Brindle

Recording a police officer in public isn't a crime. Well, it isn't anything a cop can cite or arrest you for doing. Instead, a bunch of vague infractions are listed in hopes that something will stick and deter future citizen recordings.

Shawn Randall Thomas, a New York photographer, was approached by NYPD officer Efrain Rojas when he noticed Thomas filming another officer's interaction with a turnstile jumper in a subway station. "Approached" is putting it mildly. Rojas confronted Thomas and got physical when the photographer refused to stop filming. (via Techdirt reader Tony Loro)

A New York City cop beat up and arrested a man for video recording him inside a subway station from 30 feet away Saturday night, walking up to him and getting in his face all while claiming the man was invading his personal space…

Thomas also obtained footage from another man who had recorded Rojas with his knees on Thomas’ back as he lay face down on the sidewalk just outside the sub station, seconds after Rojas had bashed his face into the pavement, busting his lip.

The injury was so bad that they had to transport him to the hospital twice during his 24-hour incarceration where doctors described him as a victim of assault.

As if the impromptu "use of force" wasn't enough, Thomas was also charged with the following:

[Thomas] is still facing charges of resisting arrest, trespassing, disorderly conduct and obstructing government…

Here's the video:

Note that Rojas had to come over to where Thomas was filming (nearly 30 feet away) in order to be "obstructed." Note also that Thomas was filming in a public location, where it's almost impossible to "trespass." And note that the de rigueur "resisting arrest" is included only because Thomas didn't apply his own handcuffs, hoof it to the nearest cruiser and slide into the back seat.

Here's the description of "resisting arrest" from the arrest report itself:

Deponent further states that, at the above time and place, defendant did resist a lawful arrest by crossing defendants' arm across defendant's chest while deponent attempted to place defendant in handcuffs.

But it gets worse. Officer Rojas apparently grabbed Thomas' cellphone and either deleted the footage or removed the battery in order to prevent Thomas from filming any further. (PINAC's account of this event mentions "deletion" and Thomas using Recuva to recover the deleted footage, but the description of events only says Rojas took Thomas' phone and pocketed the battery.) Thomas then took out his backup phone (a Blackberry) and tried to continue filming, at which point Rojas "knocked the phone out of [Thomas'] hand" and slammed him to the ground.

Either way, Rojas made an effort to prevent any further filming. The incident report filed by Rojas makes no mention of the fact that he seized a cellphone and either deleted footage or seized the phone's battery. He also undermines the charge of trespassing by noting the area where Thomas was filming was public, which is contrary to Rojas' filmed assertion that Thomas was "violating" his "personal space."

Apparently, Rojas wasn't done with feeling "violated" by Thomas' filming. According to PINAC's Facebook page, Officer Rojas filed a privacy complaint asking YouTube to remove the video. YouTube, fortunately, turned his request down, which means that Rojas will now have to deal with a recording that contradicts (or severely weakens) many of the claims he made in his sworn statements (the arrest report).

As PINAC and Thomas point out, the obstruction charge is especially baseless, given Thomas' distance from the officers (approx. 30 feet compared to the report's "close proximity") and the fact that the entire situation appears to be completely under control by the time Officer Rojas arrives. Rojas seems to be the only cop there who viewed Thomas and his camera as somehow interfering with police business. Rojas then abandons his "partner" -- who is presumably dealing with an actual criminal -- solely to harass someone with a camera. If nothing else, Rojas has problems with prioritizing, giving the non-criminal (and protected) act of filming precedence over an actual law enforcement work.

Officer Rojas had multiple paths to take when he noticed a citizen filming him performing his public duties in a public place. Unfortunately, he decided to take the well-worn path and violate the rights of the photographer. And like many others, this decision has done nothing more than heap more negative publicity on the police department and the officer involved. The correct response -- ignore it and do your job -- still remains largely untested.

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There's not a whole lot that's new about Samsung's Galaxy Gear 2. It's take two of a product that wasn't that great on the first go-round. But underneath, the Gear 2 isn't just another gadget; it's a defiant shot across Google's bow. It's a trial run where Samsung can practice seceding from the world of Android.

Read more...

The federal judge handling the lawsuit seeking an injunction against the NYPD's pervasive surveillance of Muslims appears to have taken a page from Rep. Mike Rogers' book. Judge William Martini has dismissed the case, stating that the only reason the plaintiffs claimed their rights were being violated is because someone told them their rights were being violated.

Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel sums it up:

The core of his logic is that Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo have injured NYC’s Muslim community by providing them proof of the spying targeted at them.

From the ruling itself:

None of the Plaintiffs’ injuries arose until after the Associated Press released unredacted, confidential NYPD documents and articles expressing its own interpretation of those documents. Nowhere in the Complaint do Plaintiffs allege that they suffered harm prior to the unauthorized release of the documents by the Associated Press. This confirms that Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries flow from the Associated Press’s unauthorized disclosure of the documents. The harms are not “fairly traceable” to any act of surveillance.

Your rights aren't violated until you know they've been violated. And even then, knowing they've been violated apparently doesn't give you standing to pursue this claim, at least not according to Judge Martini.

Martini takes time to lay into the acts of journalism that led to this suit being filed, pointing out that the AP's reporters "covertly" obtained access to NYPD documents, before (shock!) publishing them (without authorization) along with their "interpretation" of the confidential papers. If these two reporters would have minded their own business, no one would have known their rights were being violated and Judge Martini wouldn't have been inconvenienced by having to consider the plaintiffs' claims.

Martini's reasoning is just as flawed as Rogers', but he does Rogers one better by detailing the sort of pervasive surveillance he finds to be perfectly non-rights-violating. Back to Wheeler:

Martini said all this spying was cool because it was designed to find Muslim terrorists hiding among Muslims...

As I emphasized here, when it was first reported, NYPD wasn’t hunting for Muslim terrorists in places where the 9/11 terrorists were known to hang out — cheap hotels, gyms, cybercafes, and a bunch of other businesses catering to anonymity rather than Muslims. Rather, the NYPD was hunting terrorists in schools in Newark, including the one above teaching girls in fifth to twelfth grade, and another teaching first through fourth graders.

The NYPD was hunting terrorists in a girls school.

The plaintiffs' expressed concerns that past surveillance efforts could negatively affect their futures are waved away for being speculative rather than "provable." This is more the law in general rather than Martini's interpretation, but up until the AP exposed the documents, the NYPD's surveillance programs were also more speculative than provable. And given recent history, how much "speculation" is actually being deployed here?

Plaintiffs Syed Hassan, Soofia Tahir, and Zaimah Abdur-Rahim fear that being the subjects of surveillance will interfere with their careers. Hassan is a U.S. Soldier and Tahir is expecting to begin a career in international social work. Both plaintiffs allege that career advancement will require background checks and security clearances. Both allege that their affiliations with organizations falsely labeled as “threats” will hinder their career advancement.

Who knows what sort of flags the NYPD's surveillance will raise on background checks, or whether anything noted by the department is actually merited? The NYPD's informants have been known to inflate claims and flat out make stuff up just to meet the expectations of the Demographics Unit. Simply putting their names into the system could create problems for the claimants. Just ask Dr. Ibrahim, who spent a decade on the TSA's "no fly" list because of an FBI agent's clerical error.

But take away all the other questionable parts of Martini's decision and we're still left with this: a federal judge telling plaintiffs their rights weren't violated until the program was exposed, and even then, actually weren't violated.

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Provo, Utah, Austin, Texas and Kansas City, Missouri aren’t the only two places in America Google’s interested in launching Fiber. The company has revealed plans to explore bringing the high-speed broadband and TV service to nine new metropolitan areas, for a total of 34 new cities in all. The list is as follows:

• Portland, Oregon
• San Jose, California
• Phoenix, Arizona
• Atlanta, Georgia
• Nashville, Tennessee
• San Antonio, Texas
• Salt Lake City, Utah
• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

Google has the full list of cities right here in case you’re wondering if you’re in one of the surrounding areas being thrown into the hat. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can expect to wake up tomorrow and sign up for someone to come to your home and juice you up with all those fiber optics.

 

Google reminds us that planning and negotiations with the cities take quite a while, as does the actual installation of service. A lot goes into making sure proper infrastructure is built in a way that won’t interrupt the day-to-day lives of those in the area.

Furthermore, we’re also warned that cities on this list doesn’t guarantee a rollout. A lot has to happen between now and the end of the year, when Google expects to know more about which exact cities will be getting the green light. Still, Google says even if a city doesn’t ultimately make it, everyone will have been better off going through the motions.

More than anything, they will have at least been satisfied with the opportunity to get these people to start thinking about how they can upgrade their infrastructure and deliver the type of network that today’s information-driven world demands. You can read about all of the specifics over at the source link.

[via Google]

And so the countdown to Google I/O 2014 officially begins. Android lead Sundar Pichai has revealed the official dates the developer conference will begin via this Google+ page. Mark you calendars, everyone: June 25th – 26th in San Francisco, CA at the Moscone Center.

Pichai mentions that, like previous years, they’ll be live streaming many of the even (as well as the sessions) via the I/O Extended community around the world. We know, it’s hard to get worked up over the event when the vast majority of you aren’t developers and don’t have a shot at attending but wait…

Pichai also mentioned that they’ll be handling registration a bit different this year, opening up the conference to anyone who wants to attend. Google didn’t mention what you will need to qualify, but did says they’d be choosing “randomly selected applicants.”

Say what?

[Google+]

This originally was a story I only mentioned in passing while discussing the law enforcement community's growing embrace of no-knock warrants.

