year. It takes a while to add up when cops -- utilizing their training and expertise -- are able to turn almost anyone into a "drug trafficker" for the purposes of relieving them of their cash. According to WFPL's investigation, almost 40% of the seizures involved less than $1,000. And yet, officers taking property from arrestees tend to describe any amount of cash as "large" to better fit the drug trafficking narrative being pushed to create charges significant enough to be used as leverage against defendants and their natural desire to be reunited with their seized funds.

Police stopped a man in January 2017 for failing to use a turn signal while leaving “a high narcotics area,” according to an arrest citation. The officer reported smelling marijuana but didn’t find any; instead, a search netted a needle loaded with suspected meth, two pills and a “large amount of money”: $231.

An LMPD officer arrested a man suspected of selling synthetic marijuana at a west Louisville gas station in March 2017. In the arrest citation, the officer noted the man possessed a “large amount of lower denomination bills” in his wallet. The “large” amount of cash officers seized: $33.

These are the people prosecutors ring up on drug trafficking charges. And these are the ones whose cash they take to secure plea deals for lesser charges. Even then, the deliberately-broken system still doesn't work. The $33 kingpin listed above lost his cash and was convicted of drug trafficking.

One more data point: the LMPD's drug dogs are only "right" half the time.

In an analysis of 139 searches since Jan. 1, 2017, in which a dog indicated that drugs were present, 45% turned up no narcotics.

Cops don't know the drug dog is wrong until after the search is completed. The drug dog is really there to give officers permission to perform a warrantless search. On the dog green lights the search, anything discovered can be seized by officers, including whatever cash happens to be in the car or on the driver. A drug dog is a mobile warrant exception.

Programs where random citizens are relieved of cash just because they happen to be in possession of small amounts of drugs isn't going to stop the flow of drugs. They'll continue to flow as freely as citizens' cash into the accounts of the PD and prosecutors. No one's in any hurry to give up this revenue stream, even if law enforcement resources would be better used elsewhere.

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I will admit being only marginally aware of Bret Stephens in the past -- as someone the NY Times seems to employ to write really dumb opinion pieces that get people angry with how dumb they are. This latest bit of Bret Stephensisms isn't going to improve that impression. One of Stephens' big things, apparently, is whining about "the left" not believing in free speech any more, and complaining about things like "safe spaces on campus." Here are two recent examples:

If you're unable to see those, they're two columns by Stephens, with the first one entitled "Free Speech and the Necessity of Discomfort," and the second one entitled, "Leave Your Safe Spaces: The 2017 Commencement Address at Hampden-Sydney College." No matter what your stance is on "the necessity of comfort" or "safe spaces," once should at least conclude that Bret Stephens has positioned himself as one who believes that free speech is important, and people should chill out before getting offended.

Oh, and he sometimes tweets about free speech too, and has some more tweets that he's likely to regret before all this is over:

In the first tweet, he's quoting David French, saying "Our nation cannot maintain its culture of free speech if we continue to reward those who seek to destroy careers, rather than rebut ideas." Remember that one. And the second is "The right to offend is the most precious right. Without it, free speech is meaningless. That's what Charlie Hebdo was about."

Okay. That's a little background on Bret Stephens' professional opinion on free speech and people being offended when he's acting all intellectual-like. Now let's take a look at Bret Stephens' unprofessional opinion on free speech and people being offended, when someone calls him a bedbug.

On Monday morning, an assistant editor of the NY Times opinion section, Stuart Thompson, tweeted: "Breaking — There are bedbugs in the NYT newsroom." Lots of people made jokes about this. My favorite, from Lindsey Barrett, mocked the NY Times' unwillingness to call racism racism by rewriting it as: "I think you mean there's an insect-tinged problem in the NYT newsroom." She made some more jokes about bedbugs, including a fake headline by Bret Stephens: "'There Are No Bedbugs and If There Were, The Caustic Twitter Socialists Put Them There and Bed Bugs Are Good, Actually' --half a column by bret stephens, who was itching too vigorously to finish it" That one got lots of likes and retweets. But it's not the tweet that exposed Bret Stephens as the free speech hypocrite many people seemed to always assume he was.

Instead, it was a not even that funny tweet from Dave Karpf, an Associate Professor at George Washington University:

Then, last evening, Karpf noted that while that original tweet (cue ominous music: at the time...) had only 9 likes and 0 retweets, and did not in any way tag Stephens himself, Stephens took it upon himself to not just complain about the tweet to Karpf, but to cc his university provost:

We'll get to the contents of the letter in a moment. But, first, let's revisit those tweets from Stephens about free speech. He talked about how the right to offend was so important. And also was apparently against "those who seek to destroy careers rather than rebut ideas." Of course, there's no good reason for Stephens to cc the GWU provost except in a weak, thin-skinned, hypocritical attempt to destroy Karpf's career.

And let's not avoid the contents of Stephens' email. Because, it's weird.

Dear. Dr. Karpf,

Someone just pointed out a tweet you wrote about me, calling me a "bedbug." I'm often amazed about the things supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people -- people they've never met -- on Twitter. I think you've set a new standard.

I would welcome the opportunity for you to come to my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a "bedbug" to my face. That would take some genuine courage and intellectual integrity on your part. I promise to be courteous no matter what you have to say.

Maybe it will make you feel better about yourself.

Please consider this a standing invitation. You are more than welcome to bring your significant other.

Cordially,

Bret Stephens

It certainly sounds like Stephens "took offense" to Karpf's random joke. Perhaps he felt being a NY Times Opinion columnist gave him a "safe space" from criticism? It must be that, or otherwise, to think that calling him a "bedbug" is a "new standard" of Twitter-based discourse, suggests someone who is so shielded from the way Twitter arguments normally play out as to be a poor judge of what the "new standards" are of insults. And, yes, you could argue that Stephens' creepy invite to come over to his house (with Karpf's significant other) and insult him to his face, is a request for "more speech," in response to "speech." But, we should remind everyone that Stephens' cc'd the George Washington University provost.

Anyway, if you couldn't already guess what happened next, I should tell you that Merriam-Webster chose last evening to (not for the first time), tweet out their explanation of the Streisand Effect. Whenever the dictionary starts adding to my own mentions, you know something good is going down.

And, so, yes, within just a few hours, Karpf's tweet mocking Stephens, that had just 9 likes and 0 retweets, has many thousands of retweets and tens of thousands of likes. And, tons and tons of people are now associating Bret Stephens with bedbugs. Here's just a few fun tweets.

Like bedbugs, those tweets just keep on coming. On my Twitter account, at least, Bret Stephens, was the top "trending" topic for many hours last night. Note how many likes and retweets all of those tweets have. Bret Stephens has taken a throwaway line that most people ignored and ensured that, for years, people will associate him with bedbugs.

