U.S. Courts to decide if police can take a persons' DNA without a warrant.

U.S. courts will soon decide whether Americans can have the expectation of privacy over their DNA, reports Kate Moser at the Recorder.

Michael Risher of the ACLU of Northern California is challenging a California law that requires all felony arrestees to give a DNA sample.

He argues that Americans "don't want the government to have all that information about us." The government doesn't have the right to demand our genetic material – including the wealth of personal information it holds – even if it promises to use it only for law enforcement, Risher claims.

Hanni Fakhoury, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who filed a friend of the court brief in the case, says he's concerned about "some of the problems of large-scale data gathering not based on any individualized suspicion that someone is engaged in criminal activities."

That concern is already playing out in terms of the other ways the government collects data on innocent Americans without a warrant.

But there is no indication how mandatory DNA collection will play out as technology brings unprecedented challenges to interpreting the Fourth Amendment's right against unreasonable searches.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is the California Supreme Court's review of a state court of appeal panel's forceful decision finding the DNA collection unconstitutional. And the U.S. Supreme Court has telegraphed in the past month that it is likely to take up a criminal case in Maryland that raises the same question.

The lawyer bringing the federal challenge to California's DNA swab law, Michael Risher of the ACLU of Northern California, hopes that the Ninth Circuit will stop the state from adding arrestee DNA to its already sprawling databank of criminal DNA profiles.

"We as Americans don't want the government to have all that information about us," said Risher, who's preparing for the en banc oral arguments set for the week of Sept. 17. Even with the government promising that it won't use the DNA samples — and all of the rich information the genetic material carries with it — for anything beyond law enforcement, Risher said, "that's not the way the Fourth Amendment works."

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski is on record with such deep misgivings over government surveillance, including the inclusion of DNA in a searchable database. In a key case on law enforcement's use of GPS without search warrants, he invoked George Orwell in his strident dissent: "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last." Those goosebumps over an Orwellian police state go along with the alarm the EFF is sounding.

"We've routinely been concerned about some of the problems of large-scale data gathering not based on any individualized suspicion that someone is engaged in criminal activities," Fakhoury said. "We fear there is a potential for abuse — we fear that because we're losing some of the legal protections that we've had."

And Risher and those concerned about privacy rights say the government's success stories of tracking down violent criminals with hits to its DNA database are few and far between, and the downsides dramatically outweigh them. The database the government will build from DNA samples, they argue, will only exacerbate existing racial disparities in the system, because people who are victims of racial profiling would be overrepresented in the database.

The cheek swab police use to collect the DNA is minimally invasive, said Albert Locher, a Sacramento prosecutor and co-chair of the appellate committee for the California District Attorneys Association, an amicus curiae in the case. It takes less time than even brushing your teeth, he said: "That's the extent of the intrusion here."

And Justice Department officials in California hint at an even bigger legal headache if the DNA collection is unconstitutional, given what they see as the close analogy between DNA and fingerprints.

"That argument would suggest that routing fingerprinting at arrest is unconstitutional," said Daniel Powell, the deputy attorney general arguing in Haskell v. Harris, 10-15152.

Privacy watchers say the fingerprints analogy is all wrong. Fingerprints tell us nothing about who we are; DNA, on the other hand, harbors a wealth of information — on blood types, genetic predispositions, even, some believe, the likelihood for a certain sexual orientation. Risher filed suit in October 2009, along with a team from Paul Hastings. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer shot down the ACLU's request for a preliminary injunction and concluded the plaintiffs hadn't alleged irreparable harm.
http://www.businessinsider.com/legality-of-dna-collection-2012-8#ixzz24mDJTEtY
http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1202568938355&slreturn=20120729072603

Administrative subponeas are on the rise as gov't. agencies use them to circumvent obtaining a warrant.

When Golden Valley Electric Association of rural Alaska got an administrative subpoena from the Drug Enforcement Administration in December 2010 seeking electricity bill information on three customers, the company did what it usually does with subpoenas — it ignored them.

That’s the association’s customer privacy policy, because administrative subpoenas aren’t approved by a judge.

But by law, utilities must hand over customer records — which include any billing and payment information, phone numbers and power consumption data — to the DEA without court warrants if drug agents believe the data is “relevant” to an investigation. So the utility eventually complied, after losing a legal fight earlier this month.

Meet the administrative subpoena (.pdf): With a federal official’s signature, banks, hospitals, bookstores, telecommunications companies and even utilities and internet service providers — virtually all businesses — are required to hand over sensitive data on individuals or corporations, as long as a government agent declares the information is relevant to an investigation. Via a wide range of laws, Congress has authorized the government to bypass the Fourth Amendment — the constitutional guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that requires a probable-cause warrant signed by a judge.

