Police use a picture of a reporter's face for target practice.

St. Bernard Parish, LA - A local sheriff is apologizing and promising to change departmental policy when it comes to target practice.

The developments came after FOX 8 uncovered chilling evidence his deputies may have been unhappy with a recent Lee Zurik investigation.

Last November, that investigation uncovered a long list of people who voted in the October 22nd election in St. Bernard Parish, even though they haven't lived there since Hurricane Katrina. Dozens on the list work for the Sheriff's office. Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler told us at the time, if those voters had homestead exemptions in other parishes, voting in St. Bernard Parish would be against the law.

Schedler launched his own investigation. By that time, the Sheriff's race was down to two candidates, Wayne Landry and Chief Deputy Jimmy Pohlman.

Landry was outraged by the alleged voter fraud. He said, "We go to war in foreign countries to make sure elections are fair and free and right here in the U.S. we have voter fraud like this taking place." Pohlman downplayed the allegations. Before the runoff election in November, he said, "I don't think people are going to be scared off by the ridiculous accusations of voter fraud."

In the end, the vote challenges came too late, so everyone in question was allowed to cast a ballot. Pohlman won the Sheriff's race with 60 percent of the vote.

That race may have gotten downright ugly, but it's what happened at the Sheriff's Office shooting range in the days and weeks that followed, that led FOX 8 to dig even more. We wanted to know who's been targeting the messenger.

At most shooting ranges, paper targets come in all shapes and sizes. There are silhouettes, unidentifiable people, animals, or bulls-eyes. Most come from a company that specializes in law enforcement targets. But FOX 8 found St. Bernard Deputies using a black and white photo of Lee Zurik's face instead.
http://www.fox8live.com/news/local/story/Taking-aim-at-Lee-Zuriks-photograph/8Tlb1Ka_-E2hzB_jx7kHSw.cspx

Springfield, MA - Police are accused of destroying possible excuplatory cell phone video evidence.

Springfield, MA – A police sergeant acknowledged Monday never mentioning that officers confiscated a possible cellphone video in his report on a violent struggle and arrest last year in the entertainment district.

“In retrospect, I wish I had,” Sgt. Steven Kent said during a pre-trial hearing for Middletown, Conn., resident Michael Ververis, who is facing assault and battery on a police officer, attempted larceny of a firearm and other charges from the January 2011 incident on Worthington Street.

“Was that a mistake?,” asked Northampton defense lawyer Luke Ryan.

“It was an oversight,” Kent replied.

Kent was one of nine witnesses testifying Monday in Springfield District Court on a defense motion to dismiss all charges against Ververis. In his motion, Ryan argued that police seized the cellphone from the witness, then erased the video, effectively destroying evidence that could exonerate his client.
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/02/springfield_police_grilled_by.html

Related stories:

Worcester, MA. man suing city alleging false police report kept him in jail.
http://www.telegram.com/article/20120224/NEWS/120229705/1116

Springfield police brutality case due for evidentiary hearing in District Court.
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/02/2nd_springfield_police_brutali.html

Facebook denies reading your text messages but say's it could if it wants to.

Facebook has denied a report in the Sunday Times in London that the social network is secretly reading the text messages of users who have downloaded its mobile app.

The Facebook app permissions list posted on the Android Market does, in fact, include permissions that allow the company to edit, receive, read or send SMS messages, which would allow the company to integrate its services with text messaging.

In a Facebook note, the company’s European communications lead Iain Mackenzie called the Times piece ”disingenuous” and clarified several points in the article.

“Just as an aside. . . we didn’t say we’re launching a messenger product,” Mackenzie wrote, reiterating that the company only uses the read/write permissions listed in the terms and conditions of the app in limited testing with people who know what is being tested.

According to a survey commissioned by the Times, 70 percent of respondents said that they do not check what permissions apps require before downloading them.

A close look at the app permissions list does show Facebook can edit, receive, read or send SMS messages on your behalf.

The bottom line is to be aware of what you're agreeing to — if you're not comfortable giving a company that kind of control, don't agree to an app's permissions.

Other well-known companies accessing smartphone users' personal data -- such as text messages -- include photo-sharing site Flickr, dating site Badoo and Yahoo Messenger, the paper said.

It claimed that some apps even allow companies to intercept phone calls -- while others, such as YouTube, are capable of remotely accessing and operating users' smartphone cameras to take photographs or videos at any time.

Security app My Remote Lock and the app Tennis Juggling Game were among smaller companies' apps that may intercept users' calls, the paper said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/facebook-denies-report-its-snooping-through-texts/2012/02/27/gIQAkGPydR_story.html?tid=pm_business_pop

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/26/facebook-spies-on-phone-users-text-messages-report-says/

Wiki Leaks global intelligence files, shows how pervasive spying has become in America.

Coca-Cola asked about stability problems in China in advance of the Beijing Olympics. Northrup Grumman asked—twice—about the possibility of Japan getting nuclear weapons. Intel asked about Hezbollah's presence in Latin America "and their general ability to blow things up." And the owner of the Radisson Hotel chain inquired: "Do you have an expected completion date for the Militant Islamist Perception Report we ordered?"

The 200-plus emails that have been released from WikiLeaks' cache of "Global Intelligence Files"—more than 5 million messages lifted from Stratfor, a private "global intelligence" firm—are a comical mix of breathless geopolitical intrigue and workplace chitchat, equal parts Tom Clancy and Office Space. But the trove also offers insights into the business of corporate intelligence, showing how multinational companies paid Stratfor tens of thousands of dollars to watch global hotspots, cover their competitors, and even monitor pesky activists.

It was all part of Stratfor's "Global Vantage" plan, a subscription-based program for companies to obtain personalized intelligence briefings. Launched in 2006, the service became an overnight success: Organizations as diverse as Coke, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, the Marine Corps, Duke Energy, and Georgetown University plunked down $20,000 or more a year to get their hands on tailored sensitive information. As Stratfor's leaked master client list shows, major military contractors were well represented, as were Big Oil and agribusiness.

Wiki Leaks Global Intelligence Files: http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/wikileaks-strafor-leak-corporate-intelligence

Your local bar or store might be using facial recognition to spy on you.

It's not unusual to see surveillance cameras. They’re inside businesses, outside of homes, even on the streets. In public places, people are comfortable with knowing those cameras are there for safety, but this new technology allows cameras to not just see what people do, but know who they are.
Shops and malls across the country are already taking this a step further.

There are now billboards, made by Immersive Labs in Manhattan, and kiosks that cater ads to your age and demographic.

For example, if a woman was to walk up to a mall directory, a camera inside would take a photo. It will recognize her gender, age and race and instantly provide an ad for the appropriate products. So, if the shopper is a 30-year-old woman, she might see adds for makeup, shoes and clothing.

Industry expert Rafe Needleman believes it's just a matter of time before stores not only to recognize you, but track your spending habits.

