Brindle

Cops lie. Citizens know this. Defense attorneys know this. Prosecutors know this. Most importantly, judges know this. But rarely does it have any effect on the outcome of the case at hand. But in what has been described as a "Perry Mason moment," five Illinois police officers were caught lying on the stand. (h/t to Trevor Debus)

A seemingly routine suppression hearing in a suburban Chicago courthouse last month took an unexpected dramatic turn when video from a police car was introduced that disproved the testimony of five police officers.

They had said Joseph Sperling was arrested after officers who pulled him over in a traffic stop smelled marijuana, searched the vehicle and found nearly a pound in a backpack lying on the back seat of his car. But the Glenview police video showed the search occurred only after Sperling was taken from his car, frisked and handcuffed, reports the Chicago Tribune (sub. req.).

I suppose once the film rolled, there was little the judge could do but address it. It's one thing for a cop to lie in the courtroom and have it discovered months, weeks or even years later. It's quite another when the testimony is rebutted by video evidence during the same hearing.

"All the officers lied on the stand today," said [Judge Catherine] Haberkorn, who herself is a former prosecutor, at the March 31 hearing. "So there is strong evidence it was conspiracy to lie in this case, for everyone to come up with the same lie."

The officers, currently on desk duty, apparently did conspire to lie about the specifics of the search, at least according to the lawsuit filed by the arrestee shortly after this suppression hearing went sideways.

Joseph Sperling says in his suit that Chicago police asked Glenview officers at the scene of his arrest last June to turn off their squad car dashcams. At least one Glenview officer didn't, resulting in video footage that persuaded a Cook County Circuit Court judge to grant a motion to suppress seized evidence, because police testimony contradicted what the camera showed.

This case has obviously provoked quite a bit of discussion as to how often cops lie and what the final arbiters -- the judges -- do when they take this knowledge into consideration. The answers, unfortunately, are depressing. Even if these temporary desk jockeys manage to retain their jobs, one would think their days as credible witnesses are over. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Scott Greenfield talks about one judge he heard discuss why he kept on pushing defendants into the maw of the prison system, even while knowing those on the law enforcement side weren't necessarily any better when it came to truth-telling.

After a cocktail or two, Harold talked about how his experience as a judge changed him. Case after case, defendant after defendant, victim after victim, made it all a blur. Sure, cops lied. Everybody knew cops lied. Everybody knew cops lied in every case. That was the game. It was their job to put the bad guy away, and the way to win the game was to speak the magic words that the system accepted as necessary…

What was he supposed to do, Harold asked? They may not all be guilty, but they all were guilty. No one could pluck out the one in a hundred who didn’t deserve to be there, and he wasn’t going to cut everyone free because he couldn’t tell who was who. […] He had a job to do, to keep the cattle moving toward the slaughter. Harold could be a rather charming guy, personally. As a judge, he was utterly despicable.

Judge Richard Kopf, prompted by Greenfield's post, offered his own thoughts as to why he finds cops credible witnesses, despite loads of evidence otherwise. It's a bracing read and admirably soul-baring, but it's not going to make anyone feel any better about their odds against a lying law enforcement officer. While he makes several points that indicate he's still more careful in his selection process than the Judge Harold mentioned above, he does make the following indictment of his own beliefs and behavior.

I am a shitty judge of credibility. Truly, I am. See here for what happened when I believed a defendant and it blew up in my face with an editorial cartoon and the whole nine yards. Thus, when forced to judge between a cop and a defendant it is safer to believe the cop than the defendant particularly if a judge cares about his or her reputation. While pleading the subconscious in mitigation, there was a period of time when I really thought I might make it to the Circuit if I were a good little boy. See what happened to Judge Baer when he “screwed” up.

Will Baude at the Volokh Conspiracy, who originally questioned whether these five cops would be unable to offer believable testimony in the future, gathered some notable comments from Judge Kopf's post that lend credence to the belief that everyone in the courtroom knows cops lie, but there's very little anyone's actually willing to do about it, partly because the system destroys judges who refuse to play along.

Lorin Duckman, a former New York judge, noted how the system lends itself to accommodating lying cops, if only to keep the system moving at the pace that pleases most of those involved.

It’s not just about the trials. Jurors don’t want to sit, don’t understand the instructions and cannot consider what the sentence should be. They cannot tell if a person is lying or not and tend to believe those who look like them or wear badges, despite instructions to the contrary. It’s not about did the accused did it or didn’t do it, most of the time. It’s about the penalties, the sentences, and the lack of a future when one tries to put a life together after doing time. It’s about judges who need to move calendars, jailers and bailiffs, court reporters and clerks who depend on a steady stream of defendants for their livelihood ...

But Duckman also points out that judges have their own livelihoods to consider, and speaking aloud about the fact that cops lie on the stand tends to short-circuit their futures.

[M]ost of all it’s the Judges who sit silently, listening to the bartering, accepting the stories for fear that they will be removed if they question, dismiss or offer justice. Break my hear[t], they did.

A comment I made, “cops lie all the time,” was introduced as evidence at my removal hearing and served as the basis for finding me biased. I couldn’t have been the only judge who believed that, could I?

The system is broken all the way up and all the way down. These five cops were very possibly only called out because it was unavoidable. Their punishment for being caught perjuring themselves has been desk duty, something that may seem tedious compared to pulling people over and illegally searching their vehicles, but can hardly be considered a true punishment. It's not as though the facts are disputed. The cops are being "investigated" after lying in court in front of a judge and several witnesses. There's literally nothing to "investigate."

This is just two police departments (Glenview and Chicago) buying time until they can weigh possible punishments and outcomes. As few judges are willing to confront the fact that cops lie with the same frequency as other human beings, just as few PDs are willing to terminate officers (partly due to pushback from officers' unions), no matter the wrongdoing.

But before all hope is destroyed, another judge (Alabama's Judge Joseph Johnson) commenting at Kopf's blog noted the status quo is changing, at least in his courtroom.

Yesterday I met with our new police chief (city of 250,000) I I told him I was getting tired of not having video or audio recordings of defendants statements. I said I felt juries disbelieved the rendition by the officer (especially a narcotics officer). I added, I was not sure I was going to believe another citizen consented to the search of his vehicle unless I had a written signed consent to search (which they have). The Chief looked like I had kicked his dog. I said “Hey, the jurors expect this in this age of technology.” We will see.

Looking at this and another set of isolated incidents -- the pushback by two judges against overly-broad search warrants -- gives a modicum of hope that law enforcement will be finally forced to play by the rules that have been existent since shortly after the founding of this nation. It's too little, far too late and it's marked by outliers rather than exceptions to the rule. But at least it's something. And the more the public is informed about the routine abuse of civil liberties by law enforcement, the less those tasked with handling the intersection of cops and civilians will be able to ignore the reality of the situation and blithely (and blindly) believe badges denote a more trustworthy class of human.



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Because sometimes trying to sneak a bottle of bourbon taped to your nuts into a sporting event still gets confiscated by security, now there's Palcohol, a powdered alcohol that's just been approved for sale in the US. That way security will just think it's fat sack of coke and call the police! It's just powdered alcohol, I swear -- I just didn't want to pay $16 for a cocktail! *getting handcuffed* My only crime is being thrifty!

What's worse than going to a concert, sporting event, etc. and having to pay $10, $15, $20 for a mixed drink with tax and tip. Are you kidding me?! Take Palcohol into the venue and enjoy a mixed drink for a fraction of the cost. We've been talking about drinks so far. But we have found adding Palcohol to food is so much fun. Sprinkle Palcohol on almost any dish and give it an extra kick. Some of our favorites are the Kamikaze in guacamole, Rum on a BBQ sandwich, Cosmo on a salad and Vodka on eggs in the morning to start your day off right. Experiment. Palcohol is great on so many foods. Remember, you have to add Palcohol AFTER a dish is cooked as the alcohol will burn off if you cook with it...and that defeats the whole purpose.

