Brindle

As we discussed over and over again during the past eight years, the Obama White House -- despite a first day pledge to be "the most transparent administration in history" -- was actually quite famous for its extreme secrecy, combined with a seriously paranoid view of anyone leaking anything unflattering to the White House. As we detailed, the Obama White House declared any unflattering leaks as "aiding the enemy." And, of course, the Obama administration went after more leakers/whistleblowers with Espionage Act claims than all other Presidents in history combined.

So, now, I guess we'll see what the Trump administration does about leaks. So far, in just the first few weeks of the Trump administration, the number of leaks out of the White House has been fairly astounding. There are leaks on just about everything, with some being just downright silly (and a few being literally unbelievable). In a larger report in Politico on how Trump is adjusting to the job of being President, there's a brief mention that he's getting increasingly frustrated by the leaks and is seeking to have them stop:

After Trump grew infuriated by disclosures of his confrontational phone calls with foreign leaders, an investigation was launched into the source of the leaks, according to one White House aide. National Security Council staffers have been instructed to cooperate with inquiries, including requests to inspect their electronic communications, said two sources familiar with the situation. It’s not clear whether the investigation is a formal proceeding, how far along it is or who is conducting it.

The administration is considering limiting the universe of aides with access to the calls or their transcripts, said one administration official, adding that the leaks — and Trump’s anger over them — had created a climate where people are “very careful who they talk to.”

And, now, in the wake of a variety of leaks that resulted in National Security Advisor Mike Flynn resigning, the President is trying to shift the story to being about leaks:

This is only marginally hilarious, coming from the same President who regularly praised Wikileaks during his campaign, and who almost certainly owes his presidencey, in part, to multiple damaging leaks on his opponent during the campaign. Sean Spicer doubled down on this angle in a press briefing today — after joking about how he needs to stop lecturing reporters on what stories to cover, he proceeded to lecture them about the idea that they should be focusing on the existence of White House leaks as the real story.

Of course, Washington DC is a town that thrives, and often seems to live off of, leaks from the government. I can imagine just how frustrating it must be to experience it first hand, but it sort of comes with the territory. It's also a very, very important way in which the public is able to hold the government accountable. Leaks reveal things that keep the government's worst impulses in check, which is why it's a form of whistleblowing.

That said, this seems like yet another reason to be annoyed with the Obama administration's vast, paranoid crackdown on leakers. It has set the blueprint for a Trump administration if it chooses to go down that same path. It remains to be seen if the Trump administration will pick up where Obama left off and go after leakers quite as aggressively as the last administration. But the quotes above (ironically... leaked from the White House) certainly indicate a plan to crack down on leakers, and to date, Trump has not shown that he's interested in moderation when it comes to hitting back at those who displease him. One can only hope that he doesn't decide to take the Obama blueprint and go even further in going after leakers and whistleblowers.

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Part of the reason asset forfeiture is such a problem is the lack of transparency. The funds obtained through this process are frequently hidden from the public and used to purchase everything from margarita makers to Stingray devices. The procedure through which the government takes control of citizens' assets is also shrouded in secrecy. Cases are filed against property, not the persons formerly in possession of them. The process for retrieval is purposely impenetrable, designed to make it almost impossible for petitioners to reclaim their assets.

Law enforcement officials claim that all parts of this opaque process are there to prevent drug dealing and/or terrorism, hence their reluctance to divulge the inner details of this particular mean/method. Legislators in New Jersey were hoping to end this unofficial tradition with a bill that would have demanded far more transparency from agencies involved in asset forfeiture.

S2267 passed with unanimous support in both houses of the State legislature and would have instituted the following information be submitted to the state Attorney General's office every year.

[I]nformation on the seizure of the property, including a description of the seized property; the date of seizure ; the market value of the seized property; the alleged criminal offense associated with the seizure; a description of the location at which the property was seized, including whether the property was seized from a private residence or business or during a traffic stop; if the property was seized during a traffic stop, the name of the highway, street, or road on which the property was seized and whether the vehicle was traveling northbound, southbound, eastbound or westbound;

   (2)   the disposition of any criminal action related to the seizure;

   (3)   information on forfeiture of the seized property, including:

   (a)   whether the forfeiture involved prima facie contraband or was enforced by civil action pursuant to N.J.S.2C:64-1 et seq., the forfeiture was a result of racketeering activity pursuant to N.J.S.2C:41-1 et seq., or the forfeited funds or property were obtained from an action involving financial facilitation of a crime pursuant to P.L.1994, c.121 (C.2C:21-23 et seq.); and

   (b)   whether a person with a property interest in the seized property was represented by counsel at the forfeiture proceeding, if applicable;

   (4)   information on the final disposition of the seized property, including whether the property was returned to the owner, destroyed, sold after forfeiture, or retained after forfeiture; and the date of disposition;

   (5)   information on the value of 1the1 forfeited property, including the gross amount received from 1the1 forfeiture, the total expenses deducted as part of the forfeiture action, and the net amount received from the forfeiture;

   (6)   whether the forfeiture resulted from an adoptive seizure; and

   (7)   any other information the Attorney General requires.

This information would have provided the public with valuable insight into state law enforcement's use of asset forfeiture. And there are several reasons law enforcement wouldn't want to have to turn over these details. The dirty secret of asset forfeiture is that it's not being used to take down the biggest and baddest criminals. It's far more frequently used to nickle-and-dime average citizens, with a majority of an agency's take being made up of seizures valued at well below $10,000. Vehicles are seized from grandmothers because their grandchildren drove drunk. Any cash on anyone who smells like marijuana to a police officer usually ends up being forfeited even if the person is free to go.

These details would have made the state's asset forfeiture programs looks exactly as bad as they are. New Jersey holds a D rating from the Institute for Justice, which performs annual reviews of states' forfeiture programs, rating them for damage done to citizens' rights and property. One of the aspects of forfeiture that aided in the state's D rating is the lack of transparency and almost-nonexistent reporting requirements.

County prosecutors across the state collected $72 million in forfeiture proceeds from 2009 to 2013, including more than $57 million in cash and vehicles worth $9 million, according to the report.

In addition, the report found county agencies received an average of $7 million a year from federal "equitable sharing" programs that give state and local agencies a cut when they serve on federal task forces.

But the millions tallied by the institute "are a vast undercount for what's going on in New Jersey," according to Dick Carpenter, the group's director of strategic research and one of the authors of the report.

Carpenter said it's difficult to get the whole picture in New Jersey because while the state does collect some data, it was not able to provide the group with comprehensive figures for local and state law enforcement agencies.

"The transparency in New Jersey is pretty poor," he said. "The ability for average folks -- or even elected officials -- to know what's going on in their state or municipality just isn't there."

None of this matters now, at least not for the foreseeable future. Governor Chris Christie has decided the public isn't on the "need to know" list as far as asset forfeiture is concerned.

Gov. Chris Christie on Monday vetoed a bill that would have required county and state prosecutors to publish information about how they use civil courts to seize property from criminal investigations.

In order to fend off any attempts at a veto override, Christie has proposed his own law enforcement-friendly "fixes" to the rejected legislation.

Christie instead recommended a quarterly report in which prosecutors identify seized assets and detail the legal proceedings by which they were seized.

Under Christie's proposal, prosecutors also would not have to disclose why they seized an asset or for what purpose it would be used.

Christie's "compromise" does nothing. Quarterly reports are already filed with the attorney general, but they're withheld from the public. The details included are minimal and provide no useful insight into law enforcement's forfeiture activities. And it's not as though the AG's office goes after agencies for incomplete or nonexistent reporting. There appears to be no consequences for agencies that fail to comply with these minimal reporting requirements.

Of course, Christie's "compromise" is predicated on a ridiculous pretense.

The governor said his proposed changes would "strike a balance between government transparency and protecting law enforcement operations and personnel."

Protect law enforcement from what exactly? Transparency? Accountability? Criticism? There's nothing in the information the bill demanded that would make it anything more dangerous for law enforcement. It might inform the public where law enforcement likes to go diving for dollars, but the only negative thing likely to happen to law enforcement is an increase in informed criticism.

In Christie's mouth, the words "government transparency" are meaningless -- as meaningless in his buzzword jumbling, bootlicking excuse for kicking the legislature's unanimously-supported bill to the curb.

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Thanks to FOIA requests (and lawsuits), the ACLU has gathered enough documents to provide a comprehensive report [PDF] on the worthlessness of the TSA's "Behavioral Detection" program. Meant to give the agency a better way of proactively thwarting acts of terrorism, the program instead opts for lazy profiling, dubious readings of behavioral cues, and junk science.

The documents show the evolution of the behavior detection program and make clear the extent to which it is a program of surveillance of unsuspecting travelers based on unreliable indicators. “Behavior detection officers,” some of them dressed in plain clothes, scrutinize travelers at airports for over 90 behaviors that the TSA associates with stress, fear, or deception, looking for what the TSA calls signs of “mal-intent.” The reliability of these so-called indicators is not supported by the scientific studies in the TSA files. The behavior detection officers may then engage travelers in “casual conversation” that is actually an effort to probe the basis for any purported signs of deception. When the officers think they perceive those behaviors, they follow the travelers, subject them to additional screening, and at times bring in law enforcement officers who can investigate them further.

