Brindle

So much attention concerning the intelligence community lately has been focused on the NSA. There has been a bit of looking at the FBI as well, but for the most part the CIA has been left untouched -- even though when the Washington Post released details of the US's black budget (thanks to Ed Snowden), it surprised many people to discover that the CIA still has a significantly larger budget than the NSA.

Late last week, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer had a fantastic article revealing some details of a still-classified report put together by the Senate Intelligence Committee which apparently rips the CIA to shreds over its torture program, both in how ineffective the program was, but also in how the CIA tried to avoid any real oversight from Congress.

At its core is a bitter disagreement over an apparently devastating, and still secret, report by the Senate Intelligence Committee documenting in detail how the C.I.A.’s brutalization of terror suspects during the Bush years was unnecessary, ineffective, and deceptively sold to Congress, the White House, the Justice Department, and the public. The report threatens to definitively refute former C.I.A. personnel who have defended the program’s integrity. But so far, to the consternation of several members of the Intelligence Committee, the Obama Administration, like Bush’s before it, is keeping the damning details from public view.

The CIA, apparently, has been "defiant and defensive" in response to the massive report (over 6,000 pages, and which apparently cost $40 million to produce). CIA boss John Brennan has apparently been especially aggressive in trying to challenge the report and in blocking it from being declassified.

As Mayer notes, many of the new details came out due to Senator Mark Udall (who, for years, has been a leader in trying to stop the NSA's bad behavior) first blocking the confirmation of Stephen Preston to become General Counsel of the Defense Department (a position formerly held by Jeh Johnson, who was just nominated to run Homeland Security). Preston, prior to this, had been General Counsel for the CIA. Udall used the opportunity to quiz Preston about both the Intelligence Committee's report and the CIA's angry rebuttal, noting that if Preston stood by the rebuttal, he would be very uncomfortable about confirming him for the Pentagon job.

Preston, in his response, appears to distance himself from the CIA's position, agreeing with some of the findings in the Senate report. In particular, he admits that the CIA "fell well short" of keeping Congress informed and allowing Congress to have oversight over the CIA's torture program.

In fact, Preston admits outright that, contrary to the C.I.A.’s insistence that it did not actively impede congressional oversight of its detention and interrogation program, “briefings to the Committees included inaccurate information related to aspects of the program of express interest to Members.”

The contention that the C.I.A. provided inaccurate information to the congressional oversight committees is apparently extensively documented by the report. Udall notes that the report contains a two-hundred-ninety-eight-page section on “C.I.A. Representations on the C.I.A. Interrogation Program and the Effectiveness of the C.I.A.’s Enhanced Interrogation Techniques to Congress.”

Furthermore, the report apparently notes that rather than actually briefing the entire Intelligence Committee on what it was doing, the CIA only briefed the chairman and vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In other words, beyond providing enough misleading information to fill a large book, the CIA also made sure that the Senate Intelligence Committee members (outside of the two top members) weren't even informed of the details of what they did.

There's a lot more in the Mayer piece, going through many of the key revelations that can be parsed out from both Udall's questions and Preston's answers, but it's apparent that (1) the CIA had very little real oversight from Congress concerning its torture program, (2) the Senate Intelligence Committee is pissed off about this, and (3) there's a massive report detailing all of this that will eventually see the light of day. It does sound like many on the Senate Intelligence Committee -- including (much to my surprise) Dianne Feinstein -- are fighting to have the report released (I'm sure with many redactions). Udall is pushing strongly for such a declassification:

“My views of the C.I.A.’s response remain unchanged,” Udall wrote. “As I told John Brennan during his confirmation hearing, acknowledging the flaws of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program is essential for the C.I.A.’s long-term institutional integrity—as well as for the legitimacy of ongoing sensitive programs. At this point, I do not believe the C.I.A. has sufficiently acknowledged the flaws that the committee has meticulously detailed with thirty-five-thousand footnotes in six-thousand-three-hundred pages.”

Udall also reiterated his demand to “declassify as much of the committee’s report as possible.” He added, “Without the right amount of sunshine, some of the problems documented in the study—to include problems that I believe still exist today—will remain uncorrected. The American people have the right to know what the government has done on their behalf.”

Between the lack of any real oversight of the NSA and now, it appears, the CIA as well, once again we're left wondering how the administration can pretend that these agencies are actually under control and not prone to abuse.

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Jonathan Corbett, a long-time vocal critic of TSA body scanners, has been engaged in a lawsuit against the government concerning the constitutionality of those scanners. In the course of the case, the TSA gave him classified documents, which he was ordered not to reveal. In using some of that information to make his case, he needed to file two copies of his brief: a public one with classified stuff redacted, and the full brief under seal, for the government and the courts to look at. Just one problem: someone over at Infowars noticed that apparently a clerk at the 11th Circuit appeals court forgot to file the document under seal, allowing them to find out what was under the redactions... Included in there is the following, apparently quoted from the TSA's own statements:

“As of mid-2011, terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland are not known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports; instead, their focus is on fundraising, recruiting, and propagandizing.”

Elsewhere, the TSA appears to admit that "due to hardened cockpit doors and the willingness of passengers to challenge hijackers," it's unlikely that there's much value in terrorists trying to hijack a plane these days (amusingly, that statement is a clear echo of Bruce Schneier's statement criticizing the TSA's security theater -- suggesting that the TSA flat out knows that airport security is nothing more than such theatrics).

Elsewhere, in the redacted portions, the TSA is quoted as admitting that "there have been no attempted domestic hijackings of any kind in the 12 years since 9/11."

As Corbett notes in his filing, the entire basis for the nude scanners is that they were somehow necessary to stop terrorists with explosives from getting on planes. Yet, as he makes clear, the TSA knows that there's been little threat of any such attack for quite some time. He also details how the machines are not very good at tracking down explosives, and pretty much everything that has been caught with these machines (such as guns) could be easily found via traditional metal detectors. Further, as noted above, other protections that have nothing to do with the nude scanners are the main reason (which the TSA admits) that terrorists have moved on from targeting airplanes.

Amazingly, it appears that the government forced Corbett to redact the revelation that the TSA's own threat assessments have shown "literally zero evidence that anyone is plotting to blow up an airline leaving from a domestic airport." Corbett argues that this shows why the searches are not reasonable under the 4th Amendment. Corbett also points out that about the only thing the machines seem useful at catching are illegal drugs -- but, as he notes, that's "irrelevant to aviation security." Sure, the government may like the fact that it catches illegal drugs with these machines, but the TSA can't argue it needs the machines for "terrorism" when it knows that's not true, and then tries to keep them just because it finds some narcotics...

While it still seems unlikely that Corbett's lawsuit will actually succeed, he's right that these revelations mean that, at the very least, Congress should be investigating why the TSA insisted that it needed these machines to find terrorists that it now admits aren't actually plotting to attack airplanes.

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As you may have heard, last week President Obama nominated Jeh Johnson, the former General Counsel of the Defense Department, to be the new head of the Department of Homeland Security. While he's certainly better than some other proposed candidates, he's not exactly known as a supporter for civil liberties. He's been a point person defending the use of drone-strikes, even on US citizens. He also has defended the collection of metadata by the NSA. Oh, and in his remarks after President Obama announced the nomination, he talked all about 9/11 and how he's spent his time since then trying to act in response to that.

Of course, many have questioned his qualifications to lead an organization like DHS, noting that it's a pretty big leap from his last job:

“I think it’s a stretch because you go from administering a relatively small and homogenous staff… to administering a huge and very diverse staff, with things like law enforcement responsibility, immigration and border control responsibility,” says one former Obama Justice department official who worked with Johnson. “It’s just a very diverse set of issues and set of people to manage, and he has no experience with managing any of them.”

But, really, there's a bigger issue here: why do we still have a Department of Homeland Security in the first place? It seems like the whole thing is a massive bureaucratic disaster. Over the years, we've covered how the crowning jewel of DHS, its so-called "fusion centers" that tried to bring together various groups for anti-terror purposes -- the very reason that DHS was put together in the first place -- were a colossal failure. They were incredibly wasteful of taxpayer funds, created no useful intelligence at all in the fight on terror, and were regularly cited for violating civil liberties. More recently, we've noted how Customs and Border Patrol has basically become a rogue agency that can do whatever it wants with what appears to be no oversight or consequences. We've similarly seen how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (another sub-agency within DHS) was involved in illegal censorship and questionable seizures of blogs, just because the RIAA complained.

And there's plenty more. Apparently, DHS only just figured out how to actually track its finances. And this is after it spent heavily on massive tech projects that didn't work.

Maurer says that the department has only just begun to keep adequate financial books. Several big DHS projects have been expensive failures. Billions of dollars were spent on technology to secure the southern border and screen cargo containers for radioactive materials. In both cases, the tech just didn’t work.

