Man arrested after publishing a robbery he commited on YouTube

TAMPA, Fla. - Authorities say they've arrested a man who they say recorded video of a beating and robbery in the parking lot of a Tampa Bay-area bar and then posted it on YouTube. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office says 26-year-old William T. Bogan told others to beat up a 21-year-old man and take his wallet during a fight in the parking lot of the L.A. Hangout Bar on March 31.

Link: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/orl-bk-youtube-arrest-052909,0,3544960.story

How far will the International brotherhood of police officers go, to receive what they want in Atlanta?

"Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin’s claims of being intimidated by a union leader are just a political ploy to cover up a broken workers’ compensation system, a national police union president said Thursday. On Thursday, International Brotherhood of Police Officers’ President David Holway delivered a letter to Franklin, demanding a public hearing for all injured city employees who have filed workers’ compensation claims. Several officers, who were severely injured on duty, have complained of not getting proper medical care or payments from the city. Holway, who represents about 13,000 police officers across the nation, also asked for the city to allow Atlanta union president Sgt. Scott Kreher to return to work. Kreher was suspended last week after he said he wanted to beat Franklin in the head with a baseball bat for her failure to address the workers’ compensation issue."

Link: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2009/05/28/police_union_workers_comp.html



Link: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2009/05/28/police_union_workers_comp.html

Publicly shared Wi-Fi could put your laptop & other wireless devices at risk.

With Wi-Fi access at airports, hotels, and aboard airplanes, business travelers don't have to look very hard for a wireless Internet connection.
But with these public wireless hotspots becoming more prevalent, in addition to more travelers using smart phones for Web access, are business travelers putting themselves at a security risk? The short answer, some technology security experts say, is yes. But they add that the use of Wi-Fi at these spots is no riskier than at a coffee shop.
"It's a shared medium, and if you can connect to it, someone else can connect to it and monitor your traffic," said Marty Linder, a senior member of the technical staff at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute CERT/Coordination Center. "That has nothing to do with the security of the network. It's just the nature of the beast."

Link: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/business.travel/05/28/computer.security/index.html

Private investigators can use this website to search for complaints against numerous companies and products.

Complaints.com is a listing of dissatisfied consumer experiences concerning purchased products and/or services. These experiences are first-hand personal incidents collected by visitors on Complaints.com, and published for the primary benefit of voicing an opinion and obtaining resolution. As Complaints.com is the primary search result for the term "complaints" in Google, posting grievances helps get the word out about complaints and ensures product manufacturers and service providers take notice!
Complaints.com: provides consumers with a forum to voice their experiences enables businesses to resolve complaints allows members to read actual consumer experiences aids consumers in making better-informed purchase decisions assists consumers in complaint resolution from unresponsive companies facilitates businesses in improving products and services helps consumers help themselves get better customer service allows members to see how a business is performing and treating customers.
Who are we?
Launched in May 2000, Complaints.com is a joint venture of Sagacity Corporation and Domain Strategies LLC . It now comprises over 100,000 complaints spread across 50+ categories.

Link:http://www.complaints.com/

Investigators checked an alleged bank robber's MySpace account and find he posted how he robbed a bank!

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A man who confessed to robbing a South Carolina bank in a message posted on MySpace has pleaded guilty. Federal prosecutors said Thursday that 27-year-old Joseph Northington of Roanoke, Va., will be sentenced later for using a firearm during a crime of violence. Authorities said Northington robbed a bank in North Augusta of almost $4,000 in January while visiting a friend, who called investigators after seeing surveillance pictures of Northington. Prosecutors said before his arrest, Northington posted a message to his MySpace account reading: "On tha run for robbin a bank Love all of yall."

Link: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/custom/offbeat/sns-ap-us-odd-myspace-confession,0,7490043.story

Threats against judges & prosecutors on the rise in the U.S.