So...can you snort it? Because this sounds like it could be dangerous. AND I LIKE DANGEROUS. I'm going to bury my face in a pile of this stuff like Tony Montana at the end of Scarface. "And then?" The same thing Tony did. "Shoot up your mansion?" After that. "Die?" Exactamundo! And then my ghost is going to sue the company. "For?" An afterlifetime supply! This might be my best idea so far. UPDATE: Government says Palcohol was approved for sale in error, will not be on shelves (or up anybody's ass) soon. Keep going for a shot of the questionable-looking packaging. Thanks to Thaylor H, Ed and Mr. K., who prefer to get drunk the old fashioned way: in a bar surrounded by a bunch of a$$holes talking way too loud about nothing.

When we talk about the stupidity that are school-affiliated zero-tolerance policies, those stories usually revolve around an administration's inability to marry common sense with their reactions to non-issues. This can produce somewhat varied results, from really dumb stories about children being children and ending up in serious trouble, to a far more angering practice of victim-blaming. What it all boils down to, though, is an overreaction to certain tragic situations that results in bureaucratic lunacy on a level I never would have thought possible. School shootings and violence are the impetus in these cases, but we see this elsewhere as well. 9/11 resulted in the s#!*-show we know as airport security and NSA surveillance. The Boston Marathon bombing has resulted in the kind of militarized protection and media-blitzkrieg that would likely have other world nations that deal with far more terrorism shaking their heads. And, in each of these cases, we learn a simple truth that we should have seen coming all along: reactionary policies breed stupidity, corruption, and trouble.

So let's get back to zero-tolerance policies in schools and witness the logical conclusion they offer: a college professor who had recently been at odds with his school's administration was just suspended for posting a picture of his child wearing a Game Of Thrones t-shirt.

A popular community college professor was suspended after posting a photo of his daughter wearing an oversized T-shirt bearing a tagline from this season of Game of Thrones—Daenerys Targaryen's "I will take what is mine with fire and blood." Francis Schmidt, who teaches art and animation at Bergen Community College in New Jersey, shared the photo on Google+, where it was seen by several of his work contacts. One of them, a dean, decided the shirt was a veiled threat of some kind.

In case you can't see the image, it's of Schmidt's daughter doing a handstand while wearing a Game of Thrones t-shirt that includes the tagline: "I will take what is mine with fire & blood." In case you think it's reasonable that such a picture being shared on social media could be interpreted as a threat to commit violence at a local community college, stop thinking that because that's a stupid thought. I imagine Schmidt said as much when he was called in to meet with the administration to explain why he'd sent a "threatening email", despite the fact that no email had been sent.

At the meeting, Schmidt explained the shirt in the context of Game of Thrones and showed Miller that the "fire and blood" tagline has 4 million results on Google. The professor asked why his photo had caused such a reaction, and was told that "fire" could be a metaphor for "AK-47s." Schmidt was placed on administrative leave without pay later that week, and told he would have to pass a psychiatric evaluation before he could return.

Now, like me, you should be even more confused. There's no way you could somehow interpret "fire" to mean "AK-47" any more than you could interpret "fire" to mean "Easter ham." They aren't related. And if you're thinking that there's so little sense being made here that there must be something more to this story, there sure as hell is. The head of the school's administration had just been delivered a vote of no confidence by the staff, including Schmidt, who had also filed a grievance recently for being denied a request for a sabbatical. You don't need to read between the lines much to understand that this is probably a trumped-up charge serving to punish a member of the teacher's union.

Which brings us nicely back to my original point: it isn't just the stupid you have to worry about when it comes to zero-tolerance policies, it's also the corrupt. When we overreact to admittedly tragic occurrences, we almost invariably open up the possibility for abuse through that overreaction.

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This is hardly a surprise, given that we'd already covered the brief submitted by the US Solicitor General's office in support of the broadcasters and against Aereo, but the Supreme Court has agreed to allow the office to argue in court tomorrow in the Aereo case. Again, not surprisingly, the Solicitor General's office tends to have a lot of sway with the Supreme Court, so this is effectively the US government tipping the scales of justice in favor of Hollywood and against the internet, where the impact of a ruling against Aereo may be quite severe.

The Solicitor General's office has argued that a ruling for Hollywood won't impact the cloud, basically because they say so. But, as we've discussed, its argument there is truly bizarre, in that it just asserts that such a ruling "need not" impact the cloud, and never bothers to address the many reasons it will absolutely impact the cloud. In fact, many of the other briefs in support of the broadcasters' position insist that the broadcasters should win because all those other companies can "just get a license." Now think about that for a second. Imagine using your Dropbox if nothing can be uploaded until Dropbox confirms it has a license for the work. Right. That's not going to work.

And, of course, this is what this case is all about. Broadcasters have always hated the internet, because they can't control it. Broadcasters have spent decades honing a business model that is based around a "broadcast" model. That is, they send out a signal, and the masses "consume" it. The internet has shaken that up in so many ways, because the internet is not a broadcast system. It's a communications system that allows anyone to communicate with anyone. For decades now, broadcasters have worked hard to reshape the internet into a better "broadcast" medium. That's what nearly every copyright challenge is about. Giving more control to the big broadcasters, while making it harder for the everyday internet user to do anything online without getting it shut down.

Stifling cloud computing by pushing for every bit of content -- even those totally in control of an individual user -- to be "licensed" is just the latest such attempt to stifle the internet as a communications medium of the people, and to push it to be a broadcast medium for a few giant entertainment companies.

So, really, the big question is why anyone thinks it's appropriate at all for the US government to weigh in here. We've already noted the significant conflict of interest in that the Solicitor General himself, Donald Verrilli, spent many years as Hollywood's top lawyer, even arguing in the Supreme Court on some key copyright cases. And while he recused himself from all of this, it at least smacks of the "too cozy" relationship between Hollywood and the US government. Also recused is Verrilli's top deputy who, prior to rejoining the government a few years ago, was a top lawyer at Jenner & Block, the very same law firm representing the broadcasters in this case. Yes, they've recused themselves, but given that it's rather bizarre that the Solicitor General's office decided to get involved in this case in the first place, it certainly raises eyebrows about the reasons.

This is a dispute where the US government really has no role joining in the proceedings, but it has decided to assert itself, solely on the side of broadcasters and against the internet. Seems like an odd choice for an administration that has claimed to be so internet savvy.

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As we've discussed, the administration has gone to incredible lengths to try to avoid any sort of public discussion concerning what legal authority it has to target American citizens with extrajudicial drone strikes. However, in a fairly big turn of events, a federal appeals court has overturned a lower court and ordered the DOJ to release "key portions" of the DOJ's classified memo that explains the legal justification for killing US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki via a drone in Yemen. What's interesting is that the panel came to this conclusion based on the administration's public discussion on drones:

The unanimous three-judge panel, reversing a lower court decision, said the government had waived its right to keep the analysis secret in light of numerous public statements by administration officials and the Justice Department’s release of a “white paper” offering a detailed analysis of why targeted killings were legal.

“Whatever protection the legal analysis might once have had,” Judge Jon O. Newman wrote for the panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, “has been lost by virtue of public statements of public officials at the highest levels and official disclosure of the D.O.J. White Paper.”

The ruling is good in that this sort of information should be public and should be discussed publicly. However, at the same time, it also will likely lead to the administration clamping down on any other such information that it hopes to keep entirely secret -- which could be a real problem. It will lead to even less transparency and fewer open discussion concerning issues of the US doing things under questionable legal authority.