DHS was created in the hysteria following 9/11. It officially was created in 2003, and has now been in existence for a decade. In that time, it appears to have failed at a variety of key things, and it's entirely unclear if it's created any benefit at all. Matt Yglesias pointed out last week that rather than nominating a new boss, we should be admitting that creating DHS was a mistake. It seems like that would be a much more productive step at this point.

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One of the key reasons many people support Bitcoin is that it's supposed to be anonymous, like cash. However, Sean Percival today wrote about how he received a phone call from his bank, because "they detected Bitcoin related transactions," and they asked him if it was for personal use or business. And, no, it wasn't because of some concern about fraud. Percival clarified that it was just about Bitcoin, and said they wanted to know about "a spike in activity" with merchants like Coinbase. He later confirmed that it was not even from the fraud department. Percival does not name the bank, other than to say that it's "one of the biggies." It will be interesting to see if this becomes a regular thing, and whether or not it'll become yet another path for government officials to try to track Bitcoin usage.

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Yesterday, T-Mobile promised to #unleashthetablet and told us to be on the lookout for some interesting un-carrier phase 3.0 news coming our way today. Well, they came through with that promise, and have announced some very interesting new perks for buying a tablet through them.

For starters, T-Mobile is introducing tablet trade-ins, something a trusted source of ours revealed would happen before any of the details were made official. It’s simple, really — fork over a tablet you own, and you can get money toward a new tablet. Nothing amazing there.

It doesn’t start to get amazing until you find out that the new tablet can be had for $0 down (for “introductory” models, anyway). But the train doesn’t even stop there. Add in the fact that T-Mobile is guaranteeing 200MB of free data per month for life with each data-enabled tablet — even if you’re not a T-Mobile customer — without having to sign a contract, and they have become one of the more interesting carriers to look at when it comes time to buy that new 4G tablet you’ve always wanted.

We’re hearing that means you can bring an unlocked tablet that would accept a T-Mobile SIM to the carrier, and you would still be able to grab that free 200MB. We’ll be putting in word to T-Mobile to see if we can get hardcore confirmation on that. Either way, it’s a pretty nice deal.

You do have the option of getting more data, with plans starting at $10 for unlimited data (only 500MB of that will be 4G). Want more 4G allowance? Add another 2GB for another $10. That’s a pretty nice deal, and should make T-Mobile one of the most attractive carriers around for those who are looking to buy a data-enabled tablet.

It looks like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 will be available for $0 down to start, with the Nexus 7 headed our way under this new program November 20th. T-Mobile does promise us that more will be on the way at some point down the line (including the iPad Air), but we’ll just have to wait until they officially announce those details to see who else will get in on the fun. You can head to their site and sign up to be notified when all of this is ready to kick off (earliest is November 1st for the iPad Air). Who’s biting?

This is the Picobrew (I see you!) automatic home brewing system. Currently an already-funded Kickstarer project, the $1,600 tabletop device brews "high-quality all-grain beer" with the touch of a button (and the addition of water, grain and hops). You just add the ingredients according to your own (or a Picobrew community) recipe, and three and a half hours later your keg is ready to disconnect, ferment for a week, and PARTY TIME. Just be sure to invite me over for inaugural keg stands. "This is craft beer, GW, not Bud Light." Hey -- sometimes craft beers like to be keg standed too, you know. It's like me, sure I LOOK like the kind of guy who only attends black tie events, but-- "You're wearing athletic shorts." Well sure, you caught me on my way to the gym. "With a 40 of Old English?" What are you, my personal trainer? Hit the jump for the Kickstarter video about the system, then start saving your money so you can buy one and start brewing me some beer like I deserve. Thanks to Jeremy and Michael, who love good beer and hate bad beer but will still drink it because, you know -- beer.

I don't even know what to say about the following. Is there some sort of secret contest going on between administrators to see who can come up with the most ridiculous interpretation of their school's zero-tolerance weapons policies? Do they meet annually to hand out awards and have a good laugh at their students' expense?

Or is it something more nefarious? Are they ushered off to administrative instructional facilities shortly after being hired and, under the guise of "teambuilding," fed a combination of psychoactive drugs and zero-tolerance dogma until they've "unlearned" any sort of common sense or restraint they've picked up through their life's experiences to that point?

What else could explain this race to bottom, policy-wise?

To date, students have been punished for the following "weapons": pop tarts bitten into a gun-like shape, fingers folded into a gun-like shape, an ASL sign for a student's own name being a gun-like shape, a drawing of a gun having a gun-like shape. And now, as if to indicate that the previous incidents were merely blips on the zero-tolerance-insanity radar, comes this story.

Parham said her son, Rhett, had made the hand-drawn picture of the bomb during the weekend at home. Parham said her son is a fan of the video game Bomber Man and drew the cartoon-ish like explosive.

Parham said her son took the picture to Hillcrest Middle School, and that's where problems arose.

Parham said she was told that her son showed the picture to some older children, who reported him to school administration. She said her son was suspended indefinitely by the school.

Here's the "bomb."


As you can see from the drawing, this bomb is the sort that only strikes fear into Wile E. Coyote and TSA agents. Or so I would have thought until confronted with the fact that "older children" were so troubled they brought it to the attention of school administration, which was so troubled it suspended the child indefinitely.

Now, the good news is that the suspension was lifted two days later. The bad news is, well, there's a lot of bad news. The bad news is that he was suspended at all. The additional bad news is that he was only reinstated after a "manifestation hearing" by the board to determine whether this harmless drawing of a cartoon bomb was somehow "linked to his disability."

You see, the student in question has autism and therefore, somehow, his drawing of a bomb might be a sign that his "disability" was turning threatening or I don't even know how to finish this sentence because it was a FREAKING CARTOON BOMB based on a CARTOONISH GAME with CARTOON BOMBS IN IT.

Two hours. It took two hours for administration to decide to rescind the suspension. Lord knows what would have happened if a student advocate specializing in autism hadn't been present.

Now, if you're not completely perplexed, irate and reeling from the ridiculousness contained in this post so far, you're going to suffer a brain spasm and die a little inside when you read the school's excuse for its actions.

"They actually reiterated to me they knew he was non-violent," said Parham. "They knew he was not actually having a bomb, creating or making a bomb. But that they could not go without making an example of him and take some type of action because they were worried about their perception. Perception is actually the word he used. Perception is reality, and parents might think you have a bomb or [might be] violent."

Because my first response to this statement is to type up a string of capitalized nonsensical letters in an attempt to convey my internal dialog that begins with a WTF loud enough to be audible to people outside of my skull and concludes with me hammering at the keyboard until the pulsing in my frontal lobe stops, I'll turn this rebuttal over to Lenore Skenazy at Free Range Kids.

The perception that anyone could be harmed, physically or mentally, by a pretend bomb (or gun)? NOT REALITY. The perception that our kids are awash in a sea of predators? NOT REALITY. The perception that kids are at high risk if they sit in a Bumbo chair or wear a pair of flowered sandals? NOT REALITY. The perception that any parent who isn’t watching his or her child every single second is putting that child in danger? Not reality.

An administration so worried about "perception" that it suspends a child indefinitely solely to show it won't tolerate any deviations from policy, no matter how slight, is an administration so weak it shouldn't be entrusted with the care and education of children, especially children with additional needs.



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A year-long review of a police shooting in Cleveland has finally concluded. The investigation stems from a police pursuit late last year that resulted in the deaths of both suspects in the vehicle, who were at the receiving end of 137 bullets fired by Cleveland police officers.

This is only one of several investigations into the chase/shooting, as Reason points out.

A state investigation previously concluded there was a systemic problem of an attitude of "refusal to look at the facts," and handed the case over the prosecutors. In August, East Cleveland's mayor said prosecutors were considering filing charges against the cops involved in the shooting, but as of this month the shooting is still being investigated.

The city of Cleveland asked the Department of Justice to review police policies following the chase and shooting, and the DOJ obliged by opening a civil rights investigation into misconduct and the possible systematic excessive use of force in March. The investigation could take up to a year and a half.

Both suspects were killed by the barrage of gunfire. The driver, Timothy Russell, was shot 23 times. His passenger, Malissa Williams, was shot 24 times. No weapons or casings were found inside the vehicle.

The chase began when an officer thought he heard gunfire coming from the Russell's car. Another witness on the scene thought it may have just been the vehicle backfiring. Either way, it led to a 23-minute chase involving five dozen police vehicles and nearly 100 officers and supervisors. Both suspects had criminal records, which may have influenced their decision to flee.

The pursuing police were ordered to stop by their supervisors but overrode this decision because they thought a police officer had been wounded. In order to right this perceived wrong, officers chased Russell at speeds of up to 120 mph before stopping him in a middle school parking lot. Thirteen officers then fired 137 shots, a majority of them in just over 20 seconds.


