Amazon's recommendation system could be more intrusive than Google.

 When Amazon recommends a product on its site, it is clearly not a coincidence.

At root, the retail giant's recommendation system is based on a number of simple elements: what a user has bought in the past, which items they have in their virtual shopping cart, items they've rated and liked, and what other customers have viewed and purchased. Amazon (AMZN) calls this homegrown math "item-to-item collaborative filtering," and it's used this algorithm to heavily customize the browsing experience for returning customers. A gadget enthusiast may find Amazon web pages heavy on device suggestions, while a new mother could see those same pages offering up baby products.

Judging by Amazon's success, the recommendation system works. The company reported a 29% sales increase to $12.83 billion during its second fiscal quarter, up from $9.9 billion during the same time last year. A lot of that growth arguably has to do with the way Amazon has integrated recommendations into nearly every part of the purchasing process from product discovery to checkout. Go to Amazon.com and you'll find multiple panes of product suggestions; navigate to a particular product page and you'll see areas plugging items "Frequently Bought Together" or other items customers also bought. The company remains tight-lipped about how effective recommendations are. ("Our mission is to delight our customers by allowing them to serendipitously discover great products," an Amazon spokesperson told Fortune. "We believe this happens every single day and that's our biggest metric of success.")

Amazon also doles out recommendations to users via email. Whereas the web site recommendation process is more automated, there remains to this day a large manual component. According to one employee, the company provides some staffers with numerous software tools to target customers based on purchasing and browsing behavior. But the actual targeting is done by the employees and not by machine. If an employee is tasked with promoting a movie to purchase like say, Captain America, they may think up similar film titles and make sure customers who have viewed other comic book action films receive an email encouraging them to check out Captain America in the future.

Amazon employees study key engagement metrics like open rate, click rate, opt-out -- all pretty standard for email marketing channels at any company -- but lesser known is the fact that the company employs a survival-of-the-fittest-type revenue and mail metric to prioritize the Amazon email ecosystem. "It's pretty cool. Basically, if a customer qualifies for both a Books mail and a Video Games mail, the email with a higher average revenue-per-mail-sent will win out," this employee told Fortune. "Now imagine that on a scale across every single product line -- customers qualifying for dozens of emails, but only the most effective one reaches their inbox."

The tactic prevents email inboxes from being flooded, at least by Amazon. At the same time it maximizes the purchase opportunity. In fact, the conversion rate and efficiency of such emails are "very high," significantly more effective than on-site recommendations. According to Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester analyst, Amazon's conversion to sales of on-site recommendations could be as high as 60% in some cases based off the performance of other e-commerce sites.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/30/amazon-5/?hpt=hp_t2

Internet giants combine to create new lobby on Capitol Hill.
  
Google Inc, Amazon.com Inc, eBay Inc, Facebook Inc and other big Internet companies are starting a trade association to handle political and regulatory issues in Washington, a person close to the group said on Wednesday.

The Internet Association, which will open its doors in September, will act as a unified voice for major Internet companies, said President Michael Beckerman, a former advisor to the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee.

Beckerman would not identify the association's members or discuss which issues the group will focus on. But the source confirmed that leading members were Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook.

Internet companies have been lobbying recently on issues as disparate as easing visa restrictions to hire overseas engineers, revenue repatriation, privacy, cybersecurity and sales taxes for Internet companies.

"We want to educate (lawmakers) about the impact of the Internet in their congressional districts," said Beckerman. "In September, we'll do a full rollout and announce companies and announce policy positions."

Google and Facebook have been steadily ramping up federal lobbying spending.

Google, the world's No. 1 Web search engine, increased federal lobbying spending by 90 percent year-on-year, spending $3.92 million in the second quarter to lobby the U.S. Congress, the White House and various federal agencies, according to required filings disclosing lobbying.

The company, which is being investigated by antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe, lobbied officials at the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Commerce.

Facebook boosted its spending on federal lobbying by 200 percent in the second quarter, spending $960,000 on issues including online privacy and immigration reform.

The world's largest online social network with 900 million users, Facebook said it lobbied lawmakers on market structure and initial public offering issues during the quarter.

In May, Facebook became the first U.S. company to go public with a market valuation above $100 billion. But the market debut was marred by technological glitches on the Nasdaq exchange and criticism that the IPO was priced too high.

EBay spent $400,600 dollars on lobbying in the second quarter, up about 10 percent from the same quarter in 2011. Its lobbying efforts focused on piracy and counterfeiting, air pollution and revenue repatriation, according to disclosure filings.

Amazon spent $690,000 in the second quarter, up about 25 percent from the second quarter of 2011. Its lobbyists worked on issues including sales tax, privacy and advertising.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/25/net-us-congress-lobbying-idUSBRE86O1JO20120725
http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/64959-new-lobbying-group-draws-industry-heavyweights
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/07/internet-giants-combine-forces-creating.html#more 

Twitter will (spy) gauge voter sentiment in new venture.

Twitter says it has developed a way to measure how its users feel about the presidential candidates, drawing on the nearly 2 million weekly posts on the micro-blogging site about President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

The company joined forces with the data analysis firm Topsy and two campaign pollsters--Democrat Mark Mellman and Republican Jon McHenry--to launch the new Twitter Political Index, which it says "evaluates and weighs the sentiment of tweets mentioning Obama or Romney relative to the more than 400 million tweets sent on all other topics" each day.

Topsy developed an algorithm that assesses the sentiment of a tweet in the same way that a random individual would more than 90 percent of the time. And Adam Sharp, the leader of Twitter's government, news, and social innovation team, says that the algorithm can be altered and refined to reflect the changing rhetoric of the campaign. "It is a collection of key words, phrases, and patterns that is ever expanding what is positive and negative," he said.

The initial installment of the Twitter Political Index, called the "TwIndex" for short, shows Obama with a score of 34 and Romney with 25, based on tweets posted on Tuesday. Since the TwIndex compares tweets about the candidates to all tweets on other topics, that means that tweets about Obama are on average more positive than 34 percent of tweets not mentioning him. It also means that tweets about Obama are generally more positive than tweets about Romney. The plan is for the latest Twitter Political Index will be posted each day at 8 p.m. at election.twitter.com.

The TwIndex can also be used to show changes in perceptions of each candidate among Twitter users. Sharp shared charts and graphs with National Journal that showed the changes in TwIndex scores for Obama closely paralleling movements in Gallup's daily-tracking poll. And because the TwIndex is a daily, immediate measure, compared with the three-day rolling sample used by Gallup to form its tracking poll, tweets often foreshadowed changes in the president's approval rating, he said.
http://nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/twitter-will-gauge-voter-sentiment-in-new-venture-20120801

Coming to a city near you: NYPD launches total surveillance, "Domain Awareness System" and will store data for 5 years.

The New York Police Department will soon launch an all-seeing “Domain Awareness System” that combines several streams of information to track both criminals and “potential” terrorists.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the city developed the software with Microsoft.

Kelly says the program combines city-wide video surveillance with law enforcement databases. He added the program will be officially unveiled by New York’s mayor as soon as next week.

Conservative author Brad Thor has coined the term “Total Surveillance,” referring to the federal government’s ability to monitor nearly every aspect of our lives through an array of surveillance technology. The term certainly seems fitting here.
 