The TSA has repeatedly claimed that the behavior detection program is grounded in valid science, but the records that the ACLU obtained show that the TSA has in its possession a significant body of research that contradicts those claims. The records include numerous academic studies and articles that directly undermine the premise of the program: the notion that TSA officers can identify threats to aviation security with some reliability based on specific behaviors in an airport setting. In fact, the scientific literature in the TSA’s own files reinforces that deception detection is inherently unreliable, and that many of the behaviors the TSA is apparently relying on are actually useless in detecting deception. The documents further show that the TSA either overstated the scientific validity of behavior detection techniques in communications with members of Congress and government auditors, or did not disclose information that discredited the program’s scientific validity.

There's nothing good in the ACLU's findings. In addition to the contradictory lists of "behavioral indicators" that would make pretty much every traveler suspicious, the documents also include a "Behavioral Detection" presentation [PDF] that shows the compiler's inherent bias. For no appropriate reason, the presentation includes the following images:

Right above these questionable images is something just as questionable: a profile of "female suicide bombers" that pretty much encompasses the entirety of the female gender.

If you can't read/see the picture, the female suicide bomber profiles reads as follows:

Single, married, mothers or grandmothers

High school and college students

Working professionals such as lawyers, journalists, or medical practitioners

Devout or non-devout in religious beliefs

Intelligent, charming, and attractive

Very active in their cause

The cost of this program -- which simultaneously caters to biases while providing little in the way of useful targeting -- runs in the billions. In exchange, US taxpayers have received almost nothing that makes air travel safer. What they have obtained is the "opportunity" to be questioned without being detained, as TSA agents attempt to apply contradictory non-science to "casual" conversations most travelers feel compelled to engage in.

Engaging in mock-casual conversation with TSA agents is guaranteed to result in some level of suspicion, as it would be almost impossible not to.

The TSA’s list of behavioral indicators—long held secret but leaked to the press in March 2015—deepens our concerns about the program and calls into question whether it could ever be implemented neutrally and objectively. The list includes conduct as commonplace as being late for a flight, yawning, whistling, or rubbing one’s hands together. Other “indicators” are unavoidably subjective: appearing confused, “wearing improper attire,” “appearing not to understand questions,” or displaying “exaggerated emotions.”

In some cases, the TSA indicators place travelers in the difficult position of seeming deceptive to the TSA no matter what they do—whether they “give[] non-answers” to questions or they are “overly specific with answers”; whether they are “gazing down” or “constantly looking at other travelers or associates”; whether they have “no or little direct eye contact” or they have “widely open staring eyes.”

Putting agents in the position of sussing out potential terrorists with a long list of contradictory indicators does travelers and their safety no favors. When nothing can be reconciled against the TSA's disproven "science," agents are more likely to fall back on their own biases when vetting travelers. Hence the large number of non-white fliers "randomly" selected for additional screening.

The program hasn't made the TSA smarter or more nimble. All it's done is made flying even more unpleasant, especially for those that fit the "profile" the TSA provides… which is damn near everyone attempting to board a plane.

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More Executive Orders have been issued by Donald Trump. The latest skew heavily in favor of Trump's recent conversational partners: members of law enforcement.

Earlier this week in a meeting with several sheriffs, Trump voiced his support for asset forfeiture and made an off-hand comment about ruining the careers of legislators engaged in reform efforts. Great fun was had by all… mostly Trump and perhaps a sheriff or two.

One order does nothing more than what large bureaucracies do best: institute task forces. Trump's task force is charged with "crime reduction and public safety." The DOJ will head this up and ask for cooperation from local law enforcement agencies. The public safety priorities are definitely Trump's, though.

A focus on law and order and the safety and security of the American people requires a commitment to enforcing the law and developing policies that comprehensively address illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and violent crime.

Illegal immigration is apparently the most dangerous of the three listed, presumably because it's the only one that justifies the erection of a Mexico-funded wall and the existence of a previous, possibly-unconstitutional executive order banning visitors from certain Muslim countries.

The scary part is a few paragraphs deep:

identify deficiencies in existing laws that have made them less effective in reducing crime and propose new legislation that could be enacted to improve public safety and reduce crime

If there's anything this country has too much of, it's laws. The president wants more laws, or existing ones patched up, to better reduce criminal activity. Given the state of mind of many in law enforcement, any perceived "deficiencies" in existing laws are likely concessions made to Constitutionality. You know, the sort of things cops and prosecutors call "technicalities" -- like the Fourth through Sixth Amendments.

Arriving alongside the Task Force order is one directing law enforcement agencies to get a better grip on "transnational criminal organizations." In short, Trump wants to reboot the Drug War and do all the things that have failed for the past 40 years harder, faster, and with more of a focus on foreigners.

To kickstart this new War, Trump has declared public safety and national security to be the same thing.

It shall be the policy of the executive branch to:

(a) strengthen enforcement of Federal law in order to thwart transnational criminal organizations and subsidiary organizations, including criminal gangs, cartels, racketeering organizations, and other groups engaged in illicit activities that present a threat to public safety and national security and that are related to, for example:

(i) the illegal smuggling and trafficking of humans, drugs or other substances, wildlife, and weapons;

(ii) corruption, cybercrime, fraud, financial crimes, and intellectual-property theft; or

(iii) the illegal concealment or transfer of proceeds derived from such illicit activities.

Just like that, RICO violations, drug dealing, IP "theft," and depositing money in a bank in a certain way are all now considered threats to national security. The lessons not learned in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks continue to pay dividends for those seeking increased government power.

And once again, Trump makes sure non-US citizens are singled out for their inherent criminal nature/national security threatening.

...pursue and support additional efforts to prevent the operational success of transnational criminal organizations and subsidiary organizations within and beyond the United States, to include prosecution of ancillary criminal offenses, such as immigration fraud and visa fraud, and the seizure of the implements of such organizations and forfeiture of the proceeds of their criminal activity.

US persons' data and communications already being shared by the NSA with at least 16 federal agencies will also be shared with foreign law enforcement.

work to increase intelligence and law enforcement information sharing with foreign partners battling transnational criminal organizations and subsidiary organizations, and to enhance international operational capabilities and cooperation

And Trump's promise to ease restrictions on asset forfeiture appears to get a nod here:

identify Federal agencies' practices, any absence of practices, and funding needs that might hinder Federal efforts to effectively combat transnational criminal organizations and subsidiary organizations

Because forfeiture has always been defended with claims that it's used to dismantle criminal cartels, even when it's just being used to take cars away from drunk drivers and tuition money from college students.

The last order appears to call for a federal "Blue Lives Matters" law:

pursue appropriate legislation, consistent with the Constitution's regime of limited and enumerated Federal powers, that will define new Federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing Federal crimes, in order to prevent violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.

More specifically, the order says that the federal government will explore new definitions of criminal activity if it appears to be directed at law enforcement officers and implement harsher sentences for these crimes.

...make recommendations to the President for legislation to address the protection and safety of Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers, including, if warranted, legislation defining new crimes of violence and establishing new mandatory minimum sentences for existing crimes of violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers, as well as for related crimes

The "for related crimes" shows this won't just be used to punish direct attacks on law enforcement officers. It could be expanded to turn any number of "contempt of cop" charges (obstruction, resisting arrest, failure to identify, etc.) into criminal acts punished by extra-long jail sentences and hefty fines.

Also in this order: a nod to the 1033 program, which -- until (briefly) curtailed by the Obama administration -- distributed used (and new) military gear to local PDs for little to no cost.

(f) thoroughly evaluate all grant funding programs currently administered by the Department to determine the extent to which its grant funding supports and protects Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers; and

(g) recommend to the President any changes to grant funding, based on the evaluation required by subsection (f) of this section, including recommendations for legislation, as appropriate, to adequately support and protect Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.

If this goes ahead as planned, small town cops will once again be riding high in armored vehicles, toting grenade launchers, and picking up Stingray devices without having to break the budget.

It was clear during his campaign that Trump was going to offer unconditional backing to the law enforcement community. And here it is, in three executive orders. They're all predicated on something Trump keeps repeating but that simply isn't true: law enforcement officers are not in more danger than they've been in years. The opposite is true. While there was an increase in officer deaths last year, it followed several years of steep declines. [Image via Reason]

And our cities aren't the crime-filled nightmares Trump insists they are. The national crime rate is still at historic lows. There are a few outliers on the scale, but that's the case every year, no matter where the national average sits.

On the other hand, there has been zero appreciable decline in the number of citizens killed by police officers. While crime rates remain low, this brand of killing hasn't. Through February 9th, 137 people have been killed by law enforcement, which puts this at 1,250 for the year if this pace continues. Last year, officers killed somewhere between 1,092 and 1,153 people (depending on whose count you go with). So, while crime rates remain low and officer safety remains high, people are being killed by officers at a faster pace than last year.

But these orders have no place for facts. And they indicate a willingness to for this president to institute policies reflecting his own misconceptions, rather than the nation's reality.

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Samsung SDI, the supplier of batteries for the Galaxy Note 7, had one of its factories catch fire due to partially manufactured batteries and other lithium ion batteries.

Last summer, the DHS started asking visitors to the US to supply their social media handles. It was all on a strictly voluntary basis, of course. But that doesn't mean some immigrants and visa seekers didn't do exactly as they were asked, either due to a language barrier or figuring that turning down this request might harm their chances of entering the country.

