Dahl.brendan

Weev’s case is just another example of a dangerous prosecution that covers all sorts of innocuous, common internet behavior. Perhaps more dangerously, it’s an example of a prosecution that tries to regulate a person, not just his or her crime.

A new report is showing that Google's Android mobile OS could be dominating Europe with as much as 70.4% of the mobile market share. iOS comes in second with a paltry 17.8%.

So a lot of folks are talking about Wikileaks releasing the latest statement from Ed Snowden from Moscow. It honestly doesn't say much, beyond criticizing the report that VP Joe Biden has been pressuring Ecuador into rejecting Snowden's request for asylum:

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

Of course, some quickly noted that the choice of phrases is a bit odd. Farhad Manjoo correctly points out that it's quite unlikely for any American to write "the United States of America have been..." An American would say "has been" not "have." It's a much more European use of English to say "have been." It's entirely possible that someone else "edited" the statement, or perhaps it was a mis-transcription of spoken words, but it at least calls into question how much of the statement is actually from Snowden.

Given everything that's been going on, there has been growing concern that Snowden is quickly becoming a pawn of a variety of other political actors with a variety of other motivations. It does seem odd that Snowden has aligned himself with Wikileaks (a site he's mocked in the past). Hopefully, the full statement can be confirmed in some manner, because that language choice really does raise some serious questions about its authenticity.

Update: And... just as I finished this post, Manjoo tweeted that they'd changed the text to "has been." However, that's not what it was originally. Here's a screenshot of it from my screen with the wrong "have been" in there.

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Illinois Senator Dick Durbin has penned an editorial for the Chicago Sun-Times in which he argues that journalists need some form of government-granted protection, but that the government should decide who is a real journalist and who isn't.

As he points out, there is currently no national "shield" law that protects journalists and their sources, although a bill along those lines is slowly making its way through the system. Durbin seems to feel a great many people should be excluded from this protection, though -- possibly for no other reason than the platform used.

The media informs the public and holds government accountable. Journalists should have reasonable legal protections to do their important work. But not every blogger, tweeter or Facebook user is a “journalist.” While social media allows tens of millions of people to share information publicly, it does not entitle them to special legal protections to ignore requests for documents or information from grand juries, judges or other law enforcement personnel.

There's your new have-nots, if Durbin's deciding. Here's the list of who Durbin feels actually deserves the "journalist" label and its associated protections.

A journalist gathers information for a media outlet that disseminates the information through a broadly defined “medium” — including newspaper, nonfiction book, wire service, magazine, news website, television, radio or motion picture — for public use. This broad definition covers every form of legitimate journalism.

The internet: illegitimate journalism. Journalism isn't a static object with a single definition, it's something people do with or without the title, and the dissemination of these endeavors spans many platforms. While there are a lot of old school journalism outlets listed, Durbin also includes "news website," which covers a whole lot of gray area (Buzzfeed? TMZ? Vice?). Without further details, it would appear a "news website" will probably have to be anchored by one of the other "time-honored" journalism outlets.

If a newspaper journalist writes a blog on the side or maintains a Twitter account, are those sidelines protected because of his or her position, or is it only what appears on the printed page/associated news website? Or conversely, if someone's journalist efforts are mainly regulated to platforms not covered by Durbin's list but occasionally contributes to "legitimate journalism," does that cover the non-associated online work as well? No matter how these instances play out, "journalism" is being defined by media form rather than by the activity itself. While the government should recognize freedom of the press and grant protection to journalists, it becomes problematic when the definition is narrowed to pre-existing forms that don't truly reflect journalism as it exists today.

Durbin says that those who think the government shouldn't be able to define journalism need to be reminded that 49 states already do just that. That doesn't make these definitions better or more acceptable and certainly shouldn't be taken as some sort of tacit permission for the federal government to define what media forms it will protect and which it won't.

He goes on to cite recent events as evidence this protection is needed.

The leaks of classified information about the NSA’s surveillance operations and an ongoing Justice Department investigation into who disclosed secret documents to the Associated Press have brought this issue back to the forefront and raised important questions about the freedom of speech, freedom of the press and how our nation defines journalism.

Journalists should certainly be shielded from those who think they should be prosecuted for exposing leaked documents. But this administration isn't interested in protecting whistleblowers and, if it wasn't running up against existing "freedom of the press protections," would probably be punishing journalists as well. Allowing the government to pick and choose who is protected will likely result in a large number of unprotected journalists, thanks to an inadequate definition. And even this additional protection is unlikely to prevent entities like the DOJ from violating the Fourth Amendment in a search for sources and whistleblowers. If you're already violating civil liberties, breaking a law isn't much of a concern.