On December 19, eight members of Texas’s Burleson County Sheriff’s Department banged open the door of the double-wide trailer rented by 28-year-old Henry Magee and his girlfriend. It was between five and six AM and the deputies, who were there to search for marijuana and stolen weapons, set off at least two flashbang grenades in an attempt to surprise and disorient Magee, their suspect. The leader of the team, Sergeant Adam Sowders, a seven-year veteran of the department, had requested the warrant be “no-knock,” meaning the police could enter the residence without announcing themselves. But it was possibly do to the confusion caused by the sudden entrance of the cops that led to Magee opening fire with a semi-automatic weapon and hitting Sowders. The cop later died, and Magee has been charged with capital murder, which can bring the death penalty in Texas.

A squad of officers smash through a person's door (possibly unannounced) pre-dawn and are greeted by gunfire. The surprising thing is that this doesn't happen more often, especially in a state like Texas, where a man's home is often his well-armed castle. But the prosecutor didn't see the deputy's fault in this incident and pursued capital murder charges. Keep in mind, part of what was being sought in the raid was an ultra-dangerous drug that is currently legal in two states. Also keep in mind that the guns they found weren't stolen, but because of the marijuana Magee possessed, the previously legal weapons were now illegal.

In a surprising decision, a Texas grand jury has decided not to indict Henry Magee on capital murder charges.

"This was a terrible tragedy that a deputy sheriff was killed, but Hank Magee believed that he and his pregnant girlfriend were being robbed," Magee's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, told A.P. "He did what a lot of people would have done. He defended himself and his girlfriend and his home."

DeGuerin, a well-known defense attorney who has been practicing for half a century, said "he could not immediately remember another example of a Texas grand jury declining to indict a defendant in the death of a law enforcement officer."

The district attorney who pursued the capital murder charges against Magee even admitted the evidence against him wasn't solid.

"I believe the evidence also shows that an announcement was made," Renken said. "However, there is not enough evidence that Mr. Magee knew that day that Peace Officers were entering his home."

Despite this lack of evidence, Julie Renken went ahead and pursued capital murder charges in front of a grand jury, an entity most notable for its willingness to "indict a ham sandwich." The fact that Magee was able to walk away from that charge still remains the exception to the rule. As far as grand juries go, indicting is what they do best. They have it down to a science, as Gideon at A Public Defender points out.

During a single four-hour workday last week, a Mecklenburg County grand jury heard 276 cases and handed down 276 indictments.

That means the 18 jurors heard evidence, asked questions, weighed whether the charges merit a trial, then voted on the indictments – all at the average rate of one case every 52 seconds.

276 indictments, all in under a half-day. Not a single one of the 276 accused were found not guilty. This is the grand jury system running on all cylinders.

You read something like that and you just have to laugh. You have to laugh because it’s so improbable and so absurd that it must be true and that it can only happen here, in these United States of America, the best country in the world with the best justice system in the world, because by God, we hate criminals.

A grand jury rings up a 276-0 shutout in less time than it takes the average officer worker to get to their lunch break, but when people question whether a true justice system should be giving this much power to an entity that only hears one side of the case (the prosecution's), the supporters point out the rarities, like the one above, that supposedly prove the system (and its 52-second indictments) works.

The biggest obstacle to curbing grand juries (much less eliminating them) is the government itself.

The appeal of the grand jury to the government is obvious: you get to present your allegations to a group of civilians who aren’t in any way equipped to determine the veracity of the charges and who are most likely to side with you.

If that description doesn't seem too far removed from the rubber stamp of the FISA court with its non-adversarial approach, there's a good reason for that. Political figures harness voters by vowing to be tough on crime -- and there's no greater crime than terrorism. The best way to pitch a shutout and satisfy constituents demanding a "safer" country/city/neighborhood is to remove the batter from the equation.

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As we've noted plenty of times in the past, works produced by the federal government are not subject to copyright. However, they are (almost inexplicably) subject to both patent and trademark protection, where those things apply. A little while back, Jim Gourley over at Foreign Policy looked into how the Pentagon has gone trademark slap happy over the last five years or so (the headline of the article falsely implies that it has also gone copyright happy, despite barely mentioning copyright, and in the one spot it does, totally confusing copyright and trademarks).

The program began in 2007 when the Defense Department issued a directive calling for the component services to establish a branding and trademark licensing office, which would answer to the DOD level through a separate office working for the undersecretary of defense for public affairs. Holding to its tradition of being first in the fight, the Marines were the most aggressive in the early going. In 2009, they began contacting large-scale print-on-demand t-shirt suppliers Zazzle and CafePress. It immediately shut down several small online retailers of military-themed hats and shirts. It even came up with rules applying to USMC-themed stuff sold on Etsy.

The other services quickly caught up. Between 2007 and 2011, sales of officially-licensed U.S. Army merchandise increased from $5 million to $50 million

It does note that the military seems to realize that going after small retailers who are selling things face-to-face isn't wise, because "they're probably engaging in healthy patriotism." But, anyone else may be facing a bill from the Defense Department -- an organization that probably has the world's largest budget already. This should raise serious questions about why the US government should be granted trademarks in the first place. Yes, you could argue that the Defense Department doesn't want "shoddy" military merchandise out there, but is that really something the government needs to be concerned about? The US government isn't supposed to be a commercial enterprise. It could easily highlight and focus on "official" military gear to distinguish it from unofficial gear, without having to show up and force everyone else selling military-themed t-shirts that they need to kick back an extra "licensing" fee on top of any taxes they already have to pay.

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The War on Drugs is increasingly being fought in the courtrooms, but not in the way drug warriors prefer. A multimillion dollar lawsuit has been filed for civil rights violations, use of excessive force and wrongful death by the wife (Tonya Pate) of Eugene Mallory, who was 80 years old at the time sheriff's deputies ended his life back in 2011.

The lawsuit details the actions taken by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Dept., along with its alleged coverup of its misconduct proceeding and following the incident that saw Mallory shot six times as he was lying in bed. According to sheriff's deputies, the decision to enter Mallory's trailer was justified by Detective Toucan Sam Patrick Hobbs, who claimed he smelled "chemicals" while "downwind." This was further justified by an anonymous tip that Mallory was supposedly manufacturing meth on the premises. No spoiler alert is really necessary as I'm sure we can see where this is going. No meth or meth manufacturing equipment/chemicals were found. However, deputies did claim to find "marijuana and marijuana-growing equipment" on another part of the property.

But, as Reason points out, there were discrepancies between the deputies' first statement and the one released after they listened to the audio recording of the incident.

Deputies approached the house, and what happened next is where things get murky. The deputies said they announced their presence upon entering and were met in the hallway by the 80-year-old man, wielding a gun and stumbling towards them. [Note: I can't find any confirmation that the deputies ever made this particular statement.] The deputies later changed the story when the massive bloodstains on Mallory's mattress indicated to investigators that he'd most likely been in bed at the time of the shooting. Investigators also found that an audio recording of the incident revealed a discrepancy in the deputies' original narrative:

Before listening to the audio recording, [Sgt. John] Bones believed that he told Mallory to "Drop the gun" prior to the shooting. The recording revealed, however, that his commands to "Drop the gun" occurred immediately after the shooting.

The rest of the case, including the warrant and the anonymous tip, seem to be at least as suspect as the changing narrative, according to the allegations put forth in the filing. It doesn't take long for Pate's lawyer to start nailing the defendants (of which there are more than 50) to the wall. The second paragraph of the first cause of action runs as follows.

On or about June 25, 2013, in the County of Los Angeles, State of California, HOBBS filed with the Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles, his sworn affidavit and statement attesting to certain facts in support of a search warrant for the residence and real property of DECEDENT located at 36644 117th Street East, Littlerock, County of Los Angeles, State of California. At all times stated herein, HOBBS either lied under oath making these representations, knowing that the material facts he stated to the court were false or were likely untrue, or were made by him with a reckless disregard for the truth, with the further intent to deceive the court and to intentionally deprive DECEDENT and Plaintiff of their constitutional rights under the law.

What did Hobbs allegedly lie about? Well, Mallory's supposed "clandestine" meth lab (which was allegedly used to "continuously manufacture" the drug) for one thing. Hobbs used an anonymous tip and his expert nostrils to make this call, both of which were proven wrong after Mallory had six bullets in him. Hobbs apparently felt Mallory had the ability to whip up a meth lab on the fly, as the filing notes that the property itself had been inspected several times by the LA Sheriff's Dept. itself, along with code enforcement officers, all without ever turning up evidence of drug manufacturing or storage.

The suit also alleges that the "secret informant" was unreliable, if he or she even existed at all. (The lawsuit then goes on to confusingly claim this possibly nonexistent informant "had reason to lie and fabricate false information about [Mallory].")

Further on, Pate's lawyer calls out the LA Sheriff's Dept. (of which a total of 50 'John Doe' officers are listed as defendants, which apparently was the total number of responding officers post-shooting) for failing to properly train its officers or even curtail their misconduct.

Failure to provide adequate discipline, training, control, and supervision to peace officers who themselves have either a propensity for lying and fabrication of evidence, for violence or a history of violence, and for engagement in other unconstitutional actions.

This isn't far from the truth. Reason points out the department has been "plagued by prison abuse scandals, questionable hiring practices, and allegations of racial profiling and harassment in recent years."

The lawsuit also alleges that Mallory was "deliberately" denied prompt medical care by sheriff's deputies. Also of concern is the fact that Pate was unable to obtain an independent autopsy (although the county coroner's declaration that Mallory died from "multiple gunshot wounds" would seem to be accurate), as the county chose to contact out-of-state relatives rather than Pate, Mallory's wife, and cremated his body at their request.