As for the technology in use now, retailers say they are not saving the photos or the information that is attached to the pictures. They say they're simply using the information to serve you better.

Banks are using it to identify customers and prevent fraud. Hotels are using it to know when honor program guests arrive.

This spring, bars in Gainesville will begin using cameras that will do more than just capture the faces of the people inside. The technology will also determine their gender and age. Using an app called SceneTap on their smartphone, potential patrons can use that data before deciding whether to go inside.
Scene Tap: http://scenetap.com/

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/Bars-stores-to-use-facial-recognition-technology-to-increase-sales/-/1637132/8859986/-/1uomquz/-/index.html

Remove your YouTube viewing history before Google's new privacy policy affects you.

On March 1st, Google will implement its new, unified privacy policy, which will affect data Google has collected on you prior to March 1st as well as data it collects on you in the future. Earlier this week, we showed you how to delete your Google Web History in order to prevent Google from combining your Web History data with the data it has about you on its other products to provide you with personalized ads or suggestions across all of its products. You may also wish to delete your YouTube Viewing and Search History, which can reveal particularly sensitive information about you, including your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, and health concerns.

Note that disabling Viewing and Search History in your YouTube account will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes. It also does not change the fact that any information gathered and stored by Google could be sought by law enforcement.

With Viewing and Search History enabled, Google will keep these records indefinitely; with it disabled, they will be partially anonymized after 18 months, and certain kinds of uses, including sending you customized search results, will be prevented. An individual concerned about privacy may also want to set up a secondary Google account for browsing and sharing YouTube videos. She could then download all of her existing YouTube videos to her computer, delete them from her primary Google profile, and then use a separate browser to upload them to a new secondary Google account. If you want to do more to reduce the records Google keeps, the advice in EFF's Six Tips to Protect Your Search Privacy white paper remains relevant.

Click the link below and follow the instructions:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/how-remove-your-youtube-viewing-and-search-history-googles-new-privacy-policy

Spy state America, Ohio introduces a 677 cellphone number to spy on citizens.

Colombus, OH - A hidden compartment in your vehicle, with or without drugs, could mean big trouble as Ohio officials get serious about slowing down drug-smuggling.

A proposed state law, advocated by Gov. John Kasich, would make it a fourth-degree felony to own a vehicle equipped with secret compartments. A conviction would mean up to 18 months in jail and a potential $5,000 fine.

The hidden-compartment law, coupled with nearly 150 new highway signs warning traffickers that they face prison time in Ohio, are part of a stepped-up drug interdiction campaign announced yesterday by Kasich. The governor gave a brief commencement address at graduation ceremonies for the 151st Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy class at the academy, adjacent to the state fairgrounds.

Kasich unveiled a new number for motorists with cellphones — #677 — to alert law enforcement about possible drug activities.

“A lot of the people that are dealing these drugs are after our kids,” Kasich said at a news conference. “When you see something, call this number.”

The governor’s news conference, held in a patrol academy garage, played out against the backdrop of a pickup truck loaded with tens of thousands of dollars of cocaine, heroin and marijuana. The drugs were scooped up in the patrol’s expanding and increasingly successful campaign to slow down drug trafficking by stopping smugglers on the highways.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/02/25/secret-compartments-could-get-drivers-busted.html

Latest trend subdivision police, will they be coming to a city near you?

Former Lombard police commissioner Ken Poris knew to pull over when he saw a vehicle's flashing lights behind him while returning to his home in LaSalle County's Lake Holiday subdivision.

But he quickly realized the person who'd pulled him over, taken his driver's license back to his squad car and written him a speeding ticket wasn't a police officer.

In fact, the man wearing a uniform, duty belt and badge was a homeowners association employee with little police training and no state certification. The security force has been pulling drivers over for years and also boarding boats on the development's man-made lake. But nobody had ever challenged the practice until Poris, a former DuPage County prosecutor, was pulled over.

His case –– a type that lawyers rarely take up because they don't pay — shines a light on what experts say can be a problem with the proliferating private security teams that now patrol large subdivisions, apartment complexes and even a Chicago neighborhood that taxes itself extra to pay for it.

"It's a massive, ad hoc privatization of government services," said Evan McKenzie, a University of Illinois at Chicago associate professor of political science and critic who has written two books on the topic. "That's why you get these weird situations.

"It makes sense to (homeowners groups) from a property-management perspective," he said. "But if you view it another way, the actions of any government are supposed to be limited by concepts of civil liberties. Civil liberties don't always apply here."

 LaSalle County judge had previously ruled in favor of the homeowners association.

"I think they went overboard, and I think that they decided they could do pretty much what they wanted to," said Poris about the homeowners association. "I was told by some other people that nobody's ever beaten Lake Holiday.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-subdivision-police-20120224,0,3637912.story

The NYPD spying program was funded by the White House.

Washington - Millions of dollars in White House money has helped pay for New York Police Department programs that put entire American Muslim neighborhoods under surveillance.

The money is part of a little-known grant intended to help law enforcement fight drug crimes. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush and Obama administrations have provided $135 million to the New York and New Jersey region through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, known as HIDTA.

Some of that money – it's unclear exactly how much because the program has little oversight – has paid for the cars that plainclothes NYPD officers used to conduct surveillance on Muslim neighborhoods. It also paid for computers that store even innocuous information about Muslim college students, mosque sermons and social events.

When NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly was filled in on these efforts, his briefings were prepared on HIDTA computers.

The AP confirmed the use of White House money through secret police documents and interviews with current and former city and federal officials. The AP also obtained electronic documents with digital signatures indicating they were created and saved on HIDTA computers. The HIDTA grant program is overseen by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The disclosure that the White House is at least partially paying for the NYPD's wholesale surveillance of places where Muslims eat, shop, work and pray complicates efforts by the Obama administration to stay out of the fray over New York's controversial counterterrorism programs. The administration has championed outreach to American Muslims and has said law enforcement should not put entire communities under suspicion.

At Columbia University and elsewhere, the fear that the New York Police Department might secretly be infiltrating Muslim students' lives has spread beyond them to others who find the reported tactics "disgusting," as one teenager put it.

The NYPD surveillance of Muslims on a dozen college campuses in the Northeast is a surprising and disappointing violation, students said Saturday in reaction to Associated Press reports that revealed the intelligence-gathering at Columbia and elsewhere.

"If this is happening to innocent Muslim students, who's next?" asked freshman Dina Morris, 18, of Amherst, Mass. "I'm the child of an immigrant, and I was just blown away by the news; it's disgusting."

Documents obtained by the AP show that the NYPD used undercover officers and informants to infiltrate Muslim student groups. An officer even went whitewater rafting with students and reported on how many times they prayed and what they discussed. Police also trawled college websites and blogs, compiling daily reports on the activities of Muslim students and academics.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/nypd-muslim-surveillance_n_1303400.html

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NYPD_INTELLIGENCE_UNIVERSITIES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-02-26-09-03-22

Will valets be encouraged to spy on Americans and judge whether they've had too much to drink?