The program combines city-wide video surveillance with law enforcement databases, according to Kelly.

The Domain Awareness System will include technology deployed in public spaces as part of the counterterrorism program of the NYPD counterterrorism bureau, including: NYPD-owned closed circuit television cameras, license plate readers, and other undisclosed domain awareness devices.

According to WNYW, the Domain Awareness System is a counterterrorism tool designed to:

• Facilitate the observation of pre-operational activity by terrorist organizations or their agents
• Aid in the detection of preparations to conduct terrorist attacks
• Deter terrorist attacks
• Provide a degree of common domain awareness for all Stakeholders
• Reduce incident response times
• Create a common technological infrastructure to support the integration of new security technology

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/total-surveillance-nypd-to-launch-an-all-seeing-domain-awareness-system-to-track-potential-terrorists-and-criminals/

NYPD "Domain Awareness System" public security awareness privacy guidelines:

In order to help ensure public safety and security and to detect, deter, and prevent potential terrorist activities, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has developed a networked Domain Awareness System. The Domain Awareness System not only supplies critical supplemental assistance to officers’ ongoing security and public safety efforts, but also enhances the collaborative nature of those efforts by leveraging the resources of the private sector and other City agencies. Given the ongoing threat of terrorist attack, the Domain Awareness System is an important part of the NYPD’s integrated approach to providing protection for those who work in, live in, and visit New York City.

The Public Security Privacy Guidelines (the Guidelines) establish policies and procedures to limit the authorized use of the Domain Awareness System and to provide for limited access to and proper disposition of stored data. To ensure that appropriate privacy protections exist, the NYPD has considered and consciously incorporated technical, operational, legal, policy, and oversight safeguards throughout the development life cycle of the Domain Awareness System.

Domain Awareness System: technology deployed in public spaces as part of the counterterrorism program of the NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau, including: NYPD-owned and Stakeholder-owned closed circuit television cameras (CCTVs) providing feeds into the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center; License Plate Readers (LPRs); and other domain awareness devices, as appropriate.

B. Statement of Purpose
The Domain Awareness System is a counterterrorism tool designed to:

• Facilitate the observation of pre-operational activity by terrorist organizations or their agents
• Aid in the detection of preparations to conduct terrorist attacks
• Deter terrorist attacks
• Provide a degree of common domain awareness for all Stakeholders
• Reduce incident response times
• Create a common technological infrastructure to support the integration of new security technology

C. Operation
The Domain Awareness System will be operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in a professional manner and only in furtherance of legitimate law enforcement and public safety purposes.

As with all NYPD operations, no person will be targeted or monitored by the Domain Awareness System solely because of actual or perceived race, color, religion or creed, age, national origin, alienage, citizenship status, gender (including gender identity), sexual orientation, disability, marital status, partnership status, military status, or political affiliation or beliefs.

The Domain Awareness System will be used only to monitor public areas and public activities where no legally protected reasonable expectation of privacy exists.

Facial recognition technology is not utilized by the Domain Awareness System.
All NYPD-owned CCTVs that are part of the Domain Awareness System will have accompanying signage, and the NYPD will recommend that signage accompany each Stakeholder-owned CCTV that is part of the Domain Awareness System.

In certain cases, technologies governed by the Guidelines may utilize or be integrated with systems and technologies deployed by other bureaus and divisions of the NYPD. In such cases, the application of the Guidelines will be controlled by separate memorandum from the Deputy Commissioner of Counterterrorism to the Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters.

D. Data Storage
Generally, data gathered through the use of the Domain Awareness System will be destroyed as a matter of course at the end of the relevant Pre-Archival Period; any decision to retain certain data possessing evidentiary or other value beyond the Pre-Archival Period must be approved and documented in writing by the Authorized Agent, or a designee approved in writing by the Authorized Agent.

• Video:
→ The Pre-Archival Period for Video is 30 days. For any decision to retain Video beyond the Pre-Archival Period, the Authorized Agent is the Deputy Commissioner of Counterterrorism. All Video from CCTVs will be recorded.

• Metadata:
→ The Pre-Archival Period for Metadata is five years. For any decision to retain Metadata beyond the Pre-Archival Period, the Authorized Agent is the Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters.

• LPR Data:
→ The Pre-Archival Period for LPR Data is five years. For any decision to retain LPR Data beyond the Pre-Archival Period, the Authorized Agent is the Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters.

• Environmental Data:
→ Environmental Data will be retained indefinitely.

After the conclusion of five years, Archival Data must be reviewed by the Deputy Commissioner of Counterterrorism and the Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters for continuing law enforcement or public safety value or legal necessity; all Archival Data determined not to have continuing law enforcement or public safety value or legal necessity will be destroyed as a matter of course.
http://publicintelligence.net/nypd-domain-awareness-system-public-security-privacy-guidelines/

Police departments use "Predictive Analytics" to prevent crimes.

 Crime fighters have long used brains and brawn, but now a new kind of technology known as “predictive policing” promises to make them more efficient.

A growing number of law enforcement agencies, in the US and elsewhere, have been adopting software tools with predictive analytics, based on algorithms that aim to predict crimes before they happen.

Police departments from Santa Cruz, California, to Memphis, Tennessee, and law enforcement agencies from Poland to Britain have adopted these new techniques.

The premise is simple: criminals follow patterns, and with software — the same kind that retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon use to determine consumer purchasing trends — police can determine where the next crime will occur and sometimes prevent it.

Colleen McCue, a behavioral scientist at GeoEye, a firm that works with US Homeland Security and local law enforcement on predictive analytics, said studying criminal behavior was not that different from examining other types of behavior like shopping.

“People are creatures of habit,” she said.

“When you go shopping you go to a place where they have the things you’re looking for… the criminal wants to go where he will be successful also.”

She said the technology could help in cities where tight budgets were forcing patrol reductions.

“When police departments are laying more sworn personnel, they can do more with less,” she said.

The key to success in predictive policing is getting as much data as possible to determine patterns. This can be especially useful in property crimes like auto theft and burglary, where patterns can be detected.

“You can build a model that factors in attributes like the time of year, whether it is hot and humid or cold and snowy, if it is a payday when people are carrying a lot of cash,” says Mark Cleverly, who heads the IBM unit for predictive crime analytics.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/29/police-using-predictive-analytics-to-prevents-crimes-before-they-happen/

Homeland Security & police still consider anyone with a camera a possible terrorist.

By Jay Stanley:

The fact that police so regularly find it intolerable for a lone photographer standing on a sidewalk to be training a camera on them shows that police officers inherently recognize what we’ve been saying for years: surveillance and recording is a form of power. The actions of some police officers can be explained (though not justified) by the fact that they seem to find that power a challenge to their authority when wielded by a bystander.

Adding to the complicated dynamics underlying this issue is this: in polite society, it is just rude to point a camera at people, and persistently photograph them, especially if they ask you to stop. Most people would not do that to their friends and neighbors. I have previously discussed the line between law and social expectation, and photographing police in some situations can fall on the wrong side of that line.

But in the end, a recognition of these dynamics does not lessen one bit our determination to defend photographer’s rights.

First of all, photography is truly a means of self-expression and as such receives the full protection of the First Amendment.