Those thirteen officers are facing an additional investigation (a memo from the state prosecutor suggests charging 12 of the 13 shooters with negligent homicide), but the other officers involved (including supervisors) have received their punishment from the PD.

An initial review of the chase found 75 patrol officers violated orders, but the disciplinary hearings reduced that number to 64 officers. All but one received a suspension, with the longest being 10 days, McGrath said.

None of the violations was so serious it warranted termination. Some of the officers received a written warning.

Police previously announced punishments for 12 supervisors stemming from the chase. One sergeant was fired. A captain and lieutenant were demoted, and nine sergeants were suspended.

Additional charges most likely await the thirteen officers who fired 137 shots into a single vehicle, including one officer who managed to squeeze off 49 rounds in less than 20 seconds. The DOJ's investigation also hangs overhead, but it could be another year or two before it reaches any conclusions. What's been handed down so far barely amounts to a slap on the wrist for the 63 officers being punished. The maximum suspension is only 10 days. Their supervisors appear to have fared worse, with one firing and two demotions.

The police officers' union has (of course) defended the actions of the thirteen shooters.

The union has said the shootings were justified because the driver tried to ram an officer.

One wonders if the union feels every bullet fired was "justified" or just the 47 kill shots. One also wonders how many stray shots (with only about a third of the shots hitting the targets) went wandering into the nearby neighborhood. The state AG's animated reconstruction (above) indicates some remedial gun safety training might be wise, as the officers form (more than once) a semi-circle, firing shots in the direction of each other. (That this hail of gunfire took place at night made it even more dangerous for everyone involved.)

For the rank-and-file, the punishments being handed down are too light to discourage insubordination and unsafe pursuits in the future. For some cops, ignoring supervisors' orders in order to "avenge" one of their own is always justified and any resulting punishments are worn as badges of honor. But make no mistake, this pursuit wasn't about justice or any higher duty. It was a squad of officers looking to extract revenge as self-appointed judges, jurors and executioners. Nothing else explains the massive number of shots fired or the dozens of officers facing (minimal) suspensions for directly disobeying orders.

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We've written about Carl Malamud and his ongoing crusade to make sure that the law is actually publicly accessible and not locked up by copyright. Just recently, we noted that he'd run into some troubles with Georgia, and it appears now he's facing a similar challenge from Mississippi. The basic story was actually posted as an update to Malamud's ongoing Kickstarter project, which we've already told you about.

The issue? Malamud had purchased, formatted and posted Mississippi's Code of Law, Annotated. As with Georgia, the real issue seems to be in the question of whether or not the annotations themselves are covered by copyright, as they're often produced and sold by a private company (usually LexisNexis), but in coordination with the government. That's the case here, as the letter Malamud received from Mississippi's intellectual property counsel, Larry Schemmel, suggests. Schemmel goes to great lengths to point out that the unannotated code is "freely available," but that the "creative work" behind the annotations is covered by copyright, and thus should be taken off of Malamud's site.

However, as Malamud notes in his response letter (complete with a bunch of "exhibits"), the State of Mississippi makes it fairly clear that the annotated code is part of the law, and thus he argues it, too, should be freely accessible:

Exhibit K contains the marketing literature provided by your vendor. As you can see, any citizen and certainly any lawyer would feel totally remiss in not using the the official annotated version of the Code. The marketing literature stresses that:

Be sure that the law you read is the law indeed
Official isn’t just a word. It’s a process. The Mississippi Joint Legislative Committee on Compilation, Revision and Publication of Legislation maintains careful editorial control over the publication of the official code, from the moment LexisNexis receives the acts to the final galley proofs of the finished product. Their strict supervision ensures that the published code and its supplements contain no errors in content, conform carefully to the numbering scheme, and publish in a timely manner.

Cite the code that’s guaranteed to be right Because it’s official, you can rely on LexisNexis’ Mississippi Code of 1972 Annotated for the correct statement of the law ...

As you can see, it is very clear that the Code is the official statement of the law as promulgated by the State. This is not some independent commercial endeavor, this is an official process under the direction of the State.

I have attached as Exhibit L the same section earlier attached from Exhibit D, this one being the annotated version. As you can see by comparing the two, the Annotated Code includes important cross references, research references, and Editor’s Notes. The Editor’s notes are not simply creative work, they are important materials. For example, the note to § 1-1-11 is a reference to a statement adopted by the Joint Legislative Committee on Compilation, Revision and Publication of Legislation. Statements such as these are part and parcel of the law, statements of the codifiers that add important information to the original statutes.

Malamud further challenges (in great detail) the argument that even the unannotated version is freely available, noting that LexisNexis throws up a giant pop-up before you can access it that requires you to agree to terms and conditions that are not at all reasonable for public domain information like official laws.

Those Terms and Conditions, which are attached in Exhibit B, consists of an extensive license agreement spanning 5 pages of exceedingly technical language in fine print.

Some of the highlights of the agreement include fairly draconian prohibitions against efective use, including a prohibitions against the ability to “copy, modify, reproduce, republish, distribute, display, or transmit for commercial, non-profit or public purposes all or any portion of this Web Site.”

He also notes that LexisNexis has made it impossible to share the information contained in even the unannotated law via a URL:

The user interface your vendor presents is full of links to various proprietary products, but there is a little print icon, which presents a semi-clean version of the text, as shown in Exhibit E. However, there is a huge flaw in the user interface, in that the URL that is presented does not allow a user to share what they are looking at with other users. If you mail the URL to a friend, you don’t get the section of the Code, you get a screen from your vendor hawking proprietary products as shown in Exhibit F.

He further notes that the site LexisNexis put together is "replete with HTML errors" as well as CSS errors, preventing modern browsers from being able to display it properly. Also (and this is potentially a big legal issue), the site does not comply with the accessbility requirements of the US Rehabilitation Act, which requires such information be made available to people with disabilities.

Malamud, in his Kickstarter update also highlights the incredibly detailed and painstaking process by which he sent this particular response to officials in Mississippi. This includes printing it all out and binding it very professionally, sending along a professional grade self-inking rubber stamp with the statement originally stated by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer that "If a law isn't public, it isn't a law," and finally packing the whole thing up in a box with red, blue and white "crinkle-pak" in the design of the Mississippi flag. Here are just a few of the photos (more if you click on any of the images which will take you to the update):



This may seem like overkill (or just showing off your packing skills), but as Malamud explains, there's a very important reason to go to this level of detail:

You may wonder why all the hooptedoodle and fancy printing? We want to send a message that we're very serious about this and that posting the Mississippi Code was not a casual hack, but a deliberate and carefully considered decision to make the laws of the states available to citizens. I've been presenting these kinds of issues to governments for over 20 years, and I've learned that you have to show determination, and nothing shows determination like a professional-grade rubber stamp.

On that note, I'm heading out to get some professional-grade rubber stamps.

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Way back in 2005, we wrote a story about a ridiculous situation in which a group of students were suspended after filming an angry teacher go on a bit of a tirade, screaming at students and yanking the chair out from under one of them. Rather than discipline the teacher, the school suspended the students. This was way back before it was that common for everyone to have phones with cameras in them (back when people still called them "cameraphones" and mocked them) and before social media made it so easy to widely distribute such images and videos. You'd think, given nearly a decade of time to get used to the concept that we wouldn't see a similar story pop up... but that's not the case apparently. 10 students in California have been suspended from their high school for posting, sharing or commenting on an image that appears to be their principal putting a student into a choke hold: There is some dispute about what's happening in the photo. The principal, Todd Whitmire, claims that the girl was involved in a fight, and he had separated her from others, "and she began struggling and I was pushing her away to get her away from the area and she fell down." The girl, Ashley Johnson, a 9th-grader at the school, disputes this, is wearing a neck brace and claims that Whitemore injured her neck. Either version of the events may be plausible, but no matter what the truth is, it's ridiculous to suspend students for posting, sharing or commenting on the photo. Yet that's what the school did. Whitmire claims that the original posting of the image wasn't the problem, but "keeping it alive" or making "negative comments" somehow constitutes "cyberbullying."

Principal Todd Whitmire said it wasn't the posting of the photo that got the suspended students in trouble but rather the comments that were added to the photo, which he said amounts to cyberbullying through a social network. The two students who fought were also suspended earlier this week for their actions as called for under the state education code.

"It was the reposting, the retweeting, and keeping it alive and assigning negative comments to it and creating a hostile environment" for the girl, he said Wednesday of the posts that followed Friday's on-campus fight.

This is shameful. It seems abundantly clear that the school is trying to stifle free expression and free speech -- and they flat out admit that fact, but hide behind the claim that it's "cyberbullying." Cyberbullying of who? The principal? Really? If you're going to be an administrator in a public high school, you need to have a slightly thicker skin than to suspend students for saying some mean things about a photo of you.