Incredibly, overnight, rather than realizing that he'd fucked up, Stephens apparently decided to dig deeper and make it worse. First, he shut down his Twitter account, laughably claiming that Twitter "is a sewer" that "brings out the worst in humanity." He then went on MSNBC and compared being called a "bedbug" to the worst "totalitarian regimes," while also (laughably, ridiculously) trying to argue that cc'ing the GWU provost wasn't about trying to get Karpf fired. He claims he just wanted the provost to know what his staff was doing. Which... come on. No one believes that.

Of course, like bedbugs, I'm guessing that the NY Times won't get rid of Bret Stephens either.

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Oh come on. Earlier this week we wrote about both Twitter and Facebook shutting down a bunch of Chinese accounts that both companies claimed were state-backed accounts pushing propaganda/misinformation/attacks against Hong Kong protesters. Separately, Twitter also changed its policies to no longer accept advertising from state-backed media operations. The Chinese government -- the very same government famous for aggressively censoring the entire internet -- apparently is not happy about it, arguing that it's a violation of free speech rights. Really.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed the allegations, made by the companies a day earlier, that the government had done something wrong in using online resources to portray the protests roiling Hong Kong as the work of “cockroaches” spurred to action by shadowy Western forces.

Rather, ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said, the accounts were not the work of alleged government disinformation teams but Chinese students and others living overseas who “of course have the right to express their point of view.”

First of all, even assuming that they are Chinese students living abroad (already a dubious claim), they may have a right to express their point of view, but they don't have a right to force Twitter and Facebook to host it. And, China knows this, considering that it currently bans both Twitter and Facebook in their country. So if it really believes that Chinese citizens deserve a right to express themselves on that platform, it might want to fix something back home first.

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This is some Ring doorbell cam footage of two thieves using a keyless hack to steal a ~$110,000 Tesla from a driveway in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England in about thirty seconds. Some more info about how the hack so you can start stealing cars yourself (Bring me a monster truck!):

Keyless vehicle systems use a simple process: fobs emit a short-range "friendly" radio signal that carries only a few yards. When the associated vehicle is close by (usually within a few metres), the car recognises the signal unlocks its doors. The same process is used for the ignition on cars with start buttons; the fob signal usually needs to be inside the car itself. Using relay system, key jamming and other hacks, thieves gain nearly immediate access to keyless vehicles. Experts say there are several ways to protect your car from potential theft: deactivating your key fob, keep keys away from doors and windows, or purchasing a wheel lock so that the car cannot be driven even if a thief managed to break into it.

That's right, the experts suggest if you don't want your car stolen you should deactivate your key fob and get a wheel lock. What is this, the 1800's? You might as well just ride a horse. Wait -- where's my horse?! "You left it at the bar." That's right, because I'm RESPONSIBLE. Wait, which bar? Keep going for the video while I Uber back to Hoofy. Thanks to Jeffrey S, who agrees Nic Cage could have done it in ten seconds.

This is the Indiegogo campaign for the already heavily funded Sonny personal bidet (weird name for a bidet). The $100 device ($140 retail) provides the perfect on-the-go solution to blasting your ass clean after using a public restroom. Some more info while I swing mine around like a lightsaber and spray coworkers:

Beautiful design meets premium construction in a portable bidet that you can take everywhere! Developed for the healthy, hygiene-conscious and environmentally aware lifestyle, Sonny helps reduce your environmental burden while increasing your personal cleanliness. Elevate your bathroom routine for an effective, intimate, refreshing cleanse. No Installation 3 Weeks of Use per Charge Save 1,739 Gallons of Water per Year from being Used to Make Toilet Paper Antibacterial, Interchangeable Nozzle Head Normal and High-Pressure Spray Settings

Granted, portable bidets have already existed for quite some time in the form of pistol style Super Soakers. And if you pump them up enough those things are POWERFUL. They'll blast your ass clean and pressure wash the last two digits of the number you're supposed to call for a good time right off the stall wall. Unrelated *showing picture on phone* does this look like a 91 or 47 to you? Keep going for their launch video, which does include some worthwhile footage of trying to wipe peanut butter off a bagel at 1:00 as a stand-in for a muddy butt. Thanks to DT, who agrees by scooping your hand just right you can turn any regular sink into a bidet.

A few years ago, the Parma (OH) Police Department decided to turn its hypersensitivity into a criminal investigation. A local man, Anthony Novak, created a Facebook page parodying the PD's social media front. It wasn't particularly subtle satire. Most readers would have immediately realized this wasn't the Parma PD's official page -- not when it was announcing the arrival of the PD's mobile abortion clinic or the institution of a ban on feeding the homeless. Not only that, but the official logo had been altered to read "We No Crime."

The Parma PD decided to treat this parody as a dangerous threat to itself and the general public. It abused an Ohio state law forbidding the use of computers to "disrupt" police services to go after Novak. Not that there was any disruption other than the rerouting of PD resources to investigate a non-criminal act.

The end result was the arrest of Novak, the seizure of his electronic devices, and a four-day stay in jail for the parodist before he was acquitted of all charges. Novak sued the police department, but the district court decided to award immunity across the board to everyone involved. The Sixth Circuit Appeals Court has rolled back some of that ruling, allowing Novak's civil rights lawsuit to proceed.

The opinion [PDF] opens with a brief discussion of how parody works -- and how the court treats parody -- which is more reprimand than reminder.

Apple pie, baseball, and the right to ridicule the government. Each holds an important place in American history and tradition. So thought Anthony Novak when he created a Facebook page to mock the Parma Police Department. He styled his page to look like the department’s official Facebook page. But the similarities ended there. Novak shared posts like an advertisement for a “Pedophile Reform event,” at which pedophiles would receive honorary police commissions.

Novak’s page delighted, disgusted, and confused. Not everyone understood it. But when it comes to parody, the law requires a reasonable reader standard, not a “most gullible person on Facebook” standard. The First Amendment does not depend on whether everyone is in on the joke. Neither is it bothered by public disapproval, whether tepid or red-hot.

This misuse of police resources was mobilized by an entire twelve hours of posts by Novak. The page offered up a recruitment ad that "strongly encouraged minorities to not apply" and promised swift justice would be brought against an "African American woman" for "loitering outside a Subway" while it was being robbed by an "armed white male," who was presumably not under investigation. A certain number of readers were so upset by what they saw they phoned the police department, tying it up for a total of twelve minutes.

The PD assigned two officers to the case and sent an email to Facebook reps demanding the page be taken down. The parody page made a brief appearance on the local news as Parma's brave crime fighters announced their desire to take down this Facebook criminal. Novak deleted the page shortly thereafter, but the Parma PD continued its investigation, ultimately arresting him for "disrupting" the PD's apparently endless supply of waste-able time.

The Appeals Court says there is no doubt Novak's speech was protected, citing none other than The Onion.