Boston, MA - City Councilor Rob Consalvo says he decided something needed to be done after a 23-year-old on a scooter was mowed down by a drunken driver in Boston. The driver later said he was "blackout drunk" and couldn't believe that a valet guy actually handed him his car keys.

"I was stunned. I said to myself, 'Yeah, how could he have?' " Consalvo says.

He says it only makes sense that valet workers withhold keys from drivers who appear drunk. "They are literally our last line of defense," Consalvo says. "If not them, who? They are the ones with the cars and the keys. I just think it's a no-brainer."

In Boston, valets have more mixed feelings, and no one more so than Josh Lemay, an executive with Ultimate Parking who, as it turns out, was very close to the 23-year-old who was killed by that drunken driver. The young man babysat Lemay's kids.

"Me personally, I would do anything to avoid that circumstance from occurring ever again," Lemay says. "I mean, he was part of my family."

On the other hand, Lemay says, it's not practical — or fair — to put the onus on valets, who tend to be 18 or 20 years old and, unlike bartenders, are not trained to spot intoxication. They often have only a few seconds of interaction with a driver.

"You're going to have suit after suit after suit," says Dave Andelman of the Restaurant and Business Alliance. He says making valets get more training and more insurance would only drive up parking costs for everyone. And where do you stop, Andelman asks — should we deputize coat checkers to take away drivers' keys?

"You are sending a message to the individual, 'We'll take care of you like a baby,' not, 'You're an adult, and act like an adult,' " Andelman says. "It's not just nanny-state politics — it's crazy politics."
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/22/147064421/should-valets-be-responsible-for-drunk-drivers-too/

Internet companies will be forced to spy on you under H.R. 1981

Online commentators are pointing to the Internet backlash against H.R. 1981 as the new anti-SOPA movement. While this bill is strikingly different from the Stop Online Piracy Act, it does have one thing in common: it’s a poorly-considered legislative attempt to regulate the Internet in a way experts in the field know will have serious civil liberties consequences. This bill specifically targets companies that provide commercial Internet access – like your ISP – and would force them to collect and maintain data on all of their customers, even if those customers have never been suspected of committing a crime.

Law enforcement could demand that a social network hand over the IP addresses and logged-in times of an individual using its service. Law enforcement could then combine this information with data from an ISP or mobile carrier to figure who was assigned to each of those IP addresses. For mobile providers, each entry could be combined with data about one’s GPS location. So a law enforcement agent could know when an individual was posting to a social network as well as her location. ISPs will be slightly less exact but still provide a detailed portrait of an individual’s physical location each time she logged in.

This is no nightmare scenario. This is exactly what the U.S. government attempted when it pressured Twitter to hand over Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir’s data as part of the WikiLeaks investigation. And we’ve seen numerous other occasions where law enforcement pressured Internet companies to hand over the IP addresses and times of individuals using their services.

Law enforcement is coming to understand that IP addresses are a powerful key to location data and to tracking people's movements over time. But in order for this data to be most useful to them, they need ISPs and mobile carriers to keep records of who is assigned to which IP addresses, and when.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/how-internet-companies-would-be-forced-spy-you-under-hr-1981

How to remove your Google search history before Google's new privacy policy takes effect.

On March 1st, Google will implement its new, unified privacy policy, which will affect data Google has collected on you prior to March 1st as well as data it collects on you in the future. Until now, your Google Web History (your Google searches and sites visited) was cordoned off from Google's other products. This protection was especially important because search data can reveal particularly sensitive information about you, including facts about your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns, and more. If you want to keep Google from combining your Web History with the data they have gathered about you in their other products, such as YouTube or Google Plus, you may want to remove all items from your Web History and stop your Web History from being recorded in the future.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/how-remove-your-google-search-history-googles-new-privacy-policy-takes-effect

The D.H.S. monitors the internet for criticism of the government.

Washington — Analysts for a Department of Homeland Security program that monitors social networks like Twitter and Facebook have been instructed to produce reports on policy debates related to the department, a newly disclosed manual shows.

The DHS's media monitoring handbook a 2011 reference guide for analysts working with the department’s Media Monitoring Capability program, raises questions about recent claims by Homeland Security officials who portrayed the program as limited to gathering information that would help gain operational awareness about attacks, disasters or other emerging problems.

Last month, a previous disclosure of documents related to the program showed that in 2009, when it was being designed, officials contemplated having reports produced about “public reaction to major governmental proposals with homeland security implications.”        

Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group that filed the lawsuit and obtained the document, argued that the manual shows that the monitoring may have gone beyond its limited portrayal by department officials.

“The D.H.S. continues to monitor the Internet for criticism of the government,” she said. “This suspicionless, overbroad monitoring quells legitimate First Amendment activity and exceeds the agency’s legal authority."

In a letter (PDF) sent to the ranking members of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Ginger McCall, who directs EPIC’s Open Government Project, explains that details within the document directly contradict testimony given during the hearing (PDF).

About 300 pages of documents (PDF) obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and published by EPIC in January revealed that analysts were specifically told to scour the Internet and social networks like Facebook and Twitter in search of “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government,” and to zero in on discussions criticizing government policies and proposals.

The program also monitors articles and broadcasts by traditional media outlets. The 2011 manual says that analysts, in addition to flagging information related to matters like terrorism and natural disasters, should also identify “media reports that reflect adversely on D.H.S. and response activities” and collect “both positive and negative reports” on department components as well organizations outside of the department.

The manual includes keywords that analysts should search for. A list of agencies in the keyword section includes not only those in the department dealing with matters like immigration and emergency management, but also the Central Intelligence Agency, several law enforcement agencies in the Justice Department, the Red Cross and the United Nations.   

The 2011 manual contains a fuller list. Many keywords are closely related to various disasters. But a handful are potentially more sweeping, like China, cops, hacking, illegal immigrants, Iran, Iraq, marijuana, organized crime, police, pork and radicals.       

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/us/house-questions-homeland-security-program-on-social-media.html?_r=1

Attorney's general from 36 states cite privacy risks to all Android phone users.

Attorneys general from 36 states and territories sent a letter to Google raising new questions about the plan to consolidate user data on March 1. "The new policy forces consumers to allow information across all of these products to be shared, without giving them the ability to opt out.," the letter says.

Attorney General George Jepsen joined with attorneys general of 36 states and territories yesterday in raising strong concerns about a new privacy policy by Google, Inc., scheduled to take effect March 1 for all users of Google products and services.

Under the new privacy policy, Google gives itself the freedom to combine users’ personal information from services such as YouTube with Gmail and all other Google products.

“This not only raises personal privacy issues, but it makes the collected personal information an attractive target for hackers and identity thieves,” Attorney General Jepsen said. “Google has not given users a real choice to participate and the policy makes it practically impossible to opt out, short of exiting all Google services,” Jepsen said.