Second, we give our police enormous powers over other citizens. And unfortunately there has always been regular abuse of those powers on the part of some officers. And so police must learn that along with the unique and significant powers and discretion that society invests them with, comes the responsibility of being subjected to photography, which is vital check and balance on those powers. Surveillance is a form of power, but increasing citizen power over police in that way is appropriate and, ultimately, good for everybody. (It is not appropriate or good to increase government power over citizens through surveillance, however.)

Of course we have also seen many incidents in which police officers harass people not for recording the police, but merely for photographing buildings, trains, or other facilities, and the dynamics I’m talking about here have nothing to do with those abuses. That’s just a symptom of “suspicious activity reporting” mania and widespread police trainings about how photography is supposedly inherently suspicious—even though security experts say this is nonsense (as we also discuss here and here). (For example, a widely distributed pamphlet entitled “The Seven Signs of Terrorism” includes as its number-one sign, “Surveillance,” which “may include the use of cameras.” This video version of the seven signs approvingly shows a citizen reporting, and a police officer approaching, a man taking photos from a bridge.)
http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech-national-security-technology-and-liberty/sympathizing-police-point-photography

“The Seven Signs of Terrorism”

Conducting a Google search reveals Homeland Security and numerous states teach police and citizens to consider anyone with a camera (either still or video) or binoculars a possible terrorist.

Surveillance:
"Someone recording or monitoring activities. This may include the use of cameras (either still or video), note taking, drawing diagrams, annotating on maps, or using binoculars or other vision-enhancing devices."
http://www.homelandsecurity.ms.gov/docs/msaic_seven_signs_terrorism.pdf

BIllboards may soon be spying on people by using facial recognition technology.

 Just a face in a crowd? Scans pick up ID, personal data.

As you scan the face on that giant billboard, it may just be scanning your face right back.

Increasingly sophisticated digital facial-recognition technology is opening new possibilities in business, marketing, advertising and law enforcement while exacerbating fears about the loss of privacy and the violation of civil liberties.

Businesses foresee a day when signs and billboards with face-recognition technology can instantly scan your face and track what other ads you’ve seen recently, adjust their message to your tastes and buying history and even track your birthday or recent home purchase. The FBI and other U.S. law enforcement agencies already are exploring facial-recognition tools to track suspects, quickly single out dangerous people in a crowd or match a grainy security-camera image against a vast database to look for matches.

Many fear that future is coming too quickly, with facial-recognition technology becoming increasingly advanced, available and affordable before restrictions on its use can be put into place. Concerns have been raised on Capitol Hill in recent weeks that FBI searches using the technology could trample Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, while some in the industry say excessive regulations could cripple cutting-edge technology.

“In our country, government shouldn’t be looking over your shoulder unless it has a reason,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union’s speech, privacy and technology project. “They should not be collecting data on innocent subjects.”

The potential to “data-mine” raw video or photography using facial-recognition technology is another concern, he said, but one that could clash with First Amendment rights on the right to photograph.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/26/just-a-face-in-a-crowd-scans-pick-up-id-personal-d/
http://zen-haven.dk/billboard-ads-will-use-facial-recognition-technology/

Pick N' Tell company wants to put webcam mirrors in clothing stores.

A new fashion company called Pickn'Tell has a high-tech solution to this shopper's dilemma. It allows you to try on clothes alone while still receiving to-the-minute critiques from friends, sitting at home by their computers. Pickn'Tell's vision -- now available at two clothing boutiques, in New York and Los Angeles -- involves a web-connected mirror, with an outward-facing miniature video camera installed. Shoppers can try on different outfits, record their images in mirrors and then automatically post the videos to Facebook or Twitter, where friends and family members can give the thumbs up or thumbs down. 

Say goodbye to awkwardly holding up a camera phone in order to snap a shot of an outfit: Now, the mirror is recording you.

(Before you run around screaming about how creepy this sounds, know that the company has no plans to put its camera-loaded mirrors in dressing rooms. These mirrors would be for the floor of the store only, not where customers are undressing, according to Pickn'Tell's vice president of business development, Mark Frieser).

Here's the technical setup for these robo-mirrors: Pickn'Tell takes a full-length mirror and cuts out a rectangle the size of a 10-inch tablet in the upper right corner. It affixes a tablet inside that rectangle, so that the screen of the tablet can act as a sort of monitor and communications hub for the shopper. Pickn'Tell attaches a webcam via wire to the tablet.

 Using the Pickn'Tell app on an iPhone or Android device, a shopper can connect to the mirror's tablet by inputting a unique connection code; that code turns on the camera inside the mirror. Using the smartphone, the shopper can then direct the mirror to either record a video for five seconds or take a snapshot. That footage then appears on the shopper's smartphone, which he or she can then post to Facebook or Twitter, for friends to comment on. 

The Pickn'Tell app has several other fashion-related functions: a barcode scanner, with which you can scan the barcodes of products you're interested in and add them to a potential buying list; a list of stores and boutiques, with coupons, catalogs and pricing information; and a miniature social network, so that you can follow which articles of clothing your friends envy or appreciate.

Perhaps most fascinating and unique is the option to connect with a Wi-Fi enabled, webcam-loaded mirror at a store and record your image and send it to your social networks. Other social-shopping apps, like Pose and VIZL, make store catalogs available on a smartphone and let someone share fashions with friends. But Pickn'Tell installs hardware in mirrors to facilitate that sharing. 

Convincing store owners to allow third-party webcams in their mirrors -- and then assuring shoppers that recording themselves in public is safe -- will be an obstacle for Pickn'Tell. So far, the startup, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, has installed its mirrors in trendy Runway Couture in New York City's SoHo neighborhood and in Bee Free Boutique in Los Angeles' Silver Lake district. Company representatives hope that, by the end of the year, their wired mirrors will be within a 15- to 20-minute car ride from Los Angeles (or a quick subway trip from New York), Frieser said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/pickntells-webcam-enabled-mirrors_n_1686972.html

Numerous gun safes can be opened by a kid using a straw or paper clip.

Las Vegas, NV. - Is a plastic drinking straw from McDonald’s the only thing keeping a thief — or worse, a child — from accessing the loaded weapon in your closet safe?

That’s apparently the case with one model of personal safes that a team of researchers will be cracking at DefCon on Friday.

But the researchers found similar problems with several brands of personal safes that are marketed for securing guns and other valuables. Toby Bluzmanis, Marc Weber Tobias, and Matt Fiddler demonstrated in videos that they were able to swiftly open seven models of safes, using household items like paper clips, a wire hanger and a drinking straw. In one case, they opened a safe simply by lightly bouncing it on a floor once.

It’s estimated that about a fifth of all households own a handgun, according to a study by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. About 500 teens and children are killed accidentally each year with guns, some of them by handguns stored in their homes.

The safes the researchers looked at are sold at Walmart and sporting good stores and Amazon.com. Many of them are certified as being compliant with California penal code standards for securing firearms. But Tobias notes in one of the videos that the companies that make the safes “do not understand security engineering,” and that “every one of these safes should be pulled from the market until they’re fixed … before someone else gets hurt or killed.”