Threats against the nation's judges and prosecutors have sharply increased, prompting hundreds to get 24-hour protection from armed U.S. marshals. Many federal judges are altering their routes to work, installing security systems at home, shielding their addresses by paying bills at the courthouse or refraining from registering to vote. Some even pack weapons on the bench.
The problem has become so pronounced that a high-tech "threat management" center recently opened in Crystal City, where a staff of about 25 marshals and analysts monitor a 24-hour number for reporting threats, use sophisticated mapping software to track those being threatened and tap into a classified database linked to the FBI and CIA.
State court officials are seeing the same trend, although no numbers are available. "There's a higher level of anger, whether it's defendants or their families," said Timothy Fautsko, who coordinates security education for the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg and said threats are coming from violent offenders along with divorce, probate and other civil litigants.
The threats are emerging in cases large and small, on the Internet, by telephone, in letters and in person. In the District, two men have pleaded not guilty to charges of vowing to kill a federal prosecutor and kidnap her adult son if she didn't drop a homicide investigation. The judge in the CIA leak case got threatening letters when he ordered Vice President Richard B. Cheney's former chief of staff to prison. A man near Richmond was charged with mailing threats to a prosecutor over three traffic offenses. The face of a federal judge in the District was put in a rifle's cross hairs on the Internet after he issued a controversial environmental ruling, judicial sources said.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/24/AR2009052402931.html?hpid=topnewshttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/24/AR2009052402931.html?hpid=topnews

Are police sketch artists asking the right questions, are they providing accurate sketches?

From the Daily Mail in England.
By Jane Fyer
This article shows that private investigators have their work cut out for them, when investigating sketch artists and witnesses.

"Jan Szymczuk, a very jolly man with lustrous grey hair, a splendid beard and a brown leather waistcoat, is huddled in the corner of a hotel bar in London with a sketch pad, a twitchy-looking witness and pictures of about a hundred chins. Jan, 50, is a highly-trained forensic artist who describes himself as 'the best in the country' and until his retirement in March had spent 30 years working as Senior Police Artist for New Scotland Yard helping witnesses to recall suspects in murders, rapes, robberies, kidnappings, you name it. But just how accurate are artists' sketches? And is a fleeting glance ever enough when it comes to identifying a nasty villain?
To test how helpful they really are, three people in the street were asked to watch like hawks as our pretend suspect - me - rushed past them looking furtive, and then describe exactly what they'd seen to Jan.
The results are rather startling. Although perhaps more alarming are the percentage marks, given by each witness to indicate how good a likeness they consider the picture to be.
And so, finally, back to our witnesses. After an hour with each - he'd usually have three to four hours per witness - he comes up with three sketches of our 'suspect'. That is, me (Jan Fryer).
They all look alarmingly different to me, but Jan is unperturbed. What did the witnesses think of it all? Well, they disagreed on my height, weight, hair colour, complexion, jaw, cheek bones, ears, mouth, jewellery, clothes, indeed, pretty much everything. But it turns out the one thing they were happy with was their pictures - even when I met them afterwards. 'Oh yes! That's exactly as I remember you!' they chorused in front of their wildly different pictures. 'But it doesn't look anything like me!' 'Maybe not, but it is how we remember you.'
And that, as we now know, is all that matters. "

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1186754/Call-likeness--criminal-Just-accurate-artists-sketches-suspects.html

Lying on a resume' can give private investigators some extra work.

Most companies disqualified candidates after discovering their dishonesty. Thirty-six percent still considered the candidate, but ultimately passed on hiring them. Six percent of hiring managers overlooked the "flawed resumé" and hired the applicant anyway.
Here are some examples of lies on resume's that did not require a private investigator to research:

Candidate claimed to be a member of the Kennedy family
Applicant invented a school that did not exist
Job seeker submitted a résumé with someone else's photo inserted into the document
Candidate claimed to be a member of Mensa
Applicant claimed to have worked for the hiring manager before, but never had
Job seeker claimed to be the CEO of a company when he was an hourly employee
Candidate listed military experience dating back to before he was born
Job seeker included samples of work, which were actually those of the interviewer
Candidate claimed to have been a professional baseball player

Link: http://my.att.net/s/editorial.dll?bfromind=7442&eeid=6230692&_sitecat=1133&dcatid=0&eetype=article&render=y&ac=0&ck=&ch=ca

Identifying the needs of the the forensic science community in the U.S.