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Improved technology enabled the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. Future improvements will make collecting data on citizens easier and easier.

Recent revelations about the extent of surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency come as no surprise to those with a technical background in the workings of digital communications. The leaked documents show how the NSA has taken advantage of the increased use of digital communications and cloud services, coupled with outdated privacy laws, to expand and streamline their surveillance programs. This is a predictable response to the shrinking cost and growing efficiency of surveillance brought about by new technology. The extent to which technology has reduced the time and cost necessary to conduct surveillance should play an important role in our national discussion of this issue.

Back in May, we noted that the appeal in the Authors Guild case against Google over Google Books had taken something of an odd turn. The specific question on appeal had been entirely focused on whether or not it was appropriate to have this be a class action lawsuit for all authors. Google had, quite reasonably, argued that fair use can be pretty fact specific, and a very different analysis may apply for different kinds of books, and thus it would be a bad idea to lump all authors together in a class action lawsuit. However, the district court had ruled in favor of a class action, and supposedly it was that question that was being discussed on appeal. Instead, we noted that during the oral arguments, the three judge panel seemed to have no interest in that actual question, and instead talked about how Google's book scanning project seemed likely to be covered by fair use.

So, I guess it should come as little surprise that today's ruling on the matter barely even mentions the class action issue, other than to say that Google's argument "may carry some force." Instead it sends the case back to the district court, saying that it should do the fair use analysis first, suggesting that this might make the whole question of whether or not a class should be certified entirely moot. In other words, the Second Circuit is basically screaming to the district court: "what Google is doing is fair use, full stop, so we're wasting time arguing about whether or not this is a class action: just end the thing by saying it's fair use." The ruling is short and sweet and is a huge victory for Google. Here's the key part:

Putting aside the merits of Google’s claim that plaintiffs are not representative of the certified class—an argument which, in our view, may carry some force—we believe that the resolution of Google’s fair use defense in the first instance will necessarily inform and perhaps moot our analysis of many class certification issues, including those regarding the commonality of plaintiffs’ injuries, the typicality of their claims, and the predominance of common questions of law or fact, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(2), (3), (b)(3). See, e.g., FPX, LLC v. Google, Inc., 276 F.R.D. 543, 551 (E.D. Tex. 2011) (denying plaintiffs’ request for class certification “because of the fact-specific inquiries the court would have to evaluate to address [defendants’] affirmative defenses [including fair use of trademarks]”); Vulcan Golf, LLC v. Google Inc., 254 F.R.D. 521, 531 (N.D. Ill. 2008) (“The existence of affirmative defenses [such as fair use of trademarks] which require individual resolution can be considered as part of the court’s analysis to determine whether individual issues predominate under Rule 23(b)(3).”); see also Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 469 n.12 (1978) (“Evaluation of many of the questions entering into determination of class action questions is intimately involved with the merits of the claims. The typicality of the representative’s claims or defenses . . . and the presence of common questions of law or fact are obvious examples.” (quotation marks omitted)); Castano v. Am. Tobacco Co., 84 F.3d 734, 744 (5th Cir. 1996) (“[A] court must understand the claims, defenses, relevant facts, and applicable substantive law in order to make a meaningful determination of the certification issues.”); cf. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541, 2561 (2011) (holding that “a class cannot be certified on the premise that [a defendant] will not be entitled to litigate its statutory defenses to individual claims”). Moreover, we are persuaded that holding the issue of class certification in abeyance until Google’s fair use defense has been resolved will not prejudice the interests of either party during the projected proceedings before the District Court following remand. Accordingly, we vacate the District Court’s order of June 11, 2012 certifying plaintiffs’ proposed class, and we remand the cause to the District Court, for consideration of the fair use issues.

I'm actually somewhat surprised at this. While I've argued from the very beginning that Google's book scanning project was clearly fair use (and was annoyed when it looked like Google was dropping that argument in its original settlement effort), it does seem a bit strange for the judges to jump straight to the fair use analysis across the board. I would guess that the Author's Guild, somewhat ironically, might now want to hit back with Google's own argument in trying to block the class, by saying that different authors have different arguments, and seeking a fair use judgment across the board wouldn't make any sense. Still, in terms of getting this many-years process finally over and done with, it seems like skipping ahead to the fair use analysis is probably the best way to finally settle the matter.