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Samsung seems to be coming to the table with yet another flip phone model that looks just like the Galaxy Golden and Galaxy Hennessy models that have already been made official. The device is being called the SM-W2014, and will come with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 chipset, 2GB of RAM, a 13 megapixel rear camera, a 2 megapixel front camera, two 3.67-inch WVGA Super AMOLED displays, and more.

This slick looking device will apparently launch with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, and Samsung’s TouchWiz will undoubtedly make an appearance (though we don’t expect it to house nearly the same amount of features that devices like the Note 3 and S4 do).

Samsung has been one of the more adventurous OEMs as of late when it comes to new smartphones and gadgets. It was just yesterday that the company officially announced the Samsung Galaxy ROUND, a smartphone with a curved design. Curved designs are nothing new, but the curve on that particular device is quite interesting — it’s horizontal instead of vertical.

With that, we’re likely to see the SM-W2014 pass us by as Samsung likely won’t be launching this thing outside of a few Asian markets. Still, that’s a lot of power in such a classic and small form factor. Find images of it above.

[Tenaa via Engadget]

Just a few months ago, the City of London Police announced that it had set up a special " Intellectual Property Crime Unit" -- which was immediately, and gleefully, welcomed by the legacy record labels. The whole thing seemed fairly bizarre, given that copyright should generally be a civil issue, and even when it's a criminal issue, at best it should be a federal issue, not a local police issue -- especially when you have local police who almost certainly don't understand the basic nuances of copyright issues. However, in what appears to be an effort to justify their existence, the City of London IP Crimes Unit has jumped into the deep end without looking. Beyond quickly arresting some folks, this week they demanded that EasyDNS take down a website for a BitTorrent search engine, claiming copyright infringement, based on their claims alone. They did not present a court order. They did not present a conviction. They just told EasyDNS to do it -- and (worse) threatened EasyDNS with punishment for not obeying, claiming (falsely) that it could lose its accreditation as a domain registrar. EasyDNS's Mark Jeftovic, who is incredibly well-versed in these issues (having spoken out previously on bogus domain name seizures) posted a fantastic response, which we're going to post at length. There's more than this, but it's worth reading the whole thing.

Who decides what is illegal? What makes somebody a criminal?  Given that the subtext of the request contains a threat to refer the matter to ICANN if we don't play along, this is a non-trivial question. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought it was something that gets decided in a court of law, as opposed to "some guy on the internet" sending emails. While that's plenty reason enough for some registrars to take down domain names, it doesn't fly here.

We have an obligation to our customers and we are bound by our Registrar Accreditation Agreements not to make arbitrary changes to our customers settings without a valid FOA (Form of Authorization). To supersede that we need a legal basis. To get a legal basis something has to happen in court.

The request also suggests we look at the whois contact information for the domain (which looks perfectly valid) and go ahead and suspend the domain based on invalid whois data. Again, there's a process for that, you have to go through the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint process and most of the time that doesn't result in a takedown anyway.

What gets me about all of this is that the largest, most egregious perpetrators of online criminal activity right now are our own governments, spying on their own citizens, illegally wiretapping our own private communications and nobody cares, nobody will answer for it, it's just an out-of-scope conversation that is expected to blend into the overall background malaise of our ever increasing serfdom.

If I can't make various governments and law enforcement agencies get warrants or court orders before they crack my private communications then I can at least  require a court order before I takedown my own customer.

Furthermore, Jeftovic notes that the police ordered him to redirect all of the traffic to a different site that promotes some content services that the entertainment industry likes, and noted that this was a fairly obscene form of intimidation for the sake of local protectionism of favored industry players:

In other words, they are ordering us to take down competing websites, with no legal basis, hijacking the traffic, and redirecting it to competing commercial services, all of which are based out of (guess where?) London, UK.

This whole thing is fairly stunning, and Jeftovic even suggests he wasn't sure it was real at first, though the headers from the email suggest that it's legit. Furthermore, it appears that this was not a one-off situation. TorrentFreak is reporting that the City of London Police sent out a bunch of these letters to various registrars, targeting a variety of sites -- with no evidence that there's a court order, or indeed any court case at all, with all of them. And while EasyDNS isn't complying, it appears that many other registrars did get intimidated into shutting down these sites.

The thuggish behavior and lack of due process isn't that surprising. Combine a "respect my authority" law enforcement mentality, with people who don't have much (or any) experience with the nuances (or history or purpose) of intellectual property issues, and you're going to get this kind of overreaction. Add to that the likelihood that the legacy industry helped provide the extreme (and wrong and misleading) version of copyright law, and is it any wonder that the police seemed to just start demanding websites be pulled down willy nilly just because the police think they're illegal?

If you only were to hear the legacy movie studios' and record labels' version of things, copyright is about establishing their very important business model, and anything that threatens that must be illegal. If you see a service that enables some form of infringement, well, that must be illegal, too, right? Of course, they won't realize that copyright is not about establishing a business model for those gatekeepers, that blaming tools & services for the actions of their users is a recipe for killing innovation, and (most importantly) that these things are rarely black and white. And that's why you have due process.

The City of London IP Crime Unit has only been around for a little over three months. One hopes that they'll actually learn something before pulling these kinds of censorious, abusive and thuggish stunts in the future. And, while we're at it, it seems reasonable to call for shutting down the whole unit in the first place. IP crimes are not an issue for an ignorant metropolitan police force. The unit never should have been set up in the first place, and this little cowboy censorship action highlights why the unit deserves to be quickly retired.

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While the government shutdown continues, I've joked that it seems like all of the parts of the government that I think should be closed have remained open, while the parts that I actually find useful seem to have been shutdown. The whole "essential" vs. "non-essential" distinction often seems fairly arbitrary. Now, ThinkProgress has shown what may be the most ridiculous of all: the "members-only" gym for Congressional Representatives has been deemed "essential" and thus remains open. Apparently the gym for Congressional staffers is different, and that one is closed. But, of course, the Members get special treatment, and that includes having a nice clean gym while the rest of the country suffers.

A House aide confirmed to ThinkProgress that the House member’s gym is open. The House gym features a swimming pool, basketball courts, paddleball courts, a sauna, a steam room and flat screen TVs. While towel service is unavailable, taxpayers remain on the hook for cleaning and maintenance, which has been performed daily throughout the shutdown. There are also costs associated with the power required to heat the pools and keep the lights on.

According to the aide, the decision to keep the gym open — even while other critical government services were shelved — came directly from Speaker Boehner’s office. Meanwhile, the staff gym available to Congressional staff has been closed.

So in case you were wondering if the government shutdown was cutting into your Reps' treadmill time, rest assured that your taxpayer dollars are helping to keep them in shape.

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We saw Nova Scotia deliver the worst in cyberbullying laws (Canadian edition) earlier this year. Like most bad cyberbullying legislation, this one was prompted by the suicide of a teen. It's too tempting for legislators to rush into action with no real idea on how to solve the problem, much less mitigate it, and the attendant public uproar contributes nothing in terms of clear thinking or common sense.

As a result, laws like Nova Scotia's get passed -- laws that rely on purely subjective measures. If someone feels offended, they can press charges, utilizing a non-adversarial process that allows the accuser to present his or her case directly to a judge, who then decides whether or not it's actually cyberbullying. This opens the accused up to civil proceedings, criminal charges and a chance of being banned not just from social media but from the internet entirely, along with being banned from using electronic devices -- like a phone.

Maryland's anti-cyberbullying law ("Grace's Law") is also the byproduct of the charged reaction to a teen's (Grace McComas) post-bullying suicide. Grace's Law attempts to outlaw being a jerk while still pretending it doesn't tread all over the public's First Amendment rights. It grants exceptions for "expressing political views" and "conveying information" but that's it. And if it's a teen on the receiving end of "electronic annoyance" (whether or not the "annoyer" knows the target is a teen), expect the hammer to fall swiftly and crushingly.

Grace's Law is now in effect and the state of Maryland has gone even farther, partnering with Facebook to help it censor the output of Maryland citizens, as Walter Olson details at Cato.

On Tuesday, the new law took effect, and this morning Maryland attorney general Douglas Gansler unveiled a joint initiative with Facebook and the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) in which Facebook will create a new program for school officials, the Educator Escalation Channel — initially limited to use in the state of Maryland, presumably pending similar enactments elsewhere — allowing the officials to object to Facebook users’ content. Per local radio station WTOP, Maryland school officials will be offered the chance to flag “questionable or prohibited” language. That is to say, they will flag speech that isn’t prohibited by the new law but which they deem “questionable.”

The targets of the new program, according to Gansler as quoted by WTOP, include persons who are “not committing a crime… We’re not going to go after you, but we are going to take down the language off of Facebook, because there’s no redeeming societal value and it’s clearly hurting somebody.” That is to say, Gansler believes he has negotiated power for school officials to go after speech that is not unlawful even under the decidedly speech-unfriendly definitions of the new Maryland law, but which they consider hurtful and lacking in “redeeming societal value.”