The state AGs also say "this invasion of privacy is virtually impossible to escape for the nation's Android-powered smartphone users, who comprise nearly 50% of the national smartphone market. For these consumers, avoiding Google's privacy policy change may mean buying an entirely new phone at great personal expense."

For most users, opting out of all Google products and services would not be a practical choice because of the expense involved. For example, users who rely on Google products for their business or government services – uses that Google has actively promoted – may need to move their entire operations to different platforms to avoid expanded information sharing, the attorneys general said.

The AGs point out that Google told Android users "We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent." Last week, EPIC filed a lawsuit to force the Federal Trade Commission to require Google to honor its previous commitments to Google users. EPIC has alleged that the proposed changes in the company's practices violate a 2011 Consent Order. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. FTC (Google Consent Order)

National Association of Attorney General's letter:
http://www.ct.gov/ag/lib/ag/press_releases/2012/20120222_googleprivacypolicyfinal.pdf

Purchase of a "tank" in Keene, NH., remains hotly contested.

“It's an armored vehicle, not an armed vehicle and there's a big difference,” Keene Police Capt. Brian Costa said in describing the BearCat.

The BearCat would not be used to disperse a peaceful assembly, he said.

The BearCat would have four-wheel drive, a thermal-imaging camera, combustible gas detectors and a radiation detector, according to Costa.

Councilor Terry Clark said he plans to make a motion to rescind the acceptance of the grant at the March 1 meeting.

“I can only speak for myself, but I sense that I am gaining support,” Clark said.

Clark said his major concern was best expressed by the LENCO representative, who told the council that Homeland Security grants allow the company to tap into the $34 billion domestic terrorism budget.

“This seems to be a poster child of waste,” Clark said. “This is an agreement between the government and arms dealers, essentially.”

But the vast majority of those at the hearing opposed the BearCat's purchase.

State Rep. Steve Lindsay said: “As one who spends Saturdays the last 11 years protesting our wars in Central Square, I fear this vehicle.”

But on Wednesday, Councilor Clark said he and other councilors had received a letter from Fitzwilliam selectmen saying their police chief had no authority to enter into the agreement and the town did not want to participate.

“I understand that there's danger out there and I do care deeply about the safety of our police,” Clark said, but noted there have only been two murders in the city of 23,000 in the past 14 to 15 years and the city has never lost a policeman in the line of duty.
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20120223/NEWS07/702239959

Abine, Inc., has filed a complaint against BeenVerified.com.

From the press release:

Abine, Inc., has filed a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint against BeenVerified.com, one of the largest background check websites and data brokers. Abine has found that consumers who stated their preference to be removed using BeenVerified’s own opt-out system in fact showed up again in its online databases. Abine’s DeleteMe service, which is now fully available at Abine.com, provides consumers with a service to ensure their personal info stays off online databases. In the process of delivering this service, Abine verified these findings and sent them to the FTC.

For consumers to remove their information from BeenVerified, they must email BeenVerified their name (as shown on the site), age, current and previous addresses, and listed relatives. Abine’s subscription service, DeleteMe, sends this email on behalf of consumers to ensure their information is deleted and stays unavailable. In the process of delivering its DeleteMe service, Abine found that although BeenVerified temporarily deleted the consumer’s personal information from its database, they later republished it and sometimes included the updated information provided in the opt-out.

Abine estimates that there are more than 180 websites like BeenVerified, and most have different deletion procedures. These websites sell consumers’ personal information for employee background checks, marketing and advertising, personal uses (such as looking up an ex-spouse’s whereabouts), targeted advertising, and credit reporting, among other uses. Once this information is available, it can lead to identity theft, lost job opportunities, and physical safety threats, making it imperative that consumers have the ability to remove their own data if they choose to do so.

“Similar to the Do Not Call Registry, consumers should have the ability to request their personal information, like address, phone number, email address and more, be unlisted online, and they should be able to trust that their request is respected and fulfilled,” said Bill Kerrigan, CEO of Abine. “Our FTC complaint was filed on behalf of all consumers because we believe that they deserve control over their personal information online.”

BeenVerified states that it obtains its information from various government sources, including birth certificates, marriage licenses, divorce proceedings, child support orders, voter registrations, census questionnaires, credit cards, default student loans, corporate filings, lawsuits, mortgages, liens, other real estate transactions, criminal court records, speeding tickets, and immigration documents. It also sends people, referred to as “court runners,” to obtain information directly from courthouses.
http://www.abine.com/wordpress/2012/when-delete-means-delete-the-inside-story-of-our-ftc-complaint-against-beenverified-com/

http://www.abine.com/

U.S. gov't. wants Twitter to hand over protester's data without a warrant.

On October 1, 2011, over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. Most of the protesters, including Malcolm Harris, were charged with the mundane crime of disorderly conduct, a "violation" under New York law that has a maximum punishment of 15 days in jail or a $250 fine.

And yet on the basis of a charge no more consequential than a speeding ticket, the New York City District Attorney's office sent a poorly worded subpoena to Twitter requesting "any and all user information, including email address, as well as any and all tweets posted for the period of 9/15/2011-12/31/2011" regarding Mr. Harris' Twitter account, @destructuremal. Unsurprisingly, the government wanted to keep it quiet, but thankfully Twitter didn't listen. Instead, as it has consistently warned law enforcement, Twitter notified Mr. Harris, who through his lawyer, Martin Stolar of the National Lawyers Guild, has moved to challenge the subpoena in court.

The subpoena is astonishing not only for its poor grammar, but also for the breadth of information the government wants for a trivial crime that hardly requires it. The government's request that Twitter hand over Tweets is unlikely to succeed because consistent with the Stored Communications Act, Twitter releases "contents of communication" (effectively Tweets and private messages between Twitter users) only with a search warrant.

Since much of Mr. Harris' Twitter information (like Tweets and followers) is already public, it's very likely that the government was really after something else: location data. By attempting to subpoena these records, the government can get around the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against warrantless searches by requesting information that includes IP addresses. Twitter keeps track of IP address information regarding every time a person logged into Twitter, as well as the IP address information related to a Twitter user's direct messages to other users, and the date and time information related to these log ins and direct messages. Armed with IP addresses, the government -- without a warrant -- can go to an ISP to determine who was assigned that particular IP address. And if that person connected on a mobile device -- which is where the majority of Twitter users access their accounts -- the ISP will hand over to the government the specific cell tower (and its corresponding geographic location) which that person used to access Twitter. This allows the government to piece together a map of where a person physically is when he opens Twitter on his smartphone, sends a direct message to a friend, or Tweets.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/malcolm-harris-occupy-wall-street-twitter-government-pressure

Mobile apps. record user's data without permission.

Companies that make many of the most popular smartphone apps for Apple and Android devices — Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram among them — routinely gather the information in personal address books on the phone and in some cases store it on their own computers. The practice came under scrutiny Wednesday by members of Congress who saw news reports that taking such data was an “industry best practice.”