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At the end of last year, we wrote about an extraordinary attempt by the University of California (UC) to resuscitate the infamous "Eolas" patents that were thrown out earlier by a jury in East Texas. Clearly, the University of California likes patents, and the way that they can be used to extract money from people with very little effort. In fact, it likes them so much it is trying to privatize research produced by taxpayer-funded laboratories so that even more patents can be taken out on the work, and even more money obtained through licensing them. The background to this new approach, implemented via a new entity provisionally entitled "Newco", is described in a fantastic feature by Darwin BondGraham that appears in East Bay Express:

The purpose of Newco is to completely revamp how scientific discoveries made in UC laboratories -- from new treatments for cancer to apps for smartphones -- come to be used by the public. Traditionally, UC campuses have used their own technology transfer offices to make these decisions. But under Newco, decisions about the fate of academic research will be taken away from university employees and faculty, and put in the hands of a powerful board of businesspeople who will be separate from the university. This nonprofit board will decide which UC inventions to patent and how to structure licensing deals with private industry. It also will have control over how to spend public funds on these activities.

Newco's proponents contend that the 501(c) 3 entity will bring much-needed private-sector experience to the task of commercializing university inventions. Ultimately, it will generate more patents, and thus bigger revenues for UC through licensing deals and equity stakes in startups, they claim. UC administrators also say they have established sufficient safeguards for Newco and that UCLA's chancellor and the regents will have oversight over the entity.

As that makes clear, at the heart of this approach is a belief that taking out more patents on publicly-funded research is a good thing. But as Techdirt reported five years ago, the legislation that started universities down this road, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, did not cause more research to be conducted in the academic world, contrary to what advocates of this law claimed would happen. Another article the same year noted that more patents actually led to much less collaboration, much greater secrecy and much higher costs to innovation.

The East Bay Express feature has a great comment from Gerald Barnett, who ran tech transfer operations at the University of Washington and at UC Santa Cruz, and therefore has some experience in this field. He explains why more patents are bad for the public that is paying for the research that generates them, and bad for the US economy:

"The problem is that you're taking out of circulation a vast amount of public domain knowledge and other stuff, and holding it hostage, making it less likely that any of these inventions will make money because you're focusing on exclusive licenses," he said.

What's better for the public and the broader economy, said Barnett, is a system in which most university inventions and knowledge quickly flows into the public domain, or is swiftly made available through non-commercial means. A relatively small number of university inventions that benefit from patent positions might be licensed out, Barnett said. But he's skeptical of the obsession with exclusive patent agreements with corporations.

The article goes on to explore the ways in which the worlds of UC academia and business are becoming deeply intertwined, and how this raises questions about potential conflicts of interest when decisions concerning the commercialization of discoveries are being made. It's an important piece that chronicles the University of California's shift away from the pursuit and sharing of knowledge for the benefit of all humanity, to the monopolization of ideas and maximization of profits for a few privileged investors.

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

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by Cora Currier

On June 9, a U.S. drone fired on a vehicle in a remote province of Yemen and killed several militants, according to media reports.

It soon emerged that among those who died was a boy – 10-year-old Abdulaziz, whose elder brother, Saleh Hassan Huraydan, was believed to be the target of the strike. A McClatchy reporter recently confirmed the child’s death with locals. (Update: The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism today reported that there was "strong evidence" it was a U.S. drone strike, but it could not confirm the fact.)

It’s the first prominent allegation of a civilian death since President Obama pledged in a major speech in May “to facilitate transparency and debate” about the U.S. war on al Qaida-linked militants beyond Afghanistan. He also said “there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured” in a strike.

So what does the administration have to say in response to evidence that a child was killed?

Nothing.

National security spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden would not comment on the June 9 strike or more generally on the White House position on acknowledging civilian deaths. She referred further questions to the CIA, which also declined to comment.  

The president’s speech was the capstone on a shift in drone war policy that would reportedly bring the program largely under control of the military (as opposed to the CIA) and impose stricter criteria on who could be targeted. In theory, it could also bring some of the classified program into the open. As part of its transparency effort, the administration released the names of four U.S. citizens who had been killed in drone strikes.

An official White House fact sheet on targeted killing released along with the speech repeated the “near-certainty” standard for avoiding civilian casualties. Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated it a few days later, when he told an audience in Ethiopia: “We do not fire when we know there are children or collateral — we just don't do it.”