In fact, there are roughly 335 federal statutes on the books (.pdf) passed by Congress giving dozens upon dozens of federal agencies the power of the administrative subpoena, according to interviews and government reports. (.pdf)

“I think this is out of control. What has happened is, unfortunately, these statutes have been on the books for many, many years and the courts have acquiesced,” said Joe Evans, the utility’s attorney.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that federal officials from a broad spectrum of government agencies issue them hundreds of thousands of times annually. But none of the agencies are required to disclose fully how often they utilize them — meaning there is little, if any, oversight of this tactic that’s increasingly used in the war on drugs, the war on terror and, seemingly, the war on Americans’ constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable government trespass into their lives.

That’s despite proof that FBI agents given such powers under the Patriot Act quickly began to abuse them and illegally collected Americans’ communications records, including those of reporters. Two scathing reports from the Justice Department’s Inspector General uncovered routine and pervasive illegal use of administrative subpoenas by FBI anti-terrorism agents given nearly carte blanche authority to demand records about Americans’ communications with no supervision.

The administrative subpoena doesn’t just apply to utility records and drug cases. Congress has spread the authority across a huge swath of the U.S. government, for investigating everything from hazardous waste disposal, the environment, atomic energy, child exploitation, food stamp fraud, medical insurance fraud, terrorism, securities violations, satellites, seals, student loans, and for breaches of dozens of laws pertaining to fruits, vegetables, livestock and crops.

Not one of the government agencies with some of the broadest administrative subpoena powers Wired contacted, including the departments of Commerce, Energy, Agriculture, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, would voluntarily hand over data detailing how often they issued administrative subpoenas.

 The FBI has reported issuing 290,000 National Security Letters directed at Americans in the past decade.

Amy Baggio, a Portland, Oregon federal public defender representing drug defendants for a decade, said DEA agents “use these like a doctor’s prescription pad on their desk.” Sometimes, she said, they issue “hundreds upon hundreds of them” for a single prosecution — often targeting mobile phone records.

“They are using them exponentially more in all types of federal criminal investigations. I’m seeing them in every drug case now,” Baggio said. “Nobody is watching what they are doing. I perceive a complete lack of oversight because there isn’t any required.”

A typical DEA investigation might start with an informant or an arrested dealer suspected of drug trafficking, she said. The authorities will use an administrative subpoena to get that target’s phone records — logs of the incoming and outgoing calls — and text-message logs of the numbers of incoming and outgoing texts. Then the DEA will administratively subpoena that same information for the phone numbers disclosed from the original subpoena, and so on, she said.

Often, Baggio said, the records not only show incoming and outgoing communications, they also highlight the mobile towers a phone pinged when performing that communication.

“Then they try to make a connection for drug activity and they do that again and again,” Baggio said. “They used a subpoena to know that my client used a phone up in Canada, but he said he was playing soccer with his kids in Salem.” That client is doing 11 years on drug trafficking charges, thanks to an investigation, Baggio said, that commenced with the use of administrative subpoenas.

Those aimed at foreigners are not required to be accounted for publicly. Likewise, FBI anti-terrorism requests for subscriber information — the name and phone numbers associated with phone, e-mail or Twitter accounts for example, aren’t included in that tally either, regardless if the account holder is an American or foreigner.

All of which means that, even in the one instance where public reporting is required of administrative subpoenas, the numbers are massively under-reported, according to Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I think it’s ridiculous they won’t release the real numbers,” she said. Richardson speculated that the government has “something to hide.”

Some of the stranger statutes authorizing administrative subpoenas involve the Agriculture Department’s power to investigate breaches of the Floral Research and Consumer Information Act and the Fresh Cut Flowers and Fresh Cut Greens Promotion and Information Act. The Commerce Department has administrative subpoena power for enforcing laws relating to the Atlantic tuna and the Northern Pacific halibut. It also has those powers when it comes to enforcing the National Weather Modification Act of 1976, requiring “any person to submit a report before, during, or after that person may engage in any weather modification attempt or activity.”

In a 2002 government report, the Commerce Department said it had not used its administrative subpoena powers to enforce the National Weather Modification Act “in the recent past.” (.pdf) Susan Horowitz, a Commerce Department spokeswoman, urged Wired to send in a FOIA in a bid to obtain data surrounding how often it issues administrative subpoenas.

Lacking in all of these administrative subpoenas is Fourth Amendment scrutiny — in other words, judicial oversight. That’s because probable cause — the warrant standard — does not apply to the administrative subpoena. Often, the receiving party is gagged from disclosing them to the actual targets, who could, if notified, ask a judge to quash it.

Christopher Slobogin, a Vanderbilt Law School scholar who has written extensively on administrative subpoenas, said the power of the administrative subpoena was born at the turn of the 20th century, when the U.S. began developing the regulatory state.

“In some ways, they were a good thing if you were liberal,” Slobogin said of the administrative subpoena. “But they have migrated from corrupt businesses to people suspected of crime. They are fishing expeditions when there is no probable cause for a warrant.”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/administrative-subpoenas/

Payday lenders have created a modern debtors' prison for many Americans.

Wakita Shaw's troubles started with a $425 payday loan, the kind of high-interest, short-term debt that seldom ends well for the borrower.