The researchers began examining the safes six months ago after Tobias was contacted by a former detective named Ed Owens from the Clark County Sheriff’s office in Vancouver, Washington. Owens’s 3-year-old son was accidentally shot to death in September 2010 after his 11-year-old step-sister retrieved the detective’s loaded handgun from a Stack-On safe in which it had been stored.

Stack-On safes had been issued to all deputies in the sheriff’s department to secure service revolvers at home after a previous shooting incident in 2003 in which another child was killed with a deputy’s gun. Owens asserted that the safe his employers gave him was not working properly, and that the sheriff’s department knew this before the shooting occurred but did not recall the safes. The sheriff’s department accused Owens of failing to report the malfunctioning safe.

In 2004, Stack-On had recalled 1,320 of the model of safes that was purchased by the sheriff’s department, because the safes could be opened by simply jiggling the doorknob, though the sheriff’s department maintains that the recalled safes were not from the same lot number as the ones the law enforcement agency bought.

In either case, the researchers were called in to test the model of safe connected with the shooting, and found that a magnetic pin that moves up and down when someone enters the correct combination was superfluous. They could simply move the pin by bouncing the safe, causing the door to swing open. In a video the researchers made showing the vulnerability, a 3-year-old boy lifted the safe a couple of inches off the floor and set it down, causing the door to spring open.

“This is what happens when you have a defective design,” Tobias says. “The sheriff’s department didn’t have a clue what they were buying and didn’t know how to evaluate them.”

The researchers decided to test six other models of safe to see if they had similar problems.

They tested four models of safes made by Stack-On, a leading seller based in Illinois, and others made by Bulldog, GunVault and Amsec. All of them were easily opened. Some of them could be opened in ways that were undetectable, so that anyone just looking at the safe afterward would never know that it had been opened and its contents removed. Some of the safes are used by the TSA to store papers and evidence at airports.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/gun-safes/

Your phone company is monitoring everything you do.

The mobile phone you carry in your pocket has revolutionized daily life, but it’s also made possible a surveillance society previously only dreamed of by the likes of the Stasi, KGB and NSA.

Malte Spitz, a German Green Party politician, wanted to know what his carrier, T-Mobile, collected on him, and filed suit to get the data. After a settlement, he got a CD of the data the company retained, and in a TedGlobal talk on June 27, he brought down the house, calling for others to fight for their right to self-determination in the digital age.

Although there is no mandatory data retention law in the U.S., none of the major carriers tell the public how long they store the data, nor do they make it possible for a citizen to request the data stored about himself or herself.

Luckily, the ACLU cleverly got this information, which seems to be freely shared with the Justice Department, by sending government sunshine requests to state and local police that the feds shared information with.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/mobile-carrier-data-retention/

Police state America: The US military and local police are working together to protect citizens.

The US military is being used to protect civilian events, like the 2012 Democratic and Republican Party National Conventions in Tampa, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina.

USNORTHCOM and Leon Panetta, US Secretary of Defense, has readily admitted that US armed forces will collaborate with local law enforcement “if called upon”.

In fact, more than 20,000 troops were brought home and readied for deployment within the US to assist in “civil unrest and crowd control”.

The US military will prop up the US Secret Service “for operational security reasons we do not discuss the numbers of military personnel and resources that are involved. Additionally, we do not share our operational plans,” said U.S. Navy Lt. Cdr. William G. Lewis.

The extent of use of military forces on civilian matters, as reported by mainstream media (MSM) have included the reallocation of hundreds of military police officers being trained to “assist local authorities” in investigation, crime scene and case building.

An estimate 500 military police and dogs will be used as “law enforcement battalions”. These soldiers, having served on tours in Afghanistan, will now be activated and based out of military bases across America to help local police forces.

The idea behind the law-enforcement battalions is to consolidate the military police and capitalize on their investigative skills and police training, he said. The new additions come as every branch in the military is trying to show its flexibility and resourcefulness amid defense cuts.

The battalions will be capable of helping control civil disturbances, handling detainees, carrying out forensic work, and using biometrics to identify suspects. Durham said they could assist local authorities in allied countries in securing crime scenes and building cases so criminals end up behind bars and not back out on the streets because of mistakes.
http://occupycorporatism.com/us-military-and-local-police-working-together-on-american-streets/
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2018749493_marinecops23.html

State police boot camps "use a paramilitary structure."

MA- State police directly run the summer training program, “designed for men and women with good scholastic standing and high moral character that uses a paramilitary structure,” State Police Sgt. Stephen C. Mullaney said.

Assisting Sgt. Mullaney are troopers Christian Paluk, the platoon leader, and Michelle Mason, John Puccia and Scott LaPointe.

Crismay Negron, 17 of Springfield, MA said she wanted to try out the paramilitary style boot camp because “I want to be a detective, but I am going to be a cop first. I want the adventure; I want to see if I can handle it.”
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/07/western_massachusetts_students.html

LAPD officers investigated for 'military-style' boot camp.

Officials from the Los Angeles Police Department are investigating two officers who allegedly operated a military-style boot camp for kids that employed harsh physical methods.

The Juvenile Intervention Program, which bills itself on its website as a 12-week program that will “improve the lives of "at risk" youth and their families by implementing structure, self-discipline and respect,” has been operating its weekend classes in Hollywood since at least February, according to the program’s website.

Two online videos show drill instructors  screaming at young participants, disparaging them, and, in at least one instance, challenging one child to a fight. Much of the footage shows the children struggling to complete sets of push-ups and other difficult endurance exercises. In one scene, a group of exhausted-looking girls calls out, “316, sir,” as they count off another squat with their hands held behind their heads. Several kids are seen crying during the exercises or as instructors lean down into their faces to shout at them.

In one scene, a male officer pushes a girl from her knees into push-up position. In another, a young boy is brought to tears by an expletive-filled tirade.

The program and videos were first reported by the  Los Angeles Daily News.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/lapd-officers-investigated-for-military-style-boot-camp.html

Filming police is a Constitutional right but many police continue to harrass and arrest citizens filming them.

Wielding a camera, activist takes on police misconduct.

Walking home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn in 2002, Dennis Flores witnessed several police officers terrorizing one of his students. Using his camera, he filmed the beating from a telephone booth where he was trying to dial 911 – until the police officers noticed his presence.

The result of his ordeal: a fracture, a head injury, and the destruction of his camera.

After the beating, Flores won his case in court, the first of many that he says has earned him a spot on the NYPD’s blacklist. “The police say I do it to make money, and that’s why they’ve got their eye on me.”

Spokespeople from the NYPD refused to answer questions about Flores’ case.

Flores used the $270,000 that he won at trial to organize his efforts to monitor police activity.

Flores gives workshops to high school and university students on how to use technology to defend citizens’ rights. He is currently a media and documentary film instructor at the Educational Video Center, an organization that strives to develop the skills of young documentary filmmakers.

“We make documentaries on the relationship between police and the community,” Flores explained. He has given talks on the issue at Columbia University, New York University, and Hostos Community College.

Read more:
http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2012-07-wielding-a-camera-activist-takes-on-police-misconduc

Private companies are buying influence at universities across the country.

Pennsylvania remains the largest U.S. state without a tax on natural gas production, thanks in part to a study released under the banner of the Pennsylvania State University.