But White House press secretary Jay Carney said in late May that “this commitment to transparency…does not mean that we would be able to discuss the details of every counterterrorism operation.”

The new White House statements don’t address what happens after a strike, even in general terms.

CIA Director John Brennan offered one of the few public explanations of how casualties are assessed during his nomination hearing in February. Before his confirmation, Brennan was the White House counterterrorism adviser, and is considered to be the architect of Obama’s drone war policy.

He told senators that, “analysts draw on a large body of information — human intelligence, signals intelligence, media reports, and surveillance footage — to help us make an informed determination about whether civilians were in fact killed or injured.”

Brennan also said the U.S. could work with local governments to offer condolence payments. As we’ve reported, there’s little visible evidence of that happening.

At the hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Brennan if the U.S. should acknowledge when it “makes a mistake and kills the wrong person.”

“We need to acknowledge it publicly,” Brennan responded. Brennan also proposed that the government make public “the overall numbers of civilian deaths resulting from U.S. strikes.”

Neither overall numbers nor a policy of acknowledging casualties made it into Obama’s speech, or into the fact sheet. Hayden, the White House spokeswoman, would not say why.

The government sharply disputes that there have been large numbers of civilian deaths but has never released its own figures. Independent counts, largely compiled from news reports, range from about 200 to around 1,000 for Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia combined over the past decade.

Researchers agree that the number of drone strikes and civilian deaths have dropped during the past year. (Before Obama’s speech, an administration official attributed this partly to the new heightened standards.) The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which generally has the highest tally of civilian dead, has found there were between three and 16 civilians reportedly killed in about 30 drone or other airstrikes in Yemen and Pakistan so far this year. No strikes have been reported in Somalia.

“Official” statistics might not be much help without knowing more about how they were compiled, said Sarah Holewinski, head of the advocacy group Center for Civilians in Conflict.

That’s because it’s still not clear how the U.S. distinguishes between civilians and “militants,” or “combatants.”

In so-called signature strikes, operators sometimes fire on groups of people who appear to be engaged in militant activity without necessarily knowing their identities. The newly instituted drone rules reportedly roll back the military’s ability to use signature strikes, but the CIA can keep firing in Pakistan under the old rules at least through the end of the year.

An administration official told ProPublica last year that when a strike is made, “if a group of fighting-age males are in a home where we know they are constructing explosives or plotting an attack, it's assumed that all of them are in on that effort.”

The new White House fact sheet contradicts that, stating: “It is not the case that all military-aged males in the vicinity of a target are deemed to be combatants.”

From the outside, in a strike like the recent one in Yemen, it’s impossible to know how these things were determined.  McClatchy reported that the target, Saleh Hassan Huraydan, had “largely unquestioned” ties to al Qaida. Yemeni officials said he arranged to bring money and fighters from Saudi Arabia to Yemen.  

As for Huraydan’s young brother, “They may not have realized who was in the car. Or they may have realized it and decided collateral damage was okay,” Holewinski says.

The same questions dog the death of another boy that the administration has acknowledged: the 16-year-old son of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric tied to terror attacks. Awlaki and his son were killed in separate strikes in Yemen in the fall of 2011. The boy, Attorney General Eric Holder has said, was “not specifically targeted.”

Just a few weeks ago, we noted that the UK government appeared to be working uncomfortably closely with the entertainment industry, going so far as to have lobbying groups do a kind of real-action ride-a-long for arrests of UK citizens. This, after the UK entertainment industry made it their reprehensible goal to censor websites it doesn't like without even the appearance of due process. There seemed to be something of storm cloud brewing over the UK internet, leaving many to wonder exactly how torrential (get it?) the downpour would be.

Well, if the first few raindrops are any indication, it'll be as misguided as it is costly. You see, the UK thinks the next great step for their nation's police force is an Intellectual Property Crimes unit.

"Intellectual property crime has long been a problem in the world of physical goods, but with the growing use of the internet, online intellectual property crime is now an increasing threat to our creative industries. These industries are worth more than £36 billion a year and employ more than 1.5 million people," Lord Younger said.

"Government and our law enforcement agencies must do all they can to protect our creative industries and the integrity of consumer goods. By working with the City of London Police, who have recognised expertise in tackling economic crime, we are showing how committed this government is to supporting business and delivering economic growth."