As we've seen over the past few years, DOJ lawyers seem happy and willing to justify just about anything, twisting the law in all sorts of ways to make very questionable decisions deemed "legal" with little to no oversight or review -- and no public discourse whatsoever.

Of course, it seems likely the DOJ will protest this latest decision and seek a Supreme Court review first, so it's not like the justification is going to be revealed any time soon.

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Eli Lilly bet its entire business model on patents years back, rather than on creating useful products that people want to buy. Lately it's been having trouble getting new patents, and is reacting extremely poorly to the fact that its last-gasp efforts to get new patents aren't working. As we've noted, a few years back, Canada rejected some patent applications for some Eli Lilly drug after the Canadian patent board "determined that the drug had failed to deliver the benefits the firm promised when obtaining the patent." In other words, after realizing that the drug is not useful, Canada rejected the patent.

And Eli Lilly flipped out.

Eli Lilly has sued Canada for $500 million claiming "lost profits." How is this possible, you ask? Well, it's those corporate sovereignty provisions that are finding their way into various trade agreements lately. They're usually called "investor state dispute settlement" (ISDS) provisions, because supporters know that such a phrase will bore most people to death and they won't realize what's happening. Eli Lilly is arguing that Canada's decision to check to see if a drug is actually useful somehow violates its international agreements. And thus that a sovereign decision by Canada not to patent drugs of questionable benefit is not just a violation of trade, but stomping on Eli Lilly's expected profits.

Lilly is now raising the stakes. Not only has it asked the USTR to put Canada back on the wacky "Special 301 list" of "naughty countries" that don't bow before American corporate demands, but it's convinced 32 members of Congress to out themselves as corporate shills for Eli Lilly by demanding that the USTR follow through on this request.

Eli Lilly seems to have no shame about this, happily admitting that it's behind this effort to have the US punish Canada for daring to judge whether or not a drug is useful. As he told the Wall Street Journal:

“We’ve been unsuccessful in bringing about change by other means,” said Lilly chief executive John Lechleiter. “It’s an issue right at our back door. And unfortunately, we’re afraid it can lead to other countries attempting to undermine intellectual property.”

No, not "undermine intellectual property." It's about actually making sure, before giving you a decades-long monopoly right, that your drug is actually useful. Of course, if the USTR actually follows through and puts Canada on the Special 301 list, it will just cement what a complete joke the Special 301 list really is. For years, the USTR -- at the behest of Hollywood -- put Canada on the Special 301 list. Each year Canadian officials would specifically state that they "don't recognize" the process of the Special 301 list as being legitimate (because it's not) and then proceed to do nothing. Eventually, though, with a new government in place, Canada did change its copyright laws, and was "downgraded" on the Special 301 list. Upgrading them back up to a "pirate" nation will just highlight why Canada (and every other country) should totally ignore the nearly entirely arbitrariness of the list.

Meanwhile, shame on those 32 members of Congress for supporting such a blatant attempt by a company to interfere in the sovereignty of Canada and its crazy idea that drugs should actually be useful to deserve patent protection.

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Time for an update on the NYPD scene. As you'll recall, both Mayor Bloomberg and Police Chief Ray Kelly exited their respective offices in their respective huffs, claiming the city would fall apart if the sanctity of the NYPD's Constitution-skirting programs (stop-and-frisk, the Muslim-watching Demographics Unit) weren't preserved.

The legal battle over the constitutionality of the stop-and-frisk took several turns, including the removal of the presiding judge for "appearances of partiality." Incoming mayor Bill de Blasio promised to drop the city's appeal of Judge Scheindlin's ruling, and oddly enough, actually did.

An attempt to keep the appeal going was filed by the union representing the NYPD, but this was shot down by the appeals court. It did, however, allow it to be part of the final negotiations. The end result was the installation of five years of oversight over the NYPD's controversial program in order to move it towards something more resembling compliance with the Constitution.

The apocalypse Bloomberg and Kelly claimed was unavoidable if stop-and-frisk was curbed has failed to materialize. Even before the ruling was handed down, the program had been scaled back, with 86% fewer stops being recorded in the first quarter of 2014 than in the same quarter of 2012. Despite this lack of pushing random people up against the wall, crime is down 13% compared to 2013. Was stop-and-frisk ever truly essential? Or was it simply something that became an all too easily abused "tool" of the NYPD? At this point, the numbers seem to indicate that stop-and-frisk had very little real effect on criminal activity.

More good news on the NYPD v. Constitution front: the infamous Muslim-spying wing of the NYPD -- the stupidly-named "Demographics Unit" -- has been disbanded. This program, started by a former CIA officer who leveraged the city's post-9/11 anxieties to craft major changes to guidelines governing the surveillance of New Yorkers, spent a considerable amount of time infiltrating and surveilling entire mosques under the pretense that each and every member was somehow related to ongoing counterterrorism investigations.

The investigations performed by this unit did considerable damage to the civil liberties of mosque attendees over the last decade, but failed to turn up any credible suspects, much less terrorism-related arrests. The unit's pervasive surveillance so thoroughly violated First and Fourth Amendment protections that the CIA and FBI were unable to avail themselves of the "intelligence" collected by the NYPD without violating federal guidelines. When even the CIA can't look at your investigative results for fear of violating its own minimal civil liberties protections, you know you've got a problem.

Bill Bratton, returning to the NYPD commissioner's office, seems to have realized that programs like the Demographics Unit ultimately do more harm than good. When heading the Los Angeles Police Department, he was approached with a similar idea for tracking that city's Muslim community. He had this to say then:

“A lot of these people came from countries where the police were the terrorists,” he said at the time. “We don’t do that here. We do not want to spread fear. We want to deal with criminals.”

The NYPD, before his return, had no such concerns. If anything, the NYPD actively created distrust -- both in the New York Muslim community and around the world, sending its officers uninvited to peer over the shoulders of local police and investigative units at scenes of terrorism activity in countries like Kenya and Bali.

The new NYPD is still staffed with the old NYPD, which means change will be slow and likely fought every step of the way. Muslims are understandably concerned that the public disbandment of the Demographics Unit will just result in the level of surveillance being unchanged, if only a bit more unfocused. Bratton seems to be nudging the department towards a more FBI-esque set of rules, which isn't ideal, but is certainly much better than the abusive behavior permitted under the NYPD's internal guidelines.

It does appear the NYPD will be moving towards something resembling an actual police force, rather than a law unto itself. Without Kelly and Bloomberg around to defend its every overstep, the NYPD can no longer expect to skirt the Constitution with impunity. But there's a long way to go to fix things, so any optimism must be tempered by the fact that good habits are tough to instill and bad habits are extremely hard to break. Five years of oversight is a start, but the city -- meaning the mayor and the police commissioner -- must be willing to hold its officers accountable.



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The LAPD wants you, Joe Citizen, to help it out with its surveillance. It has enlisted the help of a crowdsourcing tool called LEEDIR to collect photos and recordings from everyday people who may have additional footage of natural disasters or civil unrest that could help out both emergency responders and cops looking to put a few more demonstrators in jail.

In today's announcement, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and the Boston Marathon bombings were mentioned as scenarios in which LEEDIR could help law enforcement respond to disasters or large-scale public security threats. One might also imagine large citizen protests like Occupy Wall Street being the focus of such crowdsourced surveillance.

It's unarguable that the addition of crowdsourced photos and video helped authorities track down the Boston Bombing suspects, which shows that there is some value to this service. But, as is pointed out by Xeni Jardin, it could also be used to build a database of people enjoying First Amendment-protected activities. Currently, the site is soliciting input for any info related to last week's party-turned-riot in Isla Vista, CA, where over 100 arrests were made and 44 people injured, including five police officers. The notice clearly states the police are "seeking to identify several subjects wanted for violent felonies that occurred during the evening."