By:
The Honorable Harry T. Edwards
Senior Circuit Judge and Chief Judge Emeritus
United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit

With the exception of nuclear DNA analysis, however, no forensic method has been
rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty,
demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source. Yet, for years, the courts have been led to believe that disciplines such as fingerprinting stand on par with DNA analysis.
For example, in a decision issued by the Seventh Circuit, the court reported that an FBI fingerprint expert had “testified that the error rate for fingerprint comparison is essentially zero.” In a later decision issued by the Fourth Circuit, that court cited the Seventh Circuit opinion approvingly, noting that an expert from the FBI had testified that the error rate for fingerprint comparison was “essentially zero.” The committee’s report rejects as scientifically implausible any claims that fingerprint analyses have “zero error rates.” A “zero error rate” is a myth in fingerprint analyses and in all other forensic disciplines. That is no surprise, however, because there is no such concept as a zero error rate in good scientific analysis. Of greater concern is the dearth of solid research to establish the limits and measures of performance and to address the impact of the sources of variability and potential bias in most disciplines.
Another serious concern is contextual bias. Some studies have demonstrated that
identification decisions on the same fingerprint can change solely by presenting the print in a different context. In one study, for example, fingerprint examiners were asked to analyze
fingerprints that, unknown to them, they had analyzed previously in their careers.
Contextual biasing was introduced – that is, examiners were told that the “suspect confessed to the crime” or the “suspect was in police custody at the time of the crime.” In one-third of the examinations that included contextual manipulation, the examiners reached conclusions that were different from the results they had previously reached.

Link: http://judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/09-03-18EdwardsTestimony.pdf

Forensic science in The U.S. needs an overhaul.

Many professionals in the forensic science community and the medical examiner system have worked for years to achieve excellence in their fields, aiming to follow high ethical norms, develop sound professional standards, and ensure accurate results in their practice. But there are great disparities among existing forensic science operations in federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. The disparities appear in funding, access to analytical instruments, and availability of skilled and well-trained personnel; and in certification, accreditation, and oversight. This has left the forensic science system fragmented and the quality of practice uneven. Except in a few states, forensic laboratories are not required to meet high standards for quality assurance, nor are practitioners required to be certified. These shortcomings pose a threat to the quality and credibility of forensic science practice and its service to the justice system, concluded the committee.
There is some evidence that fingerprints are unique to each person, and it is plausible that careful analysis could accurately discern whether two prints have a common source, the report says. However, claims that these analyses have zero-error rates are not plausible; uniqueness does not guarantee that two individuals' prints are always sufficiently different that they could not be confused, for example. Studies should accumulate data on how much a person's fingerprints vary from impression to impression, as well as the degree to which fingerprints vary across a population. With this kind of research, examiners could begin to attach confidence limits to conclusions about whether a print is linked to a particular person.

Disciplines that are too imprecise to identify an individual may still be able to provide accurate and useful information to help narrow the pool of possible suspects, weapons, or other sources, the report says. For example, the committee found no evidence that microscopic hair analysis can reliably associate a hair with a specific individual, but noted that the technique may provide information that either includes or excludes a subpopulation.
In addition to investigating the limits of the techniques themselves, studies should also examine sources and rates of human error, the report says. As part of this effort, more research should be done on "contextual bias," which occurs when the results of forensic analysis are influenced by an examiner's knowledge about the suspect's background or an investigator's knowledge of a case. One study found that fingerprint examiners did not always agree even with their own past conclusions when the same evidence was presented in a different context.

Link: http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12589

Bitemark analysis is exposed as having serious flaws.

At trial, a more experienced bite-mark analyst from Las Vegas named Ray Rawson confirmed Piakis' findings: The bite marks on Ancona’s neck could only have come from Krone. Rawson included a 39-page report with his testimony. It must have been convincing, because the jury convicted Krone despite no other physical evidence linking him to the crime. He was sentenced to death.
In 1995, Krone was given a new trial after an appeals court threw out his conviction over an unrelated legal technicality. Rawson testified again. And Krone was convicted again. After the second trial, however, the judge refused to sentence Krone to death, writing, "The court is left with a residual or lingering doubt about the clear identity of the killer."The judge’s misgivings proved prescient. Over the strenuous objections of prosecutors, who maintained that Rawson’s testimony was in itself sufficient to affirm Krone’s conviction, Krone's attorney Christopher Plourd was livid that his client could have been convicted not once, but twice, based on obviously erroneous testimony that was presented as scientific. It seemed to confirm what Plourd and other critics of bite-mark analysis have long suspected—that there is little "science" behind the method at all. So in 2001, the lawyer decided to conduct a “proficiency test” on some unknowing and prominent bite-mark expert.
In October 2001, working for Plourd, a private investigator named James Rix sent West the decade-old photographs of the bite marks on Ancona’s breast. Rix told West that the photos were from the three-year-old unsolved murder of a college student in Idaho. Rix then sent West a dental mold of his own teeth, but told him that they came from the chief suspect in the case. He also sent a check for $750, West's retainer fee.
Following the methodology that he has used in more than 100 other cases over the years, West confidently matches a dental mold and a photo of bite marks that have absolutely nothing to do with one another, decorating the fiction with the language of science. Though West is dead wrong, he sounds convincing, and it isn't difficult to imagine how he might prove persuasive to judges and juries.
In February, the National Academy of Sciences published a highly critical report about how forensic evidence is used and abused in the courtroom. The study was especially critical of bite-mark testimony, noting that it has contributed to a number of wrongful convictions over the years. The report concludes that there’s simply “no evidence of an existing scientific basis for identifying an individual to the exclusion of all others” using bite-mark analysis. Yet bite-mark testimony is still common, and there are still plenty of people in prison as a direct result.