The 2009 report predicted drillers would shun Pennsylvania if new taxes were imposed, and lawmakers cited it the following year when they rejected a 5 percent tax proposed by then- Governor Ed Rendell.

“As an advocacy tool, it worked,” Michael Wood, research director with the non-profit Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said in an interview. “If people wanted to find a reason to vote against having the industry taxed in that way, that gave them reason to do it.”

What the study didn’t do was note that it was sponsored by gas drillers and led by an economist, now at the University of Wyoming, with a history of producing industry-friendly research on economic and energy issues. The researcher, Tim Considine, said his analysis was sound and not biased by industry funding.

As the U.S. enjoys a natural-gas boom from a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, producers are taking a page from the tobacco industry playbook: funding research at established universities that arrives at conclusions that counter concerns raised by critics.

Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, who made the tobacco analogy, said companies and their trade associations are “buying the prestige” of universities that are sometimes not transparent about funding nor vigilant enough to prevent financial interests from shaping research findings.  

“It’s a growing problem across academia,” Mark Partridge, a professor of rural-urban policy at the Ohio State University, said in an interview. “Universities are so short of money, professors are under a lot of pressure to raise research funding in any manner possible.” 

In 2008, private sources provided about 6 percent of all academic research funding, according to a June report from the Washington-based AAUP. The figure excludes gifts, endowments for new faculty appointments, consulting or speaking fees, honoraria, seats on company boards, commercial licensing revenue, or equity in startups. 

Controversy has followed when research too closely supports a corporate agenda. Litigation against tobacco companies helped reveal a decades-long effort that relied on academic research to suppress the dangers of smoking. Today, schools of public health at Columbia University, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and others ban tobacco funding, according to the association’s report.

More recently, the 2010 documentary film “Inside Job,” reported that the financial-services industry paid university economists to testify in Congress and in antitrust cases, serve on boards of directors, and give speeches to the companies and industries they study, without disclosing the inherent conflicts of interest.  
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-23/frackers-fund-university-research-that-proves-their-case.html

Is the natural gas industry buying academics?

Last week the University of Texas provost announced he would re-examine a report by a UT professor that said fracking was safe for groundwater after the revelation that the professor pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Texas natural gas developer. It's the latest fusillade in the ongoing battle over the basic facts of fracking in America.

Texans aren't the only ones having their fracking conversations shaped by industry-funded research. Ohioans got their first taste last week of the latest public-relations campaign by the energy policy wing of the US Chamber of Commerce. It's called "Shale Works for US," and it aims to spend millions on advertising and public events to sell Ohioans on the idea that fracking is a surefire way to yank the state out of recession.

The campaign is loaded with rosy employment statistics, which trace to an April report authored by professors at three major Ohio universities and funded by, you guessed it, the natural gas industry. The report paints a bright future for fracking in Ohio as a job-creator.

One co-author of the study, Robert Chase, is poised at such a high-traffic crossroads of that state's natural gas universe that his case was recently taken up by the Ohio Ethics Commission, whose chairman called him "more than a passing participant in the operations of the Ohio oil and gas industry," and questioned his potential conflicts of interest. As landowners in a suite of natural gas-rich states like Texas and Ohio struggle to to decipher conflicting reports about the safety of fracking, Chase is a piece in what environmental and academic watchdogs call a growing puzzle of industry-funded fracking research with poor disclosure and dubious objectivity.

"It's hard to find someone who's truly independant and doesn't have at least one iron in the fire," said Ohio oil and gas lease attorney Mark F. Okey. "It's a good ol' boys network and they like to take care of their own."

Read more:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/07/fracked-professors

How universities are spying on students.

By Bennett Stein:

On Sunday, the New York Times published an extensive piece surveying the ways American universities are using their access to students’ information to tailor their college experiences. Universities collect a huge amount of data on their students—course selection and grades, past educational experience and standardized test scores, and other personal information. Austin Peay University analyzes a student’s data and suggests classes in which the student is likely to “succeed.” Arizona State University uses its data to identify students who are “off track” based on course selection and course results. ASU is also experimenting with using information on student swipes of ID cards around campus—at the gym, at the dining hall, at the dorm, at the library, etc.—to understand social ties. (Last week, my colleague Catherine Crump also wrote about universities experimenting with monitoring students’ internet usage to assess mental health.)

While universities have an important role in supporting students towards graduation, these data mining methods threaten campus as a place of self-exploration, development, and discovery. A student who knows that a computer is analyzing his course selection and grades may be less likely to choose a course out of the ordinary or take a risk on an assignment for fear of being deemed “off track.”

During my first year of college at the University of Michigan, I took two Spanish classes, a bible lecture, a philosophy seminar, a course on political advertising, and a survey course on arts and culture in public life that was taught by a professor who primarily studied 20^th Century avant-garde Mexican film. Like my academics, my social life was diverse and often disparate as I met kids unlike me and the people I knew growing up. While these courses may not have contributed directly to my eventual degree in public policy this past May nor to my current position with the ACLU—and those freshman year dorm buddies ended up being weirdos—the lessons and experiences from the decisions and mistakes I made as a fresh-out-of-high-school 18 year old still prove invaluable.

This blog has frequently described the chilling effects of similar data analysis programs on free speech and social interactions. These effects are particularly relevant on college campuses where malleable young people work towards critical decisions about lifestyle, world view, and career. Students must not feel restrained by the potential judgment of a computer program as they develop themselves as adults and community members. Pressuring students to fit into an algorithm threatens the intellectual and social vibrancy of the campus (and of society, as my colleague Jay Stanley discussed last week). Even if a student does not expect her behavior to be flagged for further scrutiny, we have seen time and again that these complex computer algorithms make mistakes that have very real consequences.

I am sure that I would have questioned my course selection had I thought it might be flagged as wrong. I might have opted out of second (or third) dinner at the dining hall had I expected my ID swipe would lead to someone noticing my eating habits. Instead, I grew a lot and learned a lot in college because I made choices that my academic advisors, my professors, maybe my mother—and even a computer program!—may have considered off track.

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-lgbt-rights-religion-belief-reproductive-freedom/big-data-nsa-facebook

Big data on campus.

Universities see such technology as one answer to a big challenge. On average, only 31 percent of students at public colleges get their bachelor’s degree within four years, and 56 percent graduate within six years. Such statistics have come under greater scrutiny as parents and politicians demand accountability from colleges. Tennessee, for example, doles out higher education dollars in part by measuring how effective an institution is at graduating students.

With 72,000 students, A.S.U. is both the country’s largest public university and a hotbed of data-driven experiments. One core effort is a degree-monitoring system that keeps tabs on how students are doing in their majors. Stray off-course and a student may have to switch fields. 

And while not exactly matchmaking, Arizona State takes an interest in students’ social lives, too. Its Facebook app mines profiles to suggest friends. One classmate shares eight things in common with Ms. Allisone, who “likes” education, photography and tattoos. Researchers are even trying to figure out social ties based on anonymized data culled from swipes of ID cards around the Tempe campus.

This is college life, quantified. 

Data mining hinges on one reality about life on the Web: what you do there leaves behind a trail of digital breadcrumbs. Companies scoop those up to tailor services, like the matchmaking of eHarmony or the book recommendations of Amazon. Now colleges, eager to get students out the door more efficiently, are awakening to the opportunities of so-called Big Data. 