This is a potentially useful tool that isn't completely evil, but there are some definite concerns. For one, there's no real way to submit anything anonymously. You aren't required to input your name, but the app itself demands access to GPS data and any other communications-related metadata is likely hoovered up by LEEDIR when images and video are uploaded.


There are also other questions left unanswered about the handling of the data submitted.

According to today's announcement, agencies might typically retain uploaded content for a month or two, then delete it. But there's no requirement to delete it…

And the way the system is accessed and used seems to lend itself to abuse.

It's up to law enforcement to provide analysts or investigators to sort through all of the content uploaded to LEEDIR and find potential evidence…

Once the content is uploaded, it belongs to law enforcement, [Co-Global CEO Nick] Namikas said. It's up to each agency to decide how long they want to store the content in the cloud – a service being provided by Amazon.

An unfiltered influx of photos and videos curated by law enforcement officers. What could possibly go wrong? The tool may be aimed at natural disasters (which provides free access to police and emergency responders in the affected area), but paid subscriptions are available which would keep LEEDIR live at all times for any law enforcement agency willing to foot the bill.

As if the potential negatives of this sort of crowdsourcing weren't apparent enough, there's also the very large problem of who's behind this new system.

Under the leadership of disgraced former LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, the department is said to have conceptualized the web service and smartphone app, which was built by Citizen Global with Amazon…

Baca's administration was plagued by corruption and scandal, and he resigned amid ongoing investigation into possible criminal activity. Certainly no such imperfect leader would misuse LEEDIR.

But LA Sheriff's Dept. commander Scott Edson sees no downside:

“I like to call this a flag-waving opportunity,” Edson said. “This is a great opportunity for the public who really wants to catch those guys as badly as any law enforcement agency wants to catch them. Now they’re going to have an opportunity.”

Sure. Just like "see something, say something" filled DHS Fusion Centers with thousands of reports of people using cameras. With unfiltered access to whatever citizens submit, law enforcement can browse for unrelated criminal activity or simply use it to fill in the holes in their surveillance network.

It's not that it couldn't help, as it did in the Boston Bombing. It's that the downside isn't even being considered by the proponents of the system, which include a former law enforcement official accused of corruption. There's seemingly no oversight to the program and absolutely no concerns being raised about privacy or the potentially endless retention of non-relevant footage and photos.

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Usually, the NSA's whoppers are so ham-fisted everyone knows them for falsehoods. And if there's any question, you can usually rely on the fact that when the agency's lips move, it's stretching the truth so far that it's as good as a lie.

But from the start of Snowden's revelations, one of the NSA's tall tales has differed vastly from the others. It's so subtle and ubiquitous, such a consummate Big Lie, that even the surveillance-state's fiercest critics haven't spotted it.

Can you? Let's play Find the Fib with this testimony to Congress last June from Deputy Attorney General James Cole (though, to be fair, he doesn't state the Big Lie outright but only implies it in the phrases I've emphasized):

"[T]here's a great deal of minimization procedures that are involved here, particularly concerning any of the acquisition of information that deals or comes from US persons. As I said, only targeting people outside the United States who are not US persons."

Want another hint? Check out the letter Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote Sen. Ron Wyden, though he too merely implies the Big Lie:

"There have been queries … using US person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence targeting non-US persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States … These queries were performed pursuant to minimization procedures approved by the FISA court and consistent with the statute and the Fourth Amendment."

Yep, those are my emphases again -- and I included "Fourth Amendment" because that's the biggest clue of all. Here's the text of that strangled, mangled, moribund member of the Bill of Rights:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Anyone see notation there about "US persons" and "non-US persons?" Yet for basically its entire existence, the NSA has pretended that the Fourth prohibits the government from searching American citizens without a warrant (not that that's stopped the spooks) while authorizing it to search the rest of the world willy-nilly.

But the Fourth's language is so clear that even Clapper should comprehend it: without a warrant, the government may not "violate" anyone's "person, house, papers, and effects." Whether he's Australian or American, from Utah or Uzbekistan, living in or visiting Mexico or Massachusetts is irrelevant.

"Wait a minute!" the NSA's bureaucrats sneer. "'People' is just a synonym for 'citizens.'"

Wrong. The Founding Fathers wrote "citizen" when that's what they meant (remember, most of these Dead White Men were fluent in Greek and Latin, which is to say they understood and used language precisely). And though they employ "citizen" eleven times in the body of the Constitution, they mention only "people" and "persons" in the Bill of Rights. For example, when delineating the requirements for election to the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the presidency, the Constitution specifies the minimum number of years each official must have been a citizen.

But when the Constitution concludes, and its amendments begin, "citizen" goes on hiatus. As you may recall from high-school history, the Anti-Federalists insisted on adding ten amendments to the Constitution, the partial list of liberties known as the Bill of Rights. Anti-Federalists distrusted and loathed government, even the Constitution's severely limited one: they eerily, accurately predicted today's creeping totalitarian state and tried to protect themselves with a written guarantee that the government would never restrict their speech, disarm them, spy on them, etc.

The Anti-Federalists also realized that politicians and bureaucrats powerful enough to silence, disarm, and spy on foreigners will certainly pull the same stunts at home. That's why the Bill of Rights consistently says "people," as in the Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The nationality of the government's victim doesn't matter: politicians and bureaucrats may not silence, disarm, or spy on, etc., anyone. Then, bingo, when the Bill of Rights ends and nationality becomes pertinent again in the Eleventh Amendment, "citizen" pops up like clockwork.

Of course, at this point, discussions of the Constitution are somewhat academic: our rulers have amply demonstrated their disdain for it and us. But, unlike Sen. Dianne Feinstein or German Chancellor Angela Merkel, we should be as livid when the Feds spy on others as when they spy on us. The Constitution clearly, adamantly prohibits both.

Becky Akers is the author of two novels, Halestorm and Abducting Arnold. Both are set during the American Revolution, when Peeping Toms were horsewhipped rather than handsomely paid to spy on citizens.

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A federal appeals court has upheld a contempt citation against the founder of the defunct secure e-mail company Lavabit, finding that the weighty internet privacy issues he raised on appeal should have been brought up earlier in the legal process. The decision disposes of a closely watched privacy case on a technicality, without ruling one way or the other on the substantial issue: whether an internet company can be compelled to turn over the master encryption keys for its entire system to facilitate court-approved surveillance on a single user.

A group of filmmakers has decided to put together an interesting new animated web series called "Copy-Me" all about copying and copyright -- and more specifically about culture and sharing, and why that's important (while also debunking some of the usual myths about copyright). Among the things they've claimed the series will cover are:

• The importance of the public domain.
• Artists making money without restricting access to their work.
• A bit of copyright history.
• The paradox of originality.
• The state of the Internet today
• The impact of copyright on every single part of society today.

While they're just getting started, it looks like it will be quite interesting. They've also put together an IndieGogo campaign for folks interested in supporting this project. Here's the intro video the filmmakers have made about the campaign, explaining a bit more of why they're doing this and what they hope to accomplish: While there have been various other cool projects trying to discuss these issues, from Kirby Ferguson's Everything is a Remix to Nina Paley's Copying is Not Theft, the more the merrier in getting past the myths of copyright that a certain industry has been pushing for decades.

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While various arbitrary prizes and awards may not mean much in the grand scheme of things, it's still quite heartening to see that the Guardian and the Washington Post were awarded a Pulitzer for public service for their reporting on the NSA via the Ed Snowden documents.