This is America's drug war: a man killed in the pursuit of a drug manufacturing operation that didn't exist. After the news first hit, the sheriff's department used the discovery of marijuana as justification for its actions -- even though the failure to find the drug it was actually searching for turned both the anonymous tipster and Detective Hobbs' nose into liars.

Here are the statements made directly after the shooting.

During the June raid, Mallory raised a semi-automatic handgun in response to deputies, who fired on him, the sheriff’s department said at the time. Two guns were recovered at the scene, according to sheriff’s department spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Using the word "semi-automatic" makes the handgun sound more threatening, despite the fact that the majority of pistols sold are semi-automatic.

“Age does not preclude somebody from being aggressive toward deputies,” Whitmore said. “The lesson here is… don’t pull a gun on a deputy.”

That narrative is still being disputed.

Marijuana was found on another part of the property where Tonya’s lived, she said.

“There was a drug operation that was certainly going on in this house,” Whitmore said.

But not the drug operation anyone was looking for and not the drug operation cited by Hobb's nostrils and the department didn't release any specifics on what was recovered or how much, which means it could have been nothing more than a couple of potted plants and a grow lamp ("marijuana and marijuana-growing equipment"). It couldn't have been much of a "drug operation" because not a single person who was detained and questioned following the incident was arrested or charged.

There were no other occupants in the residence at the time of the shooting, but several residents at the multi-unit property were detained for questioning in relation to the deputy-involved shooting, Gomez said. All residents were later released.

Pin it on the dead guy, whatever they actually found. So, the Drug War rolls on, costing citizens billions of dollars, some of it in the form of lawsuit settlements. A dangerous 80-year-old alleged meth manufacturer was taken out, making the world a safer place, because eventual, alleged marijuana growers are apparently equally as dangerous and undeserving of due process.

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Last Spring, wireless carriers and the government jointly announced that they'd be collaborating on building a new nationwide database to track stolen phones (specifically the IMEI number). The goal was to reduce the time that stolen phones remain useful, thereby drying up the market for stolen phones and reducing the ability of criminals to use the devices to dodge surveillance. The move came after AT&T was sued for not doing enough to thwart cellphone theft, the lawsuit alleging AT&T was intentionally lax on anti-theft practices because stolen phone re-activations were too profitable. After regulator pressure, AT&T launched new stolen device blocking tools and re-vamped their website with security tips.

Law enforcement has complained that none of these efforts have done much to stop cell theft and resale, in large part because phones stolen here are simply taken overseas and used there. This in turn prompted a push for new "kill switch" legislation in both New York and most recently San Francisco, in addition to a new bill proposed by Senator Amy Klobuchar we discussed last month. While perhaps well-intentioned, all of the bills have one thing in common: they forget that if you can kill your phone remotely, so then can governments, hackers, and anybody else.

Those concerns are part of the reason cell carriers oppose kill switch legislation (again, that and they profit off of re-activations and new plans), and the worries shouldn't be taken lightly. There's a long, long list of examples where remote or artificial termination technology (Monsanto's wonderful scientific advancements are the first to come to mind) isn't a particularly great idea. Information Week tries to hash through some of these to illustrate the dangers of the concept and its contribution to a broader surveillance state, where the control over your personal devices could become an illusion and institutionalized control becomes a threat:

"Mandatory phone kill switches will hasten the arrival of the Surveillance of Everything, an unavoidable consequence of the so-called Internet of Things. Using technology to extend the reach of property rights make as much sense for other objects as it does for phones. But in so doing, individual property rights mingle with social mores and government prerogatives. Nothing is truly yours on someone else's network....Consider a recent Google patent application, "System and Method for Controlling Mobile Device Operation," which describes research to help in "correcting occasional human error," such as when phones have not been silenced in a movie theater.

The thing about kill switches is that they're a manifestation of digital rights management. In the hands of individuals, perhaps they're a good idea. But they won't remain in the hands of individuals. They will be used by companies, organizations, and governments, too. And even when people believe they have control of their kill switches, authorities and hackers can be expected to prove otherwise."

Granted governments could still shut down the BART network on protesters (one of the first examples the author gives) or kill Internet access in Egypt without necessarily needing a kill switch. A gifted hacker might also be able to remotely brick your current phone. But why would you want to make it any easier? There's countless other ways to combat cell phone theft that doesn't involve making an entire industry considerably less secure.

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Note: Security cam footage of the hole appearing after the jump. At 5:44AM Wednesday morning a sinkhole opened underneath part of the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and swallowed eight cars, at least two of which are valued over $1-million apiece. Wow -- expensive meal, Earth!

The affected 'Vettes include a 1962 model, a 1984 Corvette pace car, the millionth-Corvette ever built (a 1992 C4 model), a 1993 Corvette 40th Anniversary Edition, a 2001 Corvette Z06, and the 1.5 millionth Corvette ever built, a 2009 C6. Two GM-owned Corvettes on loan to the museum were also damaged, including the blue 2009 Corvette ZR1, and a 1993 Corvette ZR-1 Spyder.

Man, if I were there I would have punched that sinkhole right in the mouth. "You can't punch sinkholes." And I would have made some VERY disparaging remarks about its family. Something like, I heard your mom was a volcano! "That doesn't even make any sense." It doesn't have to, sinkholes aren't that smart. As long as I SAY it mean, it will BE mean. Keep going for a couple more pictures and the security cam footage, and a couple videos of the aftermath including some R/C helicopter footage. Thanks to Ryan L and BBQ, who agree the only museum appropriate for a sinkhole to appear is at the museum of natural disasters.

So apparently Facebook now has 56 different custom gender options selectable via an autocomplete option under the gender tab. Unsurprisingly, they still don't have the one I'm looking for. The whole list:

Agender, Androgyne, Androgynous, Bigender, Cis, Cisgender, Cis Female, Cis Male, Cis Man, Cis Woman, Cisgender Female, Cisgender Male, Cisgender Man, Cisgender Woman, Female to Male, FTM, Gender Fluid, Gender Nonconforming, Gender Questioning, Gender Variant, Genderqueer, Intersex, Male to Female, MTF, Neither, Neutrois, Non-binary, Other, Pangender, Trans, Trans*, Trans Female, Trans* Female, Trans Male, Trans* Male, Trans Man, Trans* Man, Trans Person, Trans* Person, Trans Woman, Trans* Woman, Transfeminine, Transgender, Transgender Female, Transgender Male, Transgender Man, Transgender Person, Transgender Woman, Transmasculine, Transsexual, Transsexual Female, Transsexual Male, Transsexual Man, Transsexual Person, Transsexual Woman, Two-Spirit

So, did Facebook add the other options because they realize its users are all unique like snowflakes and might not identify their gender as a simple male or female? Or -- OR -- to better target advertising? Sadly, I think we all know the answer here. Thanks to E V I L A R E S, who's so evil it's become his gender.

This is the LEGO Big Bang theory cast and apartment designed by LEGOManiacs Alatariel and GlenBricker (of LEGO X-Men Mansion fame). It's up for voting on the LEGO Cuuso website so if you're a fan of The Big Bang Theory (my parents are) and LEGO, go vote for it. Will it get made? I doubt LEGO will go for it, but don't let that stop you from trying. The odds of winning the grand prize on the lotto scratcher I play is only 1 in 2,400,000 but that doesn't stop me from throwing $80 at it every day. "You're an idiot." No, I just have faith. "You're an idiot." No, I just have a gambling problem. So -- Vegas this weekend or what? You know what the best part about Vegas weekends are? You don't have to pay for a hotel if you can stay awake for three days. Keep going for a couple more pictures, including the minifigs. Thanks to Glen himself, who is clearly skilled in the art of LEGO. Me? I'm still trying to figure out if I have any skills.

The University of California, Berkeley, has been authorised by Alcatel-Lucent to release all Plan 9 software previously governed by the Lucent Public License, Version 1.02 under the GNU General Public License, Version 2. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License. I never really dove too deep into Plan 9, but it has always fascinated me. I think it's time to learn more - and I suggest you do so too. It's weekend, after all, right?

The Massachusetts Supreme Court has restored a bit of its citizens' Fourth Amendment rights, even if the decision finding that law enforcement needs a warrant to obtain cellphone location data specifically doesn't address that. (via How Appealing)

The Supreme Judicial Court, ruling in a case with echoes of the controversy over the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, said a warrant is required under the Massachusetts constitution protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

"It's an enormous victory for everybody in Massachusetts who cares about privacy,” said Matthew Segal, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which served as appellate counsel for the suspect in the case, Shabazz Augustine, who was being investigated in the 2004 homicide of his girlfriend, Julaine Jules of Malden…

In 5-2 ruling issued Tuesday, the state's highest court clarified the issues, providing both a clear definition of the privacy of phone records in the digital age, and also affording prosecutors a road map to using those records in their case against Augustine.

The court said it was possible that if the data covered only a short period, then obtaining the records under the federal Stored Communications Act without a search warrant might be acceptable. But it said it was clear that in Augustine's case, in which two weeks of data was obtained, the period was too long.

This was determined to be a violation of the state's constitution. The majority decision notes that cell site location information (CSLI) is much more revealing than the Third Party Doctrine anticipated. The court notes that CSLI is more intrusive than vehicular GPS tracking.