And hey, why not? After all, it's only costing the British taxpayer roughly $4 million to have their police force act as the American entertainment industry's Stasi. Four-mil-do may not sound like a big number, but when you're $1.5 trillion in debt, every bit counts. And if they just peered over at their long-time-friends and habitual wine-drinking neighbors in France, particularly with how monumentally futile the Hadopi experiment was, maybe they'd decide they could use that money for something more productive. You know, like burning it for a couple moments of warmth.

But no, they say. This is all about jobs and protecting the innocent computers of the citizens.

[Commissioner of the City of London Police, Adrian] Leppard said the new unit would not only safeguard jobs, but would also ensure citizens’ “computer safety” by ensuring they were not exposed to unauthorized copyrighted content.

“Creative industries such as music are a vital part of our economy, providing jobs and investment. Copyright is the engine that makes these industries tick and that is what makes the work of this new Intellectual Property Crime Unit so valuable and important.”

See, the problem is that we've heard the dramatic death-moans of the UK entertainment industry in the past, and they've been shown to be bullshit. You don't create jobs through protectionism, you create them through innovation. And keeping people from being "exposed to unauthorized copyright content?" I can't tell if that is supposed to indicate that UK citizens are being actively sought out by movie files, or if the Commissioner is simply acknowledging that he's going to deny the citizens he serves what a large number of them want, which is access to filesharing sites.

It would be entertaining to watch how this all fails miserably if it weren't being propped up on the backs of tax money paid by my English comrades. But fail it will, not because there isn't great content in the UK, but because the industries concerned would rather play blackshirt than just compete.

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Glyn Moody covered the roll out of India's intrusive surveillance system a couple of months ago, but more information has come out, filling in the details of the country's breathtaking domestic spy network. If the NSA's surveillance capabilities make the Stasi's spying seem completely underwhelming, the Indian government's efforts in the same arena threatens to make our men and women at the NSA look as if they're just not applying themselves.

The NSA, as revealed in media reports earlier this month, has been monitoring phone-call metadata (such as phone numbers and call durations) on a widespread basis for years, but has to get the approval of a (albeit secret) court to spy on the calls themselves or the content of emails. The CMS [Centralized Monitoring System], by contrast, will give nine Indian government agencies—including the tax department—the power to access, in real-time, phone conversations, video conferences, text messages, emails, and even internet search data and social media activity...

If that's not enough to make the NSA's staunchest supporters begin fantasizing about setting the Constitution ablaze using the Bill of Rights as kindling, it gets even better/worse, depending on your point of view.

[The agencies] will work without any independent oversight, Reuters reports [and] the agencies can start monitoring targets without the approval of the courts or the parliament.

We get the impression here that the NSA works without oversight, but many have rushed to point out that Congress is (supposedly) watching the watchers and all requests must receive FISA court approval, something that seems about as difficult to obtain as a "Participant" ribbon. India is simply being more efficient and cutting out the brief "makin' it legal" stops on the way to the domestic data harvest.

The CMS has it easy. No privacy laws to break. A system that is its own rubber stamp. But it goes even further. Someone must have wondered aloud during the formation of the CMS, "It's almost too easy. But is it too easy enough?"

Moreover, with the CMS, security agencies won’t need to request users’ information from telcos. They’ll be able to get it directly, using existing interception systems that are built into telecom and data-service networks. According to the Hindu newspaper, the system will have dedicated servers and extensive data-mining capabilities that can be used for surveillance.

Much like the 9/11 attacks led to an unprecedented increase in domestic (and worldwide) surveillance by US security agencies, the Mumbai attacks of 2008 resulted in changes to existing laws that allowed the Indian government to increase the size (and depth) of its surveillance net. Additional attacks in 2011 prompted another rewrite and expansion. Again, much like in the US, the terms "safety" and "security" are thrown around to justify the existence and actions of the CMS.

Finally, much like the US, government officials have taken care to point out the supposed "oversight" CMS falls under, and it's every bit as weak as the arguments used by the NSA's defenders.

The government has so far played down fears of abuse. Senior government officials told the Times of India that since “CMS will involve an online system for filing and processing of all lawful interception requests, an electronic audit trail will be in place for each phone number put under surveillance.” And who will audit the audit trail? The same ministry that authorizes the surveillance requests. Hardly a reassuring safeguard.

Oversight doesn't really mean anything if no one's interested in questioning actions or curbing excesses. Making sure the foxes guarding the national hen house answer to a different fox does very little to improve the hens' existence, and even less to deter the predatory nature of their "guardians."