[A] parody need not spoil its own punchline by declaring itself a parody. “Parody serves its goals whether labeled or not, and there is no reason to require parody to state the obvious (or even the reasonably perceived).” Campbell, 510 U.S. at 583 n.17. Imagine if The Onion were required to disclaim that parodical headlines like the following are, in reality, false: Presidential Debate Sidetracked By Booker, De Blasio Arguing About Best Place In Lower Manhattan To Get Tapas, or, John Bolton Urges War Against the Sun After Uncovering Evidence It Has Nuclear Capabilities. News in Brief, The Onion (June 26, 2019); News in Brief, The Onion (June 10, 2019). The law of parody does not require us to strain credulity so far. And that is not because everyone always understands the joke. Susanna Kim, All the Times People Were Fooled by The Onion, ABC News (June 1, 2015).

Unfortunately, this doesn't necessarily mean Novak's claims of First Amendment retaliation will hold up. As the court notes, the Supreme Court recently gave officers a free pass to retaliate against protected speech, provided they can find some sort of probable cause to support an arrest. In some cases, it could be nothing more than jaywalking or not signalling before a turn. In this case, it could be an Ohio state law the Sixth Circuit court views as unconstitutional.

First, it notes the only thing Novak engaged in was speech. And it was only determined to be criminal by using a very loose reading of a very loosely-written law.

Besides posting to his Facebook page, Novak committed no other act that could have created probable cause. In other First Amendment retaliation cases on point, by contrast, the defendant’s conduct was a mix of protected speech and unprotected conduct. That is, the defendants both said something and did something.

[...]

Here, we have nothing like that. Novak did not create a Facebook page criticizing police and use his computer to hack into police servers to disrupt operations. The sole basis for probable cause to arrest Novak was his speech. And there is good reason to believe that, based on the reasoning underlying the First Amendment retaliation cases, this is an important difference.

But if officers reasonably believed the law supported this arrest, they can avail themselves of qualified immunity. The state law against "disrupting" police operations is broad enough it could conceivably allow these officers to escape retaliation allegations. The Appeals Court doesn't like this law much.

[T]he vague language of the Ohio statute further heightens the concern raised in Issue 2. That statute makes it a crime to “use any computer . . . or the internet so as to disrupt, interrupt, or impair the functions of any police . . . operations.” Ohio Rev. Code § 2909.04(B). To see how broad this statute reaches, consider an example. An activist tweets the following message: “The police are violating our rights #TakeAction #MakeYourVoiceHeard.” People in the community see the tweet and begin calling the police department to share their views. A small protest even forms in the town square. Police station employees spend time fielding the calls, and a couple of officers go down to monitor the protest. Under the plain text of the Ohio statute, have these acts of civic engagement “interrupt[ed]” police operations? Taken at face value, the Ohio law seems to criminalize speech well in the heartland of First Amendment protection. This broad reach gives the police cover to retaliate against all kinds of speech under the banner of probable cause. Critical online comments, mail-in or phone bank campaigns, or even informational websites that incite others to “disrupt” or “interrupt” police operations could violate the law.

The vagueness of the law could help or hurt Novak, depending on the lower court's interpretation of the law and its application in this case. The Appeals Court only hints that an easily-abused law that blurs the line between legitimate enforcement and speech-targeting misuse may work out better for the plaintiff than the law enforcement defendants. No qualified immunity… at least not yet.

A few other claims survive as well, including Novak's allegation that the Parma PD's announcement it would prosecute him for his parody page was prior restraint. The court agrees, allowing this claim to continue for further factual development. A number of his other claims rest on the same issue as his retaliation claim: probable cause or the lack thereof. If it's determined the Parma PD had no probable cause to arrest Novak, his claims of malicious prosecution and Privacy Protection Act violations will survive.

The most important decision is the most immediate: no qualified immunity for the Parma PD officers and no early exit from the lawsuit. There's no question the search and arrest were retaliatory. The only question remaining is how much Ohio's terrible law will help these cops get away with it.

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So much for the Fifth Amendment. At least in Idaho, anyway. Back in January, a magistrate judge rejected the government's attempt to force a suspect to unlock a seized phone using his fingerprints. The judge found the government's request to be a violation of two rights -- the Fifth Amendment protection against compelling a defendant to testify against themselves -- and the Fourth Amendment, since the government hadn't shown a connection between the accused and the seized device.

As the magistrate pointed out, the government could not rely on "foregone conclusion" arguments because it had failed to develop any foregone conclusions. The warrant itself said the government was seeking to search the phone for "indicia of ownership" -- something the government should have been able to plausibly allege long before it started asking the court to compel the suspect to unlock the device.

The judge said the government's application lacked a lot of info it needed to pursue this next step.

The applicant avers that, when questioned at the residence at the time the earlier search warrant was executed, the individual told law enforcement his/her phone was in the bathroom. A phone was found in a bathroom, and the application implies that the individual was not in the bathroom when that statement was made. But three other phones were also located during the search. There is no specific information about how many bathrooms were in the residence. There is no information about whether the individual lives alone or whether anyone else lives or was in the residence at the time of the search. To be clear, none of these facts are determinative of the Court’s conclusion in this case. But they do illustrate that any connection between the individual and the phone at issue here is more tenuous than it might be under other circumstances.

Given the government's inability to tie the suspect to the seized phone, it's absolutely astonishing the district court has decided to reverse the magistrate's decision. (h/t Orin Kerr)

The court's reversal comes to exactly the opposite conclusion using exactly the same information the government presented to the magistrate judge. The government's inability to conclusively tie the phone recovered from the bathroom to the suspect is now, somehow, more than enough info to justify the compelled production of fingerprints. From the decision [PDF]:

The Government further represented in its application for the additional warrant that it already knew this particular cellphone belonged to the individual who was subject to the warrant because the individual stated—when questioned at his residence by police officers executing the warrant—that his phone was in the bathroom where he had been just prior to answering the door. The Google Pixel 3 XL cellphone was subsequently found in that bathroom.

A phone found in a bathroom is now the phone in the bathroom, making all those Fourth and Fifth Amendment concerns vanish into the ether.

But what's now in the ether may not matter -- at least for this phone. The precedent will be helpful but it's too late to do much about the seized phone, as the court points out.

The ability to unlock a cellphone with a fingerprint (biometric encryption) expires after 48 hours of not unlocking it. At that point, a passcode of some type must be used. Here, it took the Magistrate Judge a few days to issue the order denying the warrant1 and then took the Government eight days to file its motion for review. Consequently, any decision by the court in this case will have no impact on this case. The Government simply can no longer unlock the cellphone with a fingerprint. The issue is, therefore, moot under County of Los Angeles v. Davis, 440 U.S. 625, 631 (1979).

The government doesn't want the issue mooted. It wants some precedent, or at least a ruling it can use to persuade magistrates to approve potential Constitutional violations. The government argues contrasting rulings from magistrate judges on compelled product requests creates a "split" the district court must resolve.

The court declines to act on any perceived split here, presumably to the government's chagrin.