Six months later, the DHS made it more official, unofficially. An "optional" section in the DHS's online visa application process asked for account info for multiple social media platforms, including (strangely) Github and JustPasteIt. Again, officials assured everyone this was optional and the information was to be used to assess the threat levels of incoming foreigners. Again, the DHS probably harvested a fair amount of information despite the optional nature of the request. Like any cop asking if you'd "mind if they look around the car a little bit," the request carried unspoken threats that things might be a bit more difficult if the request was denied.

Now, news comes that the DHS is planning on going even further. Say goodbye to optional social media account disclosure. The DHS wants to be inside travelers' [social media accounts], according to this report from Federal Computer Week.

John Kelly, the new secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, testified that foreign travelers coming to the United States could be required to give up social media passwords to border officials as a condition of entry.

"We want to say, for instance, which websites do you visit, and give us your passwords, so we can see what they do on the internet," he said at a Feb. 7 House Homeland Security hearing, his first congressional hearing since his Senate confirmation. "If they don't want to give us that information, they don't come in."

Thanks, Trump. Kelly noted that the recent, not-even-fully-legal-yet travel ban has given the DHS the perfect excuse to start behaving in a more totalitarian fashion.

[H]e added that President Donald Trump's freeze on entry to the U.S. by citizens of seven countries, "is giving us an opportunity… to get more serious than we have been about how we look at people coming into the United States."

Perhaps this will be deployed the way the DHS's other attempts to peer into travelers' social media accounts has: to make it "optional," with the implicit threat that rejecting the agency's advances will result in zero forward progress beyond the nation's borders.

DHS Secretary Kelly isn't much for implicit threats. He prefers his threats (at least those he makes) to be explicit.

[I]f they truly want to come into America, then they'll cooperate. If not, you know, next in line.

Kelly also shouldered some of the blame for the disastrous travel ban roll out. In a too little, far too late mea culpa, Kelly suggested it might have been better to consult with Congress first. Kelly did not offer further details as to whether this would have just been a token gesture or whether the administration could have been talked out of the unpopular, possibly-illegal travel ban by legislators.

Fifteen years ago, a terrorist attack was exploited to expand government power -- especially in the intelligence and law enforcement arenas. Fifteen years later, fear-mongering politicians and officials are still dining out on that attack, selling fear and buying government power real estate while using War on Terror eminent domain "orders" to carve holes in civil liberties. The Trump Administration has already made it clear it won't extend any of our rights to citizens of other nations. The president's new DHS head is right on top of ensuring visitors and immigrants are welcomed with maximum intrusiveness.

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Here comes some more law and order, courtesy of our new law and order President. President Trump met with a group of sheriffs on Tuesday and offered to start rolling back civil asset forfeiture reforms. Apparently, it's time to reset the clock on forfeiture, bringing us back to a time when the process wasn't so heavily-criticized. But Trump's not offering to curb abuse. He just fails to see why so many people think it's a bad idea.

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday there was "no reason" to curb law enforcement agencies that seize cash, vehicles and other assets of people suspected of crimes, a practice that some lawmakers and activists have criticized for denying legal rights.

The issue of civil asset forfeiture, created to disrupt the activities of organized crime groups, arose when sheriffs from around the United States told Trump at a White House meeting that they were under pressure to ease the practice.

"I'd like to look into that," Trump said. "There's no reason for that."

Oh, there's plenty of reason for that. But Trump is unequivocally on the side of law enforcement, no matter how much of an abusive farce asset forfeiture has become. Trump should have limited his comments to promising to look into it -- something he clearly hasn't done. A little bit of information would go a long way. But, as Scott Greenfield points out, information-gathering isn't something Trump's much interested in.

[T]he President of the United States doesn’t know the first thing about asset forfeiture. He has no clue how it started, what problems have since developed, the in-depth discussions of why it’s wrong, how it’s wrong, how it destroys the lives of the poor schmuck who made the mistake of driving down the wrong stretch of road with out-of-state plates.

The problem isn’t that “there’s no reason,” but that Trump doesn’t know the reason, and doesn’t find it worth his very valuable time to learn the reason before spouting off.

It would have been damaging enough if Trump had left it there. But he didn't. As the sheriff continued to complain about not being able to take property from people without a conviction, Trump continued to insert his foot deeper into his mouth.

At a meeting Tuesday with sheriffs from around the country, Sheriff Harold Eavenson complained about a state senator who wanted to make it harder for law enforcement to get control of assets forfeited by drug traffickers.

"Do you want to give his name? We'll destroy his career," Trump offered.

LOL. A threat from the most powerful politician in the world. Hilarious. Sure, it's a joke. Trump's not going to destroy the unnamed senator's career. I mean, I don't think he is. The sheriff didn't offer a name or any other information that might get the destruction process started and, most likely, Trump immediately forgot about his stupid joke the minute the meeting ended.

But still, it's a horrible thing to hear coming from a president's mouth, even if it was just a very poor joke. The two Texas senators who have been pushing the hardest for asset forfeiture reforms weren't very amused by Trump's comment.

Senators Konni Burton and Juan Hinojosa both offered statements in response. Here's Burton's (h/t CJ Ciaramella):

I have never met with Sheriff Eavenson, nor even heard of him before yesterday. However, I take exception to his comments on asset forfeiture reform.

While I certainly want law enforcement to have the tools necessary to combat large criminal enterprises, we must be vigilant to safeguard the rights of everyday citizens from potential abuse. Do not be mistaken or misled: this is not strictly a law enforcement issue; this is a property rights issue.

Property rights are one of the foundational rights in any free society and the taking of property by government is no small matter. Requiring the government to secure a criminal conviction before permanently taking property from citizens is simply commonsense. We would not stand for anything less when it comes to our personal liberty or freedom; why should we allow our property to be taken so easily?

And Hinojosa's:

I do not know and have not met with Sheriff Harold Eavenson of Rockwall County. And quite frankly, I don't pay much attention to what President Trump says anymore. However, the asset forfeiture bills I have authored and co-authored will not interfere with our law enforcement agencies' ability to do their jobs. Instead, these bills are an important protection for Texans' property rights and civil liberties. I have taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and Texas and intend to do just that by protecting the rights of people and property.

All in all, Trump's meeting with law enforcement officials sends discouraging signals. The rights of the many will be subject to the needs of the few. The administration has already threatened to strip funding from the DOJ's Civil Rights Division -- the one part of the agency that actually does anything to head off future misconduct and abusive behavior by the nation's law enforcement agencies. The comments made in this meeting suggest civil liberties are very low on this administration's list of priorities.

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For decades, inmate calling service (ICS) telcos have charged inmates and their families upwards of $14 per minute for phone calls without anybody giving much of a damn. Because these folks are in prison, and as we all know everybody in prison is always guilty, drumming up sympathy to convert into political momentum had proven difficult. But after decades of activism, the FCC intervened in 2013 and again in 2015, voting to cap the amount companies can charge the incarcerated for intrastate phone calls. This resulted in a firestorm of complaints from these companies, which not only get to rip off inmates, but have all too cozy and often not particularly legal relationships with law enforcement.

One of the more vocal ICS outfits, Securus, quickly sued the FCC, going so far at one point as to claim that inmates would riot if the company wasn't allowed to continue overcharging inmates and their families. Securus, Global Tel*Link and other providers challenged the FCC's intrastate rate caps in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, claiming the agency lacked the adequate authority to set caps and that the rates were too low. And for the last several years, the FCC had been working to defend its actions in court.

That all changed last month, when Donald Trump pegged Ajit Pai to head the FCC. Pai and former Commissioner Mike O'Rielly had consistently voted against defending inmates from monopoly overcharging. And just days after giving a speech in which he professed his selfless dedication to closing the digital divide, Pai effectively decided to pull the rug out from underneath FCC Deputy General Counsel David Gossett, who had been defending the FCC's action in court. In a brief filed by Gossett last week (pdf), he notes that he was ordered to no longer defend the FCC's intrastate calling cap:

"As a result of these changes in membership, the two Commissioners who dissented from the Order under review—on the grounds that, in specific respects, it exceeds the agency’s lawful authority—now comprise a majority of the Commission," Gossett wrote. Gossett is thus no longer authorized to defend the FCC's previous contention that it "has the authority to cap intrastate rates for inmate calling services" and cannot defend the FCC's assertion that it "lawfully considered industry-wide averages in setting the rate caps contained in the Order," he wrote."

Despite Pai suddenly undermining the agency's own lawyers, all is not lost quite yet:

"Gossett said he will continue to defend other parts of the commission's October 2015 order, which also lowered the price of interstate calls, those that cross state lines. Despite the FCC's various losses, a 2013 decision to set interim rate caps of 21¢ to 25¢ per minute for interstate calls has survived court challenges...The FCC's decision to stop defending the full order hurts the case for maintaining rate caps on intrastate calls in which both parties are in the same state, but it doesn't completely kill the case. The FCC is ceding 10 minutes of its allotted argument time to attorney Andrew Schwartzman, who is defending the rate caps on behalf of prisoners' rights groups."

It's worth reiterating that voice services these days cost very little to actually provide. Also keep in mind that Securus and other such companies are part of a dangerously cozy and captive market, where prisons get paid upwards of $460 million annually in "concession fees" (read: kickbacks) to score exclusive, lucrative prison contracts. In this comically absurd environment, the service pricing and quality are just about what you'd expect. Government oversight of these businesses have been virtually non-existent, in part thanks to accusations that these companies have allowed some law enforcement to monitor what should be privileged attorney client communications.