Indeed, as the defendant contends, because of the nature of cellular telephone use and technology, there is a strong argument that CSLI raises even greater privacy concerns than a GPS tracking device. In contrast to such a device attached to a vehicle, [...] because a cellular telephone is carried on the person of its user, it tracks the user's location far beyond the limitations of where a car can travel. See, e.g., United States vs. Powell, U.S. Dist. Ct., No. 12-cr-20052 (E.D. Mich. May 3, 2013) ("There are practical limits on where a GPS tracking device attached [to] a person's vehicle may go. A [cellular telephone], on the other hand, is usually carried with a person wherever they go"). As a result, CSLI clearly has the potential to track a cellular telephone user's location in constitutionally protected areas.

The court references the infamous pen register/trap and trace decision (Smith v. Maryland) that has served as the basis for warrantless access to phone records for everyone from local law enforcement to the NSA. But unlike FISA Judge Kollar-Kotelly's broad reading in favor of the Section 215 program, this court finds that the narrow scope of the original decision (outbound and incoming phone calls) doesn't stretch quite far enough to cover long-term warrantless access to a person's whereabouts as provided by CSLI.

CSLI is purely a function and product of cellular telephone technology, created by the provider's system network at the time that a cellular telephone call connects to a cell site. And at least with respect to calls received but not answered, this information would be unknown and unknowable to the telephone user in advance -- or probably at any time until he or she receives a copy of the CSLI record itself. Moreover, it is of course the case that CSLI has no connection at all to the reason people use cellular telephones. See Earls, 214 N.J. at 587 ("People buy [cellular telephones] to communicate with others, to use the Internet, and for a growing number of other reasons. But no one buys a [cellular telephone] to share detailed information about their whereabouts with the police").

Even if cellphones are handy tracking devices, it's really not considered a "selling point." The expectation of privacy in location data may have been eviscerated by an outdated decision (1979's Smith v. Maryland) and an aggressive application of the Third Party Doctrine, but the state Supreme Court sees no reason to continue ignoring the reality of today's cellphone-inundated world simply because that case's implications haven't been recently examined by the US Supreme Court.

But the court does seems to slip up when attempting to find the point when a constitutional search becomes an unconstitutional one (in terms of Massachusetts' state constitution, not the United States'). Rather than simply require a warrant for cell site location data, it instead asserts that the length of the search determines its constitutionality.

Nonetheless, we also recognize that in terms of the constitutional question raised, GPS data and historical CSLI are linked at a fundamental level: they both implicate the same constitutionally protected interest -- a person's reasonable expectation of privacy -- in the same manner -- by tracking the person's movements. Given this intrinsic link, it is likely that the duration of the period for which historical CSLI is sought will be a relevant consideration in the reasonable expectation of privacy calculus -- that there is some period of time for which the Commonwealth may obtain a person's historical CSLI by meeting the standard for a § 2703(d) order alone, because the duration is too brief to implicate the person's reasonable privacy interest. But there is no need to consider at this juncture what the boundaries of such a time period might be in this case because, for all the reasons previously rehearsed concerning the extent and character of cellular telephone use, the two weeks covered by the § 2703(d) order at issue exceeds it: even though restricted to telephone calls sent and received (answered or unanswered), the tracking of the defendant's movements in the urban Boston area for two weeks was more than sufficient to intrude upon the defendant's expectation of privacy safeguarded by art. 14.(37) Cf. Rousseau, 465 Mass. at 382 (no need to decide dimensions of individual's expectation "not to be subjected to extended GPS electronic surveillance by the government, targeted at his movements," because police GPS vehicle tracking for thirty-one days was sufficient to trigger defendant's reasonable expectation of privacy).

This is a problematic decision, as Orin Kerr points out at The Washington Conspiracy/Volokh Post.

As I wrote in my mosaic theory article, it will be interesting to see how courts turn this into rules. For example, if one week is short-term enough not to get a warrant, what happens when the investigators get two one-week court orders individually instead of one two-week order? But then this is only a decision that regulates one state, and doesn't apply at the federal level, so perhaps the issue won't come up often enough to open the Pandora's Box that I think the mosaic theory implicates.

The dissenting opinion also seems to misstep, at first almost affirming the assertions made by the majority.

[W]hile it may seem as if Americans are always talking on their cellular telephones, they are actually doing so less than two per cent of the day. Therefore, there is a world of difference between telephone CSLI and registration CSLI in terms of the location points they will reveal and the degree to which they will intrude on personal privacy…

I recognize that, because of the mobility of a cellular telephone, telephone call CSLI will provide many location points outside a user's home or place of business, and these location points may provide a patchwork that will intrude on the user's privacy to the extent that they reveal where the user is located when making or receiving calls on the telephone. But this patchwork of location points, while intrusive of privacy, is less intrusive than the patchwork of personal affiliations that can be learned from traditional telephone toll records. I also recognize that the degree of intrusion on privacy will depend on the number of calls the user makes and receives. But this is also true about traditional telephone records; the more telephone calls a person makes and receives, the more will be revealed regarding the persons the individual speaks with and the frequency of those calls.

The problem here is that there's no indication that only "telephone call CSLI" was sought or will be sought in the future. Even if this case deals with only phone call CSLI, the fact is that location data entirely unrelated to phone calls (and the pen trap/trace statute) is being accessed without a warrant as well. The dissenting opinion tries to portray CSLI as roughly equivalent to call records, even while admitting there's a huge difference between continuously-generated location data and the much more limited inbound/outgoing phone call data.

The question should be: why didn't law enforcement get a warrant? It sought two weeks of historical data, meaning time wasn't really of the essence. In fact, the spokesman for the state's district attorney's office says it could have easily obtained one:

"We expect to prove that the affidavit submitted in 2004 would just as easily have supported a search warrant," said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney.

So, why didn't they get one? Is this Third Party Doctrine loophole too tempting to resist? If it had just obtained a warrant, it wouldn't have had to pursue this case through multiple courts and would have been able to use the information it obtained during prosecution. Instead, because it took the easy way out, it has to gear up for yet another legal battle to appeal the decision. Massachusetts taxpayers' should be irate that they're footing the bill for a pointless legal battle when the impetus for the case is a warrant that could have been obtained, but wasn't.

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Well, that was fast. No sooner had word spread that the DHS (and ICE) were soliciting bids for a national ALPR (automatic license plate reader) database than the government has stepped forward to cancel those plans.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday ordered the cancellation of a plan by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to develop a national license-plate tracking system after privacy advocates raised concern about the initiative.

The order came just days after ICE solicited proposals from companies to compile a database of license-plate information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers. Officials said the database was intended to help apprehend fugitive illegal immigrants, but the plan raised concerns that the movements of ordinary citizens under no criminal suspicion could be scrutinized.

The (stated) reasoning behind this wasn't the outrage the announcement generated. Instead, officials are portraying it as some sort of rogue bid solicitation, done with no one's permission that somehow magically appeared on an official government platform.

“The solicitation, which was posted without the awareness of ICE leadership, has been cancelled,” ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said in a statement. “While we continue to support a range of technologies to help meet our law enforcement mission, this solicitation will be reviewed to ensure the path forward appropriately meets our operational needs.”

This itself should be concerning. If ICE leadership can't even keep an eye on its all-too-helpful minions, one is forced to wonder how many other solicitations have "escaped" in this fashion… and how many of those turned into actual ICE/DHS programs.

But I wouldn't dwell on the ICE's internal failures for too long. The most plausible explanation is that someone up top at the DHS or ICE suddenly realized that publicly calling for bids on a nationwide surveillance system while nationwide surveillance systems are being hotly debated was probably a horrible idea.

This may have been put on the back burner by the agency but it's not simply going to go away. It will return, either via a super-secret bidding system that turns the job over to favored government contractors, or further down the road, when the heat surrounding surveillance of US citizens dies down.

As it stands right now, nothing much changes for ICE. There are several ALPR contractors already in service who have collected (and continue to collect) millions of license plate records. And these can all be accessed by government agencies just as easily as they're accessed by local law enforcement -- without warrants, subpoenas or anything else that might generate a paper trail.

But don't worry, citizens. When this inevitably returns, ICE will have your privacy in mind. After all, the bid solicitation specifies that the system must conform with the Privacy Act of 1974. Nothing says "privacy" in 2014 like a 40-year-old law, especially one loaded with convenient exceptions for law enforcement.

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We've seen some fairly extreme examples of police involved in shootings that were, shall we kindly say, questionable. Whether it's charging the target of police firearms with assault over injuries incurred by bystanders, officers being given the opportunity to see the evidence in question of shootings before making their statements, or officers simply looking to destroy said evidence, there appears to be an epidemic of trigger finger in our nations protectors, even as the danger involved in their jobs dips to historic lows. It's difficult to know just what is responsible for these stories. Are we simply able to hold LEOs to task due to more ubiquitous video surveillance? Is there an officer education problem? Is a police force more militarized than ever naturally going to exhibit more aggressive behavior?

Whatever the cause, we had damned well better figure it out, because the stories keep rolling in. The latest is the tragic tale of a Georgia teenager who wanted to serve his country and instead ended up getting served with a fatal wound for the apparent crime of having a video game controller in his hand.

The family of a 17-year-old shot and killed by a Euharlee police officer has hired an attorney, and they say he had a remote control in his hand. They say it was not a gun.

Christopher Roupe, 17, was in the ROTC at Woodland High School and wanted to join the Marines. His friends said he looked after them.

The officer who shot him reportedly exited the home shortly after shooting Roupe, sobbing into her hands, a clear sign of remorse. Hell, it sounds weak, but mistakes happen, even tragic mistakes like this. Remorse is the proper response. The response offered in the officer's report of the incident, however, is not.

A female police officer told GBI investigators that Roupe pointed a gun at her when he opened the door.