[T]he Government has not cited to a single written decision—and none exists to the Court’s knowledge—where a magistrate judge, or any judge from this District, has held that biometric data relating to a cellphone can be obtained by a warrant despite either Fourth Amendment or Fifth Amendment concerns. The mere fact that a magistrate judge has signed search warrants that permitted law enforcement to use a person’s biometrics to unlock electronic devices does not mean that the magistrate judge has had the opportunity to carefully and meaningfully decide the issue raised in this case. After all, the very ex parte nature of applications for search warrants does not lend itself to issues being raised as part of the process. It is not clear to this Court that there is a reasoned split of opinion between the magistrate judges in this District. This Court does not rely on the “split of authority” exception to address this issue.

That's the good news. The government does not have a blank check to compel fingerprint production. In this case, however, the court says the government isn't compelling the production of anything testimonial. But this is only due to the method the government says it will deploy.

Where, as here, the Government agents will pick the fingers to be pressed on the Touch ID sensor, there is no need to engage the thought process of the subject at all in effectuating the seizure. The application of the fingerprint to the sensor is simply the seizure of a physical characteristic, and the fingerprint by itself does not communicate anything. It is less intrusive than a forced blood draw. Both can be done while the individual sleeps or is unconscious. Accordingly, the Court determines—in accordance with a majority of Courts that have weighed in on this issue—that the requested warrant would not violate the Fifth Amendment because it does not require the suspect to provide any testimonial evidence.

Even if the government does nothing more than pick a random finger and apply it, it's using the suspect's body in an attempt to determine something it should have known before seeking compelled production. In this case, it's an undetermined number of "fingers," which suggests the government can keep trying until the device is unlocked or it runs out of fingers.

The government is still searching for "indicia of ownership" and is hoping placing the suspect's fingers on the seized phone will provide it with information the suspect knows, but the government doesn't. Whether or not the government can do this under the Fifth Amendment comes down to its "foregone conclusions," but the government doesn't appear to have one of those to work with.

The district court has turned the government's attempt to find out who owns the seized phone into a foregone conclusion by overriding the magistrate's determination on this issue. This won't set precedent in Idaho but it does indicate the district level will give the government the benefit of the doubt in cases like these, which lowers the bar for acceptable violations of Constitutional rights.

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Hiring cops is hard work. That's probably why we're not exactly blessed with the best of the best. Over the past few years, police officer morale has been in a nosedive. As the public's awareness of police misconduct has increased (along with third-party footage of said misconduct), cops have discovered the job is no longer quite as fun as it used to be. Lots of power and zero accountability is a hell of a drug, but even that wears off eventually.

But cop shops still need cops, so hiring continues. Law enforcement agencies endlessly recycle fired officers, giving them unearned shots at redemption. Other agencies have just given up, hiring whoever walks through the door expressing interest in the position.

When the openings exceed the hiring pool, you get the mess being inflicted on the residents of Stebbins, Alaska. This horrifying report by Kyle Hopkins for ProPublica demonstrates just how low the bar can be set for new hires if your agency is desperate enough.

In Stebbins alone, all seven of the police officers working as of July 1 have pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges within the past decade. Only one has received formal law enforcement training of any kind.

The current police chief pleaded guilty to throwing a teenage relative to the ground and threatening to kill her after drinking homebrew liquor in 2017. (Alcohol is illegal in the village.) He was hired a year later. He declined to answer questions in person and blocked a reporter on Facebook.

Two men who until recently were Stebbins police officers pleaded guilty to spitting in the faces of police officers; one was the subject of a 2017 sexual assault restraining order in which a mother said he exposed himself to her 12-year-old daughter.

Convicts are the new cops in Stebbins. But it's not just a Stebbins problem. All across Alaska, law enforcement agencies are understaffed. A third of Alaskan towns have no local cops at all. No cops might be the better choice. The ProPublica investigation found that at least 14 Alaskan cities employ officers with criminal records -- something that violates Department of Public Safety regulations. (It also violates common sense, but only the former can levy fines and enforce compliance.)

The most common convictions are for domestic violence. This is a problem that's inherent to law enforcement. Studies performed in the 1990s found that 40% of police officer families experienced domestic violence as compared to 10% of the rest of the population. There's very little reason to believe this has improved over the past 20 years. Law enforcement agencies simply do not punish officers who engage in domestic violence.

In many departments, an officer will automatically be fired for a positive marijuana test, but can stay on the job after abusing or battering a spouse…

[...]

[W]hile most officials say they treat domestic abuse by officers as they would any other form of misconduct, interviews and disciplinary records indicate that, in fact, punishment is often light and job loss uncommon.

Given this permissive environment, the situation may have gotten worse since these studies were performed. The most pessimistic take on ProPublica's investigation is that the only difference between the Stebbins police force and other law enforcement agencies is the number of domestic violence convictions.

Odds are, it's not going to get any better. The state's Department of Public Safety has basically given up on policing the state's police officers. It's also ceding its position, since zero oversight definitely won't improve the public's safety. This means vulnerable Alaskan communities will be all the more vulnerable for the foreseeable future.

In Mountain Village, population 864, one recent VPO [Village Police Officer] awaits trial on charges of stealing from a murder scene. Court records show five other recent VPOs in the same Yukon River community are awaiting hearings or have admitted to criminal charges including four counts of disorderly conduct, three counts of assault, two cases of neglect, two cases of drunken driving, two charges of harassment and three cases of domestic violence.

Along the Norton Sound coast, the city of Shaktoolik in May hired a VPO who has pleaded guilty to five assault charges within the past 10 years. “He was our only applicant so we had no other choice,” a city employee said.

Among those hired as TPOs in the fishing villages of Kasigluk and Tuntutuliak, located among the vast web of river-fed lakes in western Alaska, are registered sex offenders who admitted to abuse of a minor or attempted sexual abuse of a minor.

There's nothing in these jobs that attracts good people, much less great people. It mainly attracts people who can't find work elsewhere because of their criminal records. But police departments are willing to overlook this just to keep the positions filled. This isn't an acceptable compromise. The entity standing between the Alaskan public and the police has failed to hold the line and the state's taxpayers will continue to pay for a problem the state's not willing to fix.

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Everyone loves surveillance creep. Well, by everyone, I mean the government and the vendors that sell to them. Automatic license plate readers have made their way from police cruisers to malls, as has facial recognition tech that very often fails to actually recognize people.

The "everyone" may now include the near-fascist organizations turning neighborhoods into glittering shrines of conformity. I'm talking about homeowners' associations -- the anal-retentive busybodies who want to make sure your grass is cut to the correct length and that no one's offending passersby with creative mailboxes.

The Denver Post reports the newest customers for surveillance tech is HOAs and gated communities.

License plate readers posted at both entrances to an upscale Aurora neighborhood snapped pictures of passing cars Wednesday, recording the type, color and license plate number of each vehicle and inputting that information into a database.

Such technology used to be relegated to law enforcement. But these cameras were purchased by the local homeowner association in January after a few burglaries of cars and a home in the neighborhood. Red signs near the cameras warn passersby of “24/7 Video Recording.”