The fact that making it easier to rip off inmates was new boss Pai's first move in office should tell you plenty about just how far his dedication to "closing the digital divide" is going to go. That's before you realize that Pai's other early actions have involved preventing 9 pre-approved ISPs from helping the poor, killing an FCC plan to bring competition and cheaper rates to the cable box, and killing all FCC Net neutrality enforcement moving forward. With friends like these...

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A new ordinance passed in Milwaukee states that augmented reality-based games such as Pokemon Go will be required to obtain a permit before using the location for the game.

There are many great Twitter parodies of Donald Trump, from "Bridget Trump's Diary" to "Trump Draws". 

But one in particular stands out for cultural and historical ingenuity, at least from a UK-centric point of view. 

"Donaeld The Unready" pokes fun at the U.S. president while teaching us precious lessons on Britain's early medieval age, when the country was divided into the Heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. 

As the Twitter description says, Donaeld is "the best medieval King out there" of Mercia, which from the mid-7th century onwards was the most powerful of these kingdoms.  Read more...

More about Twitter Parody, Medieval King, Donald Trump, Twitter, and Social Media

In the wake of President Trump's travel ban, the San Francisco Police Department has offered up an unprecedented response: it's breaking up with the FBI.

On Wednesday, San Francisco officers took a bold stance against Trump’s new immigration laws. In response to Trump’s Muslim ban, they are cutting ties between the police department and an FBI task force.

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) has worked with the FBI on a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) since 2007, with the purpose of investigating terrorism threats, collecting intel, and making arrests.

Generally speaking, federal partnerships are forever… especially in Forever Wars. Local law enforcement agencies have been working side-by-side with federal agencies since the Drug War began. The same goes for the War on Terror. Wars keep government agencies in good health, awash in perpetual funding and repurposed military gear. Local governments are seldom interested in ending these lucrative arrangements, whether or not the underlying activity is productive.

But San Francisco already sees its supply of federal funding drying up. President Trump has made it clear he'll cut off this flow to cities that care more about immigrants than he does. So, there's some gamemanship in this move -- one that sends a message to Trump while expressing some resignation to the eventual fiscal punishment to come. The city of Austin, Texas is doing the same thing, but fighting the battle on two fronts, as its decision to call itself a "sanctuary city" has also earned it the displeasure of the state's governor.

But the SFPD's rejection of the FBI's "assistance" in the War on Terror suggests a couple of things -- neither of them complimentary -- about the federal agency's usefulness in this "war."

The first is explained in the Think Progress article.

[T]he SFPD will no longer work with the JTTF on the grounds that the federal agency will likely increase efforts to surveil Muslims, following Trump’s recent executive order to prevent Muslims from entering the county.

The other part is implied. By telling the feds to beat it, the SFPD is suggesting the FBI isn't doing much to acutally make San Francisco safer. The Joint Terrorism Task Force seems to be more about expanding surveillance and obtaining perpetual funding than preventing terrorist attacks or uncovering their conspiracies.

This much can be ascertained by the FBI's counter-terrorism efforts to date. For the most part, the FBI's terrorism busts have relied heavily on FBI informants being the brains, muscle, and wallet behind supposed future acts of terrorism. Undercover agents have pushed some of the weakest humans in the nation towards acts of violence -- acts which would likely never have materialized on their own. The FBI has poked and prodded easily-influenced people -- some elderly, some with mental problems -- into professing their support for [Current Top Terrorist Organization], helped them plan trips to [Top Terrorist-Associated Foreign Country], and purchased everything from duct tape to latex gloves to weapons for would-be terrorists that seemingly would have difficulty opening a savings account, much less coordinating an act of terrorism.

The SFPD feels it will be fine without the FBI's dubious assistance, which appears to be mostly limited to trampling civil liberties and ever-expanding surveillance with minimal oversight. The city can apparently handle the terrorism threat without federal intervention -- suggesting it's not much of a threat… and the FBI isn't much of a counter-terrorism agency.

What the city's rejection says about President Trump's orders and directives is pretty damning. What it says about the FBI and its counter-terrorism efforts is even worse.

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Hater is a new dating app that matches you with people based on your mutual disdain for things. Whether it's the opposing political party, guacamole, or Mondays, finding a soulmate who hates everything you do is just a few swipes away.

It's common knowledge at this point why advertisers start to go wonky after the new year. We've long talked about how all kinds of groups and companies suddenly begin playing the euphemism game when it comes to the Super Bowl, America's annual celebration of brain trauma. Everyone, from comedians to beer makers to tech companies, goes to great lengths to wink at everyone as they all refer to the Super Bowl by any name other than its own. Why? Well, because the NFL has a trademark on the term, which allows it to restrict the user of the phrase only to its sponsorship partners... except that that's not remotely true and isn't how trademark law works at all. Instead, the only real prohibition is on the implication that a company is an official sponsor of the NFL when it isn't. Beyond that, simply calling the game what it's called isn't trademark infringement.

But this is confusing enough that this year the website HowStuffWorks has done an entire piece to explain to an almost certainly confused public why companies are pretending that nobody knows what they're talking about when they say "the big game" instead of "the Super Bowl." It's a post that deserves a rebuttal, which I will helpfully provide.

The Super Bowl is a registered trademark of the NFL. And the football league also owns the copyright to the telecast of the game. That's why advertisers use unregistered phrases like "the Big Game" or "the football championship" when hawking a furniture sale or happy hour, for instance. The NFL allows the Super Bowl sponsors and the network airing the game that year to use the phrase, but they pay heavily for it.

Not true. Those advertisers pay to be official sponsors, not to simply use the phrase. Anyone can use the phrase Super Bowl as a means for accurately describing the name of the game about which they are talking. They just can't claim to be sponsors, nor imply a relationship with the NFL. If Best Buy advertises a big screen television as the "preferred TV on which to watch the Super Bowl," that's a no-no. But if it says it is running a sale on big screen TVs and to get yours before Super Bowl Sunday, that ain't trademark infringement.

So, the explanation for why advertisers don't say "Super Bowl" in that manner isn't because the NFL has the intellectual property rights to it, it's because the NFL is a duplicitous money-monster that has perpetrated a farce in pretending trademark law is something that it isn't.

"The NFL wants to make sure they keep their sponsorships the way they want to control who has use of the phrase," says Anderson. "That way people can know what's directly connected to the NFL and their product." Trademark infringement occurs when someone uses a trademarked term (like "Super Bowl") in a way that may cause a person to wrongly infer an official connection between the company the trademark belongs to and the product advertised.

The NFL absolutely wants that, and it regularly bullies anyone who uses the phrase in a nominative manner in any kind of advertising or social media. But the "how" part of HowThatWorks isn't answered by trademark law. It's a combination of the aforementioned misleading of the public along with the NFL's regular practice of being a protectionist idiot.

Because the NFL should want the term said as often as possible by as many people, and companies, as possible:

It’s unnecessarily stupid for the NFL, which should want “Super Bowl” said as often as possible, because until 100% of TVs new and old are tuned to the Big Game, the league has not accomplished its goal of complete domination of American consciousness. Best Buy wants to have a Super Bowl sale? Great! That’s a free ad for the NFL, which should thank a non-sponsor for promoting their product.

This is not, however, how the NFL thinks. This is the same league that banned its own teams from posting GIFs of game highlights, ostensibly to protect its TV partners, as if any GIF-worthy play isn’t being turned into a GIF by a thousand different people and going viral anyway. Shouldn’t the league want its teams to reap the benefits of all those clicks, which convert to social media followers, which convert to deeper embedding of the product, through official channels, in the minds of consumers?

Nah, the league would much rather play language cop in a silly game it has made out of trying to alter trademark law simply by out-jackass-ing the Olympics. And, hey, it's worked! By simply pretending trademark law is something that it isn't, the NFL has managed to get the world's advertisers to play pretend along with the league. And what a victory it is, what with every advertiser using barely-disguised euphemisms for the game that we all know they're talking about. Victory!

So, how does this work? Not in the way HowStuffWorks describes. The NFL acts as a protectionist lie-geyser bully through a legal team on more figurative steroids than the league's field-hands. That's how it works.

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The internet has exploded with memes mocking Donald Trump for signing bills and controversial executive orders, but in Sweden they've found a different way to make a point.

Over there, politicians have released a very similar photo with one significant difference. 

Swedish deputy prime minister and climate minister Isabella Lovin posted a photo of her signing a climate change bill to her social media accounts Friday. Behind her stood a row of women, one of whom is even noticeably pregnant.

If it looks familiar it's because Trump blasted out a very similar looking photo last month. But instead of enacting progressive, forward-thinking legislation, he was signing into effect the global gag order — with a gaggle of older, white men behind him. Read more...

More about Donald Trump, Sweden, Executive Order, Social Media, and Politics

The Intercept has obtained another secret document -- this one pertaining to the FBI's confidential informant program. The sprawling web of so-called Confidential Human Sources (CHS) is examined in multiple posts at the site. (The document, unfortunately, consists of multiple photos of the source pages, so it won't be embedded below.)

In addition to things already known about the FBI's aggressive pursuit of informants -- including using the CBP to push incoming foreigners to act as informants by threatening to withhold travel privileges or approval of visa applications -- there's much, much more contained in the FBI's guidelines.

One of the interesting aspects is the government's payment of informants. Considering the FBI has more than 15,000 informants in its network, there's always the possibility evidence produced by CHSs could be challenged if it appears the FBI is using private individuals to bypass warrant requirements (with "private" searches) or otherwise routing around legal restrictions pertaining to its investigations.