For a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper or news site through the use of its journalistic resources, including the use of stories, editorials, cartoons, photographs, graphics, videos, databases, multimedia or interactive presentations or other visual material, a gold medal.

Awarded to The Washington Post for its revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, marked by authoritative and insightful reports that helped the public understand how the disclosures fit into the larger framework of national security.

and

Awarded to The Guardian US for its revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, helping through aggressive reporting to spark a debate about the relationship between the government and the public over issues of security and privacy.

Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Bart Gellman and Ewan McCaskill (among others at both publications) should be congratulated for the work they put into the original stories and for all of the followup in the face of ridiculous levels of criticism from those who were embarrassed by Snowden's whistleblowing. Separately, with the Pulitzers recognizing that such reporting was a public service, can we finally stop people from claiming that Snowden was a "traitor" and admit that what he did was clearly whistleblowing in the furtherance of the public interest?

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Rep. Peter King has made it clear that he will stop at nothing to attack anyone who thinks Ed Snowden did something useful. He was one of the first to call for the reporters who revealed the NSA's surveillance to be prosecuted and has no qualms about lying to get his way. He's even gone so far as to argue that anyone who claims the NSA is "spying" or "snooping" is committing slander.

His main beef is his supposed belief that Snowden and anyone reporting on the facts he revealed are somehow "appeasing" terrorists. Of course, that's quite ironic, given King's history as a major terrorist appeaser in supporting the IRA decades ago, even as they were blowing up buildings that resulted in death and injury to many.

However, it's long been clear that King has no self-awareness and no understanding of his own hypocrisy. Within minutes of the Pulitzers announcing that one of its prizes was being given to the publications that reported on the Ed Snowden documents, King angrily tweeted his disgust:

Awarding the Pulitzer to Snowden enablers is a disgrace

— Rep. Pete King (@RepPeteKing) April 14, 2014

Notice that King refers to two respected news publications and countless journalists as "enablers" rather than journalists. There's only one person who's a disgrace in this situation and it's Rep. Peter King. Someone might want to send him a copy of the First Amendment, and its parts about freedom of the press. King seems to have forgotten his oath to uphold that part of the Constitution.

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In a new interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Ed Snowden seems to be hitting back at nearly every bogus claim made by his critics. He kicks it off by responding to the claims that if he were a real whistleblower, he should have just gone through "official channels." He claims that he did that and nothing happened. In fact, he suggests that Congress ought to ask the NSA about that.

The N.S.A. at this point not only knows I raised complaints, but that there is evidence that I made my concerns known to the N.S.A.'s lawyers, because I did some of it through e-mail. I directly challenge the N.S.A. to deny that I contacted N.S.A. oversight and compliance bodies directly via e-mail and that I specifically expressed concerns about their suspect interpretation of the law, and I welcome members of Congress to request a written answer to this question [from the N.S.A.].

How about the silly claim that he took 1.7 million documents? As we've mentioned this number keeps going up. First it was 50,000 documents. Then 70,000. Then 1.5 million. And the latest is 1.7 million. And all of it seems based on a faulty assumption that every document Snowden has ever "touched" he took with him. That is almost certainly false. And, as we've also noted in the past, Snowden has made it clear that he no longer has any of the documents. He reiterated that to Vanity Fair:

Snowden cautions about some of the numbers that investigators have publicized, especially the 1.7 million figure, which, he tells Vanity Fair, is “simply a scare number based on an intentionally crude metric: everything that I ever digitally interacted with in my career.” He adds, “Look at the language officials use in sworn testimony about these records: ‘could have,’ ‘may have,’ ‘potentially.’ They’re prevaricating. Every single one of those officials knows I don’t have 1.7 million files, but what are they going to say? What senior official is going to go in front of Congress and say, ‘We have no idea what he has, because the N.S.A.’s auditing of systems holding hundreds of millions of Americans’ data is so negligent that any high-school dropout can walk out the door with it?’ ”

“I know exactly how many documents I have,” Snowden continues. “Zero.”

There's more in the publicly released summary, and apparently the full story (not yet released) will have even more. Of course, it won't stop the NSA's defenders from making the same old claims again and again without proof.

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Ed Snowden testified (via video, of course) for the Council of Europe, the "top human rights body" of Europe, and told them that the NSA spied on various human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

He told council members: "The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organisations … including domestically within the borders of the United States." Snowden did not reveal which groups the NSA had bugged.

The assembly asked Snowden if the US spied on the "highly sensitive and confidential communications" of major rights bodies such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as on similar smaller regional and national groups. He replied: "The answer is, without question, yes. Absolutely."

Of course, one of the things that's bugged me most of all about the response from NSA defenders is the typical line: "we're not listening to you talk to your grandmother" or whatever similar line may be. But, as more and more revelations have come out, they get closer and closer to the kinds of communications I actually do have on a regular basis. Talking to sources working on interesting technology projects, talking to human rights and civil society groups around the globe. Spying on journalists. Each day there's more and more evidence that while the NSA might not care about some mythical person talking to his or her mythical grandmother, it is very much collecting all sorts of information that those very same people thought were private -- and which clearly have nothing to do with national security.

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I imagine in some room somewhere, a whole bunch of people in well-tailored suits came up with the idea of DMCA takedowns and thought it'd be just peaches. The practical application of that policy, however, has been something of a performance art piece on how intellectual property is a canard better left on the cutting room floor. YouTube in particular exemplifies this, what with their attempts to comply with rightsholders juxtaposed to a service model that just begs for case studies in inadvertent violations and strong arm attempts by confused non-rightsholders.

Peter writes in with the latest such example, concerning an uploader who put up his trek across the Brooklyn Bridge. The video was taken down for the silliest of reasons.

ANYWAY, I went through all of the trouble of uploading and editing both of these boring-ass videos to a popular Internet video hosting website, only to have the aforementioned website totally mute the Brooklyn Bridge video because there's a Michael Jackson impersonator at the foot of the bridge and he's performing to the song "Beat It," which you can hear in the background.

So, someone crossing a bridge has a video of the experience that includes the decades-old song of a deceased performer being reenacted by a street performer... and down the video goes. I imagine the originators of copyright are rolling over in their graves at this point, never imagining that automated systems would trip the flag on this kind of takedown. Even imagining for a moment that this wouldn't or shouldn't be considered fair use, can someone explain to me what the point of all this is?

I'm pretty sure incidental capture of a portion of a song being played by a street performer falls under "fair use," and I've disputed it because I have nothing better to do with my life, but in the meantime I'm inspired by the knowledge that our publicly-traded companies go to such great lengths to protect the copyrights of great Americans like Michael Jackson.

The reality of course is that the rights to the song are held by a third party label and this was just the automated system accidentally capturing a video that the label probably wouldn't even bother taking down itself and blah, blah, blah. All I know is this is really stupid and a hindrance to the simple sharing culture that humanity has always enjoyed. Thanks copyright.

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Almost exactly a decade ago (man, time flies...), we first discussed the question of whether or not it should be against the law to get hacked. The FTC had gone after Tower Records (remember them?) for its weak data security practices. That resulted in a series of questions about where the liability should fall. Many people, quite reasonably, say that there should be incentives for companies to better manage data security and (especially) to protect their users. But, it's also true that sooner or later, if you're a target, you're going to get hacked. Ten years later and this is still an issue. The FTC went after Wyndham hotels for its egregiously bad data security (which made it easy for hackers to get hotel guests' information, including credit cards), but Wyndham fought back, saying the FTC had no authority over such matters, especially without having first issued specific rules.

However, a court has shot down that argument and will allow the FTC's case against Wyndham to move forward.