“It’s going to keep us safer,” said Richard Warshaw, president of the Bel-Aire Estates Owners Association.

I don't want to make too many assumptions, but click through to take a look at Richard Warshaw, who appears to be exactly the way I'd expect him to look.

Anyway, this is the growth market for vendors with surveillance tech to sell. Spy gadgets have gone from military to police to business owners to bitter busybodies who want to know everything about everyone who passes through their carefully -- and forcefully -- curated neighborhoods.

Flock Safety appears to be one of the bigger players in the HOA ALPR business. Its site makes a handful of dubious claims in the space of a single splash box, including the audacious assertion that only its product prevents crime.

I attempted to discuss this claim with the FlockBot, but only got asked for my email address and phone number so the company could pitch some of its camera "solutions" that *squints at screenshots* "capture vehicle lice plates."

This only raises my confidence in the quality of Flock's products.

Back at the Denver HOA, it appears the private surveillance approval process isn't that much different than the public surveillance approval process. In other words, input from the general public is ignored.

Warshaw said the five-person board of the homeowner association decided to add the three cameras and use money from the neighborhood’s dues to pay for it. The entire 75-home neighborhood did not vote on the decision, but Warshaw said he hadn’t heard any negative feedback.

Following government precedent, the HOA's deployment of ALPRs is also pretty much unjustifiable.

Warshaw, who has lived in the neighborhood since 2005, admitted that one home burglary in 15 years is not exactly a rash of crime.

Warshaw insists the product makes residents "feel safer." This is a really curious [pronounced "bullshit"] claim, considering residents don't appear to have been asked their opinion, before or after the purchase.

I guess the only opinion that matters is that of the "leadership," whether it's a city council approving the tech behind closed doors or HOAs doing the same thing. As the Denver Post points out, surveillance tech deployment continues to increase while crime rates continue to decline. These declines preceded the mass rollout of ALPRs, Stingrays, and facial recognition tech, strongly suggesting law enforcement agencies (and HOAs!) had ways to deal with criminal activity that didn't involve pointing invasive tech in the direction of non-criminals.

Finally, Flock Safety -- the preferred provider of HOA surveillance tech -- makes a completely incongruous, if not completely impossible, claim on its website. Whoever approved this copy should be forced to stand naked in front of the nearest CCTV camera until I get tired of mocking them.

Please explain to me how "privacy" is being "protected" by giving law enforcement instant access to license plate photos. The FlockBot remains silent on the issue, but really really really wants to annoy you with emails and sales rep calls.

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The DOJ has now spent more than a year dodging an obligation it created itself. For years, FBI directors and DOJ officials have told anyone who'd listen -- conference attendees, Congressional reps, law enforcement officials -- the world was going dark. Device encryption was making it far more difficult for the FBI to collect evidence from seized devices and the problem was escalating exponentially.

It wasn't. Every new "going dark" speech contained a larger number of impenetrable devices the FBI was sure contained all sorts of juicy evidence. When the FBI was asked about these devices by members of Congress, it finally decided to take a look at its numbers. The numbers were wrong. The FBI said there were around 8,000 locked devices in its possession. In reality, the number is probably less than 2,500.

The problem is we don't actually know what the correct number is. The DOJ has been promising an update since May 2018, but it has yet to release this number. Instead, it has released the mouth of its top man -- William Barr, a longtime fan of domestic surveillance.

Barr's keynote address to the International Conference on Cyber Security didn't deal much with cybersecurity. Instead, it was 4,000-word anti-encryption rant. William Barr wants encryption backdoors. There's no use in the DOJ denying after his verbal assault on device encryption and device manufacturers. There is no subtlety and no hedging. The only concession Barr makes is that encryption shouldn't vanish entirely. But any form of encryption that remains should leave a key under the doormat for the G-men.

While we should not hesitate to deploy encryption to protect ourselves from cybercriminals, this should not be done in a way that eviscerates society’s ability to defend itself against other types of criminal threats. In other words, making our virtual world more secure should not come at the expense of making us more vulnerable in the real world. But, unfortunately, this is what we are seeing today.

Service providers, device manufacturers and application developers are developing and deploying encryption that can only be decrypted by the end user or customer, and they are refusing to provide technology that allows for lawful access by law enforcement agencies in appropriate circumstances. As a result, law enforcement agencies are increasingly prevented from accessing communications in transit or data stored on cell phones or computers, even with a warrant based on probable cause to believe that criminal activity is underway. Because, in the digital age, the bulk of evidence is becoming digital, this form of “warrant proof” encryption poses a grave threat to public safety by extinguishing the ability of law enforcement to obtain evidence essential to detecting and investigating crimes. It allows criminals to operate with impunity, hiding their activities under an impenetrable cloak of secrecy.

According to Barr, the government has a right to the contents of encrypted devices. He attempts to draw this conclusion by referring repeatedly to the Fourth Amendment. This safeguards citizens against unreasonable searches. Unreasonable searches can be performed as long as the government has a warrant. That's as far as Barr takes this line of thought. As he sees it, encryption shouldn't be able to nullify a search warrant. He believes encryption does this.

The Fourth Amendment strikes a balance between the individual citizen's interest in conducting certain affairs in private and the general public's interest in subjecting possible criminal activity to investigation. It does so, on the one hand, by securing for each individual a private enclave around his “person, house, papers, and effects” — a "zone" bounded by the individual's own reasonable expectations of privacy. So long as the individual acts within this "zone of privacy,” his activities are shielded from unreasonable Government investigation. On the other hand, the Fourth Amendment establishes that, under certain circumstances, the public has a legitimate need to gain access to an individual’s zone of privacy in pursuit of public safety, and it defines the terms under which the Government may obtain that access. When the Government has probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime is within an individual’s zone of privacy, the Government is entitled to search for or seize the evidence, and the search usually must be preceded by a judicial determination that "probable cause" exists and be authorized by a warrant.

Nothing is preventing the government from seizing devices. The warrant can still accomplish that. What Barr is arguing is that the Fourth Amendment guarantees government access to evidence, which it doesn't. It only gives it the right to search for it. A search warrant may result in a searched house or vehicle, but there's no guarantee any useful evidence will be recovered. The evidence it's looking for may not be on the premises. Or it may reside in a safe law enforcement isn't able to crack. Or it simply may not exist at all.

The "locked safe" is the closest equivalent to an encrypted device. The government is free to continue trying to open the safe, but the warrant only allows it to seize evidence or items likely to contain evidence. It doesn't obligate the safe manufacturer to build master keys for all safes and distribute them to law enforcement. Encryption backdoors make that demand. And they make that demand of any device manufacturer or software developer that secures customers' communications and data with encryption.

So, how does Barr think this will be accomplished? It appears he thinks everyone else should spend time figuring that out and let the DOJ get back to the difficult work of not answering questions about the FBI's encrypted device stash.