Link: http://reason.com/news/show/132574.html

Software problems exposed for the Alcotest 7110 MKIII-C breathalyzer.

Readings are Not Averaged Correctly: When the software takes a series of readings, it first averages the first two readings. Then, it averages the third reading with the average just computed. Then the fourth reading is averaged with the new average, and so on. There is no comment or note detailing a reason for this calculation, which would cause the first reading to have more weight than successive readings. Nonetheless, the comments say that the values should be averaged, and they are not.
Results Limited to Small, Discrete Values: The A/D converters measuring the IR readings and the fuel cell readings can produce values between 0 and 4095. However, the software divides the final average(s) by 256, meaning the final result can only have 16 values to represent the five-volt range (or less), or, represent the range of alcohol readings possible. This is a loss of precision in the data; of a possible twelve bits of information, only four bits are used. Further, because of an attribute in the IR calculations, the result value is further divided in half. This means that only 8 values are possible for the IR detection, and this is compared against the 16 values of the fuel cell.
Catastrophic Error Detection Is Disabled: An interrupt that detects that the microprocessor is trying to execute an illegal instruction is disabled, meaning that the Alcotest software could appear to run correctly while executing wild branches or invalid code for a period of time. Other interrupts ignored are the Computer Operating Property (a watchdog timer), and the Software Interrupt.

Link: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/05/software_proble.html

Tennessee may require fingerprinting if you are stopped for a moving violation.

Supporters say collecting fingerprints would save money and help police determine whether the driver is wanted for a criminal offense, but opponents worry that it allows the government to tread on individual privacy rights.
"The way I see it, if they take your fingerprint, they have access to your history and that's an invasion of privacy," said Martha Simms, 27, a mother of two who recently got a speeding ticket in Davidson County.
Republican Stacey Campfield, a Knoxville Republican, is skeptical and takes issue with the legislation. "If someone said this 15 to 20 years ago, people would be rioting about it. Now it just seems like a lot of people are giving up and giving away their freedoms," Campfield said. "It's scary. I really think that these fingerprints will be used to create a database eventually, if not right away. If you don't think it is, then you're just kidding yourself."

Link: http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=87814&catid=2

Here are some new search engine websites that a private investigator may find useful.

Scoopler is a real-time search engine. They aggregate and organize content being shared on the internet as it happens, like eye-witness reports of breaking news, photos and videos from big events, and links to the hottest memes of the day. They do this by constantly indexing live updates from services including Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and more. When you search for a topic on Scoopler, they give you the most relevant results, updated in real-time.

http://www.scoopler.com/

Tweetmeme is a service which aggregates all the popular links on twitter to determine which links are popular. Tweetmeme is able to categorize these links into categories and subcategories, making it easy to filter out the noise to find what your intrested in.

http://tweetmeme.com/search.php

Increasingly, the web's most interesting content is what our friends and other people are talking about, sharing and looking at right now. However, when people search for that content, traditional search engines struggle to surface these fresh, socially-relevant results. That's the hole - and it's a big one - that OneRiot is filling. OneRiot crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services, then indexes the content on those pages in seconds. The end result is a search experience that allows users to find the freshest, most socially-relevant content from across the realtime web.

http://www.oneriot.com/

Kosmix is a guide to the Web. The site lets users explore the Web by topic, presenting a dashboard of relevent videos, photos, news, commentary, opinion, communities and links to related topics. Kosmix’s categorization engine organizes the Internet into magazine-style topic pages, enabling people to navigate the Web.

http://www.kosmix.com/

Searchme lets you see what you’re searching for. As you start typing, categories appear that relate to your query. Choose a category, and you’ll see pictures of web pages that answer your search. You can review these pages quickly to find just the information you’re looking for, before you click through.