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It appears the New York City council would like to see some changes in the NYPD. Two bills were passed recently (known together as the "Community Safety Act") that have put Mayor Bloomberg and Chief of Police Ray Kelly on the defensive.

The first seeks to install independent oversight of the NYPD, something the Dept. of Justice itself recommends. (The DOJ's recommendation is contingent on a judicial decision finding the department's "Stop and Frisk" program unconstitutional.) This, of course, has enraged Mayor Bloomberg, who's definitely not interested in anyone policing his "personal army." (Just in case anyone feels the previous sentence is hyperbolic, here's the mayor's quote, which he delivered during a speech at MIT in 2011.)

“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg's reaction to the DOJ's recommendation echoed his previous audacious statement.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed papers Wednesday saying that if a federal judge ruled the NYPD's practices unconstitutional, then the DOJ would strongly endorse the use of a monitor to oversee changes at the department.

The mayor, however, said that the police department needs a clear line of authority. "No military organization or paramilitary runs where you have confusion in the command structure. You just cannot have that. Lives are on the line," he said in a question-and-answer session with reporters.

Part of the NYPD's problem is Mayor Bloomberg himself. The fact that he regards the police department as both "his" and a "military organization" is indicative of his mindset. Bloomberg wants a military force policing his city and has done everything in his power to bring his own brand of martial law to NYC. For its own good, of course.

With this bill passing with enough votes to override his veto, Bloomberg has gone on the attack (along with Chief Kelly), throwing around statements that give the impression New York City is only a single militarized policeman away from a crippling crimewave. The balance is apparently so delicate that any change will destroy the balance and put millions of New Yorker's in jeopardy.

In separate appearances, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, sought to portray the bills — one aimed at increasing oversight of the Police Department and the other at expanding the ability to sue over racial profiling by officers — as a divisive tool that would undermine the police’s efforts to get guns off the streets and continue to lower the murder rate.

The problem is neither of these statements are true. Stop and frisk doesn't get guns off the street or lower the murder rate. The NYCLU's report on stop and frisk showed the total number of weapons recovered in 2012 increased by a total of 96 guns compared with 2003 (pre-stop and frisk), an increase of 0.02%. And as the NYCLU's Donna Lieberman pointed out, homicide numbers were dropping before the stop and frisk program was introduced and homicide rates have decreased more dramatically in other large cities.

The first threat to Bloomberg's "personal army" doesn't take effect until Jan. 1st, 2014, meaning this decision would be passed on to the next mayor of New York City. Bloomberg can veto this bill (and will) but it has the support needed to override his veto (it passed 40-11; the override threshold is 34 votes).

The second bill takes aim at the "racial profiling" aspects of the stop and frisk program. As has been noted, 87% of those stopped and frisked over the last decade have been black or Latino. This percentage would be enough to indicate profiling, but even more damning evidence came to light during the still-ongoing lawsuit. A secret recording caught a commanding officer stating explicitly the targets of stop and frisk: "I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 20, 21."

By expanding the definition of "profiling" to include "age, gender, housing status and sexual orientation" and allowing individuals to sue police in state court for "policies that disproportionately affect people in any protected categories without serving a significant law enforcement goal," the city council hopes to make the first moves towards killing off the stop and frisk program.

As was stated earlier, Bloomberg feels this sort of "interference" would be "harmful" to his "military." His efforts to kill this legislation will include attempts to "turn" a councilperson in order to eliminate the 34th vote needed to override his veto. Even in this, the Mayor took the time to evoke the "victims" of independent oversight and additional NYPD culpability.

He declined to say how he might persuade one council member to switch positions, saying only: “This is a fight to defend your life and your kids’ lives. You can rest assured that I will not give up for one minute.”

If the NYPD resists these reforms as much as their "personal leader" does, it could actually mean a jump in crime numbers. The NYPD may decide to simply do less enforcement or deterrence in order to prove that the meddling bills did indeed "undermine police efforts." And it wouldn't take much to persuade many of these cops to "do less." Like many personal armies, the NYPD is home to plenty of low-level corruption and laziness.

Ten percent of them were malcontents who worked as little as possible. Unless they are being paid overtime, officers seem to avoid writing summonses. Indeed, some police officers need to be weaned of the idea that they are paid to drive around in their patrol cars, eating doughnuts.