From the information obtained, it appears the FBI's inelegant workaround is to obscure the money flow in order to head off questions of propriety.

The picture that emerges is of an approach that borrows some of the sophistication of modern banking. The bureau has devised a variety of ways to pay informants, including directly, before or after trial; via reimbursements; and through a cut of asset forfeitures. The guide provides some options that are clearly preferable when trying to sway a jury at trial, even as it explicitly disclaims selecting them for such reasons.

That doesn't stop informants from making big money. There are some additional levels of approval needed when hitting $100k/$500k per year in payments, but for the most part, money flowing to informants isn't watched that closely by the agency.

As is stated above, the FBI apparently uses bogus expense reimbursements to pay informants, giving it the outward appearance of someone working for the agency out of the goodness of their heart, rather than for the thousands of dollars they eventually receive.

Putting money on the table -- even implicitly -- tends to skew priorities. Additional income is hard to give up, even when there's not much criminal activity to report. As we've seen in other law enforcement agencies heavily-reliant on confidential informants, promise of continuing payments results in bogus reports that exaggerate the amount of criminal activity witnessed and portray non-suspicious activities as worthy of deeper investigation.

Possibly the most perverse incentive is the FBI's asset forfeiture program. The ability to directly profit from seized property gives the agency all the nudge that's needed to worry about seizures first and convictions later, if at all. The documents show the FBI cuts informants in on this government-ordained scam, giving even more people -- none of them trained law enforcement agents -- reason to seek cash, cars, and property, rather than the criminals they're supposed to keeping any eye on.

In addition to compensation, an informant may be eligible for 25 percent of the net value of any property forfeited as a result of the investigation, up to $500,000 per asset, according to the guide. This can be a particularly lucrative benefit for drug informants, whose cases sometimes result in the forfeiture of planes, boats, cars, and real estate.

While the guidelines specifically state the FBI is not allowed to structure its payments to hide their true nature from judges, juries, and criminal defendants, the agency apparently treats this as nothing more than empty words written in service of maintaining plausible deniability.

Craig Monteilh, a bodybuilder who worked undercover as an informant for the FBI by spying on mosques in Southern California, said he received $177,000 from the FBI over a one-year period. Monteilh said that his compensation was disguised as expense reimbursements. He said he provided receipts for everything — rent, car payments, gasoline, medical bills, food, even for the steroids he was taking — to justify an $8,200 monthly expense bill.

“Most informants are criminals. So the FBI gets that,” Monteilh said. “They know that I’m going to get the bill for lunch, even if someone else pays for it, and I’m going to say I paid for it. That includes the movies, the theater, going to an Angels game — everything. I’m paying for everything, even though I’m really not.”

That's only a small part of how the informant game is played by the FBI. Informants are cited as reasons for engaging in dubious investigations and as escape valves for unconstitutional searches. Considering the multiple benefits informants provide -- especially when the true nature of the relationship is obscured and obfuscated -- it's no wonder the FBI wants as many agencies as possible engaged in the business of turning our nation's foreign visitors into junior G-men.

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No one likes it when a new boss takes over the office and starts acting like the entire operation can be turned around in a matter of days, if not hours. A "can do" spirit is overrated, especially when it's possessed by someone who knows almost nothing about the day-to-day business or, indeed, anything about this sort of business in general.

But that's what we have going on here. Within days of taking over the job, the new President has unleashed multiple orders and directives to FIX EVERYTHING… with details to follow sometime between "shortly" and "never." The plan to "make America great again" involves:

1. Telling Americans you're going to "fix" all of these things.
2. Telling government agencies and officials that they're going to fix all these things
3. Right now
4. ????

Ars Technica reports:

Today, the Washington Post published what appears to be a draft of an executive order to be signed by President Donald Trump. The order, entitled “Strengthening US Cyber Security and Capabilities,” puts flesh on the bones of the “cyber review” promised by Trump during the campaign. It spells out who will conduct the review and what its specific goals are. The order also sets a brisk pace for the review, calling for initial recommendations for the security of “national security systems” and critical infrastructure within 60 days. The review also has a 60-day deadline to provide the president with a list of “principal cyber adversaries.”

While fire in the belly proclamations aren't unique to the new president, the expectation that multiple officials and agencies will be able to come up with what's required in the next 60 days borders on ridiculous. There's also a 100-day window for recommendations on how to draft the private sector into the government's cyberwar. At this point, multiple agencies are still fighting over who gets to be the top cyberwarrior, as well as whose particular data silo gets to be the biggest. Expecting something coherent in the next couple of months is delusional.

This administration-ordered time crunch -- as unrealistic as it is -- isn't limited to President Trump. As Ars Technica's Sean Gallagher points out, President Obama did the same thing. His 2015 cybersecurity "sprint" order was just as misguided. In the end, all Obama got out of it was some agency head resignations. Government systems are still, for the most part, as insecure as they've been since before the "sprint," when the Government Accountability Office reported that 23 out of 24 agencies surveyed failed to meet information security standards.

But this sort of speedy order is swiftly (no pun intended) becoming a Trump trademark. America's problems can apparently be solved with presidential "to do" lists fired off to a variety of agencies. He appears to believe that if he orders it, it will be done. How do you win the War on Terror, currently in year 16 of ∞? Easy. Come up with a plan to win and then win.

(ii)   Within 30 days, a preliminary draft of the Plan to defeat ISIS shall be submitted to the President by the Secretary of Defense.

(iii) The Plan shall include:

(A) a comprehensive strategy and plans for the defeat of ISIS;

It's breathtaking in its simplicity. It's a shame no previous presidents had the forethought to demand a plan to defeat ISIS. And it's doubly-shameful no one involved in the War on Terror could be bothered to formulate a plan for beating terrorists until the president demanded one. Trillions of taxpayer dollars could have been saved if only George W. Bush had demanded a "comprehensive strategy for the defeat of [current top terrorist organization]" to be delivered to him by the end of 2001, AT THE LATEST.

And here's what's going into these orders and directives. Not much. Not even a legal review by White House lawyers.

NBC is reporting that the document [immigration/visa order] was not reviewed by DHS, the Justice Department, the State Department, or the Department of Defense, and that National Security Council lawyers were prevented from evaluating it. Moreover, the New York Times writes that Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, the agencies tasked with carrying out the policy, were only given a briefing call while Trump was actually signing the order itself. Yesterday, the Department of Justice gave a “no comment” when asked whether the Office of Legal Counsel had reviewed Trump’s executive orders—including the order at hand. (OLC normally reviews every executive order.)

This process is a reflection of Trump's personality, and it's not a good look for someone in the most powerful office in the world. The federal government often has trouble accomplishing the mundane. Now, its new boss wants it to deliver miracles and is only willing to wait a couple of months for them to be delivered. At some point, realism has to set in, but we're still at the point where the new president believes mountains can not only be moved, but have always been able to be moved at the slightest notice. All that's been missing is someone willing to order the mountain's relocation.

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The new boss is not the same as the old boss. While Obama was routinely terrible at keeping his promise to run the Most Transparent Administration, positive changes still resulted in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks. The intelligence community is more open than ever -- but then we're comparing a barely-cracked door to one that has been shut, locked, and bricked over for years.

Now that Trump's in charge, it looks as though transparency and accountability aren't ideals closely held by his administration. While Trump has portrayed himself as a populist, there's very little being done currently that suggests the public -- including members employed by the government -- is welcome to participate in the process. The public has outlived its usefulness. Post-election, it just doesn't have much to offer someone who appears to believe he was elected "Boss," rather than "Top Public Servant."

Executive orders and presidential directives are being issued without legal guidance or consultation with the agencies affected. And the national security framework is being heavily altered by a man best known for running a highly-partisan website. Steve Bannon, Trump's chief advisor and former head of Breitbart, is being given a seat at the "Adults" table for National Security Council meetings.

This isn't totally unusual. Obama often invited his advisors to these meetings. What Obama didn't do was guarantee them a spot at the head table, much less do so at the expense of actual national security officials. This is what National Security Council meetings look like now, under the new president.

Bannon's spot is guaranteed. (This, despite reports that Bannon must be approved by Congress. Nothing in the law says Council members need to be confirmed.) But the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are only invited if Trump feels they should be there. This is an incredibly odd -- and possibly dangerous -- situation. Two officials considered essential to national security decisions aren't guaranteed a chance to offer their insight in national security meetings.

Worse, Bannon's apparently permanent position in the NSC has resulted in him obtaining far more power than presidential advisors normally have. His efforts are further burying national security efforts under thick, black layers of opacity. The council meetings will continue. But it appears any record-keeping will not.

Even before he was given a formal seat on the National Security Council’s “principals committee” this weekend by President Donald Trump, Bannon was calling the shots and doing so with little to no input from the National Security Council staff, according to an intelligence official who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution.

“He is running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC,” the official said. He described a work environment where there is little appetite for dissenting opinions, shockingly no paper trail of what’s being discussed and agreed upon at meetings, and no guidance or encouragement so far from above about how the National Security Council staff should be organized.

Bannon's paperless national security "office" appears to be the result of NSC officials doing what they've always done: share drafts and briefing notes with affected agencies and their employees. Bannon has put an end to that.

More stringent guidelines for handling and routing were then instituted, and the National Security Council staff was largely cut out of the process.