http://www.searchme.com/

Duck Duck Go is a new search engine with less garbage and better results. With less clicking forward and back between results, it is for anyone who wants to get information faster.
Duck Duck Go is very different than other search engines. Major differences include Zero-click Information, Category Pages, ambiguous keyword detection, semantic topic detection (for more relevant results), simpler links and much less spam. See our About Page.

http://duckduckgo.com/

SUMMARY OF THE SOFTWARE HOUSE FINDINGS FOR THE SOURCE CODE OF THE DRAEGER ALCOTEST 7110 MKIII-C

Important information for private investigators concerning the Alcotest 7110 MKIII-CBase One Technologies, Inc. in New Jersey. Also check out the Base One findings and the Code Review.

In a report released August 28, 2007, Base One determined:
As a matter of public safety, the Alcotest should be suspended from use until the software has been reviewed against an acceptable set of software development standards, and recoded and tested if necessary. An incorrect breath test could lead to accidents and possible loss of life, because the device might not detect a person who is under the influence, and that person would be allowed to drive. The possibility also exists that a person not under the influence could be wrongly accused and/or convicted.

Here is just one bullet point from the link...
1. The Alcotest Software Would Not Pass U.S. Industry Standards for Software Development and Testing: The program presented shows ample evidence of incomplete design, incomplete verification of design, and incomplete “white box” and “black box” testing. Therefore the software has to be considered unreliable and untested, and in several cases it does not meet stated requirements. The planning and documentation of the design is haphazard. Sections of the original code and modified code show evidence of using an experimental approach to coding, or use what is best described as the “trial and error” method. Several sections are marked as “temporary, for now”. Other sections were added to existing modules or inserted in a code stream, leading to a patchwork design and coding style.

Link: http://www.dwi.com/new-jersey/state-v-chun/?yeah

A man is threatened then arrested for taking pictures of an ATM in public at an REI store.

After spending around 30 minutes handcuffed in a cell and being unsuccessfully grilled about why he snapped the photo, Becker signed a REI trespassing form that instructed him not to come back to the store for a year. In the end, the authorities never asked to see the photo, much less for Becker to delete it from his iPhone. Naturally, this raises questions about the real motivation behind the incident. Was it just a power trip? Either way, with camera phones being so common these days, incidents of harassment like this one are bound to escalate.

Link: http://gizmodo.com/5250851/man-threatened-arrested-for-taking-picture-of-open-atm-in-public

Federal prosecutor witholds exculpatory evidence in MA. How many prosecutors are witholding evidence?

A federal prosecutor today acknowledged that she withheld evidence that could have helped clear a defendant in a gun case but said it was an inadvertent mistake and implored the chief judge of the US District Court in Massachusetts not to impose sanctions that could derail her career
"It is my mistake. It rests on my shoulders,'' a composed Assistant US Attorney Suzanne Sullivan said during an extraordinary hearing in Boston that lasted more than two hours. "I also ask the court to give me the opportunity to rebuild my reputation.''
But Judge Mark L. Wolf said he was considering several sanctions because he was so appalled by Sullivan's lapse and by what he characterized as a pattern of prosecutors in the US attorney's office withholding evidence. The sanctions ranged from fining her personally -- something prosecutors said would be a first by a federal judge in the country for a lapse of Sullivan's type -- to an order that she and perhaps all 90 prosecutors in the office undergo additional training about the constitutional duty to share such evidence.
Wolf wrote US Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last month to ask him to crack down on prosecutors who fail to disclose information that could clear defendants and repeated his past assessment that the Boston office has a "dismal history of intentional and inadvertent violations.'' Wolf wrote that similar appeals he made to Holder's predecessors in recent years achieved little.

Link: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/05/us_attorney_fac.html

2010 Budget reveals new surveillance programs at the FBI

The release of the 2010 budget request has shed more light on some FBI surveillance programs the bureau is currently developing and testing.
While the FBI has been criticized at times for its slow reforms after the 9/11 attacks, which revealed the FBI did not have adequate computer resources, some of the new programs sound like something out of a high-tech cloak and dagger film.
The budget request shows that the FBI is currently developing a new "Advanced Electronic Surveillance" program which is being funded at $233.9 million for 2010. The program has 133 employees, 15 of whom are agents


Link: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=7532199&page=1

How difficult is it to encrypt the hard drive on your personal computer?