Again, Wyndham's security here was egregiously bad. It didn't encrypt payment data, and also used default logins and passwords for its systems. So there's an argument here that some kind of line can be drawn between purely negligent behavior, such as Wyndham's (lack of) data security, and companies who actually do follow some rather basic security practices, and yet still fall prey to hacks. What makes things tricky is that pretty large gray area in between the two extremes.

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No entity highlights the ridiculous amount of bureaucratic inefficiency and ineptitude of government agencies better than the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Its reports are loaded with the sort of damning evidence that would lead those unfamiliar with how government actually works to assume that heads will be rolling. In reality, the agencies investigated by the GAO soldier on from scathing report to scathing report with little to no sign of improvement.

Tom Coburn, a long-time combatant of government waste and fraud who publishes a yearly report exposing the worst of worst in terms of senseless government spending (the "Wastebook") is now using the GAO's own words to craft a bill targeting the money pit that is the National Technical Information Service (NTIS).

Here's the leadup:

(3) NTIS is tasked with collecting and distributing government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business-related information and reports.
(4) GAO found that NTIS sold only 8 percent of the 2,500,000 reports in its collection between 1995 and 2000.
(5) A November 2012 GAO review of NTIS made the following conclusions:

(A) 'Of the reports added to NTIS's repository during fiscal years 1990 through 2011, GAO estimates that approximately 74 percent were readily available from other public sources.'
(B) 'These reports were often available either from the issuing organization's website, the Federal Internet portal (http://www.USA.gov) or from another source located through a web search.'
(C) 'The source that most often had the report [GAO] was searching for was another website located through http://www.Google.com.'
(D) '95 percent of the reports available from sources other than NTIS were available free of charge.'

(6) No Federal agency should use taxpayer dollars to purchase a report from the National Technical Information Service that is available through the Internet for free.

And here's the punchline:

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the 'Let Me Google That For You Act.'

Someone had fun cranking out this "Short Title."

As the bill points out, it was suggested by the Secretary of Commerce in 1999 that the NTIS would eventually outlive its usefulness. According to the GAO's 2012 findings, that sell-by date was reached more than a decade ago.

NTIS product expenditures exceeded revenues for 10 out of the past 11 fiscal years.

The "Let Me Google That For You" Act calls for the repeal of the 1988 National Technical Information Act and the disbandment of the agency itself, with the redistribution of whichever of its duties are still deemed essential to the Commerce Department.

It's not often you get the chance to watch an extraneous government agency be put down and even rarer still under a snarky, incisive, short title. This is for the best. As we've seen all too frequently, time marches on, swiftly distancing itself from the glacial pace of government innovation.

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The US government's promise to give everyone affordable healthcare coverage and an armored vehicle in every law enforcement agency's garage continues to come to fruition. Sure, the healthcare thing may have hit multiple technical snags during rollout, but the assault-rifles-and-assault-vehicles part is swiftly turning every police chief and sheriff's domain into Kabul Lite™.

The latest recipient of a free MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle) is none other than Washington, Iowa, a town of 7,000 residents and a police force of 12.

Tuesday night, in a four to one decision, the Washington City Council approved Police Chief Greg Goodman's request for a "demilitarized" MRAP or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected troop transport...

MRAPs typically cost about $500,000. [Another article puts the prices at $733,000.] Washington Police are getting theirs for free under a U.S. Defense Department program that gives surplus military equipment to law enforcement. Washington Police said the only cost will be the transportation fee to bring vehicle up from Texas.

Nothing like a free armored personnel carrier, just the sort of thing a bustling metropolis of 7,000 needs, at least according to the police chief.

Chief Goodman calls the MRAP a big win for his officers’ safety.

I would think so, considering he can probably fit his entire police force into it. Goodman envisions it rolling up at a local school or workplace in the unlikely event that an "active shooter" situation develops. Not only that, but Chief Goodman apparently feels his department can no longer afford to be without this sort of protection based, again, on another outlying incident.

The chief said he saw the need for an MRAP in 2011, when Keokuk County Sgt. Eric Stein was shot and killed by a gunman. Goodman believes the armored vehicle might have allowed police to approach the home in safety from gunfire and use non-lethal means to subdue the shooter.

Eric Stein was shot during a four-hour standoff with a resident of Sigourney, Iowa, home to a little over 2,000 Iowans. Goodman seems to believe this sort of threat is persistent (even in Washington, Iowa), despite the fact that Stein became only the second peace officer killed in Iowa in nearly thirty years (September 1985).

But Washington now has an MRAP to deal with its crime "problem," which include three murders since 2001. Oddly, the grant money isn't going towards outfitting the town's 7,000 citizens with bulletproof vests, despite it apparently being at least three times as dangerous to be a member of the general public.

Robert Shellmyer, the lone "no" vote on the city council, raises a valid question about the "safety" the MRAP's acquisition supposedly brings with it.

"How do we know, having a six-wheel armored vehicle, it's going to be on the site when the bullet's shot that's going to do the injury?" Shellmyer said.

That's it. You don't know. So to be safe, you take it everywhere. The MRAP will likely be deployed to handle any situation where officers believe they might encounter resistance, which will turn every banal warrant service into a quasi-military operation. You don't get something like this and not use it. Chief Goodman says it will be "rarely used," but plans are already in place to contact other local law enforcement agencies to spread the MRAP around and, in the process, have these entities contribute to the upkeep.

Many people are wary of militarizing police forces, a number which includes a vast amount of law-abiding citizens. The government, however, seems perfectly willing to make law enforcement agencies virtually indistinguishable from the armed forces by giving away military guns, equipment and vehicles to any entity that's willing to check the box next to "active shooter" (or "terrorism") on the request form.

The vehicles and weaponry will be put into use frequently, contrary to the assertions of small town law enforcement officials, and this escalation -- during a time when crime rates continue to fall -- will push these same officials to misrepresent and exaggerate the dangers they face in order to keep playing their martial law dress-up game.



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The Albuquerque, New Mexico police department has been a mess for quite some time now. Recently, it has gained national attention for two seemingly unjustified shootings of New Mexico residents. This is in addition to the 37 people the police force has shot since 2010, with 23 confirmed kills. As Ed Krayewski at Reason points out, the APD has shot more people than the NYPD, despite policing a city sixteen times smaller.

The Department of Justice was already investigating the department before the two latest shootings. The first involved a homeless person "illegally" camping, an infraction apparently punishable by death in New Mexico. The officers claimed the man came at them with knives, but video clearly shows him surrendering and attempting to walk down to them before being hit with a concussion grenade, followed shortly by several bullets. As for the danger poised by the knives he was carrying, the 20-30 feet between him and the officers at the beginning of the video (not to mention the difference in altitude) makes this much less of a threat than the reports indicated.

While the city of Albuquerque was still digesting the news of this apparently unjustified shooting, the APD shot another person. The police claimed he fired at them (and they did recover a gun at the scene) but video shot by an onlooker appears to show the man holding something (gun or cellphone) to his own head before shots ring out and he drops to the ground.


These shootings sparked a series of increasingly confrontational protests against the police, as well as drawing the attention of Anonymous, which took down the APD website.

The release of the DOJ's report is certainly well-timed, if nothing else. Those who have seen the entire thing call it "scathing." The prepared remarks from the DOJ's Jocelyn Samuels are certainly damning enough.

Officers use deadly force in an unconstitutional manner. Our investigation looked at officer-involved shootings that resulted in fatalities from 2009 to 2012 and found that a majority of them were unreasonable and violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We found that officers used deadly force against people who did not pose an immediate threat of death or serious harm to officers or others, and against people who posed a threat only to themselves. In fact, sometimes it was the conduct of the officers themselves that heightened the danger and escalated the need to use force.