Once again, the subjective standard is being applied. What's offensive to Maryland officials is deemed to be offensive to everyone. Maryland will now start censoring users' posts and comments, all with Facebook's approval. Here's Scott Greenfield with Facebook's public statement on its partnership in free speech neutering.

“Facebook continues to look for ways to help parents, teens and educators better understand the safety features built into our service,” Facebook’s Brooke Oberwetter said in a statement, thanking Gansler “for his national leadership on the issue of online safety and for working with us to create this pilot program in Maryland.”

Oberwetter's statement appears to have been pre-written by an official at the Ministry of Love. It contains the sort of Big Brother-embracing faux cheeriness Oberwtter, who once sued the DC Park Police after being arrested for dancing at the Jefferson Memorial (and lost but still returned to dance again), wouldn't make on her own. Nope, this is a corporate canned speech, one that gives a glassy-eyed nod as it awaits orders from its new "partner." As Greenfield points out, this is a dangerous precedent Facebook is setting.

While Facebook may be a private enterprise, fully entitled to decide what content is acceptable on its platform and similarly entitled to decide that its users will no longer be allowed to write “Suzy is a poo poo head” on the wall, it’s not that simple when the censor is a state actor and the content at issue is deemed offensive not because it violates any law, but because someone is empowered to stifle speech that doesn’t comport with their vision of redeeming societal value, whatever that means. By doing the bidding of teachers, Facebook becomes the agent of the state.

Even the new statement issued by Facebook, where it claims it won't be changing its content policy "one iota" rings a little hollow. The response, given to the WSJ's Law Blog, claims Facebook will show no greater preference to reports via Maryland's direct line than those arriving via the "report" buttons deployed by everyday, non-Escalating non-Educators.

But the foot's in the door.

But this is Maryland? Who cares? And Facebook is so MySpace, right? Except it’s a pilot program, and it comes with the support of the National Association of Attorneys Generals, who would like nothing better than to make sure that no speech that doesn’t meet its approval is ever seen. This is how it starts, in one god-forsaken state on one declining platform.

Maryland is the only state in the nation currently working with (or adjacent to) Facebook to make preemptive strikes against posts "without societal value." It's very unlikely it will be the last. There are plenty of opportunistic politicians, administrators and attorneys general more than happy to point out how SERIOUS they are about tackling the cyberbullying menace.

Maryland's anti-bullying law sets its own dangerous precedents, as does Facebook's willingness to (at least publicly) ingratiate itself to censorious state bodies. It won't just be one state or one social network before it's all said and done. With the NSA peeking in the back door and Maryland's NAAG squad peering through the windows, the world's largest social network has placed one foot on a slope that descends rapidly to Facebook.gov.

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This is the conceptual Pokeball engagement ring designed by jeweler Arts & Gems (of TARDIS engagement ring fame). I'm pretty sure if you're interested they'll make one for you. I'm also pretty sure the guy who lives upstairs died or went on vacation because he's a stomper and I haven't heard anything in like a week and a half. *picks up phone to call police, eyes all the illegalities in my own apartment, hangs up* I bet he's just on vacation.

The engagement ring has a twisted shank with created green gems showing our good health at the beginning of a battle. There is also a wedding band to complete the set with created topaz stones showing our experience. Engagement ring has a Created Ruby and Cubic Zirconium cut in half to create a symmetrical design in the center.

Heck yeah, created ruby and cubic zirconium -- I'm not trying to spend a fortune on an engagement ring. What are the chances of the relationship actually working out, anyways? "With you? Slim to none." I'm unbearable. I'm pretty sure I'm even in a dead-end relationship with myself. Hit the jump for BONUS arc reactor engagement ringsand Triforce pendant. Thanks to Lydia, who told me she'd happily wear any of these provided they came from the right partner. And to SnackCake, who told me she'd literally marry anyone who gave her the Pokeball one.

With the government shutdown, you have may have come across a variety of oddities involving various government agency websites that were completely taken offline. This seems strange. Yes, the government is shut down, but does that really mean they need to turn off their web servers as well, even the purely informational ones? I could see them just leaving them static without updating them, but to completely block them just seems... odd. Even odder is that not all websites are down and some, such as the FTC's website appears to be fully up, including fully loading a page... only to then redirect you to a page that says it's down. Julian Sanchez, over at Cato, explores the various oddities of government domains that are either up or down -- or something in between.

For agencies that directly run their own Web sites on in-house servers, shutting down might make sense if the agency's "essential" and "inessential" systems are suitably segregated. Running the site in those cases eats up electricity and bandwidth that the agency is paying for, not to mention the IT and security personnel who need to monitor the site for attacks and other problems. Fair enough in those cases. But those functions are, at least in the private sector, often outsourced and paid for up front: if you've contracted with an outside firm to host your site, shutting it down for a few days or weeks may not save any money at all. And that might indeed explain why some goverment sites remain operational, even though they don't exactly seem "essential," while others have been pulled down.

That doesn't seem to account for some of the weird patterns we see, however. The main page at NASA.gov redirects to a page saying the site is unavailable, but lots of subdomains that, however cool, seem "inessential" remain up and running: the "Solar System Exploration" page at solarsystem.nasa.gov; the Climate Kids website at climatekids.nasa.gov; and the large photo archive at images.jsc.nasa.gov, to name a few. There are any number of good reasons some of those subdomains might be hosted separately, and therefore unaffected by the shutdown—but it seems odd they can keep all of these running without additional expenditures, yet aren't able to redirect to a co-located mirror of the landing page. 

He also takes on the issue of the FTC redirect, in which he notes that the redirect after loading the full page shows that they're not saving any money at all this way, meaning it makes absolutely no sense at all.

Still weirder is the status of the Federal Trade Commission's site. Browse to any of their pages and you'll see, for a split second, the full content of the page you want—only to be redirected to a shutdown notice page also hosted at FTC.gov. But that means… their servers are still up and running and actually serving all the same content. In fact they're serving more content: first the real page, then the shutdown notice page. If you're using Firefox or Chrome and don't mind browsing in HTML-cluttered text, you can even use this link to navigate to the FTC site map and navigate from page to page in source-code view without triggering the redirect. Again, it's entirely possible I'm missing something, but if the full site is actually still running, it's hard to see how a redirect after the real page is served could be avoiding any expenditures.

Sanchez tries to piece together why this might be happening, and points to a White House memo which explicitly says that agencies should shut stuff down even if it's cheaper to keep them online:

The determination of which services continue during an appropriations lapse is not affected by whether the costs of shutdown exceed the costs of maintaining services...

It's difficult to see how this helps anyone at all. But it does yet a good job (yet again) of demonstrating that logic and bureaucracy don't often go well together.

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Note: Obviously if this picture were a sci-fi spaceship it would be smaller than a breadbox, click HERE for the full-res poster. This is a visual size comparison of sci-fi franchise spaceships compiled by DeviantARTist Dirk Loechel. Is he missing any? I bet you can probably find one. That's because you're a pro. A pro at pointing out flaws. You and I should go out sometime and talk shit on everyone else at the coffee shop. Not loud enough for them to hear though, we're not bullies. Thanks to Ford, lukas, RI and Brainjam, who agree spaceships are the coolest kind of ships.

This is a video from the recent GamesCon in Germany, which had a custom Super Mario Bros. level that people could play as a time trial. After 974 people played, they compiled everybody's run into one video. This is that video. Some people seemed to breeze through, while others, well, some people just couldn't seem to manage that first jump. What the hell those people were doing at an event called GamesCon is beyond me. KEEP GOING FOR THE VIDEO. YOU CAN DO IT, I HAVE FAITH IN YOU. Thanks to YM and Shane, who would have beat that level so fast you'd have sworn they took a warp pipe (or performance enhancing drugs).

The realm of cosplay seems to hold a strange spot in intellectual property limbo, where everyone is conscious that the getups are homages to popular movies, comics and video games, but nobody really seems to do more than shrug it off. Perhaps it's because everyone realizes these people are fans and are probably doing way more good than harm in expressing their fandom, or perhaps it's because you just shouldn't take the kind of forty year old guy willing to dress up in a Hello Kitty outfit to court and expect any good to come out of it. Either way, you typically don't see a great deal of hand-wringing by media companies over cosplaying.

But carpet companies are apparently a different story. Harrison Krix, a prop-builder and cosplayer, put together an incredibly cool camouflage outfit for DragonCon in Atlanta. The design was based off of the carpet used by the host of the convention, Marriot Marquis Atlanta.

Then Krix decided to sell the fabric he made so that other visitors to the convention the following year would be able to melt into the floors of the hotel as well. That's when the manufacturer of the carpet sent him a cease and desist.