For more than a year, the government has not been able to see what is in drive Z, which is protected by an encryption program that is sold under the name Pretty Good Privacy, according to court records. Pretty Good Privacy, which is more commonly known as PGP, is an industry standard of hard-drive encryption and email encryption, according to experts. Encryption is a complex, password-protected method of keeping information, hard drives, devices — almost anything — private. "If you hand me someone's normal laptop, it is relatively easy to bypass passwords. All you have to do is rip out the hard drive out and put it into a different computer," said Charles Miller, a principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators and former employee of the National Security Agency. "PGP is full-disk encryption, which means the entire disk is encrypted and the only way in is to know the password. The program makes a key and that key is a password, without it you can't get into to the drive." Jonathon Giffin, an assistant computer science professor at Georgia Tech, said without the password there was only one way to get into the computer: with "brute force."
"They start trying all possible passwords, hoping that they have passwords that you use," Giffin said. "The expected time it would take is years, decades, unless you have extremely powerful computers."
Even the FBI doesn't have that kind of computing power, according to Giffin.
"The FBI probably does not. The NSA probably does," he speculated. "That's really one of the NSA's jobs — to develop cryptosystems for our military as well as to crack the cryptosystems of other governments."


Links: http://i.abcnews.com/Technology/LegalCenter/story?id=4264587&page=1
http://www.pgp.com/

A new computational knowledge engine set to debut in May

Wolfram Alpha, a new "Computational Knowledge Engine" developed by British physicist Stephen Wolfram, is set to revolutionize search with its ability to give answers to your questions directly, instead of directing you to sources where you might get the required information.
It will be able to understand and respond to ordinary queries and give answers to queries in ordinary language, similar to how a person would respond when queries.
Suppose you want to compare the height of the Empire State Building with the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, all you need to do is to type in your query and wait for the software to calculate your results derived from various sources. Once the search is over, you will not only get a detailed answer to your query but also a lot of other related information that might be of interest to you.
The results that you receive are assessed by experts and are made available only after a thorough verification. This is unlike Wikipedia, which thrives on user-generated content. Wolfram Alpha is based on Stephen Wolfram's Mathematica software, a standard tool for scientists, engineers and academics for crunching complex maths.

Link: http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ewolframalpha%2Ecom%2F&urlhash=7Lwq&_t=disc_detail_link

Massachusetts CORI record abuse, should the state implement new safegaurds?

Govovernor Deval Patrik's administration intends to funnel nearly $60 million into the commonwealth’s outdated criminal records system after a scathing audit released yesterday showed 38,000 cases - some involving murderers and rapists - fell through the cracks.
“This system is seriously out of touch and has serious public safety consequences,” state Auditor Joseph DeNucci said yesterday. “You have investigators and police officers looking for information and they can’t get it.”
The yearlong review by state Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci depicts a system repeatedly accessed by users "without any apparent work-related justification."
Such unauthorized use could be considered fraud under federal law, and "disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal and/or criminal prosecution" could follow misuse of the system, DeNucci's audit said.
Links:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2009_05_06_Audit_reinforces_governor_s_plan_for__60M_CORI_overhaul/
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/05/06/police_prying_into_stars_data/

Private investigator calls an ambulance for this unfortunate man, who loses his manhood in accident.

Excerpt:
After the car was hit by the van, there was a loud scream from the woman whose mouth was covered with blood,” he said.
The woman later followed her lover to the hospital with part of the sexual organ.
The investigator, who called an ambulance to send the man to hospital, said that this was the first time he had encountered such an incident.


Link: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/5/5/nation/3830725&sec=nation

Texas police seize black motorists' cash, cars.

TENAHA, Texas
You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana border if you're African-American, but you might not be able to drive out of it—at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables. That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: voluntarily sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes. More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with any crime.
In 2008, three years after stripping a man of $10,032 in cash as he drove south along U.S. 281 to buy a headstone for his dying aunt, Jim Wells County officials returned the man’s money — and the county then paid him $110,000 in damages as part of a settlement. Attorney Malcolm Greenstein said criminal charges never were filed against his client, Javier Gonzalez, nor any of the dozens of people whose records he reviewed. People were given the option of going to jail or signing a waiver, Greenstein said. Like Gonzalez, most signed the waiver.
Texas law states that the proceeds of any seizures can be used only for "official purposes" of district attorney offices and "for law-enforcement purposes" by police departments.
An account funded by property forfeitures in Russell's office included $524 for a popcorn machine, $195 for candy for a poultry festival, and $400 for catering.
In addition, Russell donated money to the local chamber of commerce and a youth baseball league. A local Baptist church received two checks totaling $6,000.
One check for $10,000 went to Barry Washington, a Tenaha police officer whose name has come up in several complaints by stopped motorists. The money was paid for "investigative costs," the records state.