We found that officers use other types of less lethal force, especially electronic control weapons, or Tasers, in an unconstitutional manner. Our investigation looked beyond just the use of deadly force and found a significant number of improper uses of force in our review of over 200 force reports generated between 2009 and early 2013. We found that officers routinely fired their Tasers, which discharge 50,000 volts of electricity, against people who were passively resisting and non-threatening or who were unable to comply with orders due to their mental state. Indeed, we found that encounters between police officers and persons with mental illness or in crisis too frequently resulted in a use of force or a higher level of force than necessary.

The remarks run on for much longer, noting the steps that will be taken to put the APD back in compliance with the Constitution and temper its officers' tendency to apply as much force as possible in a majority of situations. However, Samuels also takes the time to pat the heads of a police force so out of control the government was forced to step in.

To the women and men of the Albuquerque Police Department, we know your work is difficult and that you face dangers, known and unknown, when you hit the streets every day to keep this city safe. We recognize that many of you are dedicated public servants who wear your badge with distinction. We do not intend our findings today to mean that you must needlessly risk your lives or safety. You must come home safely to your family and loved ones.

This is what Scott Greenfield refers to as the "First Rule of Policing:" make it home safe. Even the DOJ follows it, apparently. But this should be a goal, not a priority. The "dedicated officers" know they're putting themselves in a dangerous position by taking the job. This doesn't give them permission to do whatever it takes to save their own lives.

Firemen don't just walk away from a fire if it looks life-threatening. Soldiers aren't told they can indiscriminately open fire if things feel a bit sketchy. Airline pilots aren't encouraged to jettison planes full of people (or over populated areas) in order to assure they "come home safely." Any other person taking a job that's potentially life-threatening assumes the risks. Cops somehow don't. And they use this "rule" as a justification for swift, thoughtless reactions that result in teens carrying Wii controllers getting shot and homeless schizophrenics being beaten to death.

By adding this disclaimer, Samuels partially absolves the APD of all of its wrongdoing. "You did what you had to do to survive." That attitude isn't going to fix anything and as long as police officers are encouraged to view their own safety as paramount, excessive force will continue to be applied.

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Comcast is ratcheting up its charm offensive (or perhaps that's just offensive charm) in trying to get its attempted merger with Time Warner Cable approved. It's released its "public interest statement" and a blog post about how wonderful the merger will be. There are plenty of ridiculous claims in both, but let's focus on the key one -- Comcast's decision to completely fabricate "competitors" in various markets to argue that Comcast competes "in a dynamic, expanding and highly competitive marketplace." Of course, for anyone who actually knows what broadband options they have at home are, this statement is clearly bullshit. But Comcast is going to pretend otherwise, because it's Comcast. This chart really takes the cake: You see that? People in New York City have a wealth of competition according to, well, pure bullshit. Those "29 competitors" involve finding any company in the tri-state area that sorta, kinda offers something that if you squint and sneeze, you might sorta, kinda think maybe could be qualified as broadband if you were the last person on earth and really, really needed a barely working connection to the internet.

In the past, we've reasonably mocked the FCC's website listing broadband competitors, BroadbandMap.gov, because the results it gives are hilariously wrong and/or misleading. But Comcast's competitive claims take this to a new level entirely. Even if we rely on the National Broadband Map, I challenge anyone to find any spot in New York City where someone has anywhere close to 29 choices for actual broadband. Just for fun, I put in an address in the heart of midtown Manhattan, and it coughed up a (laughably misleading) claim of seven competitors. Except three of them (AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint) are just 3G/4G service over your phones with very low caps and limited speed. Those accounts are explicit that they're not to be used for regular home broadband. So they don't count. You have, of course, the traditional competitors: Time Warner Cable (who Comcast is trying to take over) and Verizon.

And who else? There's just Lightower Fiber Networks and Platinum Equity LLC. Platinum Equity is the private equity firm that bought out MegaPath, a DSL company that has been around (in various forms) for many years, but is only focused on business broadband. Ditto for Lightower Fiber, which only serves businesses. So, oh look, if you want true residential broadband, guess what: your choice is Time Warner Cable or Verizon. And, remember, Verizon is actively trying to get out of the wired broadband market, handing its users over to... their main cable competitors. So, it might not be left until your only real "choice" in the heart of midtown Manhattan is... Time Warner... I mean, Comcast.

So, um, what's that about 29 competitors?

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By now, it's well-known that James Clapper directly lied to Congress over a year ago when Senator Ron Wyden asked him whether or not the NSA collected any data at all on millions of Americans (a question he had sent Clapper a day earlier, so he wouldn't be surprised by it). Clapper insisted the NSA did not, something we now know is completely false. While Clapper first tried to dodge this lie by saying he thought Wyden was asking about a different program, and later claiming that this was the "least untruthful" answer, he eventually admitted that he lied and apologized to Senator Wyden. Back in December, however, a bunch of members of the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (the author of the PATRIOT Act) asked the DOJ to investigate Clapper for lying to Congress, noting that it is a criminal act to "knowingly and willingly" make any "materially false" statements to Congress.

So, how's that investigation going? Sensenbrenner is wondering that himself, because he received no response at all from the DOJ, leading him to feel the need to send yet another letter, asking whether the DOJ ever planned to get back to him.

On December 19 of last year, I wrote, along with six of my colleagues, to request that you investigate Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for his "erroneous" testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last year. Nearly three-and-a-half months later, we have not received a response or an update on the status of your investigation.

On March 12, 2013, Senator Ron Wyden asked Director Clapper, "Does the N.S.A. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Director Clapper answered "No, Sir." Wyden pressed, "It does not?" Clapper replied, "There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly."

Now declassified documents reveal that Director Clapper's testimony was false, and further, that he knew it was false when it was offered. Congress is currently considering proposals regarding intelligence reform. In considering these proposals, we need assurances that we can adequately conduct oversight following new legislation. Congressional oversight, however, depends on truthful testimony. Intelligence officials cannot be permitted to lie with impunity.

I respectfully request an update as soon as possible.

It's good to see Sensenbrenner following up, though I highly doubt that the DOJ will do a damn thing about it.

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We've been writing quite a bit about the supposedly devastating $40 million, 6,300 page Senate report that exposes the CIA torture program for being useless -- and (perhaps more importantly) describing in detail how the CIA lied about it to everyone, including Congress. There's been something of an ongoing fight about declassifying the document, with the general thinking being that the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee would likely support declassification, but the Republicans would not. But, as we'd pointed out, despite Intelligence Committee boss Senator Dianne Feinstein's condemnations of the CIA concerning the report, she still couldn't must up the courage to admit that what the CIA was doing was "torture." Instead, it was always the "detention and interrogation program." But, anyone who's looked at it knows exactly what it was: a torture program, almost certainly in violation of the Geneva conventions.

So it's great to see that a Republican Senator (remember, they were supposedly against declassification), Susan Collins, (along with Independent Senator Angus King) not only come out in favor of declassification but to directly call it torture:

We remain strongly opposed to the use of torture, believing that it is fundamentally contrary to American values. While we have some concerns about the process for developing the report, its findings lead us to conclude that some detainees were subjected to techniques that constituted torture. This inhumane and brutal treatment never should have occurred. Further, the report raises serious concerns about the CIA’s management of this program.

[....]

Torture is wrong, and we must make sure that the misconduct and the grave errors made in the CIA’s detention and interrogation program never happen again.

The CIA's torture program is a shameful moment in American history, and as a country, we cannot deal with it by pretending that it was anything other than what it was. We need to make it clear that it was torture and that it was wrong. Those responsible for the program should be held accountable. But they won't. Instead, the only person in jail... is the guy who blew the whistle on it. If we can't even admit that the torture program was a torture program, then we're bound to go down this road again.

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This is what happens when you ignore the public. Are you happy, We the People?