Seems Krix was selling some of the fabric he made for the costumes on textile site Spoonflower, so that others could make their own for next year's show. He's since had to pull the design, having received a Cease and Desist from Couristan.

Someone, anyone, is going to have to tell me in what strange, stupid world it makes even a semblance of sense for Couristan to go legal on a dude selling outfits. Yes, they're based on the carpet design. Yes, they're designed specifically to look exactly like the carpet. But so what? Krix isn't competing with Couristan. The company isn't going to lose any business because he mocked up camouflage based on its carpet. What the hell?

In fact, this could have been an opportunity for Couristan to build up some good will around its name by acting human. Or, at the very least, it could have sat back and done absolutely nothing. Going legal seems to be the only possible choice that could produce a negative consequence, like getting the company name in lights for pulling a d-bag move. Well, done, Couristan!



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New York, and many states in the northeast and midwest, use an RFID toll-paying solution called E-ZPass (the system works in multiple states -- but not all, which is why, for example, you can't use the E-ZPass on California's Fastrak system). Ever since E-ZPass came into existence, some have expressed concerns that the tags would be used for tracking, rather than just for more convenient and efficient toll-paying. And, in fact, the toll-paying records have been used in a variety of legal cases, from catching an official who falsified time sheets to being used as evidence in divorce cases. But all of those still involved using the records at the actual tolls, where everyone knows the tags are being read.

However, it turns out that New York City has had an ongoing program to surreptitiously scan the tags in a variety of places supposedly for monitoring traffic. Indeed, you could see how that sort of traffic information might be useful, though these days with many other forms of traffic monitoring systems out there, it's probably a lot less necessary than before. But this was only discovered because a hacker going by the name Puking Monkey (one assumes this was not his given name) got suspicious and hacked up an E-ZPass to light up and make a sound whenever it was read. Then he drove around Manhattan, and voila, the tag kept going off: As Kash Hill's article at Forbes notes, this has been going on for years, though, the various agencies involved have been rather quiet about it, and (perhaps most importantly) this type of usage does not appear to be disclosed in the terms and conditions for the E-ZPass. Oops.

The technology company that makes the devices insists that it's not being used for any surveillance:

“The tag ID is scrambled to make it anonymous. The scrambled ID is held in dynamic memory for several minutes to compare with other sightings from other readers strategically placed for the purpose of measuring travel times which are then averaged to develop an understanding of traffic conditions,” says TransCore spokesperson Barbara Catlin by email. “Travel times are used to estimate average speeds for general traveler information and performance metrics. Tag sightings (reads) age off the system after several minutes or after they are paired and are not stored because they are of no value. Hence the system cannot identify the tag user and does not keep any record of the tag sightings.”

Of course, even if that is true today, that doesn't mean it will always be true. We're already well aware of how the NYPD is known for the extreme lengths it will go in terms of surveillance, including the fact that it's set up its own intelligence division that many say rivals the intelligence operations of entire nations. Since the folks behind E-ZPass didn't seem to think it was necessary to tell people that their devices would be used for traffic monitoring, how likely is it that anyone would be told if it was used for surveillance as well?

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Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about how the feds had been directly going after people who claimed to teach others how to pass lie detector tests, claiming that this was part of their war on stopping leakers and security vulnerabilities. What was chilling was that a US official specifically said that they needed to focus their investigative efforts on the people who protested the loudest, which seems like a clear attack on free speech. As we noted at the time, the feds had already filed criminal charges against two people for offering to teach others how to beat lie detector tests, and now one of them has been sentenced to eight months in jail -- for teaching people how to beat a test that many argue has never ever been accurate in the first place.

As we noted last time, TV shows like Mythbusters and Penn & Teller: Bullshit! have both more or less taught people the same thing. While the government sought an even longer sentence, this is still worrisome on a variety of levels. Merely instructing people how to beat an extremely faulty technology should never be a crime. The judge and the DOJ's statements on the case are just bizarre:

O’Grady acknowledged “the gray areas” between the constitutional right to discuss the techniques and the crime of teaching someone to lie while undergoing a government polygraph. “There’s nothing unlawful about maybe 95 percent of the business he conducted,” the judge said.

However, O’Grady added that “a sentence of incarceration is absolutely necessary to deter others.”

Deter others from what? From speaking out about how to trick incredibly unreliable technology that the government probably relies on too much already?

“This crime matters because what he did endangers others,” said Anthony Phillips, a prosecutor with the Justice Department’s division that pursues corrupt public officials.

No it didn't. It doesn't endanger others to show them that a lie detector is faulty and not reliable. What endangers people is the federal government relying on such a dreadful technology that's so easy to "beat."

In many ways, this is similar to discovering a massive security flaw and then blaming the messenger for showing others how that security is flawed. The proper response is to not use the flawed security. But that's not how the government operates, unfortunately.

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By now you should be familiar with the concept of advertising being content and content being advertising. If you're new to the class, the idea is that clever, timely, and wanted ads can be every bit as entertaining and drawing as entertainment content itself. It's essentially what makes a good ad: something you want being presented in the way you want it, all without pissing you or a large section of the customer off base. Oreo serves as a wonderful example of this, having put out a timely Twitter quip as an ad in last year's Super Bowl.

But make no mistake, you can do this wrong. And one pizzeria in Champaign, IL, home of the University of Illinois, got it horribly, horribly wrong.

If you're a female customer who goes to Drew's Pizzeria in Champaign, you can apparently flash your boobs and walk away with some free pizza. Since sober girls usually won't flash people for free pizza, it seems that these boobs-for-pizza trades unsurprisingly happen more often at night, according to a Craigslist post.

Drew's Pizzeria's Twitter account, now deleted in an attempt to bury its head in the internet sand, offered such wonderful incentives to eat their pie as:

"FREE PIZZA for the next pair of nips right now, ladies only!"

"Pizzas $5 right at Drews or free for titties."

"WE WANT MORE TITS!!! #showusyourtits #uiuc FREE PIZZA"

Now, we have a couple of problems here. First, while you won't find a guy with a deeper appreciation of the female anatomy than I, screaming how much you want to see boobs at your pizzeria using the all-caps faux pas is akin to the creepy guy in the corner of the strip club who keeps asking one stripper exactly what time she'd be leaving out the back and whether she's allergic to ether. And who didn't see the eventual backlash coming? Large swaths of men may think of free-spirited ho-bags when the term "college girl" is uttered, but that's bullshit. College is also the place where feminism spreads, where activism finds roots, and where the love of battling a corporation is second only to a love of a cancelled class. Of course people rallied against these idiots.

But, hey, they cancelled their Twitter account, so they're clearly sorry. I imagine we'll get a claim of a hack by the Syrian Electronic Army any moment now. In the meantime, there has to be a better-behaved business that will sell you some pizza in rural Illinois.

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Remember Stewart Baker? He's the former Homeland Security and NSA officials who recently argued that civil liberties activists were to blame for 9/11. Apparently, that sort of thinking (blame the activists for what it leads the government to do) worked so well the last time, he's back for more. According to him, all the bullshit you've had to go through with the TSA at our airports is because of those darn meddling privacy advocates. Yes, we've now learned that the reason a TSA measured the weight of my little friend and his bag of tricks is because privacy advocates just wouldn't let the TSA do invasive background checks on all of us. The privacy advocating jerks.

TSA ended up taking more time to inspect everyone, treating all travelers as potential terrorists, and subjecting many to whole-body imaging and enhanced pat-downs. We can't blame TSA for this wrong turn, though. Privacy lobbies persuaded Congress that TSA couldn't be trusted with data about the travelers it was screening. With no information about travelers, TSA had no choice but to treat them all alike, sending us down a long blind alley that has inconvenienced billions.

Of course! It isn't the TSA's fault the TSA debased me. It's because privacy advocates (also me) didn't want the TSA to debase me by massively invading my privacy. It makes perfect sense! Never mind that this is all a theater show ostensibly designed to up the suicide count of Americans worldwide, because they sure aren't catching anyone important. It's the privacy people who are to blame. Also, all those women who are sexually assaulted? Pshh, they were dressed to provocatively. Blame the short-skirt makers or whoever.

Then, because apparently Stewart Baker hasn't been reading the news lately, he testified that instead the government just needs more data on all of us, while driving home the point that the current security screenings are stupid.

No one wants to be against privacy, but we've tried the privacy campaigners' preferred solution, denying even the smallest scrap of data to the government, and they saddled us with ten years of stupid screening at our airports, where a lack of data forced TSA to treat everyone like a suspected terrorist. No one liked that solution, with good reason. It's time to recognize that failure and encourage experiments in smarter, faster, more informed screening based on data-sharing.