“We don't know where that statement came from. The eyewitnesses on the scene clearly state that he had a Wii controller in his hand. He heard a knock at the door. He asked who it was, there was no response so he opened the door and upon opening the door he was immediately shot in the chest,” [attorney Cole] Law said.

Open the door with a controller in your hand and get a bullet in the chest. Then, to have the report deviate so completely from the eyewitness accounts just adds salt to the family's wounds. At some point people are going to have to realize that, despite what your favorite news program would have you believe, violent crime continues to diminish, while shootings by police have remained static. That simply doesn't make any sense.

That a young man who wanted to serve was caught by another officer with a trigger finger should sound the alarm that it's damned time something was done.

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A string of Aereo legal wins has come to an end, with US District Judge Dale Kimball of Utah imposing a preliminary injunction (pdf) on Aereo's existing operations in both Utah and Colorado. The injunction covers all of the 10th circuit, so it will technically prevent any future Aereo operations in all of Wyoming, New Mexico, and Oklahoma as well. Aereo currently operates in ten markets, but in recent weeks has bumped into some unspecified capacity issues in both New York and Atlanta (I've asked, they won't get specific about what kind of capacity issues they've faced).

Kimball wasn't particularly receptive to Aereo's claims that their tiny OTA antennas -- one rented to each Aereo subscriber -- allow the live streaming TV company to bypass the "Transmit Clause" of the 1976 Copyright Act:

"Based on the plain language of the 1976 Copyright Act and the clear intent of Congress, this court concludes that Aereo is engaging in copyright infringement of Plaintiffs’ programs. Despite its attempt to design a device or process outside the scope of the 1976 Copyright Act, Aereo’s device or process transmits Plaintiffs’ copyrighted programs to the public."

Similar legal assaults by the broadcast industry had proven unsuccessful in Boston and New York. Needless to say, broadcasters like Fox were pleased by the result, calling the ruling "a significant win for both broadcasters and content owners" that will "prohibit Aereo from stealing our broadcast signal." Riding on Aereo's New York win by using the Cablevision precedent, the battle now heads to the Supreme Court for the real showdown on April 22. Should Aereo win that, broadcasters could face a number of similar services offered by cable operators eager to bypass soaring retransmission fees.

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One of the most chilling moments so far in the Snowden saga was when Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda was held and interrogated for nine hours at London's Heathrow airport by the UK authorities, in a series of moves worthy of a tinpot dictatorship. And in case you thought that was a one-off, they've done it again -- this time, to Jesselyn Radack, a lawyer who represents Snowden and has spoken on his behalf several times. Here's what happened, as described by Kevin Gosztola on his Firedoglake blog:

Jesselyn Radack told Firedoglake she was directed to a specific Heathrow Border Force agent. He "didn’t seem interested" in her passport. She was then subjected to "very hostile questioning."

After asking what she would be doing in London, and establishing that she would be meeting with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy, the border agent moved on to other issues, and showed a surprising knowledge of her recent movements:

"Why have you gone to Russia twice in three months?" Radack said she had a client in the country. "Who?" She answered, "Edward Snowden."

"Who is Edward Snowden?" asked the agent. Radack said he is a whistleblower and an asylee. Then, the agent asked, "Who is Bradley Manning?" To this, she answered, "A whistleblower."

For whatever reason, the agent asked, "Where is he?" "In jail," Radack told the agent. (Now, she is known as Chelsea Manning.)

The agent said, "So he's a criminal?" Radack corrected the agent, "He's a political prisoner." The agent asked if she represented Manning and she said no. Then he followed up, "But you represent Snowden?" She replied, "Yes, I'm a human rights lawyer."

The questions are clearly concerned with one topic -- whistleblowers -- and give the impression that the person asking the questions already knew the answers, but just wanted to put pressure on Radack:

She was "stone face cold" during the interrogation but afterward was shaking and in tears. "How did he know to bring up those names?"

This blatant attempt to intimidate Snowden's lawyer, who was informed that she was on an "inhibited persons list," comes in the wake of news that a US law firm was spied upon as it advised the Indonesian government in a trade dispute with Australia. It confirms that for the US and UK governments, nothing is exempt from their total surveillance, not even information traditionally covered by attorney-client privilege.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

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The NYPD's approach to transparency has been negatively compared to the CIA, FBI and NSA by prominent investigative reporters, who noted that these other agencies will at least respond even if they're not particularly interested in kicking the requested documents loose. The NYPD often won't even respond, and when it does, it tends to drag the process out to the point of absurdity before finally deciding that no, it won't release the requested information.

Muckrock points out that NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton once stated, "there should be no secrets in the NYPD." The NYPD, under Ray Kelly (and apparently, going forward as well), has responded with, "Move along. There's nothing (EVER) to see here."

In what can only be described as a new low for the NYPD, it has denied Muckrock's FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request for the NYPD's FOIL handbook.

I have written a number of times about ongoing difficulties with the New York Police Department's FOIL Unit. From rejecting routine requests to claiming "inability to locate" documents even when provided with a form number, NYPD seems hellbent on obstructing access to its records.

Last week, NYPD's freedom of information squad determined that its own handbook is exempt from disclosure under FOIL, New York's public records statute.

Somehow, the NYPD feels that attorney-client privilege applies to its internal handbook on FOIL requests and has used that exception to reach this illogical, Heller-esque nadir in department transparency. If Muckrock's challenge of the NYPD's rationale is denied, it opens up all sorts of possibilities for the tight-lipped department, as Shawn Musgrave points out.

I very much hope that a competent lawyer who is familiar with NYPD's obligations under FOIL prepared the department's records request manual and training materials. But just because something was prepared or reviewed by an attorney does not mean that an agency can withhold it. If this were true, the vast majority of policy documents prepared by any agency counsel would be immune from disclosure, as would most talking points memos, reports and communiques that endure lawyerly vetting. This is simply not how attorney-client privilege is meant to work.

It may be time for the DOJ to declare the NYPD a "rogue agency" (or whatever) and start steering the department back into the calmer waters of public service. It certainly fits the description. It apparently answers to nobody, routinely rewrites laws and guidelines to justify unconstitutional behavior and sends its uninvited personnel to the scenes of terrorist attacks around the world. Ray Kelly called it the seventh-largest standing army in the world, but it behaves more like a law unto itself.

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In what reads like bad news all over, the DHS has just requested quotes for national automatic license plate reader (ALPR) database. There are currently several ALPRs in use and law enforcement agencies have been working hard to link systems up in order to better track vehicles as they move around the country. This has been hampered somewhat by multiple vendors, most of which aren't particularly interested in working with competitors. But even with multiple vendors, there's still a whole lot of data being stored -- a majority of which is entirely unrelated to criminal activity -- in easily-accessible databases.

License plate readers are used not only by police but also by private companies, which themselves make their data available to police with little or no oversight or privacy protections. One of these private databases, run by a company called Vigilant Solutions, holds over 800 million license plate location records and is used by over 2,200 law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

A nationwide database, with records accessible by law enforcement and investigative agencies with few restrictions is obviously a concern. Tracking vehicles as they move around the country generates a ton of location data that can reveal a great deal about a person. It's always argued that what you do in public carries no expectation of privacy, but that statement is somewhat meaningless when you consider the number of plates ALPRs scan and store. Most states with ALPRs have gathered millions of records, which are held for as long as 5 years, with little in the way of minimization procedures. ELSAG, another ALPR vendor, brags in its own promotional Powerpoint presentation that it has collected 50 million records in New York City alone, without a single mention of minimization processes or the disposal of non-hit data.

For the government to actively call for a nationwide database is troubling. Since this is a solicitation for bids, there's no discussion on what, if anything, will be required from the winning contractor in terms of storage, minimization or disposal. Given the track records of the largest vendors, it's likely these issues will be of lesser concern than other aspects, like scanning speed and database accessibility.

The call for bids may have something to do with Vigilant's recent efforts, both on the PR front and in the courtroom.

First off, Vigilant (along with Digital Recognition Network) is suing the state of Utah for, believe it or not, violating its First Amendment rights.

It posits that a new Utah law which bans license plate collection by private companies, effectively put it out of business in the state. The law was intended to keep data from falling into police hands without oversight, and is among the first by surveillance technology firms to argue against privacy laws invoking the First Amendment.

The Texas company fired back, arguing that collecting license plate numbers is free speech. The lawsuit draws upon a recent major Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United v. FEC, which overturned a law curbing corporate and union donations to political campaigns. In effect, the Court ruled that money is speech.

“The Texas company says it’s not a police agency – law enforcement already is exempt from the ban under Utah’s new law — nor can it access in bulk federally protected driver data that personally identifies the letters and numbers it collects from license plates in public,” the Associated Press reported Thursday. “The company said it only wants to find cars that have been stolen or repossessed, not to cull large swaths of data and incriminate people from their travel habits.”

DRN's press release goes into a little more detail on this rationale.

“Taking and distributing a photograph is an act that is fully protected by the first Amendment,” said DRN / Vigilant Outside Counsel Michael Carvin. “The state of Utah cannot claim that photographing a license plate violates privacy. License plates are public by nature and contain no sensitive or private information. Any citizen of Utah can walk outside and photograph anything they please, including a license plate.”

This is an interesting approach. It's a bit disingenuous to compare scanning license plates at a rate of hundreds per hour to someone walking around taking pictures of license plates (not the least of which is the fact that a private photographer most likely wouldn't have a searchable database), but underneath it all, the point remains: these are photographs of publicly-available items. It will be tough for a court to find a "bright line" that separates these two without weakening First Amendment protection. Then again, as the ACLU has noted, it's not really the photography that's a problem, it's the handling of the non-hit data, something that won't be addressed in this suit. That's Utah's problem and if it loses this case, then it needs to push for heavy restrictions on how the data is accessed and used, as well as rules on data disposal.