While Apple says it prohibits and rejects any app that collects or transmits users’ personal data without their permission, that has not stopped some of the most popular applications for the iPhone, iPad and iPod — like Yelp, Gowalla, Hipster and Foodspotting — from taking users’ contacts and transmitting it without their knowledge.

Google, which makes the Android operating system software, forces developers to ask users for permission to access any personal data up front.

The app makers collect the data to help quickly expand the network of people using their program. The practice of taking address book information without permission first came to light last week, when a developer noticed that Path, a mobile social network, was uploading entire address books to its servers without users’ knowledge. The company has since said it will stop the practice and destroy the data it has collected.

But Path is hardly the only mobile application that collects address books. Last February, Lookout, a mobile security company, found that 11 percent of free applications in Apple’s iTunes Store had the ability to access users’ contacts. And on Tuesday, VentureBeat, a technology blog, reported that dozens of applications for Apple devices were taking users’ address books without permission.
Lookout website: https://www.mylookout.com/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/google-and-mobile-apps-take-data-books-without-permission/


Disruptions: so many apologies, so much data mining.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/disruptions-so-many-apologies-so-much-data-mining/

Why is the federal gov't.'s Bureau of Prisons budget set to increase?

President Obama's budget request for fiscal year 2013 includes cuts to everything from Medicare and Medicaid to Defense and even Homeland Security. But federal prisons are among its "biggest winners," according to an analysis by the Federal Times. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is seeking a 4.2 percent increase, one of the largest of any federal agency, which would bring its total budget to more than $6.9 billion.

So what kind of criminals are we spending all this money to incarcerate? If you're thinking terrorists and kidnappers, think again. According to the Sentencing Project, only 1 in 10 federal prisoners is locked up for a violent offense of any kind. More than half are drug offenders—hardly surprising, since federal prosecutions for drug offenses more than doubled between 1984 and 2005. The 1980s also produced mandatory minimum sentences, which meant we were not only sending more people to prison, we were keeping them there far longer—a perfect formula for an exploding prison population.

Indeed, the federal prison population ballooned from fewer than 25,000 inmates in 1980 to 210,000 in 2010—an eight-fold increase—while the federal prison budget grew by a whopping 1,700 percent. Nowadays, as state prison populations have begun to fall for the first time in decades—the product of a steady decline in violent-crime rates, lawsuits over prison conditions, and deficits that have forced state officials to rethink their incarceration policies—the number of federal inmates continues to grow by about 3 percent a year. The projected 2013 federal prison population is 229,268 inmates—6,500 or more than in 2012. "Increasing funding for more prison beds has been shown to be a self-fulfilling prophecy," notes the Justice Policy Institute. "If you build it, they will come."
 
According to Obama's new budget, new federal prisons opening in Mississippi and West Virginia will house some 2,500 of those additional prisoners. Another 1,000 will be placed in private prisons—which now hold 18 percent of federal prisoners, far more than most state systems. The remainder of the new inmates will presumably be jammed into the existing federal prison facilities, which are already operating at 142 percent of capacity.

Factored into the budget request is $44 million in savings from an expansion of programs that let prisoners shave time off their sentences by behaving well and participating in educational and vocational programs, plus a compassionate release program for seriously ill inmates who have served most of their time—a smart move for the BOP, since it would shift its costliest medical cases onto Medicaid. But there's no guarantee that these "program offsets" will pass, especially given that Congress nixed similar proposals last year.
http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20120213/AGENCY01/202130308/1001
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/obama-federal-prison-budget

DEA prosecutions dip to an eleven year low.

The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during November 2011 the government reported 968 new prosecutions for these matters. Those cases were referred by the Drug Enforcement Administration. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this number is down 20.6% over the previous month.

When monthly 2011 prosecutions of this type are compared with those of the same period in the previous year, the number of filings was down (-10.5 percent). Prosecutions over the past year are still much lower than they were five years ago. Overall, the data show that prosecutions of this type are down 8.4 percent from levels reported in 2006.

http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/crim/273/

Selling used console games could identify you as a potential criminal.

Identified by eye color, hair color, height and weight. Then fingerprinted, mug shot taken, an affidavit signed. You've likely just been processed through the justice system as a suspect in a crime. Then again, maybe you just sold a copy of Madden NFL 2009 at your local video game shop.

There's still nothing illegal about selling used video games, but in some states the steps you have to take to sell your old copies of Playstation, Xbox and Wii titles may make you feel like you've broken the law.

Ten states and the District of Columbia legally require businesses to meticulously detail the used gaming habits of their customers and share that information with police. The application of secondhand goods laws to video games also requires stores in many of those states to separate used games in a special area, filing them away by customer name and holding those games as potential evidence in a crime for as long as 30 days.

Secondhand Goods laws can be created at the city, county or state level. Currently Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Utah and Washington state include video games as items that need to be tracked and reported to police. Many counties and municipalities also have secondhand goods ordinances that apply to purchases of used video games. That means that stores like Best Buy, Target, Play N Trade and GameStop now find themselves asking employees in some states to collect a variety of information on their customers including fingerprints, photos and physical descriptions. That information is then entered into a database shared with local law enforcement.

 The American Civil Liberties Union says you should be worried whenever a commercial business is asked to take so much personal information and give it to law enforcement.

Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU and author of The Surveillance Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society, says that the tracking of used video games is the byproduct of policies built on a slippery slope.

"It's a classic example of a slippery slope," he said. "Initially, limited information was collected about high value, frequently stolen items and the next thing you know they're collecting information for $20 video games."

Since 9/11 the government has been amplifying its capacity to collect data on its citizens by working with the private sector, Stanley says.

"I think whenever you have private companies doing things for the government it raises a whole set of questions about oversight and how that data is used."
http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/2/21/2802111/how-selling-used-games-marks-you-as-a-potential-criminal

DHS plans to expand it's surveillance of Americans using "Einstein 3".

2013 Federal Budget Limits Body Scanners, But Expands Domestic Surveillance.

According to White House budget documents and the Congressional Testimony of Secretary Napolitano, DHS will not purchase any new airport body scanners in 2013. However, the agency will expand a wide range of programs for monitoring and tracking individuals within the United States. This includes the development of biometric identification techniques for programs such as Secure Communities. DHS will also seek funding for "Einstein 3," a network intrusion detection program that enables surveillance of private networks.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/homeland.pdf

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/testimony/20120215-1b-s1-fy2013-budget-HSC.shtm

http://epic.org/2012/02/2013-federal-budget-limits-bod.html

Police want to purchase tanks using grants from DHS.

"We're going to have our own tank."

That's what Keene, N.H., Mayor Kendall Lane whispered to Councilman Mitch Greenwald during a December city council meeting.

It's not quite a tank. But the quaint town of 23,000 -- scene of just two murders since 1999 -- had just accepted a $285,933 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to purchase a Bearcat, an eight-ton armored personnel vehicle made by Lenco Industries Inc.