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:

Respond to all Whitehouse.gov petitions that get over 100k signatures within one month.

Whitehouse.gov petitions were intended to give the public a voice. The idea is that if more than 100,000 people all feel strongly enough about something to hand over their home address and personal email to the government and complete a nearly impossible CAPTCHA, then the President of the United States should have to respond to them. Because... democracy.

Here's the problem: there are dozens of Whitehouse.gov petitions that have received more than 100k signatures, but have gone months and even years without a response (1). That's not improving transparency, it's the same gov't spin we've always had. So what will it, Obama, hypocrisy or democracy? Sign!

It's a nice idea. There are petitions that appear to be permanently stuck to the administration's backburner while others that haven't even met the 100k signature threshold have been answered simply because the White House has a canned response on hand.

Others require more thoughtful answers or (would) force the administration to take a stance on controversial issues, something it clearly would rather not do. The average wait for a response has slipped to nearly 300 days. Among the petitions still being actively ignored by the White House are ones dealing with pardoning Edward Snowden and firing the attorney who handled Aaron Swartz's prosecution.

This new petition, created on April 1st, is clearly tongue-in-cheek. While there are some petitioners who mistake petitions for binding contracts, this probably isn't one of them. However, it does go meta on the issue, potentially putting the administration in the position of agreeing to address petitions in a timely fashion. This could prove uncomfortable for the White House since it appears it would rather ignore certain petitions until the White House changes hands in 2016.

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Here's the sort of thing that results when bad behavior is greeted with worse behavior.

The bad behavior is production companies seeking tax breaks. Politicians love to grant these tax breaks because a) they like having celebrities around and b) they've bought into the perception that somehow shooting a movie or TV series in town is a net fiscal gain for the community. Generally speaking, the first is almost always true and the latter is seldom ever true. A 2010 Tax Foundation study found that most cities granting tax breaks make back less than $0.20 per dollar "invested."

Media Rights Capital, the company behind Netflix hit "House of Cards," has already collected $26.6 million from the state of Maryland. But it isn't enough.

It began late last month when Charlie Goldstein, the senior vice president of Media Rights Capital, sent a letter to Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, threatening to leave the state if the show was not provided with millions of dollars more in tax credits for which it believes it should qualify.

In the letter, Goldstein wrote that the company would "break down [their] stage, sets and offices and set up in another state."

This is standard operating procedure for studios -- playing cities and states off each other in hopes of obtaining perpetually escalating tax breaks in exchange for a steadily diminishing ROI on taxpayer funds. Totally the sort of thing the state should have expected when it started handing out free money.

The response, however, was even worse. Rather than calling the studio's bluff and helping it pack its bags, a legislator chose to do this:

Delegate Bill Frick introduced an amendment to a budget bill that would allow Maryland to seize the production company's property under eminent domain in the event it leaves the state.

Of all the wrong things legislators have ever done, eminent domain is one of the very worst. Bill Frick has an excuse, however.

Frick said the move was inspired by the style of politics depicted on "House of Cards" and by the show's ruthless protagonist, Frank Underwood, who is played by Kevin Spacey. He told Business Insider, he thought, "How would Frank Underwood respond?" Frick said his eminent domain plan was the "most dramatic" thing he could think of to counter MRC's threat.

In what will surely be recorded in the legislative history books as a "Frick move," a legislator has managed to outdo the studio in terms of sheer, manipulative nastiness. Yes, Frick would do Frank Underwood proud, but is that what we really want from our legislators?


Frick's amendment doesn't specifically name the studio but its cutoff line of $10 million or more in tax breaks leaves "House of Cards" stranded on an island made of taxpayer funds. It also puts the legislator in the rare position of openly espousing Marx's calls for the State to seize the means of production from the Elite, something that plays better in hazy dorm rooms than in a system where corporations have been determined to be "people."

While Frick's amendment passed a voice vote in the House of Delegates, the state Senate approved its own legislation -- which increases the tax credits available to companies -- with a 45-1 vote. Either way this pans out, the taxpayers will lose -- whether they're footing the bill for more tax breaks that won't create long-term wealth, or watching their representatives carve a legislative toehold for the future seizure of certain businesses.

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Throughout the whole Ed Snowden ordeal, defenders of the NSA and the surveillance state keep insisting that revealing even the slightest details of the NSA's capabilities help our enemies "win" because they'll learn how to avoid the surveillance. As such, they've been wringing their hands about how any revelation of what the NSA is up to will cause immense damage. Just recently, the NSA pressed hard on the Washington Post not to reveal the name of the country where the NSA is currently recording every single phone call. The Washington Post agreed to withhold this information -- a decision that some have challenged.

However, barely a week later, in a glowing profile by the LA Times of now-retired NSA boss Keith Alexander, his former number two guy at the NSA, Chris Inglis, who also just retired, breezily admits to the depth of the NSA's surveillance capabilities in Iraq, information that prior to this had not been public:

In Iraq, for example, the National Security Agency went from intercepting only about half of enemy signals and taking hours to process them to being able to collect, sort and make available every Iraqi email, text message and phone-location signal in real time, said John "Chris" Inglis, who recently retired as the NSA's top civilian.

The entire article is a weak (and grossly transparent) attempt to recast General Keith Alexander's legacy -- and thus it seems that Inglis, Alexander and the NSA have no problem at all revealing the details of its capabilities in Iraq when the entire purpose in doing so is an attempt to show how good Alexander was for the NSA. Rest assured, however, had the same bit of information come out from one of the reporters with access to the Snowden documents, the NSA and all its defenders would be screaming as loud as possible about how the publication of such information would cost lives and create immense damage to American interests while aiding our enemies. Yet, apparently, it's all fine and dandy to reveal such information... when it's part of the effort to canonize the NSA retired leader.

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It's been nearly five years since we wrote about a DOJ investigation into collusive activity between a number of technology giants, in which the companies basically agreed not to poach employees from one another in an effort to keep salaries and employee turnover down. As the details have come out over the years, they've looked worse and worse, with Steve Jobs acting as sort of a ring leader -- or really more of a mob boss -- threatening retaliation (via patent infringement lawsuits) against companies that didn't obey the "rules." It's one thing to want to be careful about hiring practices to avoid angering a partner, but it's quite another to set up an official agreed-upon policy between a bunch of companies not to go after certain employees.

While some companies have already settled (and a few others likely involved in the agreements have so far escaped lawsuits), Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel have been trying to get a class action lawsuit built off of the DOJ's efforts thrown out. That effort failed on Friday, meaning that it's likely that these four remaining companies will try to work out a settlement, rather than go through a full trial.

As we've discussed for years, part of what actually made Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is the ease with which employees could switch jobs, often between competitors. Multiple studies have made it clear that greater job switching within an innovative industry is actually much better for that entire industry. With job shifting comes important cross-fertilization of ideas, allowing the bigger breakthroughs to happen faster, opening up new opportunities. Without that kind of job shifting, knowledge gets stuffed into silos, and overall innovation gets held back and stymied. In fact, if you look at the success of basically all four of the companies in this lawsuit, you can point to evidence of how the easy shifting of jobs was a key part of important breakthroughs that created tremendous opportunities and innovations (hell, two of the three members of Intel's founding team were once part of the traitorous eight, who left Shockley Semiconductor to form Fairchild Semiconductor -- only to go on to form Intel, AMD and a bunch of others). Job hopping, poaching employees and the like often get a bad reputation, but the research is pretty clear that it was a key factor (according to some, the key factor) in allowing Silicon Valley to become a hub of innovation.

Hopefully, the end result of the DOJ efforts and these class action lawsuits is to maintain an innovation economy where job hopping and information sharing is empowered, rather than hindered.

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