Using an unpopular decision (Citizens United) to argue that losing income equals losing free speech rights is a bit more troublesome. Of course, those opposed to that decision may welcome a court battle on the issue, as it may cast further doubt on the validity of that ruling. But does a company deserve to make money, much in the way it might deserve First Amendment protections? That's another grey area with no bright line and this two-pronged approach may allow Vigilant and DRN to set up their ALPR systems despite the state of Utah's opposition. (Of course, Utah would be free to use another vendor, but any decision in the ALPR companies' favor will help them attack similar laws elsewhere.)

It would appear that Vigilant is trying to knock down state laws that might curtail its national aspirations. Appearing on the same day as this lawsuit announcement was a Vigilant press release touting its ALPR's crime fighting abilities.

Vigilant Solutions announces today that the Loganville Police Department in Georgia attributes recent and significant arrests to their use of license plate recognition (LPR) technology from Vigilant Solutions.

Assistant Chief M.D. Lowry comments, “On January 7, one of our officers received an alert from his license plate reader (LPR) system on a vehicle which was associated with an active arrest warrant out of Texas. Our officer initiated a traffic stop per policy and identified the driver. Following protocol, the officer used other systems to validate the hit and was able to confirm the driver was wanted out of Del Rio, Texas for Indecent Acts with a Child, 2nd Degree. The suspect was taken into custody without incident and transported to the Walton County Jail to await extradition…"

We have only had our single unit for only a few months, but it is already proving its value by helping us to remove these threats from our community. I can tell you that the capture of a child molester from nearly 1,200 miles away was more than worth the cost of the LPR unit. If we never make another case with it, it was worth the cost.”

Two immediate questions arise. The first is: if you never make another case with it, what's the point of gathering all that data? Does the arrest of one child molester make the routine harvesting of thousands of plates of non-child molesters "worth it?"

Second: pointing out the ends as justification for the means is a rhetorical dodge. There are any number of things law enforcement could do to bump arrest numbers -- like house-to-house searches and eliminating the probable cause requirement for warrants -- but neither takes into consideration the constitutional rights of those on the receiving end of these actions. Law enforcement is supposed to work within these limitations, rather than see how hard they can push back against them.

The call for bids on a national ALPR database takes a localized problem and makes it worse. The government (both on local and national levels) has shown repeatedly that it prefers to implement technology before considering the privacy implications. Post facto "repairs" generally only come into play once widespread misuse has already been reported. This is a chilling, but not unexpected, development. If it can be construed as "public," then it's the government's for the taking, apparently.

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Ever since Edward Snowden leaked information about the massive government surveillance being done both domestically and abroad by the NSA, the refrain that such leaks have put people in danger and harmed national security have been ongoing. Supporters of the NSA have specifically noted that leaks about section 215, the PATRIOT Act section that the NSA believes gives it the power to collect all telco traffic records, will prove to be absolutely catastrophic to our safety. Spy bigwig James Clapper himself wrote to Ron Wyden that section 215 leaks "will do significant damage to the intelligence community's ability to protect the nation."

Now, in a move that will surprise nobody, since Clapper is a proven liar, he has reversed course and says that the government should have told the American people about section 215.

“What did us in here, what worked against us was this shocking revelation,” he said, referring to the first disclosures from Snowden. If the program had been publicly introduced in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, most Americans would probably have supported it. “I don’t think it would be of any greater concern to most Americans than fingerprints. Well people kind of accept that because they know about it. But had we been transparent about it and say here’s one more thing we have to do as citizens for the common good, just like we have to go to airports two hours early and take our shoes off, all the other things we do for the common good, this is one more thing.”

Unbelievable. So the very same disclosure that turned Edward Snowden into a traitor and was going to do so much harm to American security is something Clapper says he should have done in the first place? With such an admission, where is the backlash against the continued prosecution of Snowden in the court of public opinion? Where is the embarrassed apology for lying to Americans about the dangers of the disclosures made previously? Lies, I might add, designed to scare the living hell out of people and chill speech, disclosures, and journalism.

I typically try to find some humor in every situation, but this kind of flip-flopping is bullshit on a level hitherto unseen. The credibility gap between Clapper and his ilk versus Edward Snowden might as well be the Grand Canyon. I'm a bit amazed the man has been allowed to keep his job, never mind his still being allowed to make media statements.

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The NSA's problem with contractors surfaced in the most internationally spectacular way when one of them made his way to Hong Kong with a drive full of agency documents. Other failures were less spectacular, but didn't go completely unnoticed. A recent investigation uncovered years of fraudulent behavior by a government contractor charged with vetting potential hires for various agencies, including the NSA. The contractor was accused of (among many things) interviewing dead people and falsifying a massive number of background checks.

So, the release of a GAO report on intelligence contractors is perfectly timed. Like every GAO report, there's a dearth of good news. What's been uncovered by the GAO is another bureaucratic web that makes just tracking contractor information nearly impossible.

Limitations in the intelligence community’s (IC) inventory of contract personnel hinder the ability to determine the extent to which the eight civilian IC elements—the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and six components within the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, State, and the Treasury—use these personnel. The IC Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO) conducts an annual inventory of core contract personnel that includes information on the number and costs of these personnel. However, GAO identified a number of limitations in the inventory that collectively limit the comparability, accuracy, and consistency of the information reported by the civilian IC elements as a whole. For example, changes to the definition of core contract personnel and data shortcomings limit the comparability of the information over time. In addition, the civilian IC elements used various methods to calculate the number of contract personnel and did not maintain documentation to validate the number of personnel reported for 37 percent of the 287 records GAO reviewed. Further, IC CHCO did not fully disclose the effects of such limitations when reporting contract personnel and cost information to Congress, which limits its transparency and usefulness.

Bad data brings bad results (not to mention the attendant detrimental effect on accountability) and there were plenty of bad results to report, including the fact that contractors might be abusing this broken system to push the government around.

Further, the elements’ ability to use the core contract personnel inventory as a strategic planning tool is hindered because the inventory does not provide insight into the functions performed by contractors, in particular those that could inappropriately influence the government’s control over its decisions.

The GAO attempted to audit IC records dating from 2007 to 2011, but immediately ran into problems.

[W]e could not conduct a reliability assessment of the data for fiscal years 2007 through 2009 due to a variety of factors. These factors include civilian IC element officials’ stating that they could not locate records of certain years’ submissions or that obtaining the relevant documentation would require an unreasonable amount of time.

Amazing. The government stonewalls the government. This isn't people waving FOIA requests. This is the Government Accountability Office carrying out an order from Congress and yet, the responding office claims it would take too long to find these documents, if they can actually be found at all.

As the report goes on, it becomes clear the GAO never had a chance to compile anything comprehensive. First, it was informed that some contractors not previously designated as such were arbitrarily given that designation at some point in 2010. Then the CHCO informed the GAO that it had made significant changes to its contract management system in 2011, making most of what had been gathered prior useless for year-to-year comparisons.

Then there were problems stemming from the civilian contractors themselves, who also altered their data reporting during the same time frame, further complicating any attempts to compare year-to-year data.

In the end, the GAO settled for sampling 287 records from 2010-2011 to generate this report. Even with this limited sample set, there were issues.

We found that the civilian IC elements either under- or over-reported the amount of obligations by more than 10 percent for approximately one-fifth of the records. In addition, the civilian IC elements could not provide complete documentation to validate the information reported for 17 percent of the records we reviewed. Overall, we were able to validate the amount of reported obligations for approximately 43 to 77 percent of the records we reviewed at any one element.

So, only 43-77% of the records were deemed "verifiable" by the GAO. But this same unreliable data was used by the CHCO to report costs and set budgets.

However, IC CHCO used the core contract personnel inventory information to report fiscal years 2010 and 2011 contract costs for the eight civilian IC elements in our review…

IC CHCO’s guidance for the fiscal years 2010 and 2011 inventories generally requires IC elements to report on the total amount of funds obligated to contracts during the fiscal year. However, the guidance also indicates that reporting on a snapshot of active contracts on September 30 is an acceptable method for the large elements. This practice may lead to elements not fully accounting for the amount of obligations within a fiscal year on contracts…

But that's OK, because there's apparently no way to hold the IC CHCO accountable.

Officials acknowledged that in some cases, obligations may not be reported as a result of the exclusion of inactive contracts or contract option periods. However, IC CHCO does not disclose this methodology or its effects on the information it reports to Congress.

Not surprisingly, given this lack of direct accountability, the IC CHCO's methodology and controls have not improved over the past half-decade despite the constant generation of faulty info and the misplacement of IC records. The GAO recommends several changes to the current system (of course), but the past tells us these will be ignored by both the head office and the agencies under its "control."

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The militarization of law enforcement agencies is a worrying development. It's not necessarily new. Law enforcement agencies have been converting police departments into quasi-military outfits for years, most of it spurred on by the over-deployment of SWAT teams to handle basic arrests and take down ever-so-dangerous marijuana users.

The push has become a shove in the last decade or so, as the government has handed out grants to purchase military-grade vehicles and equipment, when not just simply handing over the keys to something like Lenco's BearCat to any PD that requests one.

Not pictured: any logical reason a town of 42,000 should have a bulletproof assault vehicle
A New Hampshire state representative, J.R. Hoell, is trying to push back against this and further separate our military and law enforcement entities.