But those plans are on hold for now, thanks to a backlash from feisty residents. Resistance began with Mike Clark, a 27-year-old handyman. Clark, who said he's had a couple encounters with Keene police and currently faces a charge of criminal mischief, read about the Homeland Security grant in the newspaper. "The police are already pretty brutal," Clark said, claiming he was roughed up in both his encounters with local police. "The last thing they need is this big piece of military equipment to make them think they're soldiers."

Clark's father, Terry Clark, is on the Keene City Council, and so far the only council member to publicly oppose the Bearcat. But Mike Clark said he knows how the council works. "They can pass these things without any public discussion," Clark said. "And you don't hear about them until they've already passed. But if you collect enough signatures, you can force them to reconsider the motion." Clark did just that, collecting more than 500 signatures opposing the Bearcat.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the war on terror has accelerated the trend toward militarization. Homeland Security hands out anti-terrorism grants to cities and towns, many specifically to buy military-grade equipment from companies like Lenco. In December, the Center for Investigative Reporting reported that Homeland Security grants totalled $34 billion, and went to such unlikely terrorism targets as Fargo, N.D.; Fon du Lac, Wisc.; and Canyon County, Idaho. The report noted that because of the grants, defense contractors that long served the Pentagon exclusively have increasingly turned looked to police departments, hoping to tap a "homeland security market" expected to reach $19 billion by 2014.

Until only recently, public and press reaction to these grants and the gear purchased with them has been positive or non-existent. Most towns obtain and use the grants without much discussion or news coverage. At most, the local paper might run a supportive story touting the police department's new acquisition, usually without controversy. But it has been different in Keene, in part because Clark and a group of libertarian activists have made the Bearcat an issue.

Jim Massery, the government sales manager for Pittsfield, Mass.-based Lenco, dismissed critics who wonder why a town with almost no crime would need a $300,000 armored truck. "I don't think there's any place in the country where you can say, 'That isn't a likely terrorist target,'" Massery said. "How would you know? We don' t know what the terrorists are thinking. No one predicted that terrorists would take over airplanes on Sept. 11. If a group of terrorists decide to shoot up a shopping mall in a town like Keene, wouldn't you rather be prepared?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/police-tank-purchase-new-hampshire_n_1279983.html

The Obama administration fights to retain wireless wiretapping.

Despite being propelled to victory by progressive supporters critical of the Bush administration’s record on civil liberties, President Barack Obama has directed the Justice Department to defend many of the policies of George W. Bush, including warrantless wiretapping. Last week, the Justice Department filed papers asking the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that allowed the continuation of an ACLU lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a 2008 law giving the government unprecedented authority to monitor Americans’ international emails and phone calls.

That monitoring has its origins in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when, a few years later, President Bush instructed the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept Americans’ telephone calls without warrants, which were required by the Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA, a post-Watergate statute meant to rein in domestic surveillance, created a special court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), to approve or reject requests for domestic surveillance.

  

 The American government has become increasingly reliant on pervasive secrecy in order to cover their unconstitutional, illegal and often highly immoral actions.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has exploited secrecy to an extreme which even George W. Bush couldn’t hold a candle to.

Hopefully the Obama presidency will serve as proof that you can never, under any circumstances, no matter how charismatic and intelligent they may seem, trust a politician.

If we continue to fall for these political tricks we will only see more abuses of power and exploitation of secrecy, all working towards solidifying the American police state and the Big Brother surveillance grid to the point where it is impossible to resist.
http://www.allgov.com//ViewNews/Obama_Fights_to_Retain_Warrantless_Wiretapping_120220

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/scotus-fisa-amendments/
http://endthelie.com/2012/02/21/obama-fights-to-keep-unconstitutional-warrantless-wiretapping-powers/#axzz1mxiwtSV0

National Data Research or Integrascan lawsuit for failure to update criminal records.

A federal class action claims National Data Research doing business as Integrascan fails to update its information on criminal records that have been expunged or sealed, in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/02/17/CrimRecs.pdf            

Is Taser usage by police on the rise?

The Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office has 50 Tasers, and almost every patrol officer carries one. Yet a single deputy accounted for a quarter of the department’s stun-gun uses since 2005, according to a Poughkeepsise Journal analysis of 467 stun-gun reports from 19 local police agencies.

Police agencies in the cities of Poughkeepsie, Newburgh and Kingston also had members who disproportionately used stun guns — with a Poughkeepsie officer accounting for almost 30 percent of Taser uses in 2010 and 2011 on a force with 28 Tasers, the records analysis showed.

While the more-frequent uses may be tied to risky or high-volume assignments, the agencies did not keep statistics on individual officer use, so they did not know of each officer’s standing as the top user until they were told by the Journal. While the local agencies routinely review all stun gun incidents, they are advised to “monitor and track” use of the compliance devices to “determine whether some officers are using ECWs (electronic control weapons) more frequently or in a different manner than their fellow officers and if the uses are legitimate,” according to 2011 guidelines from the Police Executive Research Forum and U.S. Department of Justice.
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120212/NEWS01/302120078/Stun-gun-use-per-officer-can-vary-widely


ShockRounds: less-lethal ammo assaults multiple senses.

SmartRounds Technology (SRT) is developing a round which carries liquefied compressed gas and then activates a high-powered “shock wave” which, upon impact, rapidly expands and “attacks three of the five human senses.”

Generally, one unit volume of the liquefied compressed gas will expand to around 800 unit volumes at standard temperature and pressure, meaning that a relatively large amount of gas (like a chemical irritant) can be carried in quite a small package.

The ShockRounds are designed to be fired from SRT-approved rifle launchers modeled on the Colt M4 carbine while the pistol launcher is modeled after an unnamed “popular semi-automatic handgun.

While the military’s test-firing its smartest munition yet, less-lethal weapons-makers are busy coming up with their own brainy bullets. Like one that senses when it strikes flesh, then deploys a devastating payload “to attack three of the five human senses.”

That’s the delightful idea behind ShockRounds, a new, less lethal munition developed by Smartrounds LLC. The company’s president, Nick Verini, tells Danger Room that the munitions, which boast a 300-foot range, are meant to replace other less-lethal options, like bean bags and rubber bullets, “which are really quite inadequate.”

“Munitions already out there depend on kinetic energy. They’re deployed, they hit, they hurt …[and] they can do too much harm,” he says. “We wanted to come up with a smarter way to pack a punch.”
http://endthelie.com/2012/02/08/shockrounds-less-lethal-ammo-assaults-multiple-senses/#axzz1mGhpGgyF

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/02/smartrounds/#more-72060

UAV drones- ABC aired two videos about police using drones to spy on Americans.

Nightline- Drones who is watching you?
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/drones-watching-15661073

Drones fly over U.S.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/drones-fly-us-15652786

U.S. Army RQ7-B Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (TUAS) Handbook.
http://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-ShadowTroop.pdf

The Campus Accountability Project database spotlights gaps in campus rape policies.