By the end of the week, they weren’t the only ones left in the dark. Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, was being briefed on the executive order, which called for immediately shutting the borders to nationals from seven largely Muslim countries and all refugees, while Trump was in the midst of signing the measure, the New York Times reported.

Cutting down on sharing is only part of the paper trail elimination. The second part ensures there's less paper than ever to share. As Kate Brannen of Just Security reports, NSC meetings have been memorialized for years with a "summary of conclusions (SOC)" -- basically minutes of the meetings, along with guidance resulting from it. Officials could refer back to these notes if they ran into issues directly addressed in those meetings. They were also given an opportunity to correct the record if they felt something has been misconstrued or misquoted. These SOCs are now just relics of the past.

During the first week of the Trump administration, there were no SOCs, the intelligence official said. In fact, according to him, there is surprisingly very little paper being generated, and whatever paper there is, the NSC staff is not privy to it. He sees this as a deterioration of transparency and accountability.

“It would worry me if written records of these meeting were eliminated, because they contribute to good governance,” Waxman said.

What appears to be happening (although there's been no confirmation yet) is that Steve Bannon is being given the job of putting together Trump-approved SOCs of NSC meetings. These will be the only official records of the meetings and they're in the hands of a person who has plenty of motivation to only memorialize what adheres to administration talking points or furthers its goals. With the administration in full control of NSC meetings and any resulting narratives, whatever paper trail survives this bizarre reshuffling of power will be mostly useless.

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Here it comes -- the exact sort of response Trump was looking for when he issued his "Standing Up for Our Law Enforcement Community" edict during his first couple of days in office.

One of the fundamental rights of every American is to live in a safe community. A Trump Administration will empower our law enforcement officers to do their jobs and keep our streets free of crime and violence. The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.

This is Trump's invitation to law enforcement agencies to come to him with their grievances. A promise that they will be heard, ABOVE the voices of the people they're supposed to be serving. And here they come, right on cue.

Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, had a blunt message for Donald Trump during a meeting in September: court-ordered reforms aimed at curbing police abuses in the midwestern city are not working.

Loomis and two other attendees said Trump seemed receptive to Loomis's concerns that federally monitored police reforms introduced during the Obama administration in some cities in response to complaints of police bias and abuse are ineffective and impose an onerous burden on police forces.

Police unions want DOJ consent decrees rolled back, heavily-altered, or done away with altogether. A review of DOJ consent decrees shows law enforcement agencies hit with them have participated in years of unconstitutional policing, engaging in everything from discrimination to routine deployment of excessive force.

The decrees -- while seldom completely effective -- target pervasive mass violations of citizens' civil liberties. They address the symptoms and attempt to apply a cure. But the problems are deep-seated, based on years of us v. them policing and a culture that actively protects its worst members.

Unions are part of the problem. They are definitely not part of the solution. In Philadelphia, the police union managed to derail an officer-involved-shooting investigation board recommended by the DOJ, removing all independent outside investigators and replacing them with police officers and police officials.

The DOJ's long, thoroughly-damning report on what may be America's worst police force -- the Chicago PD -- notes that police unions have long stood in the way of improving the department.

Here’s a list of other CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) provisions that the feds said hamper investigations of police misconduct and should be change:.

• The contracts allow officers accused of misconduct or involved in shootings to delay interviews.
• The agreements mandate disclosure of a complainant’s identity to an accused officer before questioning, which is problematic because many complainants fear police retaliation.
• The agreements limit investigations into misconduct complaints filed more than five years after an incident, and requires the destruction of most disciplinary records older than five years.

“The City fails to conduct any investigation of nearly half of police misconduct complaints,” the report said. “In order to address these ignored cases, the City must modify its own policies, and work with the unions to address certain CBA provisions, and in the meantime, it must aggressively investigate all complaints to the extent authorized under these contracts.”

The last thing most police unions want is more accountability. This is why union heads are in DC, talking to Trump. Consent decrees attempt to force law enforcement agencies to act constitutionally, which is apparently something officers (or at least their reps) are unwilling to do.

The police groups want to discuss the decrees with Jeff Sessions, Trump's designee for attorney general who has voiced criticism of them, although any renegotiation would be legally complicated because all parties as well as a federal judge must approve any changes.

"There are certainly decrees that are inartfully applied that we'd like to see revisited," said Jim Pasco, the head of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union with 330,000 members. It endorsed Trump in September and has worked with Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama, for years while lobbying Congress for pro-police policies.

"We've always found him a man who's willing to listen to alternatives to a previously charted course," Pasco said of Sessions.

"Inartfully applied" just means "applied." The DOJ has "inartfully" attempted to get officers in numerous police departments to stop beating and tasing individuals simply because they weren't immediately compliant or responded disrespectfully. It has attempted to set a reasonable suspicion standard for police stops and searches. It has attempted to prevent officers from acting in a retaliatory manner against people exercising their First Amendment rights. It has attempted to scale back excessive removals of citizens' life and liberty by law enforcement officers. It has largely failed to do so because it encounters massive amounts of resistance, much of it led by police unions.

And here come the unions to undo what little good has been done. The union reps say things like "inartfully applied decrees" and "wastes of money" but what they're really saying is they would rather not have to be limited by the rights of others. And, according to Trump's own statement, the President himself has little respect for the rights of non-badge-wearing individuals.

The only good news is that -- despite Trump's "law and order" pitch and AG Sessions' general contempt for Americans and their rights -- it will take much more than some union sales pitches to undo consent decrees already in force. The Attorney General may be able to prevent the DOJ's Civil Rights division from pursuing nearly as many agreements in the future, but it's likely any attempt to scale back in-place agreements would face an uphill battle in federal court.

But this very likely means the DOJ isn't going to be nearly as interested in investigating law enforcement agencies for the next four years. The DOJ handed out 24 consent decrees during the eight years Obama was in office. It issued less than half as many while Bush was president. A president who believes not liking the police is "wrong" isn't going to be too interested in having a government agency find even more reasons for people not to like police officers.

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Last year, we wrote about a bizarre situation in Germany, in which the incredibly thin-skinned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had discovered a little-used, mostly forgotten German law, saying that it was illegal to insult a foreign leader, and used it to go after a German comedian. Erdogan, of course, had been filing thousands of lawsuits within Turkey against people who mocked or insulted him, which resulted in people around the globe mocking and making fun of Erdogan. But the fact that he dug up this mostly forgotten law created a bit of a diplomatic mess at the time for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was trying to play nice with Erdogan diplomatically, for the sake of helping with the flood of refugees from the Middle East. The weak "compromise" was that Merkel allowed the case to move forward, leading to a sad ruling from a German court, barring the comedian from mocking Erdogan, though a federal investigation was later dropped for "lack of evidence."

However, part of the compromise suggested at the time was that Merkel would allow that case to move forward, but would work towards getting that law off the books later. And apparently, that time is now. The German cabinet has said that the law is being scrapped.

Justice Minister Heiko Mass said the law is "obsolete and unnecessary," Deutsche Welle reported. He said the concept "dates back to a long-gone era, it no longer belongs in our criminal law."

Mass added that foreign heads of state could still pursue libel and defamation cases "but no more or less so than any other person," according to the broadcaster.

Of course, given that this is happening less than a week after the Trump inauguration and the Merkel/Trump relationship is off to quite a rocky start, with Merkel now making very public digs at the new US President, some are trying to read more into the plan to dump this law. The timing is, most likely, more of a coincidence, but perhaps it will free up Merkel to come up with better insults for other world leaders.

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AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR NEW PRESIDENT:

One of the fundamental rights of every American is to live in a safe community.¹ A Trump Administration will empower our law enforcement officers to do their jobs and keep our streets free of crime and violence. The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.

^{1 There is no such right. But that doesn't stop police defenders from invoking it, like this police union rep defending the burning of a toddler with a flashbang grenade:}

^{You have to draw the line between your right as a citizen to privacy and a community's right to live in a crime-free environment. You can't have them both.}

But is the "anti-police atmosphere" really "wrong?" Let's ask the federal government.

DOJ Civil Rights Investigation of the Albuquerque PD, 2014

[O]fficers used deadly force against people who posed a minimal threat, including individuals who posed a threat only to themselves or who were unarmed. Officers also used deadly force in situations where the conduct of the officers heightened the danger and contributed to the need to use force…

Officers also often used Tasers in dangerous situations. For example, officers fired Tasers numerous times at a man who had poured gasoline on himself. The Taser discharges set the man on fire, requiring another officer to extinguish the flames. This endangered all present.

DOJ Investigation of the Cleveland PD, 2014

Officers also use less lethal force that is significantly out of proportion to the resistance encountered and officers too often escalate incidents with citizens instead of using effective and accepted tactics to de-escalate tension...

At times, this force appears to have been applied as punishment for the person's earlier verbal or physical resistance to an officer's command, and is not based on a current threat posed by the person. This retaliatory use of force is not legally justified. Our review also revealed that officers use excessive force against individuals who are in mental health crisis or who may be unable to understand or comply with officers' commands, including when the individual is not suspected of having committed any crime at all.

DOJ Civil Rights Investigation of the Ferguson PD, 2015

[O]fficers frequently make enforcement decisions based on what subjects say, or how they say it. Just as officers reflexively resort to arrest immediately upon noncompliance with their orders, whether lawful or not, they are quick to overreact to challenges and verbal slights. These incidents—sometimes called “contempt of cop” cases—are propelled by officers’ belief that arrest is an appropriate response to disrespect...