Links: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Property_seizures_seen_as_piracy_.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-texas-profiling_wittmar10,0,6051682.story
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/05/texas.police.seizures/index.html

In Nashville, Tennessee are tickets fixed if you have connections and what about other states?

Still, when NewsChannel 5 analyzed tickets written in an 18-month period, we discovered all of those tickets were dismissed by defense attorneys -- defense attorneys who sometimes take the bench while Nashville's elected judges are off doing other things.
"Special judges have a special relationship with the court and the public and they have to act beyond reproach," said former prosecutor David Raybin.
And what stunned Raybin even more was the scope.
Out of almost 1,800 speeding tickets retired or dismissed by all Davidson County judges, 1,300 were dismissed by those attorneys sitting as special judges. That's almost three out of every four.


Link: http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=10275093&nav=menu374_2_2

What if a policeman posted an ad on craigslist for people to come take away your yard furniture?

MANSFIELD (TEXAS) — Sherry Johnson Huwitt recently woke up to see what looked like robbers in her yard.
"These two guys were loading up my basketball goal," she said. "I went outside and started yelling, 'What are you doing with my things?' And they said, 'It was on craigslist.'"
The men showed Huwitt the ad from the popular Internet classifieds Web site which invited readers to collect outdoor sports equipment from her address. "Do not knock," the ad instructed. "It is placed out there for you to come and get."
Huwitt hadn't posted the invitation; she didn't know anything about it.
The ad appeared to have been posted around 4 a.m., so Huwitt thought the person who did it must work the night shift. She heard that a neighbor, Chad Hickey, had been asking about her things, so she confronted him.
Hickey initially denied having anything to do with the ad, but Huwitt kept pushing, e-mailing craigslist to learn the identity of the person who placed the notice.
An hour later, a name came back: Chad Hickey — her neighbor who is also an Arlington police officer.

Link: http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa090501_wz_craigslisttheft.df487d8.html

Are Breathalyzers reliable or should we take the manufacturers word that they are accurate?

Minnesota may be forced to drop thousands of driving-while-impaired cases and change the way it prosecutes others in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling Thursday, prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed.
The state's highest court ruled that defendants in drunken-driving cases have the right to make prosecutors turn over the computer "source code" that runs the Intoxilyzer breath-testing device to determine whether the device's results are reliable.
But there's a problem: Prosecutors can't turn over the code because they don't have it.
The Kentucky company that makes the Intoxilyzer says the code is a trade secret and has refused to release it, thus complicating DWI prosecutions.
The Intoxilyzer 5000EN is the standard device used by Minnesota police to determine if a driver is impaired. The state bought 260 of the machines from the manufacturer, CMI of Kentucky, in 1997, and state law presumes the devices' results to be reliable.
Link: http://www.twincities.com/news/ci_12267906?source=rss

What's wrong with breathalayzers?

Dr. Dubowski testified that his research determined that in only 2.3 percent of the tests did the breath reading overstate the actual BAC. This was the first time this number was made publicly available; it had not been presented in his 1985 report.
Another witness in the Downie case, Dr. Gerald Simpson, a physical chemist also testified, and attempted to describe the variables that could render a Breathalyzer reading inaccurate. The court largely disregarded his testimony in favor of the assured endorsement of breath analysis offered by Dr. Dubowski.
The court determined that the use of breath alcohol was scientifically valid for the purpose of determining BAC. Was that the end of the story? Not quite.
After the Downie trial, Dr. Simpson obtained the actual data from Dr. Dubowski’s 1985 report. In applying the same analysis to the data that Dr. Dubowski used, Dr. Simpson discovered a major error. The incidences when breath analysis overstated actual BAC were not 2.3 percent of the tests, as Dr. Dubowski had testified to in the Downie case, but rather 23 percent of the tests – a wandering decimal point!
Another fantastic resource concerning breathalyzers is the DUI blog listed below.
Links: http://www.motorists.org/blog/its-just-a-decimal-point-the-dirty-secret-behind-breathalyzers/
http://www.duiblog.com/