Is there at least one full-time person working on campus sex-assault? May rape survivors report their attack confidentially and-or anonymously? Does the school's policy cover the sex assault of a man? Is emergency contraception available in the school health center?

These are the questions that students across the country are answering through the Campus Accountability Project, an open-access database designed for students, applicants and parents. The database ranges in alphabetical order, beginning with the University of Alabama and ending with Yale University. It finds plenty of schools failing to present friendly survivor policies.

Of about 250 schools now in the database, 19 don't cover the cost of counseling after a sexual assault or rape, including such well-known universities as University of California-Berkeley and Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

Only 30 offer victims amnesty from punishment for offenses surrounding the assault, such as violating school policy against underage drinking. The fear of being punished for such offenses is considered a major deterrent to bringing a report.

A victim's sexual history and attire are allowable points of discussion in 108 schools in the database, including such highly ranked institutions as Williams College in Massachusetts; UNC-Chapel Hill; and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The database is produced by a partnership between Students Active for Ending Rape, or SAFER, based in New York City, and V-Day, the global anti-violence franchise that on Feb. 14 announced its largest campaign to date entitled One Billion Rising, which invites one billion women and their loved ones -- representative of the one billion female survivors of sexual violence worldwide -- to gather and dance in their communities on V-Day's 15th anniversary, February 14, 2013.
http://www.womensenews.org/story/rape/120215/database-spotlights-gaps-in-campus-rape-policies

Campus Accountability Project: http://safercampus.org/home

The FBI will continue to monitor social media don't worry about your privacy.

The FBI today said that its proposed plans to monitor social media sites as part of a broader strategy to improve real-time situation awareness will be fully vetted by the agency's Privacy and Civil Liberties Unit.

The unit will review the legal implications of the monitoring application and ensure that it meets all privacy and civil rights obligations before it is implemented, the agency said in a statement emailed to Computerworld "Although the FBI has always adapted to meet changes in technology, the rule of law, civil liberties, and civil rights, will remain our guiding principles," the agency said.

In its statement, the FBI said that information gathered from social media networks will support the activities of its Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC). "In accordance with its core mission, SIOC has a responsibility to enhance its techniques for collecting and disseminating real-time publicly available open source information to improve the FBI's overall situational awareness and support of mission requirements," the FBI said.

Social media monitoring will help the agency stay on top of breaking events, crisis activity or natural disasters that have already occurred or are still in progress, the FBI said. The effort will not focus on specific persons or protected groups, but on words that relate to specific events, crisis scenarios and criminal or terrorist activities.

 "The type of social media application being researched by the FBI, to view publicly available information, is no different than applications used by other government agencies."  
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/021412-fbi-says-social-media-monitoring-256113.html

EPIC asks congress to suspend DHS social network monitoring program.

In a Statement for the Record, EPIC has asked the House Committee on Homeland Security to suspend a DHS program that has permitted the agency to gather comments critical of the agency and the government by monitoring social networks and media organizations. The hearing on "DHS Monitoring of Social Networking and Media: Enhancing Intelligence Gathering and Ensuring Privacy" was called after EPIC obtained nearly 3,000 pages of documents detailing the Department of Homeland Security's activities. The documents, obtained as a result of EPIC's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, include instructions from the DHS to General Dynamics to monitor media reports that "reflect adversely" on the agency or the federal government.

http://epic.org/2012/02/epic-asks-congress-to-suspend-.html

EPIC Statement of Record:
 http://epic.org/privacy/socialmedia/EPIC-Stmnt-DHS-Monitoring-FINAL.pdf

Don't like your neighbors and want to report them to the police? The police will pay citizens to report on their neighbors.

This story reminds me of police painting a "Star of David" on houses in Germany.

In New Orleans, Louisiana, home is about to be much more than where the heart is.
Under a new initiative announced this week by the New Orleans Police Department, private residences will also become the home of massive orange stickers that’ll alert neighbors, “Hey, don’t worry. There might be drugs here.”

New Orleans Police Chief Ronal Serpas revealed to the media this week that the NOPD will soon be responding to allegations of drug activity with a campaign that some feel will create more problems than it could solve. Acting on citizen tips provided to the New Orleans Crimestroppers Inc website, the NOPD will now descend on homes alleged to engage in drug activity and, regardless of the outcome, place a large, bright orange sticker on the home.

The decal, an octagonal, stop sign-shaped adhesive, reads in large lettering, “N.O.P.D.” In a much smaller font, the emblem continues, “…has served a narcotic related warrant or checked this residence as a result of a Crimestroppers hotline citizen’s tip.”

"We're going to start placarding every house that we do a search warrant on," Serpas explained to reporters. "Neighbors will spot it and see it and know we did go to that house, we did follow up on that Crimestoppers tip…which will hopefully encourage more,” he added.

The stickers won’t be reserved for only legitimate drug dens, though. Any tip supplied through the free, anonymous Crimestropper hotline that is followed through by law enforcement will land the house in question to host a sticker. Even if a warrant isn’t served and police simply knock on the door — and even if no drugs are found.

What’s more, citizens are encouraged to supply tips on the Crimestoppers website with a reward that can exceed into the thousands. The process is completely anonymous and can be done online or over the phone. Crimestoppers Executive Director Darlene Cusanza tells the New Orleans Times-Picayune that the organization gets around 7,000 tips each year. Serpas adds that number of viable tips went up last year by 11 percent.

"People are willing communicate with our department through Crimestoppers," explains the chief.

The move brought condemnation from Marjorie Esman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana. “This is like a scarlet letter tattooed onto the homes of otherwise innocent people, giving them no presumption of innocence," she told the newspaper.
http://rt.com/usa/news/sticker-new-orleans-house-425/

DHS and the FBI wants Americans to believe school bus drivers are potential terrorists!

"DHS-FBI Suspicious Activities Involving School Buses."

The purpose of this assessment is to alert law enforcement and homeland security officials about recent suspicious activity involving school buses and the licenses to drive them.

 DHS and the FBI have no information indicating these individuals are involved in terrorist plotting against the Homeland. Nonetheless, the ease with which they have obtained the vehicles and licenses raises concerns that terrorists could use school buses to support an attack.

Most attempts by foreign nationals in the United States to acquire school buses and the licenses to drive them are legitimate. Individuals from the Middle East and South and Central America often purchase school buses to fulfill their transportation needs. For example, many foreign nationals use school buses to transport workers between job sites. Moreover, because driving is an easily transferable skill between countries, it would not be uncommon for a truck or bus driver from a foreign country to seek the same profession in the United States.

DHS and the FBI lack specific, credible intelligence indicating terrorists have been involved in procuring school buses or licenses to drive them, but several incidents raise concerns.

 Indicators of Suspicious Activities

Law enforcement should be aware of the following indicators of possible terrorist interest in school buses, CDLs, and HMEs (hazardous material endorsement):

Possession of a CDL to drive a school bus without the appropriate driving skills. (Wow, now I'm concerned.  Could it be there are no jobs available and they're over qualified or haven't driven a school or passenger bus in years and need a job? I'm sorry they said without appropriate driving skills, what does that mean they are bad drivers? Since when does just possessing a CDL license make a person suspicious?)