The new breed of software can predict how well students will do before they even set foot in the classroom. It recommends courses, Netflix-style, based on students’ academic records. 

“If the university could model, at a high level, the social network of the college, that would be a very useful data layer,” says Matt Pittinsky, who co-founded Blackboard, a company that provides a platform for online classes, and later became an assistant research professor in the sociology program at Arizona State. A university might reach out to a student “who is not showing evidence of social integration,” Mr. Pittinsky says, pointing out extracurricular activities and communities that might tie them more deeply to the institution. 

Working with computer scientists, Mr. Pittinsky started an academic research project that tiptoes toward a better understanding of social connections. The research team’s raw material: anonymous logs from swipes made with Arizona State ID cards. When students use these cards, be it to buy food on campus or access the fitness center, the transaction gets recorded. The question that struck Mr. Pittinsky was whether or not you could infer social ties from those trails. 

But the broader issue of privacy hangs over even less Orwellian efforts to collect and monitor personal data. In his own courses, Michael Zimmer, assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin includes a disclaimer on his syllabus disclosing what he can see through Milwaukee’s online-learning platform, including “the dates and times individual students access the system, what pages a student has viewed, the duration of visits, and the IP address of the computer used to access the course Web site.” 

The prospect of card-swipe surveillance discomforts Mr. Zimmer. He worries authorities might misuse location data to do things like track foreign students or instigators of a student protest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/education/edlife/colleges-awakening-to-the-opportunities-of-data-mining.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

FIrstAid app. offers answers to legal issues for private investigators & citizens.

The Reporters Committee FirstAid app is designed to help journalists who need quick answers to legal issues that arise while covering the news. It is meant as a quick solution during an urgent situation, such as when a judge or other official is keeping you from a hearing or a meeting, or a police officer is threatening you with arrest. More extensive assistance with media law issues is available through our web site.

FirstAid also provides quick access to our hotline for any media law issues, either by phone or email.

The Reporters Committee and this app are available for journalists of all varieties, whether you work for a national news organization or a neighborhood news blog. We never charge for our assistance.
http://www.rcfp.org/app

Latest gadget could allow police to jam a drivers cell phone while driving.

There’s no shortage of devices that supposedly prevent drivers from talking or texting by blocking mobile phone signals or that alert parents and employers about the behavior. But the Cellphone Accident Preventer (CAP) from a trio of researchers at an Indian university takes preventing behind-the-wheel mobile phone use to a new Orwellian level by making distracted-driving indiscretions public – and automatically ratting them out to the police.

Abdul Shabeer and two of his colleagues at India’s Anna University of Technology primarily developed CAP to combat the 20 percent of fatal road accidents involving trucks and other heavy vehicles caused by driver mobile phone use. Like other systems, CAP jams phone signals, using a small antenna above the driver seat, which the researchers claim only disables the driver’s phone, while passengers are free to call, text, tweet and Facebook at will.

But by using RFID technology, CAP can also alert the police, the general public or other passengers in the car if a driver is trying to discreetly check his phone when his hands should be on the wheel. If CAP detects that driver is using a cellphone, “The vehicle license plate information, which is already stored in the system, will be transmitted to a receiver placed on the traffic signal post, which in turn displays the license number in an LCD display so that police can take legislative action against the driver,” Shabeer told Wired. “At the same time, a warning message or sound will be given to passengers sitting inside the vehicle indicating that the driver is using a cellphone.”
 
C.A.P. has a bit of a Big Brother tattletale aspect to it, too. An embedded transmitter also alerts police when the driver uses a phone, so his or her infraction could result in a ticket.

"Data collected from the reader will be transmitted from the car and displayed at a traffic signal post so that police can take legislative action against the driver," write the researchers in the International Journal of Enterprise Network Management.

Word of this new approach to battling distracted driving comes at a time when U.S. safety regulators have launched a major initiative against anything that takes the driver's eyes off the road. In June, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration called for new guidelines to govern technology in cars in a major effort to cut down on distracted driving here.

CAP is still just a research project, with no immediate plans for commercial deployment. “We have completed the demo system and currently are in the process of implementing the system in the real world,” Shabeer adds. “For this we require funding support from an organization or government.”
http://govtslaves.info/new-gadget-allows-police-to-jam-your-phone-if-your-caught-driving-while-talking/
http://www.insideline.com/car-news/new-technology-blocks-drivers-mobile-signal-informs-cops.html

ATM skimmers are becoming more prevalant.

 The Secret Service has an urgent warning for ATM users.

“Everyone is at risk of being scammed by a skimmer,” Agent Scott Sarafian with the U.S. Secret Service told CBS 2′s Weijia Jiang.

Skimmers are small devices that criminals place on top of a bank-card reader to steal information from the card’s magnetic strip. Criminals also hide pin-sized cameras on the machine to record your pin number.

“Technology is increasing, and it’s become somewhat easier to steal money electronically versus by a gun,” Sarafian said.

There are several simple things that you can do to protect yourself. To start, you can cover the keypad when you’re typing in your pin number in case there is a camera. You can also try putting your card into the reader and shaking it, so if there’s an overlay it will fall off. Finally, you can just look at the keypad, and if you see something sketchy that doesn’t belong there, just step away.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/07/24/u-s-secret-service-atm-skimmers-are-scamming-more-people-than-ever/

NSA whistleblowers warn the U.S. government is spying on every American.

National Security Agency whistle-blowers Thomas Drake, former senior official, Kirk Wiebe, former senior analyst, and William Binney, former technical director, return to “Viewpoint” to talk about their allegations that the NSA has conducted illegal domestic surveillance. All three men are providing evidence in a lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the NSA.

Drake says the spying affects “the entire country,” citing a “key decision made shortly after 9/11 which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance.”

“It’s hard to believe that your government’s gonna actually do it,” Wiebe says. “That was the shocker.”

Binney mentions an NSA facility currently under construction in Bluffdale, Utah: “That facility alone can probably hold somewhere close to a hundred years’ worth of the communications of the world.” Binney continues, “Once you accumulate that kind of data — they’re accumulating against everybody — it's resident in programs that can pull it together in timelines and things like that and let them see into your life.”
http://current.com/shows/viewpoint/videos/nsa-whistle-blowers-warn-that-the-us-government-can-use-surveillance-to-see-into-your-life/
 
Sworn declaration of former NSA William Benney on NSA domestic surveillance capabilities:
http://info.publicintelligence.net/NSA-WilliamBinneyDeclaration.pdf 

Whistleblower: NSA is Quietly Building the Largest Spy Center in the Country (Video):
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/whistleblower-nsa-is-quietly-building-the-largest-spy-center-in-the-country_042012

NSA whistleblowers: Government spying on every single American. 

Speaking to Viewpoint host Eliot Spitzer, Drake said there was a “key decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance.” 

Although this accusation has been supported by claims that it is for national security, says that it doesn’t stop there. In fact, warns the former NSA official, the government is giving themselves the power to put intel on every American aside for potential future crimes.