Enter State Representative J.R. Hoell, a libertarian Republican who represents Dunbarton, NH, just outside of Concord. Hoell recently introduced a bill, the Police Equipment and Community Engagement (PEACE) Act, in the state legislature.

The proposed legislation is now in committee. If it’s passed and signed into law by the governor, state and municipal agencies in New Hampshire will be barred from buying or even accepting free offers of “military style equipment” for police use, except with the approval of the assembled citizenry at a public town meeting.

That prohibition would include not just MRAPS and BearCats, but also things like fully automatic weapons or anything that is not “available in an open commercial market.”

Why is Hoell doing this? Well, it's because the city of Concord recently ignored its own citizens' wishes and allowed its police department to acquire a surplus BearCat.

Concord, NH has a population of 42,000 and has racked up three murders in the last decade. While its crime rates are higher than nearby towns (towns with populations far below Concord's), its rates are much lower than the national average. The Concord PD had a hard time justifying the acquisition of an armored vehicle based on local criminal activity alone. In order to persuade the city council this vehicle was a necessity, it had to conjure up an existential threat composed of anti-government activists.

In its application for the DHS grant to purchase the $258,000 vehicle, Police Chief John Duval listed the following potential threats to the safety of Concord, NH:

Groups such as the Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire are active and present daily challenges…

More non-specifically, he added that various "anti-government clusters" also "challenged" the police on a "daily" basis.

When the news leaked out that the Concord PD was seeking an armored dissent-suppression vehicle, the response from the public was overwhelmingly negative. Activists collected 1,500 signatures against the PD's desired vehicle and presented that to the city council. This led to open public meetings in which many people spoke out against the militarization of their local police force, including a very strong speech from a former Marine Corps officer.


In the end, nothing the public had to say mattered. The city council approved the acquisition with an 11-4 vote. Here's how they justified the armored vehicle's existence in a town of 42,000.

[Liz] Blanchard said she was voting for the Bearcat because it was the replacement of an older piece of equipment and would only be used for defensive purposes. She said in the wake of the Newtown school shooting and the Boston Marathon bombing attack, “we do need to be defensive.”

Ward 2 Councilor Jennifer Kretovic called the issue “a huge civic discussion” but said the calls from her district in support of the Bearcat were "ten-fold." She said recent murders and armed robberies in the northern part of the city showed that it was needed.

(Unless the Concord PD collates stats separately for the "northern" part of Concord, there were zero recorded murders in Concord in 2013 [and zero in 2012 as well] and only 20 robberies, which puts "recent" criminal activity at the same level it's been at for the last half-decade.)

Others stated vagaries such as recent school shootings and one council member expressed the sort of faith usually reserved for evangelical services.

At-Large City Councilor Marc Coen called the last four weeks “very interesting,” especially as he researched the issue and read about the concerns of the rise of the warrior cop. But he said while there were problems in other parts of the country concerning police abuse, he didn’t believe it was happening in Concord.

The Concord City Council apparently felt that "listening" to their constituents meant just literally listening to them. And then thanking them for their input, patting them on the heads and sending them on their way.

Fortunately, a legislator is looking to use the system to fix the system. If Concord's city council is indicative of the mentality surrounding the acquisition of military technology for local PDs, then those opposed to this sort of thing are screwed. The best defense this group could come up with was conjuring up school shootings and citing their lack of awareness in regards to the local crime rate. Hopefully, Hoell's bill will push back against the US government's tireless efforts to turn our local police departments into ad hoc military bases, especially when the justifications portray anti-government sentiments as a threat worthy of a military-grade response.



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For several years now, Verizon Wireless has tried to make the argument that they don't have to compete on price because their network is just that fantastically awesome. The position wasn't entirely unsupportable, given that Verizon Wireless tops most customer satisfaction studies, has the largest LTE network, and hadn't to this point been seeing many customer defections. The result has been some of the highest wireless prices (and profits) in the industry, with Verizon getting away with offering the occasional, cosmetic promotional offer. The problem for Verizon is that real price competition (a rarity in U.S. telecom markets) isn't something you get to just wish away (at least not without some form of potent voodoo).

Enter T-Mobile, which in recent months has been a rare disruptive force in the market, working to eliminate long-term contracts and ETFs, while slashing prices and embracing a number of new, pro-consumer policies (like free international data when roaming overseas) that heretofore had been quite foreign for a largely duopoly-controlled industry. T-Mobile's shenanigans have resulted in investors whining for months about the possibility of Verizon and AT&T *GASP* actually having to compete on price, as this recent, unintentionally-hilarious Reuters report illustrates:

"The most disappointing thing is that AT&T is reacting to T-Mobile," said Jefferies analyst Michael McCormack. "How long is it before Verizon reacts?"...McCormack (is) worried about the implication that industry revenue could be cut by $20 billion. "That's clearly not a healthy sign."

Yes, how disappointing and unhealthy that a government-pampered duopoly has to suddenly compete on price, eroding artificially-inflated revenues resulting in better, cheaper service for everyone! McCormack's hellish, truly-Lovecraftian fears came true this week, as Verizon finally buckled to T-Mobile pressure and started competing more seriously on price. The company began offering loyalty discounts to existing customers, and unveiled a suite of new data options that boost data allotments for many users. While still not in range of T-Mobile's pricing, it's a start of something more closely resembling real competition in the wireless space.

The horror. The horror.

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Oregon seems to be turning into a bastion of privacy, much to the chagrin of various law enforcement agencies. As we recently covered, a district court ruled that the DEA's warrantless access of its drug prescription database (achieved through "administrative subpoenas" that require no judicial approval or probable cause) was unconstitutional. In Oregon, at least, it appears our nation's foremost drug warriors will need to comply with the Fourth Amendment.

Now, there's a pushback against another warrantless collection of data by local police departments. Techdirt reader zip sends in this Williamette Week story detailing the ID scanners police are actively pushing on bar and club owners, supposedly in an effort to cut down on underage drinking.

Multnomah County and Portland police this week suspended a new program that supplied data-gathering ID scanners to Old Town bars after WW raised questions about whether it was legal.

The state-funded program allowed Portland police to equip downtown bars and clubs in recent weeks with high-tech ID scanners that captured patrons’ names, ages and photos for upload to a central database, which police could then access.

The data collected is stored for 90 days and is compiled from the many scanners being utilized across the city. The scanners themselves are manufactured by Servall Data Systems out of Alberta, Canada. (Servall Data Systems also has access to the data.) Law enforcement agencies are given access to the collected data at any time requested (no subpoena or warrant needed) according to Servall's spokesperson.

A grant given to a local charity by the state of Oregon helped fund the purchase of these scanners, which were then pushed on local business owners by police departments. Unsurprisingly, some club owners balked at tracking their customers.

A few club owners turned down the free scanners. One owner says he added surveillance cameras when police asked. “I happily installed those. But this was going too far,” the club owner says. “It felt invasive.”

Not that every club owner feels the same. Some have purchased the scanners with their own funds, in part because it's another step they can take to protect their liquor licenses.

The company cites drops in crime in other cities in defense of the scanners. That the scanners have a deterrent quality and that they make crime investigation easier are hardly disputable. But the problem is the warrantless access to collected data, and more specifically in this case, the fact that this sort of data harvesting by businesses violates Oregon state law.

“It really is an illuminating example of where our privacy laws are, and our disconnect in a modern digital world,” says Becky Straus, lobbyist for ACLU Oregon.

Straus is referring to a 2009 Oregon law that limits companies’ legal ability to collect, store or share information from ID scanners. Straus says she was unaware Portland bars were collecting such data, or that police could grab it.

“We had wondered, when we wandered around Old Town, whether bars were complying with the swiping law,” she says.

That bar owners may have been unaware that their data collection violated state law isn't all that surprising. It's not really as much of a day-to-day part of their business as staying within the confines of their liquor licenses and complying with food safety laws. But, as Willamette Week discovered when it began investigating these scanners, many of those who should have been aware of this law had no idea they were actively encouraging business owners to break it.

Neither Portland police nor the city attorney was aware of the 2009 law until WW raised the question. “We‘re glad when someone brings this up. We want to do what’s best to protect public safety and protect people’s rights,” Multnomah County spokesman David Austin tells WW.

Austin said the county is meeting with state and local law enforcement in the coming week to determine how to move forward .

The spokesman for the Portland police department claims it's not the department's problem if these laws are violated.

He says the police don’t own the scanners, and so aren’t responsible for how they were used.

“It’s an issue between the bars and the company,” he says. “We recommend a lot of things to people, but it’s up to the individual to make sure it’s compliant.”

I'm not sure what part of that statement is more callously irresponsible, the fact that the PD will "recommend" actions and technology without ensuring it complies with applicable laws, or the fact that the PD recommends a data harvesting device but ultimately doesn't care how it gets used. The police have carte blanche access to the collected data, so its involvement bears the same weight as the supplier and the businesses utilizing the scanners. Considering it has this access, it would seem its responsibility to ensure compliance with applicable laws would be greater, especially since it's in the law enforcement business.

This also downplays the department's active promotion of the scanners, which led some business owners to feel the devices were mandatory, or at the very least, "strongly encouraged" by an entity holding the power to strip them of their liquor licenses. Here are some quotes from the story that show the department's involvement in pushing the devices its spokesman claims it's not responsible for.

“We tried to say ‘no’ at the very beginning, and police strongly encouraged that we should do it,” says Mike Reed, general manager of the Boiler Room and Jones Bar…

“If we don’t use it, they know,” a downtown bouncer tells WW…

Some Portland bar employees say the scanners keep police and the Oregon Liquor Control Commission happy...