FPD officers believe criticism and insolence are grounds for arrest, and... supervisors have condoned such unconstitutional policing...

Many officers are quick to escalate encounters with subjects they perceive to be disobeying their orders or resisting arrest. They have come to rely on ECWs, specifically Tasers®, where less force—or no force at all—would do. They also release canines on unarmed subjects unreasonably and before attempting to use force less likely to cause injury. Some incidents of excessive force result from stops or arrests that have no basis in law. Others are punitive and retaliatory.

DOJ Civil Rights Investigation of the Baltimore PD, 2016

Officers frequently resort to physical force when a subject does not immediately respond to verbal commands, even where the subject poses no imminent threat to the officer or others…

BPD uses unreasonable force against people who present little or no threat to officers or others. Specifically, BPD uses excessive force against (1) individuals who are already restrained and under officers’ control and (2) individuals who are fleeing from officers and are not suspected of serious criminal offenses…

DOJ Civil Rights Investigation of the Chicago PD, 2017

We found that officers engage in tactically unsound and unnecessary foot pursuits, and that these foot pursuits too often end with officers unreasonably shooting someone—including unarmed individuals. We found that officers shoot at vehicles without justification and in contradiction to CPD policy. We found further that officers exhibit poor discipline when discharging their weapons and engage in tactics that endanger themselves and public safety, including failing to await backup when they safely could and should; using unsound tactics in approaching vehicles; and using their own vehicles in a manner that is dangerous...

We reviewed instances of CPD using less-lethal force, often Tasers, including in drive-stun mode, against people who posed no threat, and using unreasonable retaliatory force and unreasonable force against children.

And here's more, in officers' own words. Here's an officer's greeting to a veteran who found his house surrounded after a mistaken suicide hotline call:

I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit. We’re going to break down your door. You’re going to have to pay for a new door.

Here's a police impound lot staffer, responding to the questions of a man whose car was unconstitutionally seized:

When Mr. Zullo asked the defendant’s employee why he had to pay for the tow, the defendant’s employee told him that the tow cost was Mr. Zullo’s fault for exercising his rights.

And here's an unnamed officer accosting someone for filming prisoner transfers from a public sidewalk:

You must be doing something wrong if you invoke your rights.

In exchange for a fake right, the Trump Administration is apparently willing to sacrifice citizens' actual rights. And hand out even more rights to an already-well-protected group. The only parts of the DOJ that don't actively make American law enforcement worse will be the first against the wall.

At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation and for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions.

And if martial law's your kink, the Donald has you covered:

Until Americans are more willing to lift police morale, Trump's administration will ensure those in charge of morale-lifting beatings are fully-backed by the US government.

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Time to lock up Donald Trump? Or at least his staff?

Senior Trump administration staffers, including Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon, have active accounts on a Republican National Committee (RNC) email system, Newsweek has learned.

The system (rnchq.org) is the same one the George W. Bush administration was accused of using to evade transparency rules after claiming to have “lost” 22 million emails.

Seems like Trump might want to engage in a forced migration of staffers to official White House email accounts in the near future. Can't have cries of "lock him up" being fired back at his administration -- not after using Hillary Clinton's email server as a campaign plank for so many months.

Sure, there's nothing strictly illegal about utilizing a private email account while in office. But every bit of official business needs to be handled by official accounts. Government employees are required to forward any official emails to official accounts and to disclose any private accounts upon taking office.

Making frequent use of personal accounts is just bad optics. And, in the case of the RNC accounts, it's also a possible security issue.

The RNC email system, according to U.S. intelligence, was hacked during the 2016 race.

And there's insecurity on top of insecurity. A hacker spoke with CNN after discovering Trump and his administration are running several accounts -- both Gmail and Twitter -- without using the most basic of security settings: two-factor authentication. Correction: The hacker actually criticized their failure to use a security setting that requires password resets to be requested with an email or phone number. Twitter responded suggesting that two-factor authentication and additional security protocols are in place on White House accounts, but would not comment on these specific accounts.

WauchulaGhost says he found the likely email associated with Melania Trump's handle within twenty minutes. He said the email associated with Vice President Mike Pence was easy to guess once you saw the redacted version: vi***************@gmail.com, which WauchulaGhost pieced together as vicepresident2017@gmail.com. It has since been changed, but the president and first lady's email addresses remain the same. (And the VP account still doesn't have the extra layer of security.)

And today, there are even more detailed reports, showing that the @POTUS account is secured with a gmail address.

Given the President's ability to make markets move with a single tweet, leaving accounts like these unsecured is begging for catastrophe. The news that the VP and President are still using Gmail accounts is also a problem and not just because of the lack of two-factor authentication. It signals that the Trump Administration is planning to do some official business off the FOIA-able/archivable books. That third parties are disclosing these accounts suggests the administration is in no hurry to do so.

Trump's staff may want to engage in some public disavowals of these personal email accounts, especially considering all the noise the campaign made about Hillary Clinton's private email server, its security issues, and the dubious legality of routing classified documents through unsecured servers.

If not, well… that will be completely unsurprising. Not that Trump won't hold himself and his staffers to the same standard he held Clinton, but because politicians are a mostly-hypocritical bunch who like to point fingers at everyone but themselves.

That's why we tend to steer clear of partisan arguments here at Techdirt. This isn't a post about Trump being more wrong than Hillary Clinton. They're both wrong. Trump's staff has a chance to head this off before it becomes a weapon to be wielded against his re-election campaign. If his administration doesn't distance itself from private email accounts, it will make Trump no better or worse than those that have come before him. Unfortunately, that will just make him the same as everyone else. And that's not what he ran on. And that's not what his backers want to see.

But it's incredibly tempting to keep communications out of the public's hands for as long as possible (if not forever) by routing work emails through private accounts. There are statutes and regulations to guard against this, but they're mostly toothless. So, it's up to each politician to determine their personal level of integrity. Many have opted for deliberate opacity, preferring their own secrecy to their obligations to the public that elected them. Will Trump be any better? Or will his staffers find a way to rationalize away their hypocritical stance on private email accounts? According to the statutes they must comply with, we'll know the answer in a couple of weeks.

Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a Washington-based government watchdog that requests and collects classified information, sued the Bush administration (along with CREW) over the RNC server and lost emails, and is still waiting to see what was in them. “If senior aides to President Trump were using private RNC servers on the afternoon after the inauguration, they have about 16 days to copy them into the official White House systems. If not, not they are in violation of the law,” he says.

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As was hinted heavily three years ago, you might be better off securing your phone with a passcode than your fingerprint. While a fingerprint is definitely unique and (theoretically...) a better way to keep thieves and snoopers from breaking into your phone, it's not much help when it comes to your Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.

The Minnesota Appeals Court has ruled [PDF] that unlocking a phone with a fingerprint is no more "testimonial" than a blood draw, police lineup appearance, or even matching the description of a suspected criminal. (h/t Orin Kerr)

Diamond relies on In re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum, 670 F.3d 1335 (11th Cir. 2012), to support his argument that supplying his fingerprint was testimonial. In In re Grand Jury, the court reasoned that requiring the defendant to decrypt and produce the contents of a computer’s hard drive, when it was unknown whether any documents were even on the encrypted drive, “would be tantamount to testimony by [the defendant] of his knowledge of the existence and location of potentially incriminating files; of his possession, control, and access to the encrypted portions of the drives; and of his capability to decrypt the files.” Id. at 1346. The court concluded that such a requirement is analogous to requiring production of a combination and that such a production involves implied factual statements that could potentially incriminate. Id.

By being ordered to produce his fingerprint, however, Diamond was not required to disclose any knowledge he might have or to speak his guilt. See Doe, 487 U.S. at 211, 108 S. Ct. at 2348. The district court’s order is therefore distinguishable from requiring a defendant to decrypt a hard drive or produce a combination. See, e.g., In re Grand Jury, 670 F.3d at 1346; United States v. Kirschner, 823 F. Supp. 2d 665, 669 (E.D. Mich. 2010) (holding that requiring a defendant to provide computer password violates the Fifth Amendment). Those requirements involve a level of knowledge and mental capacity that is not present in ordering Diamond to place his fingerprint on his cellphone. Instead, the task that Diamond was compelled to perform—to provide his fingerprint—is no more testimonial than furnishing a blood sample, providing handwriting or voice exemplars, standing in a lineup, or wearing particular clothing.

Of course, it's what's contained in the now-unlocked device that might be incriminating, which is why Diamond pointed to In re Grand Jury as being analogous to the forced provision of a fingerprint. The court's rebuttal of this argument, however, doesn't make a lot of sense. It says the process that unlocked the device requires no knowledge or mental capacity -- which is certainly true -- but that the end result, despite being the same (the production of evidence against themselves) is somehow different because of the part of the body used to obtain access (finger v. brain).

In recounting the obtaining of the print, the court shows that some knowledge is imparted by this effort -- information not possessed by law enforcement or prosecutors.

Diamond also argues that he “was required to identify for the police which of his fingerprints would open the phone” and that this requirement compelled a testimonial communication. This argument, however, mischaracterizes the district court’s order. The district court’s February 11 order compelled Diamond to “provide a fingerprint or thumbprint as deemed necessary by the Chaska Police Department to unlock his seized cell phone.” At the April 3 contempt hearing, the district court referred to Diamond providing his “thumbprint.” The prosecutor noted that they were “not sure if it’s an index finger or a thumb.” The district court answered, “Take whatever samples you need.” Diamond then asked the detectives which finger they wanted, and they answered, “The one that unlocks it.”