Unusual interest in obtaining an HME when it is not required for the type of job such as driving a school bus. (If a person wants to land a higher paying job, like obtaining an HME while driving a bus, you're considered suspicious?)

Reports of school bus surveillance in bus lots or while in transit. (Taking pictures of a school bus or talking with a friend in or near a school bus lot is suspicious. Don't even think of taking pictures of the school bus lot.)

Reports by school district officials or bus vendors of suspicious attempts to purchase school buses.(If anyone attempts to purchase a school bus they're considered suspicious?)

DHS and the FBI lack specific, credible intelligence indicating terrorists plan to use school buses as VBIEDs,(Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Devices) but these vehicles have the capacity to carry large amounts of explosive material. (So do passenger buses, moving trucks and mobile homes this is just another scare tactic by our authorities to consider everyone a potential terrorist.)

http://publicintelligence.net/ufouo-dhs-fbi-suspicious-activities-involving-school-buses/

Corrections Corporation of America wants to privatize all of America's prisons but at what cost to justice?

Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for "challenging corrections budgets." In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Huffington Post.

There are many issues I have with privatizing our correctional facilities, chief among them is their stated goal of keeping their prisons nearly full or "90% full" does anyone think for one moment we're living in a democratic society? Where's the incentive to incarcerate less people? What about Judges, politicians or law enforcement officials who own shares in the GEO group,CCA, Wackenhut or Pricor?

Private Prisons for Profit:

http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/banking-bondage-private-prisons-and-mass-incarceration

1.) http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/419/

2.) http://mediafilter.org/mff/prison.html

3.) http://www.alternet.org/story/17392/

Corrections Corporation of America's offer to privatize correctional facilities:
 http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/ccaletter.pdf

In recent years, Corrections Corporation of America has made it clear that it sees opportunity in the new era of state budget crises.

Corrections Corporation's offer of $250 million toward purchasing existing state prisons is yet another avenue for potential growth. The company has billed the "corrections investment initiative" as a convenient option for states in need of fresh revenue streams: The state benefits from a one-time infusion of cash, while the prison corporation wins a new long-term contract. In addition, supporters of prison privatization have argued that states can achieve cost savings through outsourcing, as prison corporations give fewer benefits to employees.

Critics point to inherent problems in such long-term contracts, particularly provisions that require a prison to be 90 percent full throughout the life of an agreement. In Ohio, for example, contractors are guaranteed payment at the 90 percent rate "regardless of the actual number of inmates at the institution at that time."

The mandate to keep prisons full raises questions about cost efficiency -- what if there aren't enough inmates? -- but it also presents a moral question about maintaining a constant supply of new prisoners."It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy," said Shakyra Diaz, policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. "In order to have it at 90 percent, you need to be able to make criminals to fill it at 90 percent."

At this point, it's unclear how many states will be interested in selling off prisons. Arizona, New Hampshire and Florida are considering privatizing the management of state prisons, but so far none have specifically broached the topic of a sale.

State corrections officials who were contacted in California, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Montana, Georgia, Texas, Illinois and New York all said they were not considering such prison sales at this time. In Illinois and New York, laws prohibit state inmates from being housed in private prisons, according to corrections officials.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/14/private-prisons-buying-state-prisons_n_1272143.html


Private Prisons Bill Voted Down In Florida Senate, Thwarting Massive Expansion. 

  
The Florida Senate narrowly defeated a bill this week that would have handed over management of more than two dozen state prisons to private corporations -- the largest-ever attempt at prison privatization in the nation.

The contentious measure was defeated despite getting the endorsement of powerful state Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Rick Scott and a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party. The Wall Street corporations that own and operate for-profit prisons were closely attuned to the vote in Florida, hoping for a major expansion of management contracts in the nation's third-largest prison system.

The policy implications were massive: the bill would have privatized every state prison south of Orlando, which represents about 20 percent of the entire correctional system. The GEO Group, one of the nation's largest private-prison corporations, has its corporate headquarters in the heart of South Florida and had expressed great interest in what its chief executive called "the largest single contract procurement in the history of our industry."

Both GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest operator of for-profit prisons, have lobbied heavily and spent liberally on Florida campaigns in recent years. Over the last decade, the Florida Republican party has been the single largest recipient of campaign donations nationwide from both companies, according to a Huffington Post analysis of campaign finance data, and employees at both companies or their proxies have donated a combined total of more than $1.8 million to Florida candidates and committees over the last three election cycles.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/15/private-prisons-florida-senate_n_1279822.html

Almost half of America requires the police to take your DNA if you're accused of a crime.

Seattle, WA — Anthony Dias is the poster boy for why police and prosecutors hope Washington will join a growing number of states that require people to give DNA samples as soon as they're arrested for a serious crime, rather than waiting until they're convicted.

In 2005, Dias was released on bail while facing a felony hit-and-run charge in Pierce County. He went on to commit crimes against 19 more people before the year was up, including a half-dozen rapes. If he had given a DNA sample after his hit-and-run arrest, detectives could have caught him after the first rape - not the last.

"By the time he committed his next rape crime, he could have been identified, arrested and taken off the streets," Charisa Nicholas, who was tied up and forced to watch as her roommate was raped, told lawmakers recently. "My case would have been the first case prevented."

Nevertheless, the rush to expand DNA's use in criminal investigations worries privacy advocates, and courts around the country have disagreed about whether such laws violate the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures. Many judges have found that routinely collecting DNA from convicts is OK because, among other reasons, committing a serious crime reduces their expectation of privacy. It's not clear that reasoning would extend to people who have not been convicted and who are presumed innocent.

"The way judges come out depends in a sense on how much trust they have in the government," says Penn State Law School professor DH Kaye, who tracks the issue. "Some judges say, 'What's the big deal? It's like a fingerprint.' But DNA samples contain a lot of information, and other judges say that sooner or later somebody is going to abuse the system."

Under bills before Washington's Legislature, the state would collect DNA from people when they're arrested for nearly all felonies or for violating a domestic violence protection order. Once a judicial officer finds that the arrest was supported by probable cause, the State Patrol crime lab could test the DNA to create a profile and enter that profile in a nationwide database used to help solve crimes. The cost of the measure - more than $400,000 a year - would be paid with money from traffic tickets.

If the person is exonerated or not charged, they could petition to have the crime lab destroy their sample and profile. The lab would be obligated to do so, but could run a check on the profile first. (Just like getting you're records expunged from criminal databases. Does anyone really believe this?)

About half the states and the federal government have similar laws.

Read more here: http://www.thenewAbout half of American states require DNA samples if you're accused of a crime.stribune.com/2012/02/05/2013560/wash-considers-collecting-dna.html#storylink=cpy

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/02/05/2013560/wash-considers-collecting-dna.html