He thinks the courts should fix it, pointing to the Supreme Court's 1925(!!) decision creating the automobile exception to search warrant requirements. He feels this concession to law enforcement (one that's abused frequently by cops searching for seizable cash) should be followed by more concessions. Courts may not be able to order across-the-board backdoors, but they can create useful precedents for compelled access -- either for device owners or device manufacturers.

He thinks society in general should fix this, even if it can't contribute directly. What society can do is stop arguing about the deliberate weakening of encryption and just accept the fact that governments (and whoever else can find the backdoor) should have access to their communications and data. It's a sacrifice we, the people, should be willing to make for our government, which pretty much has only its own interests in mind.

And Barr thinks the tech community should fix it. He lists a bunch of bad proposals, one of which was proposed by none other than the UK's version of the NSA. He talks up Ray Ozzie's take on key escrow and (former GCHQ security specialist) Matt Tait's "layered envelopes" pitch he made for a blog that's headed by noted surveillance state apologist, Ben Wittes. Those are the "experts:" the GCHQ, a former GCHQ employee, and a software pioneer.

Barr says the real risk posed by compromised encryption is worth it. He doesn't explain how it's worth to the millions of people he'll put at risk in exchange for law enforcement access, but he seems to assume we'll all feel much better about it when criminals start disappearing from the streets.

[T]he argument is that a business is thwarted in its purpose of offering the best protection against bad actors unless it can also override society’s interest in retaining lawful access. Some hold this view dogmatically, claiming that it is technologically impossible to provide lawful access without weakening security against unlawful access. But, in the world of cybersecurity, we do not deal in absolute guarantees but in relative risks. All systems fall short of optimality and have some residual risk of vulnerability — a point which the tech community acknowledges when they propose that law enforcement can satisfy its requirements by exploiting vulnerabilities in their products. The real question is whether the residual risk of vulnerability resulting from incorporating a lawful access mechanism is materially greater than those already in the unmodified product. The Department does not believe this can be demonstrated.

In the end, Barr hopes we'll be hit with a tragedy so awful, Congress will decide to end the debate by outlawing un-backdoored encryption.

Obviously, the Department would like to engage with the private sector in exploring solutions that will provide lawful access. While we remain open to a cooperative approach, the time to achieve that may be limited. Key countries, including important allies, have been moving toward legislative and regulatory solutions. I think it is prudent to anticipate that a major incident may well occur at any time that will galvanize public opinion on these issues.

This is much worse than the handful of spoken asides uttered by FBI directors and a handful of DOJ officials. This was the only focus of Barr's 4,000-word keynote address. He spent a few words at the opening to at least indicate to the crowd he knew where he was (a cybersecurity conference) before spending the rest of it arguing against effective encryption. This is Barr's DOJ and, by extension, his FBI. This is the issue the DOJ's going to run with as long as he's in charge.

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Very few law enforcement agencies take accountability seriously. Even when officers are held responsible for wrongdoing, their employers find ways to soften the blow. Powerful police unions make the situation worse. The gap between officers and accountability hasn't really shrunk, no matter how many recording devices we've attached to them or boards we've appointed to oversee them.

Nothing is going to improve if things like this keep happening. The backstory is this: Officer Philip Brailsford responded to call about a man in a hotel room with a gun. That man happened to be Daniel Shaver. Shaver killed pests so he owned pellet guns -- one of which he had in the hotel room with him.

Within minutes of Officer Brailsford's arrival, Daniel Shaver was dead -- shot five times by Brailsford whose AR-15 was decorated with the phrase "You're Fucked."

Shaver was, indeed, fucked. He never had a chance to make it out of this confrontation alive. The video of his shooting shows Shaver never posed a threat. It shows Brailsford was the aggressor in this situation -- laying down a steady stream of conflicting commands with the promise of death for any failure to comply.

This summary of Shaver's last nightmarish minutes of life comes via the ACLU's Jeffery Robinson:

On the video you can hear one of the officers screaming, “If you make a mistake, another mistake, there is a very severe possibility you’re both going to get shot … if you move, we are going to consider that a threat, and we are going to deal with it, and you may not survive it.”

[...]

Not only was the officer shouting in a very hostile voice, the orders were contradictory. “Do not put your hands down for any reason,” he tells Shaver. “Your hands go back in the small of your back or down, we are going to shoot you, do you understand me?” Shaver, who is now in tears, says, “Yes, sir.”

But immediately after, the commands change, “Crawl towards me,” and Mr. Shaver lowers his hands to the floor and begins moving toward the officers.

Within seconds of attempting to comply with the latest command, Brailsford decided Shaver was failing to comply and shot him five times, killing him.

Brailsford was charged with murder and manslaughter but a jury acquitted him of both charges. His employer fired him anyway, recognizing the threat Brailsford posed to citizens. All well and good, except it decided to make sure this firing caused the officer as little discomfort as possible. As Conor Friedersdorf reports for The Atlantic, it made a concession that will force taxpayers to fund the officer's early retirement.

As for the cop who pulled the trigger, he was “temporarily rehired by the department so he could apply for a monthly pension,” The Arizona Republic reported this month. In 2018, he was reinstated for 42 days and applied for accidental disability. “An accidental disability is one that occurred while the employee was on the clock and permanently prevents the employee from doing his or her job,” the newspaper explained, adding that the pension in question “totals more than $30,000 annually.”

So, what disability did former Officer Brailsford claim? Pretty sure you can't claim lack of good judgment and/or self-control as a disability, no matter how much these missing qualities have harmed your career. Nope, what Brailsford claimed was that he was the real victim in this shooting.

And the nature of the cop’s disability claim? According to an investigation by the local ABC affiliate, Brailsford said the incident in which he had shot Shaver had given him PTSD.

This is sickening. And it was enabled by his employer, which gave him the opportunity to make taxpayers pay for the mistakes he made as a cop. Being a bad cop pays just as well as being a good cop. And the agencies that could do something about police accountability simply won't, which means we get whatever they give us, at our expense.

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The EFF has published a primer on IMSI catchers. Harris Corporation's success in this market has led to near-genericide, as almost every one of these cell tower spoofers is usually referred to as a "stingray."

The white paper [PDF], titled "Gotta Catch 'Em All," runs down what's known about cell-site simulators used by a number of government agencies. Most of this has been gleaned from secondhand info -- the stuff that leaks out during prosecutions or as the result of FOIA requests.

The technical capabilities of CSSs have been kept under wraps for years. The reasoning behind this opacity is that if criminals know how these devices work, they'll be able to avoid being tracked by them. There may be a few technical details that might prove useful in this fashion, but what is known about Stingray devices is that the best way to avoid being tracked by them is to simply not use a cellphone. But who doesn't use a cellphone?

The report is definitely worth reading, even if you've stayed on top of these developments over the past several years. It breaks down the technical subject matter in a way that makes clear what CSSs can and can't do -- and how they're capable of disrupting cellphone networks while in use.