“When you open up the Pandora’s Box of just getting access to incredible amounts of data, for people that have no reason to be put under suspicion, no reason to have done anything wrong, and just collect all that for potential future use or even current use, it opens up a real danger — and to what else what they could use that data for, particularly when it’s all being hidden behind the mantle of national security,” Drake said.

Although Drake’s accusations seem astounding, they corroborate allegations launched by Binney only a week earlier. Speaking at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York City earlier in the month, Binney addressed a room of thousands by speaking about the NSA’s domestic spying. But in a candid interview with journalist Geoff Shively during HOPE, the ex-agency official admitted that things really are rather scary.

“Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it's a very dangerous process,” Binney claims.

Both statements from the former NSA official come on the heels of a revelation that law enforcement officers collected the cell phone records of 1.3 million Americans in 2011 alone. By carrying out this and similar requests under provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and using National Security Letters, though, news articles are emerging everyday suggesting that the surveillance of Americans — off the radar and under wraps — is becoming occurring more and more exponentially by the minute.
http://rt.com/usa/news/nsa-whistleblower-binney-drake-978/

Millions of Americans now fall within government's digital dragnet.

Will government surveillance finally become a political issue for middle-class Americans?

Until recently, average Americans could convince themselves they were safe from government snooping. Yes, the government engaged in warrantless wiretaps, but those were directed at terrorists. Yes, movies and TV shows featured impressive technology, with someone’s location highlighted in real time on a computer screen, but such capabilities were used only to track drug dealers and kidnappers.

Figures released earlier this month should dispel that complacency. It’s now clear that government surveillance is so widespread that the chances of the average, innocent person being swept up in an electronic dragnet are much higher than previously appreciated. The revelation should lead to long overdue legal reforms.

The new figures, resulting from a Congressional inquiry, indicate that cell phone companies responded last year to at least 1.3 million government requests for customer data—ranging from subscriber identifying information to call detail records (who is calling whom), geolocation tracking, text messages, and full-blown wiretaps.

Almost certainly, the 1.3 million figure understates the scope of government surveillance. One carrier provided no data. And the inquiry only concerned cell phone companies. Not included were ISPs and e-mail service providers such as Google, which we know have also seen a growing tide of government requests for user data. The data released this month was also limited to law enforcement investigations—it does not encompass the government demands made in the name of national security, which are probably as numerous, if not more. And what was counted as a single request could have covered multiple customers. For example, an increasingly favorite technique of government agents is to request information identifying all persons whose cell phones were near a particular cell tower during a specific time period—this sweeps in data on hundreds of people, most or all of them entirely innocent.

How did we get to a point where communications service providers are processing millions of government demands for customer data every year? The answer is two-fold. The digital technologies we all rely on generate and store huge amounts of data about our communications, our whereabouts and our relationships. And since it’s digital, that information is easier than ever to copy, disclose, and analyze. Meanwhile, the privacy laws that are supposed to prevent government overreach have failed to keep pace. The combination of powerful technology and weak standards has produced a perfect storm of privacy erosion.

Of course, police and other government investigators have legitimate needs for electronic evidence, and citizens enjoy huge benefits from new technologies. We don’t want to deprive law enforcement of the tools it needs, and we don’t want to give up our technology. The only solution is to ensure that the government’s use of these tools is carefully focused. The best way to do that is to follow the standard in the Constitution and require the government to get a warrant from a judge before intruding in our lives.

The problem is that the courts, in cases that are decades old, ruled that information held by a third party, such as a wireless carrier, was not covered by the Constitution’s warrant requirement. And the statute that sets standards for government monitoring of cell phones and online communications, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), was written in 1986, when mobile phones were the size of bricks and Facebook and Google didn’t exist. ECPA says that the government can obtain a wide range of information, including text messages and e-mail, with only a subpoena, issued without a judge’s approval. This is a much lower standard than requiring a warrant.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/millions-of-americans-now-fall-within-governments-digital-dragnet/

New Orleans police dept. agrees to reform strategy accepts federal decree.

Taking aim at a long history of civil rights abuses, corruption and slipshod oversight within the New Orleans Police Department, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu unfurled a bevy of sweeping reforms Tuesday afternoon in the nation's most expansive consent decree to date. The long-awaited agreement, to be overseen by an appointed monitor and U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan, amounts to a 492-point, court-enforced action plan for overhauling NOPD policies and practices -- from when officers can pull their weapons to the kind of data they track. The announcement at Gallier Hall on Tuesday afternoon featured Holder, Landrieu and other federal and city officials, including Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas and City Attorney Richard Cortizas.

The document signed Tuesday calls for landmark change in the department's policies, philosophies and practices and seeks to make the police force more transparent, its officers and leaders more accountable.

The NOPD, which doesn't have recent crime statistics posted on its website, will be forced to make voluminous reports on all aspects of its operations available to the public. Its own policy manual, with numerous parts of it long shielded from full public view, will be posted for all to see; so will reports outlining statistics on arrests, searches, seizures, police misconduct and more.

Data collection and regular audits are a key component of the decree.

Federal and city officials plan to meet with residents Wednesday at noon and 6 p.m. at Gallier Hall to hear their concerns and suggestions.

The consent decree calls for numerous benchmarks that the police must meet, some as soon as 90 days.

For example, the NOPD must analyze the usefulness of stops, finding out whether the more than 70,000 field interview cards filled out each year after civilian stops are resulting in arrests or contraband seizures.

Within the next year, all officers must undergo 40 hours of use-of-force training; 24 hours of training on stops, searches and arrests; and four hours on bias-free policing. Officers in specialized units, such as homicide and internal affairs, will have to take part in even more training.

The federal oversight mandated in the 124-page agreement will stick for at least four years. To break away from federal scrutiny, the agency must be free of violations for two consecutive years. If the NOPD fails, a federal judge can extend the oversight or impose other penalties.

Despite the wide-ranging scope of the agreement signed Tuesday, four years is short compared with other consent decrees imposed on police departments. That's because the department got a head start, Serpas said, implementing more than a third of the 147 recommendations in the federal report.
"I think we should shoot for four years," he said. "We don't want to miss this opportunity. Let's not have artificial, long timelines."

Several of the reforms are exclusive to New Orleans and have never been included before in a federal consent decree. They include reforms and measures dealing with how police investigate and handle sexual assault and domestic violence cases, as well how officers deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/07/federal_consent_decree_outline.html

The consent decree filed July 24, 2012, in the case of US v. New Orleans:
http://media.nola.com/crime_impact/other/Federal%20Consent%20Decree.pdf

Recent cases in numerous states question whether police traffic stop testimony is always believable.

When a court judges whether a motorist is guilty of a traffic offense, the evidence frequently rests on the word of a police officer against that of the accused driver. In such cases, the edge is automatically given to law enforcement, even if there is reason to believe officers may twist or fabricate the facts.

The US District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday confronted the question in evaluating an October 21, 2011 traffic stop in Washington. Officer Kenneth Thompkins stopped Maurice Williams in the 6300 block of Georgia Avenue NW, claiming he had seen Williams enter his white Chevrolet Traverse and drive away without wearing a seatbelt. Thompkins had been following Williams, who insists not only that he was wearing a seatbelt, but that there also was good reason to believe that Thompkins would not have been able to see whether he was wearing one from his position.