Okay, no. The TSA has not tried the privacy campaigner's preferred solution, because I've yet to hear a privacy campaigner stamp her feet over the fact that her nipples haven't been tweaked lately. And, while everyone would like better and safer solutions for traveling, making the "our government just doesn't have enough data on us" argument at this point in time might be the most tone-deaf thing since Bob Dylan. The TSA is full of misconduct, the government is collecting too much data on us and is overloaded with it, all while even the TSA's advocates are calling their current screening processes "stupid."

Drop the curtain on this theater, because the show has been going on too long and it sucks anyway.



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One of the more glossed over parts of Microsoft buying large parts of Nokia was that it was actually a two-part transaction. It spent $5 billion on Nokia's mobile phones unit and then another $2.18 billion to license Nokia's patent portfolio. Many reports just summarized this as Microsoft spending $7.2 billion to buy Nokia. But the licensing tidbit is interesting -- and potentially concerning, as it leads to quite reasonable speculation that the emptied shell of Nokia is about to become a massive, annoying patent troll.

There's no doubt that the company has a variety of important mobile device and mobile data patents. The license with Microsoft lasts for ten years, but there's nothing stopping Nokia from going after others. Yes, many key players already have licensing deals in place, but there are always more targets to go after, especially in such a dynamic and innovative arena. And, without having to worry about patent nuclear war being pointed back at Nokia, potentially harming its own phone business, you'd have to imagine that the company will be more willing than ever to aggressively try to squeeze money out of others.

Nokia has been deterred from asserting its patents too aggressively by the risk of retaliation by competitors. Nokia’s rivals have patents of their own, and if they felt the Finnish company was making unreasonable demands, they could have filed patent infringement lawsuits themselves.

Without that deterrent, Nokia has plenty of incentives to become an incredibly annoying and disruptive patent troll.

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Roku may have been dealt a crushing blow with the release of the insanely affordable Google Chromecast, but they’re not down for the count. The tiny streaming player has come back with a 1-2 punch, hitting the Chromecast right in its dongle by addressing the Cast’s biggest shortcoming — lack of support for locally stored streaming.

In an update hitting the official Roku app today on Google Play, Android users will now be able to stream content stored on their Android devices — pictures, movies, and music — straight to their Rokus players. A similar update already hit iOS devices last month and while it’s great that it’s finally arrived for Android devices, there are some caveats. First off, only a small list of Roku players support the wireless streaming, and there’s an equally small list of Android devices supported by the app. Below you can find the full list of supported Roku players as well as Android devices.

Supported Roku players

• Roku 3
• Roku 2
• Roku LT
• Roku HD (model 2500)
• Roku Streaming Stick

Supported Android devices

• Samsung Galaxy S3
• Samsung Galaxy S4
• Nexus 4
• HTC One
• Nexus 7 (2012 model)

Despite being touted as an online streaming player, locally stored content has been one of the Chromecast’s sore spots ever since it was announced a few weeks ago. You may remember the drama with Clockwork Mod developer Koush who, after introducing local streaming via his an unofficial Chromecast app, was later shot down by Google’s Chromecast developers in a recent update to the device.

While the Roku might not be able to compete in pricing alone, Roku still has a leg up on the competition thanks to officially supported services like Hulu, HBO Go, Vudu, Amazon Instant, and more. Local streaming is just the icing on the cake.

[Roku on Google Play]

Last month, we wrote about the revelation of the infamous backdoor search loophole that allowed the NSA to run searches on the communications of Americans without a warrant, just so long as they collected them under another program -- the so-called 702 program of the FISA Amendments Act, which sucks up a large amount of communications, based on some very broad definitions of words like "target" and "relevance." We noted that this was due to a "rule change" in 2011, but the details of that change weren't entirely clear... until now.

The Washington Post has the story (along with the recently released -- though heavily redacted -- FISA Court ruling about the NSA lying to the court) that shows that back in 2008, the FISC had banned any such searches at the request of the Bush administration, but in 2011 the Obama administration reversed course, and asked the FISA Court to allow such backdoor warrantless searches, and the court did what it was told, issuing a ruling allowing them, despite the fact that it's almost certainly a major 4th Amendment violation. The Obama administration's reasoning? As noted below, a chief administration lawyer explains: "We wanted to be able to do it." The "it" there, for clarification, is run warrantless searches on tons of communications (not just metadata) collected from Americans.

What's a little surprising is that I'm pretty sure I called some of this back in June, the day after the first Snowden leak came out, when I pointed out that the NSA likely defines "target" not to mean just the person that they're targeting, but rather the entire investigation. So as long as the goal of the collection was to "target" a particular non-American situation, anything can be collected, and then it can be searched at will without a warrant. Apparently, this includes somewhere on the order of 250 million communications per year.

What's astounding is that Robert Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, seems kind of proud of the fact that they got this backdoor loophole:

The court in 2008 imposed a wholesale ban on such searches at the government’s request, said Alex Joel, civil liberties protection officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The government included this restriction “to remain consistent with NSA policies and procedures that NSA applied to other authorized collection activities,” he said.

But in 2011, to more rapidly and effectively identify relevant foreign intelligence communications, “we did ask the court” to lift the ban, ODNI general counsel Robert S. Litt said in an interview. “We wanted to be able to do it,” he said, referring to the searching of Americans’ communications without a warrant.

Um. "We wanted to be able to do it" is not exactly a valid reason for violating the clear language of the 4th Amendment. I'm sure plenty of government officials "wanted to be able to do" all sorts of illegal things like throw political foes in jail for dissent, or shut down newspapers for writing things they don't like. But we don't allow it because the Constitution says you can't do that.

But Litt just can't help himself, he's so proud of violating the 4th Amendment.

“If we’re validly targeting foreigners and we happen to collect communications of Americans, we don’t have to close our eyes to that,” Litt said. “I’m not aware of other situations where once we have lawfully collected information, we have to go back and get a warrant to look at the information we’ve already collected.”

The duplicity here is incredible. First, they redefine "target" to allow them suck up American's communications without a warrant, despite the fact that this is expressly prohibited. Then, to ignore the official minimization rules that bar them from looking at any communications that involve Americans, they have a court say "oh fine" and overturn a clear rule that says they can't look at those communications, and Litt doesn't see the problem? Most people would argue (a) the original collection was not, in fact lawful and (b) even if it was lawful to collect, over and over again for the past few months, government officials have insisted that they are careful to make sure searches on Americans don't happen. Yet, now he nonchalantly waves off the issue as being "of course" they search that information because he thinks it's "lawfully collected" despite being almost directly against the plain language of both the law and the Constitution? Wow.

Oh, and as a "bonus" they appear to have tossed in the ability for the NSA to keep Americans' communications for six years, rather than five. Note, of course, that over the past few months, the NSA and its defenders have continued to trot out the five year claim, even though this ruling makes it clear that the timeline had actually been extended to six. So, yet another lie to top it all off.

And, while most of the outrage should be directed at the Obama administration, mainly in the form of Litt and James Clapper who pushed for this, some of it also should be directed at the chief judge of the FISA Court at the time, John Bates, who signed off on this "rule change." Once again, it seems that the administration and the NSA's defenders keep claiming one thing, and only later, as it's pointed out that the opposite is true, do they say something like "oh, yeah, well of course we do that..."

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A new skyscraper in London nicknamed the Walkie Talkie has melted a car parked nearby because the curved and mirrored exterior of the building focuses the sun's energy on a nearby street in the afternoon. What architect would be foolish enough to design such a building? Oh right, THE SAME GUY RESPONSIBLE FOR BUILDING THAT DEATH RAY HOTEL IN LAS VEGAS BACK IN 2009. You get your architecture degree from the back of a cereal box? Maybe you should just stick to building LEGO playsets. Or at least only catering to supervillains.

The car belongs to Martin Lindsay, the director of a tiling company, who parked his Jaguar in central London's Eastcheap on Thursday afternoon. The car was in the ray for just an hour but the panels were buckled and there was reportedly a smell of burning plastic. People walking buy often have to shield their eyes from the incredible glare and the building has been dubbed the 'Walkie Scorchie' by nearby workers. Joint developers Land Securities and Canary Wharf said they are investigating, adding: 'As a precautionary measure, the City of London has agreed to suspend three parking bays in the area which may be affected.'

Seriously, why does this guy keep building concave skyscrapers? Because maybe he should stop doing that. That's like a car designer who keeps putting the ejector seat buttons on the windshield wiper knob. First time it rains somebody's going through the roof. Hit the jump for some shots of the damaged car. Thanks to Erica G and dave, who have always dreamed of living in giant death rays and watching everything outside their mirrored walls burn. Me too kinda.

Adel Daoud is an American teen who was arrested last year in one of the FBI's many infamous home grown plots, in which FBI agents entice people into claiming they want to take part in a terror plot, plan the whole thing, give the person a fake bomb, and then arrest them. In this case, the "plot" which only involved Daoud and a bunch of FBI agents, was supposedly to bomb a Chicago bar. Daoud had no actual way of doing this until the FBI showed up and "helped." And then arrested him and celebrated, while admitting the public was "never at risk." Well, duh.