While CSSs can intercept communications, it's hardly worth the effort. Unless the CSS can talk the phone into accepting a 2G connection (which eliminates encryption and severely limits the type of communications originating from the dumbed-down phone), it just doesn't work. This doesn't mean the devices are never used this way. But it does mean it's not a very attractive option.

On the other hand, CSSs impersonate cell towers, so they're able to pull all sorts of info from every device forced to connect with the faux cell tower. These devices are used most often to locate criminal suspects, meaning precise GPS location is a must-have. Operating on their own, cell-site simulators can't generate pinpoint accuracy. Working in conjunction with nearby towers, they can triangulate signals to provide better location info. But there's another option -- one rarely discussed in courtroom proceedings. CSSs can also force phones to give up precise location info.

First, the Stingray extracts info from nearby cell towers. Using this info (which the EFF points out anyone can access), the CSS alters its signal to become the highest priority connection in the area of operation. Once it's done this, GPS info can be coaxed from phones now connected to the fake cell tower.

[T]he attacker creates a “RRC Connection Reconfiguration” command, which contains the cell IDs of at least 3 neighbouring cell towers and their connection frequencies and sends this command to their target’s phone.

Usually, the “RRC Connection Reconfiguration” command is used to modify an existing connection to a base station, but the attacker is only interested in the target phone’s initial response to its message. This response contains the signal strengths of the previously specified cell towers, which can then be used to find the phone’s location via trilateration.

For newer phones and networks which support the “locationInfo-r10” feature, this report will also contain the phone’s exact GPS coordinates, meaning no trilateration calculations are required. The exact GPS coordinates are just a field in the response (Shaik et al, 2017).

There are few options available for people wanting to use a cellphone but are also wanting to avoid being swept up by a Stingray. As the report notes, there are a few cell tower spoofer detection apps on the market, but they may be more likely to generate false positives than detect IMSI catchers. There's no baseline for carrier behavior, much less "normal" Stingray use.

And, in any event, the EFF isn't publishing a handbook on how to evade detection by these devices. It's simply informing the public of the power of these devices, which are becoming as ubiquitous as the phones they track and trace. Since the public hasn't been invited to any these discussions by law enforcement agencies, it's up to everyone else to detail known capabilities and assess the potential damage to the public's expectation of privacy.

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Maybe the LAPD doesn't have the experience its counter-coastal counterpart has in inflicting damage to rights and liberties, but it's trying, dammit! The NYPD's brushes with the Constitution are numerous and perpetual. The LAPD may have spent more time working on the Fourth and Fifth Amendments during its Rampart peak, but now it's rolling up on the First Amendment like a repurposed MRAP on a small town lawn.

The Los Angeles Police Department ordered a confidential informant to monitor and record meetings held by a political group that staged protests against President Trump in 2017, a move that has drawn concern and consternation from civil rights advocates.

On four separate occasions in October 2017, the informant entered Echo Park United Methodist Church with a hidden recorder and captured audio of meetings held by the Los Angeles chapter of Refuse Fascism, a group that has organized a number of large-scale demonstrations against the Trump administration in major U.S. cities, according to court records reviewed by The Times.

Perhaps no entities show more concern about opposition to fascism than law enforcement agencies, for some weird and completely inexplicable reason. Somehow, this investigation involved the Major Crimes Division, which felt the need to get involved because of all the major criminal activity that is the hallmark of protest groups.

What sort of major crimes are we talking about? Well, let's just check the record…

Police reports and transcripts documenting the informant’s activities became public as part of an ongoing case against several members of Refuse Fascism who were charged with criminal trespassing…

I see the term "major" has been redefined by the Major Crimes Division to encompass anything it might feel the urge to investigate. Supposedly, this incursion on the First Amendment was the result of an "abundance of caution" following reports of violent clashes between anti-fascists and alt-right demonstrators at other protests/rallies.

Again, the LAPD seems to not understand the meaning of the words it uses, because an "abundance of caution" should have resulted in steering clear of First Amendment-protected activities, rather than infiltrating them.

Also, an abundance of caution might have resulted in the LAPD checking out the other set of theoretical combatants, but the Los Angeles Times reports a police official said no attempt was made to infiltrate any far-right protest groups.

"Major." "Caution." "Consistency." These words are beyond the department's comprehension. And here's the kicker: the Major Crimes Division did not send its informant in until after the demonstration was already over, the freeway had already been blocked, and criminal trespassing charges had already been brought. This wasn't an investigation. It was a fishing expedition targeting people who don't like fascists that used the First Amendment as a doormat. Calls to the LAPD's Irony Division were not returned.

I guess we're all supposed to feel better about this now that the LAPD has promised to investigate itself over its First Amendment-infringing infiltration. But it seems a department that routinely struggles to use words properly and cannot steer clear of the Constitutional shoreline shouldn't be trusted to run a fax machine, much less an internal investigation.

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Biometric databases have a hunger for data. And they're getting fed. Government agencies are shoving every face they can find into facial recognition databases. Expanding the dataset means adding people who've never committed a crime and, importantly, who've never given their explicit consent to have their personal details handed over to federal agencies.

Thanks to unprecedented levels of cooperation across all levels of government, FBI and ICE are matching faces using data collected from millions of non-criminals. The agencies are apparently hoping this will all work out OK, rather than create a new national nightmare of shattered privacy and violated rights. Or maybe they just don't care.

Thousands of facial-recognition requests, internal documents, and e-mails over the past five years, obtained through public-records requests by Georgetown University researchers and provided to The Washington Post, reveal that federal investigators have turned state Department of Motor Vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.

Police have long had access to fingerprints, DNA, and other ‘‘biometric data’’ taken from criminal suspects. But the DMV records contain the photos of the majority of a state’s residents, most of whom have never been charged with a crime.

This is nothing new for the FBI, which has long had access to facial recognition databases loaded with low-res photos and millions of innocent peoples' faces. ICE's access to these databases may be a bit newer, but it has been increasing its surveillance power for years.

The thing about the access to state DMV databases is it may not be strictly legal. There's been no Congressional authorization of federal agency access to state databases. This hasn't been approved via statute at state level either. Members of the House Oversight Committee are now asking questions about FBI and ICE's access, but this concern arrives several years after the fact.

ICE's access to these databases promises to work out well for the agency. A number of states have extended driving privileges to undocumented immigrants and more state legislatures are looking to add that option. This feeds even more faces and personal info into databases ICE can access, allowing the agency to streamline its immigration enforcement operations.

So far, neither of the agencies are willing to comment on the issue. ICE refused to comment on its DMV database access, claiming any further details would hurt its enforcement efforts. The FBI was forced to comment during recent oversight hearings, but the statement it delivered is nothing more than jingoistic jargon.

Asked to comment, the FBI cited congressional testimony last month of Deputy Assistant Director Kimberly Del Greco, who said facial-recognition technology was critical ‘‘to preserve our nation’s freedoms, ensure our liberties are protected, and preserve our security.’’