Under court precedent, an officer's subjective motivation for stopping someone is irrelevant. What matters is whether he can articulate a reason to suspect a crime, no matter how minor, was being committed. According to Judge Beryl A. Howell, Williams testified "convincingly" that he was wearing a seatbelt.

"The court finds defendant Maurice Williams' testimony on this issue credible," Judge Howell wrote. "Nevertheless, the officer was unswerving in his affirmation that, through the back tinted window of the car, he could see that the defendant did not fasten his seatbelt."

Both witnesses were found to be equally credible, but the edge was given to the policeman because the courts allow him to be wrong.

"Crediting defendant Maurice Williams' testimony as true, the hearing established no explanation for Officer Thompkins' otherwise mistaken factual assessment that the defendant was not wearing his seatbelt, other than the possibility that the tinted back window, combined with the lack of color differentiation between the seatbelt and the defendant's shirt, made it appear as if the seatbelt were unfastened," Howell ruled. "As in Whren, even if Officer Thompkins were mistaken about the seatbelt being unfastened, it was objectively reasonable, even if mistaken, for him to believe a traffic violation had occurred and, therefore, the stop of Maurice Williams' vehicle was valid under the Fourth Amendment."

It may take a dashboard video camera to establish what actually happened during a traffic stop. In a July 11 ruling, the Iowa Court of Appeals overturned Blake M. Wilkerson's conviction for driving under the influence of marijuana after determining that Ringgold County Sheriff's Deputy Arends lied about the traffic stop he conducted on January 11, 2011. At a hearing, Arends testified that he saw Wilkerson's truck "weave within its own lane" and cross the center divider.

According to the three-judge panel, the only violation seen in the video was Wilkerson's Fourth Amendment right not to be seized without probable cause.

"From our de novo review of the patrol car's recording, it is apparent the recording does not show repeated weaving between boundary lines or sustained, inappropriate crossing of the center line while climbing the hill immediately prior to the stop," Chief Judge Larry J. Eisenhauer wrote. "Rather, based on the position of the always-visible taillights, Wilkerson's driving is smooth, nondescript, and unremarkable." 

http://thenewspaper.com/news/38/3850.asp

US v. Williams: http://thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2012/us-dcbelt.pdf

Residents in a MA town discuss seceding from Scituate over militarized police actions.

Scituate, MA– The anger hasn’t subsided in Humarock after 4th of July celebrations were cut short due to safety concerns.

The neighborhood met Sunday morning to plan their next move in a quarrel with the Town of Scituate.

Nearly 100 people attended a meeting at the South Humarock Civic Association Clubhouse. At the meeting, some residents went so far as to call Scituate town officials “Fascists,” and say Humarock needs to break away.

The latest aggravation began earlier this month, when residents claim the town was heavy-handed in enforcing a ban on bonfires.
 
During Independence Day celebrations on July 3, State Police troopers were called in to help maintain order in the mostly senior-citizen community. A 70-year-old man says they used excessive force when arresting him, leaving his arms bruised and wrists bleeding.

“Every time they talk to you it’s in a threatening fashion,” long-time resident Emory Langlolies said during Sunday’s meeting.

“That was a full military operation… I mean hummers up and down the beach, state police helicopters, horseback, bomb squad, and a command post up the center,” said Fred Hayden, who owns a summer home in Humarock.

“What’s occurring down here is a slow deterioration of our constitutional rights,” said another Humarock resident speaking at the meeting.

When a group attended a meeting of the Town’s Selectmen on July 10, they were not permitted to speak. Now they plan to write letters to town officials, as well as complaints to the State Police, the Attorney General, and Governor Deval Patrick.

“People are fed up with the town of Scituate. They do absolutely nothing for us,” said Dick Sparks.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/07/22/some-humarock-residents-discuss-seceding-from-scituate-in-bonfire-dispute/

Another MA police officer suspected of DUI not given a breathalyzer test.

Boston, MA – A Boston Police officer exposed by the WBZ-TV I-Team was arraigned Friday on charges stemming from a car crash in May that seriously injured a woman.

Richard Jeanetti is accused of being drunk when his pickup slammed into a car in Hyde Park on May 24.

The crash nearly killed 22-year-old Brianna O’Neill.

Jeanetti was not arrested or even given a Breathalyzer test that night, but medical records showed his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit.

New court documents showed his blood alcohol content was .27 and he was traveling 68 mph when he crashed.

Charges of operating under the influence, reckless and negligent operation and failing to stop at a stop sign were not filed until after the I-Team raised questions over the investigation.

After his court appearance on Friday, Jeanetti was released without having to post bail. He is due back in court on September 11.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/07/20/boston-police-officer-involved-in-hyde-park-crash-faces-arraignment/
  
Recent story:
MA- Judge lets off state police captain charged with DUI: 
http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2012/07/ma-judge-lets-off-state-police-captain.html

Boston officer’s blood-alcohol level high, records say.

Richard P. Jeanetti, the ­Boston police officer accused of crashing into another motorist after speeding through a stop sign while off duty on May 24, had a blood-alcohol level that was more than three times the legal limit, according to court records released Friday after his arraignment.

“It was learned from Mr. ­Jeanetti’s truck that for 6 seconds prior to the accident he accel­erated to approximately 68 [miles per hour] and did not apply the brakes prior to the collision, and he failed to stop for the clearly posted stop sign at the intersection of Austin Street and West Street,’’ Sergeant Detective John R. Kelly wrote in his report.

Brianna O’Neill, the 22-year-old Hyde Park waitress who suffered a fractured vertebra in her neck, as well as fractures to her leg and ankle, attended the arraignment wearing a neck brace and a walking cast on her right ankle. She used a single crutch to walk.

O’Neill looked briefly at ­Jeanetti, wearing a dark blue suit, as he stood before West Roxbury District Court Judge Franco J. Gobourne.

Jeanetti, 35, was charged with operating under the influence causing serious injury, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, and civil infractions includ­ing failure to stop and speeding.

Authorities say O’Neill was traveling on Austin Street in Hyde Park and entering the West Street intersection at about 11:50 p.m. on May 24 when Jeanetti’s 2007 Toyota Tundra hit her Honda Accord, according to prosecutors. The Tundra struck a second car, but the driver and occupant in that vehicle were uninjured.

O’Neill told reporters Friday that she blacked out momentarily. “Then I was confused as to why I wasn’t being helped,” she said. “I sat there for quite a few minutes before any help arrived, while the officer, he was surrounded by people, other police officers.”

She said she has been unable to work and fears she will need surgery on her neck.

Jeanetti strode out of the courthouse without commenting. His medical records from Boston Medical Center show that his blood-alcohol level at the time he was admitted to the hospital was 0.27, according to Kelly’s report. The legal limit in Massachusetts is 0.08.

Prosecutors have subpoenaed Jeanetti’s medical records as part of an ongoing Suffolk grand jury investigation of the collision, authorities said.

Police immediately requested that Jeanetti’s driver’s ­license be revoked and placed him on administrative duty, forbidden from carrying a firearm and from driving a department vehicle. Police said they did not conduct a breath test on Jeanetti at the scene because he needed medical help, and blood tests at the hospital would be able to detect alcohol.
http://articles.boston.com/2012-07-21/metro/32755906_1_medical-records-legal-limit-blood-tests