However, the case has been taking some interesting turns. Late last year, when the Senate was "debating" the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act (a key part of the NSA's surveillance program), Senator (and Senate Intelligence Commission boss) Dianne Feinstein pointed to the Daoud case as evidence for why the FAA needed to be renewed, claiming directly that the FISA Amendments Act was used to stop "a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar."

Given that, Daoud's lawyers sought access to the evidence that was obtained via the FISA Amendments Act. This is basic due process. Someone who is accused of a crime is supposed to have access to all of the evidence that was used against him. That was back in May, before the Snowden leaks, and before the revelations that the NSA and other agencies have used questionable surveillance methods to tip off other agencies of people to target, and then had them "launder" the evidence by trying to recreate evidence obtained in a more legal fashion to use against them -- also known as "parallel construction."

Back on August 9th, Daoud's lawyers made a much more thorough request for the evidence obtained via the FAA. As they note, there may be significant problems with the FISA information, including, but not limited to the FISA application for electronic surveillance may fail to establish probable cause that Dauoud was "an agent of a foreign power." As they note, he was an American citizen and high school student in suburban Chicago. They also suggest the FISA application may have contained material falsehoods or omissions and might violate the 4th Amendment. The surveillance also may have violated the FISA law. There are many other reasons they bring up as well.

The Justice Department (of course) argued that it shouldn't have to hand over any of this info, in part because it's classified and in part because they're not going to use that evidence against Daoud.

Unfortunately, the court wasted little time in agreeing with the feds that they don't need to turn over the evidence collected under FISA.

This is troublesome on a variety of levels. First of all, it seems like a clear due process violation, in which you're supposed to be able to see the evidence used against you. Second, it's a victory for "parallel construction," effectively giving the feds a green light to launder illegally obtained evidence, using it to "construct" legitimately obtained evidence. But, more directly, this issue was raised a few months ago, because the US Solicitor General had told the Supreme Court that any defendant who had FISA-collected evidence used in their arrest would have standing to challenge FISA because the government would have to disclose it. And, after it came out that the government wasn't disclosing it, the DOJ promised that, going forward it would provide such information.

Except that it's not doing so here. This is tremendously sketchy. As others are noting, if the evidence was legally obtained and really showed potential threats, why would they hide it?

The government’s successful attempt to keep the surveillance secret in the Daoud trial suggests that it either lacks confidence in the constitutionality of the spying or the Justice Department is still struggling to embrace the greater transparency on surveillance recently promised by the Obama administration—or both.

And, on top of that, the court has now sanctified this whole practice of abusing surveillance to spy on people, and then laundering the evidence so no one can challenge it. This is terrible, and hopefully an appeal on this particular issue is forthcoming.

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One of the key points that defenders of the NSA surveillance efforts keep making is that if Ed Snowden was so upset by what was happening he had "other avenues" to make his concerns known. Jennifer Hoelzer, whom you may recall from the post she wrote here about President Obama's supposed desire for an open debate concerning NSA surveillance, has penned an excellent piece for Slate, once again debunking the President. This time, it's about those supposed "other avenues" he had. As she notes, the problem is that anyone he took these concerns to would brush him off by claiming "it's legal." But the real concern the public has is the very fact that the NSA and so many of its defenders think this is legal.

If Edward Snowden had concerns that one of his co-workers was abusing the NSA’s surveillance authority to—for example—collect data on a former girlfriend or blackmail a member of Congress, he could have reported his concerns to a supervisor, and it’s highly likely that person would have done something about it.

But, contrary to what the president seems to think, Edward Snowden wasn’t concerned that the NSA was “improperly” collecting information on hundreds of millions of Americans. He was concerned that the government was collecting information on hundreds of millions of Americans. And how exactly does the president think Snowden should have raised that concern?

This is a key distinction that very few defenders of the NSA (and who are attacking Snowden) seem to grasp. The fact that the public -- and many in Congress -- have since spoken out in outrage over the program certainly suggests this is a key point. Every time NSA defenders argue "well, it's legal" they miss out on the fact that a very large number of people don't care because they don't think it should be legal at all. That's the debate we're trying to have -- and it's the one President Obama, Dianne Feinstein, Mike Rogers, Keith Alexander and James Clapper still can't even recognize is the key question.

Either way, as Hoelzer notes, Snowden really had nowhere to "complain" to about this actual issue:

Snowden’s former employer, Booz Allen, which requires employees to report “all suspected violations of the law” and cautions them to “take care to not report a violation to someone that [they] believe is involved in the matter.”

Well, nearly everyone Edward Snowden worked for—up to and including the president of the United States—was involved in the matter. So, again, whom exactly should he have gone to with his concerns?

Okay, well, what about Congress? Multiple people have suggested he could go talk to members of Congress. But, not so fast. Hoelzer takes a look at the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's website where it has a page on How to File A Whistleblower Complaint, explaining the "process" for contacting Congress (if you aren't comfortable raising the concern within the intelligence community, which, clearly, Snowden was not). But, again, not so easy:

But then I noticed a problem. Before bringing an “urgent concern” to Congress, the guidance states that all potential intelligence community whistle-blowers must first notify the DNI of their “intent to contact the congressional intelligence committees directly.” In other words, if Snowden wanted to inform the Senate intelligence committee that the DNI had lied, he would first have to inform the DNI that he intended to inform on him. That seems like it could be a problem.

But, let’s say it wasn’t. Let’s say the director of national intelligence did the honorable thing and allowed Snowden to go to the Senate intelligence committee with evidence that he lied. Would Snowden have had any reason to believe going to Congress would make the least bit of difference?

Probably not, since the House and Senate intelligence committees were already aware of the NSA’s activities. And, having worked for Wyden, a committee member who spent years trying to raise concerns about domestic surveillance, I can tell you, individual members of Congress were virtually hamstrung from doing anything about the administration’s activities. Especially since the executive branch’s classification rules forbid the senator from sharing his concerns with anyone outside of the intelligence committee, including staff.

So, really, what "official channels" could Snowden have possibly used? As Hoelzer notes, the only way to really blow the whistle on this was to go "over the head" of the federal government and the President -- and that's to go to the American public.

I understand Obama’s frustration. No one likes it when someone goes over his head. It’s humiliating. But when the guy in charge appears to be a significant part of the problem, sometimes the only way to resolve the problem is to let his boss know what’s going on. And when the guy in charge is the president of the United States, that means letting the American people know what he’s been up to.

On that front, it appears that Snowden did exactly the right thing in how he blew the whistle.

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We've seen ridiculous requests and results stemming from the concept of how "mean" the internet is. Recall that Prenda Law wanted all manner of documents sealed because the internet was a cruel, cruel place. To be fair, it isn't like we haven't seen our share of stories about jerks on the web. Still, I'm pretty sure the internet housing a bunch of meanie poopy-heads probably shouldn't factor into the decision to have a former high school teacher who raped a 14 year old girl serve only 30 days in jail.

Now, I know what you're thinking: that didn't happen. A guy did not rape a 14 year old student and then only do a month in the pen. Sorry, you're wrong, and the reasons for it are as absurd as they come.

A Yellowstone County district judge Monday ordered a former Senior High teacher convicted of raping a 14-year-old female student who later committed suicide to spend 30 days in jail. Judge G. Todd Baugh sentenced Stacey Dean Rambold to 15 years in prison, with all but 31 days suspended, for sexual intercourse without consent.

Rambold's attorney, Jay Lansing, argued Monday for the suspended sentence. He said Rambold lost his career, his marriage and his home and has suffered a "scarlet letter of the Internet" as a result of publicity about the case. The judge also said Morales was "older than her chronological age."

Okay, let's take these in order. First, doesn't even 15 years for a teacher raping a student seem on the light side, particularly when that student subsequently killed herself? Secondly, reducing the sentence from 15 years to 30 days for any reason is insane, but when those reasons are that the rapist has lost his family and job while suffering the wrath of a pissed off internet, the justice train has gone off the rails somewhere. One would think any stories of the internet being so cruel to Captain Rapey as to warrant a reduced sentence would have made it into the public light without the defense attorney's help. To even make this argument is an insult to our concept of justice and accountability.

Finally, what the hell difference does it make that the girl may have looked older than her peers? Several news pieces on this story have shown the young lady, who certainly did look mature for her age, and I can imagine some nightmare scenario in which an adult unwittingly hooks up with a mature looking young person who is underage and faces the wrath of the court as a result, but this isn't that scenario. Rambold taught at the girl's school and had every reason to know and/or believe that her age should have come into question, setting aside entirely the fact that teachers probably shouldn't be banging their students no matter what age they are.

The internet can be a cruel world, but it isn't as cruel as a teacher raping a 14-year-old girl. It just isn't.

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