As it stands now, the FBI has access to more than 641 million face photos, according to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO also noted the FBI's facial recognition software was inaccurate, its databases were loaded with non-criminals, and the DOJ had expressed zero interest in scaling back access or improving the quality of its data haystacks. How this is edging the nation closer to the misty-eyed ideal the Deputy Assistant Director trotted out before Congress last month is anyone's guess.

All the talk about preserving liberties and protecting liberties doesn't mean much when most of the nation's drivers are unwilling participants in the federal government's facial recognition experiments.

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This is a video from Youtuber LockPickingLawyer (how much to go wipe a crime scene clean for me?) trying to pick an UNPICKABLE (per the product packaging) Europa Disc dimple keyed padlock. It takes him all of about fifteen seconds and very little effort. In fact it looks so easy I feel like anybody who just watched this Youtube video could do it, including children and most pets without fins. Keep going for the video while I survey coworkers to see if they're protecting any valuables behind a Europa Disc lock.

The residents of Philadelphia elected Larry Krasner as their new DA in 2018. Krasner promised reforms to the criminal justice system. And he delivered. He secured 33 resignations from prosecutors and staff who didn't feel they could back his reforms. Shortly after this, he received the best possible (inadvertent) endorsement for his reform efforts, one that took the form of criticism from the head of the local police union.

Krasner eliminated cash bail for nonviolent defendants and made it clear he would not tolerate misconduct or abuse by police officers. More importantly, he did more than talk. Two officers were criminally charged for performing an illegal stop of a pedestrian and Krasner secured an indictment from a grand jury against a cop who shot an unarmed man in the back.

Local law enforcement isn't happy. Neither are many politicians. As Akela Lacy and Ryan Grim report for The Intercept, moves have been made to blunt Krasner's reform efforts.

Lawmakers in Pennsylvania have quietly muscled power away from reformist District Attorney Larry Krasner, passing new legislation giving authority to the state’s attorney general to prosecute certain firearms violations in Philadelphia — and nowhere else in the state. The provision will expire in two years, or just after Krasner’s first term ends.

The bill silently sped through the legislative process. It was referred to the Judiciary committee on June 11th and signed into law by the governor on July 2nd. That's amazing turn-time for a bureaucracy. It appears there are plenty of state legislators who prefer their prosecutors to be hard-nosed punishers, rather than actual arbiters of justice who realize the normal way of doing things (cash bail, stiff sentences, over-prosecution of minor crimes) contributes very little to anyone's idea of "justice."

Krasner's office has responded by pointing out the obvious.

In a statement, Krasner’s office said the move is an attempt by the legislature to undermine the will of voters who turned out in record numbers to elect him. “District Attorney Larry Krasner was elected by an overwhelming margin to push for badly needed criminal justice reforms in one of the most highly incarcerated big cities in the country, and he has serious concerns about what Act 58 does, the potential precedent it sets, and what it signifies for the justice movement at large,” said spokesperson Jane Roh, referencing the legislation the new law amends.

Unfortunately, sometimes you have to point out the obvious to put something on the record in black-and-white -- something the legislators who hastily shepherded this bill through the state legislature can't ignore. And there's more to it than a bunch of legislators yearning to stick it to the new reformer. It appears some legislators were completely unaware targeting Krasner was the goal of this legislation.

Multiple legislators made statements to The Intercept indicating the version the House approved did not match the Senate version, which was apparently surreptitiously changed to narrow the focus of the bill to Philadelphia and Krasner in particular. The version these legislators voted for gave smaller towns better access to attorney general resources. The final bill does none of that. All it does is wrest power away from Krasner and hand it to the state's AG.

Meanwhile, the AG's office is claiming this has nothing to do with Krasner -- whose power it preempts -- and everything to do with the city's gun violence problem. But this is bullshit because the problem the AG's office and supportive legislators have with Krasner's exercise of prosecutorial discretion is that he exercises it too often.

Supporters of the legislation say Philadelphia was singled out not because of Krasner, whose office would still technically have jurisdiction over the offenses, but because the city is home to the bulk of the state’s gun violence. “The Philadelphia DA continues to have the authority to prosecute these crimes, should he decide to start enforcing the law,” Republican Rep. Rob Kauffman, who sponsored the bill and worked directly with White to craft the amendment, wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “This wasn’t done statewide because prosecuting these gun offenses doesn’t seem to be a statewide issue.”

If Krasner passes on gun cases, the AG can now prosecute instead. Prosecutorial discretion means nothing when another prosecutor can push cases dropped by a city DA. The city has found one way to undermine a DA who actually changed things. I'm sure they'll keep experimenting until they can undo the good he's done.

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The NSA may have extremely belatedly decided to give up its bulk phone records collection, but that's only after years of dysfunction, abuse, and escalating uselessness. The problems with the NSA's collection of phone records dates back to at least 2004 -- a 14-year streak of violations that may only now be coming to an end because of the NSA's voluntary sunsetting.

For years, the NSA treated the phone records collection as essential to national security. Not much was said about it until Ed Snowden leaked a court order showing the NSA was sweeping up every record possessed by Verizon's business services wing. Then things got heated and the NSA was unable to justify its continued existence.

Once the program was modified, the NSA had even more trouble collecting records lawfully. It may have been limited to performing targeted searches, but it was still somehow able to over-collect. Whether this was due to the NSA's filtering of returned search results or errors on the telco side when providing records, the NSA hasn't definitively said. But it did destroy millions of records it never should have had in the first place, strongly suggesting the agency was still collecting in bulk, despite legislative changes.

The NSA may be winding the program down, but it's not going out without extending its violation streak, as John Bacon reports for USA Today.

The National Security Agency improperly collected phone call records of Americans last fall, months after a previous breach that compelled the agency to destroy millions of records from the contentious program, documents released Wednesday revealed.

The redacted documents, obtained by the ACLU in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, do not indicate how many records NSA improperly collected in the October breach, nor which telecommunications provider submitted the improper data.

The NSA is consistent, if nothing else. It continues to violate the rules governing its collections and the American public will be made aware of these abuses months after the fact. This latest revelation didn't come via the ODNI's Tumblr or during a Congressional hearing, but via a lawsuit over withheld documents.

The ACLU notes that this is just more evidence that the NSA can't be trusted with the incredible amount of power it's been given. This is from ACLU staff attorney Patrick Toomey:

The NSA’s collection of Americans’ call records is too sweeping, the compliance problems too many and evidence of the program’s value all but nonexistent.

This is all known now. But every trickle of information about this program has come from FOIA lawsuits and document leaks. None of this has come directly from the NSA or its oversight. This means both entities have been fronting an abusive, useless program for most of two decades and are only now abandoning it because apparently the rigors of compliance outweigh the value of the intel.

Finally, it should be noted the NSA is only ditching the phone records program. It will continue to sweep up other "business records" in bulk. Given its history with this program, it's guaranteed its other collections under this authority are just as abused, and possibly just as worthless.

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