As it stands right now, the county is going to "look into" the legality of the scanners. The police department seems to have washed its hands of the whole thing, claiming it's barely involved. The scanner company, which also has access to the data, seems to think there's nothing wrong with tracking people's nighttime activities and turning this data over to law enforcement any time they ask. And finally, we have business owners tracking their customers because it's been heavily implied that failing to do so may become a source of friction between the bar/nightclub and the police department.

Anyone could make the argument that what you do in public has no expectation of privacy. But this isn't in any way comparable to what police would have to do to achieve the same sort of surveillance level if the scanners weren't in use -- i.e. trailing hundreds of people around all night and noting which businesses they enter.

When technology turns the laborious into the routine, there needs to be checks in place to prevent abuse or, at the very least, provided some sort of friction between what the police can collect and what they can actually access. There also needs to be care taken to prevent collection of data simply because its possible, rather than being actually instrumental to crime prevention and investigation. But most importantly, those deploying these devices (by which I mean the police and the state that provided the grant to purchase the scanners) need to be aware of the laws governing their use, something no one quoted here seemed to know. (And, in the case of the police department, the person quoted not only didn't know, but didn't care, either.)

The state of Oregon has taken care to ensure data isn't collected or misused, but those looking for more data haven't bothered to perform due diligence before deploying devices that turn business owners into lawbreakers, and all in the name of the one of the most arbitrary of crimes, underage drinking.

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A few months ago, for our awesome stuff post looking at crowdfunding projects, we did one on hacking your car, highlighting a couple of projects involving OBD devices and software. It seems this market is exploding with other options, and a bunch of them have recently launched crowdfunding campaigns. To be honest, as with any such crowded market, the features of each start to blend together, and it's a bit difficult to tell how any of these are particularly different than the others (or previous ones that are already on the market).

• First up, we've got the OBDLink MX WiFi. These guys keep insisting their offering is better than everyone else's, especially on speed (they claim it's 4x faster than any other competitor) though it seems like you have to trust them that it's true. It uses WiFi, which isn't as common (many, though not all, competitors use bluetooth) and it certainly looks like they've put a lot of thought into making it just work, but it really does seem a bit difficult to distinguish from the competition. Of all the projects listed here today, these guys have (by far) the most traction, already raising over $170,000, well past their $35,000 goal, and they still have nearly a month left on the project. Having seen so many of these devices out there, they tend to gravitate around $100-$150, and the OBDLink guys have made sure that they have a ton of early bird offerings, including some that were as low as $49, though they're all sold out. There are still some $79 ones left, and after that the price jumps to $119.
• Next up, we've got Freematics, which plays up the fact that it's based on Arduino and the goal is to be as open source and flexible as possible on the hardware side. This one definitely seems designed more for those who would be a lot more interested in hacking their own OBD setup. By using Arduino and some built in sensors (accelerometer and gyro) there are definitely more opportunities to do different kinds of things with the Freematics device, though it's arguable how useful those things really are. Still, for someone who wants to dig a little deeper, it's an interesting option. This project is still way below it's $50,000 goal, hovering around $17,000 with about a month to go. It still might make it, but it's going to take a lot of effort. There are a range of prices depending on what hardware you're getting, so it's pretty customizable both for features and budget. However, loading it up with everything, definitely can be a lot pricier than most of the competition. While the basic versions run closer to $100, if you want to include GPS, microSD and various development kids, it goes all the way up to well over $300.
• Next up, we've got the Clickdrive. The marketing around this one is basically all about the apps and the "app market" it will have -- but that still seems to be very much in development, which makes it a tougher sell. Others advertise a variety of apps (including the OBDLink above), but for Clickdrive that seems to be the central selling point, whereas others don't promote their apps as much. The "current" apps really look like the same basic apps pretty much everyone else offers, so focusing so heavily on the apps seems a little strange. They are also promoting it as open platform for others to develop apps, but there's a chicken and egg problem there if no one's using the devices... These guys are asking for $100,000, which is a pretty high target, and they're only around 10% of that with a little over a month to go. And even though this is on Indiegogo, they chose the option to only get the funds if it hits the target, meaning this one has a decent chance of not getting funded. Of course, the fact that the Clickdrive appears to be a lot more expensive than OBD offerings already on the market, and the software isn't as developed, seems like a tough sell. The "earlybird" is $249 and they claim retail will be $359. But that's tough to square with the OBDLink one above being less than half the price with what appear to be more developed apps, or things like Automatic Link which is already on the market for $99.
• Finally, there's the Truvolo, which, again, looks an awful lot like many of the other offerings, making it difficult to find anything that stands out as particularly different. About the only "difference" they highlight is that they have a cloud solution that comes with it to store and sync data -- but we've seen that before with the Fuse project from last year as well -- and like the Fuse, Truvolo is looking to sell premium services at a monthly fee that utilize the cloud. Most of the other devices in the market promote their lack of monthly fees. If the cloud services are worth it, it could be interesting, but Truvolo even admits that they're still figuring those out. These guys are also looking for $100,000, and are only at about 30% with a little over two weeks to go. That means it's unlikely it will get funded, and again, Truvolo only gets the money if it hits the target. Unlike the Clickdrive above, however, at least these guys are more in line with the competition on pricing, offering early birds for $89 and setting the regular price at $99.

That's it for this week. Drive smarter, everyone.

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The Weather Channel has been well-deserving of mockery over the last few years, whether its for their efforts to sex up storms by naming them (in the process creating a nation of weather neurotics who become hysterical about drizzle), or for an ocean of TV and website content that has absolutely nothing to do with the weather (here's some funny faces, yuk yuk). As such, their recent battle with DirecTV over retransmission fees doesn't find the company getting much sympathy. Especially when the channel tries to argue that people will die without their inane assortment of non-weather-related content.

Normally in such retransmission disputes the content company has some leverage over the satellite or cable TV provider because what they're withholding has somewhat irreplaceable value to the viewer (say, like "Breaking Bad"). In The Weather Channel's case, their belief that they somehow held an exclusive over weather forecasting, combined with the fact that they have increasingly gotten worse at their one and only job, has given DirecTV the upper hand in the ongoing feud. After pulling the channel from the lineup back in January, DirecTV continues to battle The Weather Channel in a very simple way -- by simply offering viewers the weather for a change:

DirecTV on Monday unveiled a suite of new weather services for its subscribers, including a feature that allows customers to gain access to local weather information at any time...The satcaster said customers tuned to WeatherNation can press the red button on their remote to access instant local weather conditions and outlook. Later this week, short term and extended weather forecasts by zip code will also be integrated into the live WeatherNation broadcast and run automatically on the channel every 10 minutes.

Surely being offered actual information on the weather will outrage viewers who love sitting through a half hour of off-topic infotainment and dreck just to get the snow forecast totals for their neighborhood. Seriously, without The Weather Channel, who'll tell us which celebrities like to hunt or provide recipes for cheesy chicken bites? Usually these retransmission feuds resolve with cable and satellite companies buckling and agreeing to some sort of significant hike (then passed on to you), though with the sort of stuff The Weather Channel has been producing in recent years, it's not clear if customers will want DirecTV to cave.

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For many, many years electronics were banned during take off and landing and below 10,000 feet, purportedly to protect avionics from possible interference -- even if evidence of this interference threat was -- for the vast majority of devices -- non-existent. While it took years of tests followed by even more years of bumbling bureaucratic stumbling and repeated recommendations, back in October the FAA announced they were easing restrictions on in-flight electronics rules, allowing the use of things like e-readers during all phases of a flight. If you've flown since you've probably noticed the changes, even if flight attendants remain occasionally confused about the magical plane-crash protecting abilities of your iPad's airplane mode.

Last month FCC boss Tom Wheeler then took things further by proposing to eliminate the FCC ban on in-flight cellular phone calls (see the FCC FAQ), and the FCC is still fielding comments on the rule changes (mostly negative). While Wheeler and the FCC took a lot of grief from consumers annoyed that they'll be inundated with chatty cathys at 30,000 feet, Wheeler rather correctly argued that with tests showing no interference, the FCC's role as a technical regulator was complete, and it would be up to the FAA, Congress or the airlines to institute new guidelines protecting you from that annoying chatterbox in 17C:

“I do not want the person in the seat next to me yapping at 35,000 feet any more than anyone else. But we are not the Federal Courtesy Commission… Technology has produced a new network reality recognized by governments and airlines around the world. Our responsibility is to recognize that new reality’s impact on our old rules."

Since then, the Department of Transportation has hinted that they might create new rules, and the CEO of Delta has tried to win consumer brownie points by issuing a public letter stating they'll never allow in-flight phone conversations. Fast forward to this week, and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has approved a bill (HR3676, pdf) banning in-flight cellular (or VoIP) calls. House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) insists it's "common sense" to keep in-flight calls off limits:

"In our day-to-day lives, when we find someone’s cell phone call to be too loud, too close, or too personal, we can just walk away," he said. "But at 30,000 feet, there’s nowhere else for an airline passenger to go. Under this bill, passengers will be able to use their mobile devices to stay connected, through getting online, emailing, texting, and more. During flights, it is common sense and common courtesy to continue keeping cell phone calls on the ground."

Even if by some strange chance Congress can't work together to pass a bill (there's a similar bill winding its way through the Senate), there's a good chance that in-flight calls could be so expensive as to be of limited appeal (remember $5 per minute calls via Airfone?). While some airlines could follow Delta's lead and step in to block phone calls, it seems like only a matter of time before an airline comes up with the "innovative" idea to charge a fee if users want to sit in the soundproofed section of the aircraft.

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