And those sentiments came not from critics of the department, but from police commanders and city lawyers.

If the perfect storm comes together, the NYPD could be facing independent oversight and a major disruption in the "stop and frisk" process, if not an actual judicial decision declaring the whole thing unconstitutional. Judging from what we've seen so far, we can expect future reactions from Bloomberg and the NYPD to range from "ugly" to "uglier."

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Over the weekend there were two "big" new leaks from the documents that Ed Snowden took. The first, about US spying on EU embassies we already covered. The second one seemed bigger, but it also might have just made things murkier. It involves the Washington Post releasing four more slides about the PRISM program from that original slide deck that already had 5 of its 41 slides revealed in previous leaks. These slides show a lot more details about PRISM. What's amazing is that I've seen people claiming completely contrary things in looking over these slides: some are insisting it shows that the companies who are "members" of PRISM don't -- as was originally reported -- open up their servers to the NSA. Others insist that the slides actually support that original reporting and show that the companies are lying.

First up, here are the slides (sorry visitors from the Defense Department):





Things break down when people start to analyze these slides. A few news sources have zeroed in on the claim on that last slide that there are 117,675 "records" in PRISM as of April 5th. But, there's some disagreement about what the hell that means. The Washington Post says that these are "active surveillance targets" but it's unclear how they know that. It's possible that there's other, as yet unrevealed info that would support that, but even then there's confusion. How "active" is active? And, what constitutes a "record" anyway? No one seems to be providing any answers.

Another thing that's not entirely clear: the Washington Post annotations claim that the "FBI DITU," the "Data Intercept Technology Unit" (DITU) is on the premises of the companies listed as a part of PRISM -- but all of the companies have pretty strenuously denied this. And, honestly, from the slides, it's not at all clear that the DITU really is on premises. Google has said in the past that when it receives a valid FISA court order under the associated program it uses secure FTP to ship the info to the government. From that, it seems like the "DITU" could just be a government computer somewhere, not on the premises of these companies, and info is uploaded to those servers following valid FISC orders.

Others have focused in on the claims of "real-time surveillance," implying the ability to watch actual key strokes, but the slide in question (the third one above) suggests something slightly different: which is real time notifications for certain trigger events, such as logging into email or sending a message. Now, it does note that other forms of communication are available through the program, but it's not at all clear that's "real time." It's also not at all clear if the "real time" notifications apply to all companies in the program. It's entirely possible that a FISC order might require these companies to let the FBI/NSA know whenever a certain target logged into their email or chat. There are certainly some questions raised there about the appropriateness of that type of program, but it's not clear how much "real time" info is actually being sent.

It's entirely possible that the Washington Post's interpretation of these slides is accurate. It's also entirely possible that the other slides, or additional reporting from WaPo reporters allows them to have more knowledge on these things, and it could be true that the companies in questions are not being fully truthful. However, especially given how it appears that the WaPo's original reporting on PRISM was fairly sloppy, it seem worth reserving judgment until more information comes out.

Of course, if (as the NSA insists) this program is nothing more than these companies responding to valid FISC orders, I don't see why the NSA itself can't be a hell of a lot more transparent about these programs. If there's real oversight over these programs and they're really only used against actual threats (stop laughing...), then nothing revealed so far seems like it should be secret. It just shows how the system works for delivering the information that is legally required. The fact that there's so much secrecy over the program suggests either a stupid overclassification insistence by the NSA, or that there's a hell of a lot beyond this that they don't want to talk about (such as revealing that the program isn't what they claim. That seems like the most likely situation given what's been revealed so far.

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The bezel around touch-screen displays might become a bit more useful in the future, if Apple has its way.

The company on Tuesday was awarded a patenton a bezel technology that could extend the viewable area of the screen. The patent, which was filed in September 2012, specifically describes a method by which the bezel around the display will remain opaque when users are touching around the screen. As they get close to the bezel, however, it turns transparent to reveal more screen real estate. Apple specifically calls it a “window." AppleInsider was first to discover the patent.

It’s not clear what Apple has in mind for the bezel technology, and like every other patent that the company files, it’s completely possible that Apple won’t ever launch the feature. However, the company’s diagrams showing the technology in action seem to indicate that it would work best on a tablet or smartphone.Apple’s technology essentially aims at making screen bezels, which have heretofore been useless for viewing more of the screen, into interactive display elements. The result is the possibility of users seeing a bit more of a display by peeking inside the “window" created by an interactive bezel.