This is something only Diamond would know, and by unlocking the phone, he would be demonstrating some form of control of the device as well as responsibility for its contents. So, it is still a testimonial act, even if it doesn't rise to the mental level of retaining a password or combination. (And, if so, would four-digit passcodes be less "testimonial" than a nine-digit alphanumeric password, if the bright line comes down to mental effort?)

Given the reasoning of the court, it almost appears as though Diamond may have succeeded in this constitutional challenge if he had chosen to do so at the point he was ordered to produce the correct finger.

It is clear that the district court permitted the state to take samples of all of Diamond’s fingerprints and thumbprints. The district court did not ask Diamond whether his prints would unlock the cellphone or which print would unlock it, nor did the district court compel Diamond to disclose that information. There is no indication that Diamond would have been asked to do more had none of his fingerprints unlocked the cellphone. Diamond himself asked which finger the detectives wanted when he was ready to comply with the order, and the detectives answered his question. Diamond did not object then, nor did he bring an additional motion to suppress the evidence based on the exchange that he initiated.

And so, in first decision of its kind for this Appeals Court, the precedent established is that fingerprints are less protective of defendants' Fifth Amendment rights than passwords.

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It appears that Donald Trump -- or, more specifically, whatever remains of the organization that was his Presidential campaign -- has asked the US Patent and Trademark Office (US PTO, which Donald Trump now controls, as President) to give the campaign a trademark on the phrase "Keep America Great!" for use on bumper stickers, signs, placards, pamphlets, clothing, campaign buttons and more. One imagines that they are already gearing up for the expected campaign slogan of the 2020 re-election campaign. Of course, as Paul Levy at Public Citizen points out, someone else had already tried to trademark that phrase last year, and had it rejected by the PTO on the (correct) grounds that a "slogan" can't be taken out of the public domain and trademarked. Indeed, the rejection letter notes many examples of the slogan already in widespread use, recognizing that giving one guy the trademark on it wouldn't make any sense.

And therein lies the big question: now that the PTO is technically controlled by Trump, will it suddenly now allow the Trump campaign to register that very same trademark that it rejected from someone else two months ago? Or will it (properly) reject it on the same grounds that the phrase is already in widespread use and a political campaign can't just snatch it from public use and claim it as its own? One hopes that the PTO will do the right thing and reject this trademark application as well. Many of us will be watching.

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Reports started coming out this morning that the new Trump Administration had told the EPA that it needed to stop doing anything publicly without first getting approval from the White House (in addition to freezing grants and contracts). According to a memo that was sent around to EPA staff:

If you can't read that, the key parts say:

• No press releases will be going out to external audiences.
• No social media will be going out. A Digital Strategist will be coming on board to oversee social media. Existing, individually controlled, social media accounts may become more centrally controlled.
• No blog messages.
• The Beach Team will review the list of upcoming webinars and decide which ones will go forward.
• Please send me a list of any external speaking engagements that are currently scheduled among any of your staff from today through February.
• Incoming media requests will be carefully screened.
• No new content can be place on any website. Only do clean up where essential.
• List servers will be reviewed. Only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press.

Why yes, such messages may end up in the press.

Of course, it quickly became clear that this was not just for the EPA. The USDA received similar marching orders. Same with the Department of Health & Human Services and possibly others as well, including the Department of Commerce, being told it can't even publish the basic research it releases for US companies.

It's possible to say that this is just the Trump administration hitting the pause button to figure out what's going on before moving forward again, but many in these agencies are quite worried that they're going to be muzzled for political reasons. Most of the people working in these agencies are civil servants, not political appointees, and their work is not at all political. The press releases and blog posts are generally to release new findings, research and data from taxpayer funded studies. This shouldn't be controversial or reviewed for political motives.

Of course, this kind of thing is hardly unprecedented. For many years, we wrote about the ridiculousness of then Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper gagging Canadian scientists from talking about factual research that was politically inconvenient (including a study on fish stock). This kind of gagging on "politically sensitive" but factual science was only lifted last year once Justin Trudeau came into office. Of course, just a few months before that, the UK similarly started muzzling scientists to stop them saying anything the politicians didn't like.

One hopes the Trump administration will not be putting in place similar policies.

Of course, if that is the plan, it should be a huge boon for investigative journalists. And they're already hunting for sources. As the reports on the gag order came out this morning, lots of reporters stepped up on Twitter with notes on how to contact publications with information:

So, perhaps this kind of gag order will lead to a golden age of whistleblowing. Unfortunately, it may also lead to further crackdowns on whistleblowers. Once again, as we've explained over and over again the past few years, the Obama administration was the most aggressive and proactive in cracking down on whistleblowers and the press, and they've now handed off that power and precedent to the Trump administration, which will have a pretty big opportunity to use it.

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Last summer, we brought to you the story of how Bryton Mellott, a young man in Urbana, IL, was arrested for posting a picture of himself burning the American flag on his social media accounts. The story was strange on a variety of levels. First, the law utilized to arrest him, one of many flag-burning prohibitions that exist in laws at the state level, had been declared unconstitutional decades prior to it having ever been enacted. Burning the flag has been codified as a form of protected free speech, no matter how stomach-turning any individual might find it. It was for that reason that the local State's Attorney's office requested that the police let Mellott go and didn't even attempt to bring any kind of charges against him, because they couldn't. The police report also noted that Mellott had been taken in for disorderly conduct, referencing the backlash his actions caused, which is insane. Blaming a victim of threats for receiving those threats as a reaction to protected speech ought to be beneath the common citizen, nevermind those we actually entrust to enforce the law.

But perhaps the strangest part of the story, previously un-noted by us in our original post, the impetus for Mellott's arrest was one officer's apparent desperate search to find something for which to arrest him.

Mellott’s post was widely shared and had received 200 comments by the following morning. But just 12 hours after his post, Urbana police officers arrested him at his job at Wal-Mart after Mellott’s supervisor called and reported threats made by unknown people against Mellott and the store. Officer Jeremy Hale researched the Illinois flag-desecration statute, found it was still on the books, and decided of his own accord to enforce it.

Policing in this country isn't traditionally done in this way. Complaints to a local law enforcement office aren't generally then used to scour the books for some potentially applicable law. For this reason, Mallott is suing the three arresting officers for violating his civil rights.

Mellott filed a civil-rights lawsuit late Wednesday in Urbana federal court, claiming the three arresting officers knew or should have known that flag burning has been a protected means of political protest for almost 30 years. He says they violated his civil rights by arresting him. Mellott seeks compensatory damages and a court order that the Illinois flag-desecration statute is unconstitutional. He is represented by Rebecca Glenberg with the Roger Baldwin Foundation of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Open dissent is the highest form of American patriotism,” Mellott said in a statement. “And it was a frightening display of irony that on the Fourth of July, I should be taken from my workplace to sit in a county jail for exercising this liberty.”

It's difficult to see how this lawsuit isn't a winner. The Illinois state law is, on its face, flatly unconstitutional. That it was enacted decades after this question was decided says everything about the Illinois legislature and the rise of nationalism nationally and nothing about whether or not it might be remotely legal or enforceable. For Mellott to have been arrested and held for hours in a zealous attempt to punish protected speech, and on Independence Day no less, is about as blatant example of an infringement on the First Amendment of which I can think.

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As many expected, Donald Trump has chosen former Verizon lawyer and current FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai to head the FCC, according to a report by Politico. According to two anonymous insiders "familiar with the decision," Pai, who met with Trump on Monday, should be formally announced as FCC boss in short order. Pai recently proclaimed that net neutrality's "days are numbered" under Trump, while stating that the reformed FCC would be taking a "weed whacker" to "unnecessary regulations" like the FCC's net neutrality rules and its new consumer broadband privacy protections.

Politico rather soft sells the controversy that Pai will represent to those who don't think technology policy should be dictated by Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Charter Communications:

"Pai is already a familiar name in tech and telecom policy debates. He’s a fierce and vocal critic of many regulations passed by the commission's Democratic majority, including the 2015 net neutrality rules that require internet service providers to treat all web traffic equally and are opposed by the major broadband companies."

Let's be clear here. Pai has supported the incumbent duopoly providers on nearly every issue of substance. He has vilified net neutrality to an often-comic degree, falsely claiming the rules encouraged dictators in North Korea and Iran and led to a massive slowdown in industry investment. He has consistently refused to even admit the U.S. broadband market has a competition problem. He's made it abundantly clear he wants to eliminate every FCC consumer protection function, and, alongside fellow Commissioner Mike O'Rielly, has even repeatedly voted down holding AT&T accountable for outright fraud.

If you're looking for somebody who will rubber stamp every Comcast request shoveled in his general direction, Pai is certainly your man. If you're looking for an FCC leader who's going to care about consumer issues or the plight of the startup or small business in a word dominated by massive, ever-consolidating telecom conglomerates, you're about to get a master class in disappointment. The irony, of course, is that Pai is about as far from the "populist" rhetoric President Trump leaned on to get elected as one can get:

Yes, nothing quite says "man of the people" like a former Verizon lawyer who has fought tooth and nail against every single effort to hold large ISPs accountable to the public. On any given day, if the wind is right and with enough pressure, Pai may just be convinced to occasionally do the right thing. But as the leader of an agency tasked with keeping Comcast from viciously savaging both consumers and the competition, it's not really physically possible to make a more controversial and uninspired selection.

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