But most of them don't end up in jail. So Shaw was surprised in May of last year to hear that the St. Louis County police were looking for her. She and her mother went to the police station.

They arrested her on the spot.

They told her the bail was $1,250. "And I couldn't use a bail bondsman to get out,” Shaw recalled.
The Bill of Rights in the Missouri constitution declares that “no person shall be imprisoned for debt, except for nonpayment of fines and penalties imposed by law.” Still, people do go to jail over private debt. It's a regular occurrence in metro St. Louis, on both sides of the Mississippi River.

Here's how it happens: A creditor gets a civil judgment against the debtor. Then the creditor's lawyer calls the debtor to an “examination” in civil court, where they are asked about bank accounts and other assets the creditor might seize.

If the debtor doesn't show, the creditor asks the court for a “body attachment.” That's an order to arrest the debtor and hold him or her until a court hearing, or until the debtor posts bond.
The practice draws fire from legal aid attorneys and some politicians. They call it modern-day debtors prison, a way to squeeze money out of people with little legal knowledge.

Debtors are sometimes summoned to court repeatedly, increasing chances that they'll miss a date and be arrested. Critics note that judges often set the debtor's release bond at the amount of the debt and turn the bond money over to the creditor -- essentially turning publicly financed police and court employees into private debt collectors for predatory lenders.

“You wouldn't want to be spending taxpayer money to collect $400 and $500 debts. Don't the county police have something better to do?” asks Rob Swearingen, attorney for Legal Services.

Creditors' lawyers say body attachments are necessary to get debtors to obey the courts. To avoid jail, they simply have to show up when told.

In Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn's administration and Attorney General Lisa Madigan have joined the chorus of critics. The result was a new law, signed by Quinn last month, restricting body attachments for civil debt.
http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/payday-lenders-use-courts-to-create-modern-debtor-s-prison/article_f56ca6aa-e880-11e1-b154-0019bb30f31a.html

Private investigator Doug Hagmann, claims DHS is going to use a "False Flag Event" to institute martial law in the U.S.

One example of DHS being out of control is bill HR 1505, the “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act.” This monstrous bill empowers the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to confiscate to itself tens of thousands of acres of land across the US northern border.

By Doug Hagmann:

“It’s going hot.” Those were the ominous opening and closing words from my source inside the Department of Homeland Security in two separate contacts we had within the last 72 hours. Readers to this website and listeners to my radio program know this source as “Rosebud,” a source with access to high levels within the DHS administration.

Readers of this website and listeners to my radio program are familiar with this DHS insider from previous leaks detailing alleged plans by members of the Obama administration to keep him in power beyond the 2012 elections.  One could argue that any person of reasonable sensibilities would certainly find this a delusional prospect and tinfoil hat conspiracy nonsense. After all, we have a Constitution, or what’s left of it, that dictates our election process, at least for now. As such, one might logically ask how any sane person can even entertain the prospect of not having normal elections in November.

I would feel the same, and did so as well until the last few years. Today, things are much different than they were four years ago, or even last year at this time. Judi McLeod, award-winning founder and editor of Canada Free Press and not one to succumb to delusion or fantasy, points this out and provides a solid foundation for this possibility in her column published on August 27, 2012 titled “Staged crisis leading to suspended elections could happen on our watch.” What a difference four years can make.

For the purpose of full disclosure, I must note that what follows is a compilation of the information I obtained from my source from two separate contacts within a 72 hour period. Both contacts have been assembled into a single “conversation” for easier reading. None of the information has been changed or otherwise edited.

New information from DHS source

According to my well-placed source within the DHS apparatus, what amounts to a final authorization was reportedly given to DHS directly from the White House. A “go signal” if you will.

“It’s going hot. The plan, or whatever specific operation that was devised, is going hot, being put into motion. You’ve got to let people know that something is up, approval has been given, and unless somebody stops it, we’re going to have a staged event inside the U.S., and it’s being set up so that it gets real ugly real fast.” Obviously, I asked for clarification and more details.

“Look, I’ll tell you everything I know, what I’ve heard and seen, and some of what I’ve been told, but you’ve got to get this public. Even then, I’m not sure we know enough about the specific operational details, have enough time, or have the ability to overcome the characterizations of lunacy they’re going to throw at you, at us, for even talking about this. I’ve heard you talk about the ‘normalcy bias’ of most Americans, and that’s part of what we’re fighting. Look at what they did to you and the content of last information I gave to you. It was like that pass a secret game in first grade, you know, where one student whispers something in the ear of the kid next to him and it’s passed around the room until it gets to the last student. By that time, it’s nothing like the original ‘secret.’ It’s the lesson kids learn about spreading gossip. There was some state representative from Tennessee that sent out a mass e-mail of a screwed up version of what you wrote and then later retracted it,” he stated.

I reminded him that it was Tennessee State Representative Kelly Keisling who sent an e-mail to his constituents based on what amounted to third-hand information he read on the Internet. It centered around an alleged fake assassination attempt, something I never wrote, I told him. “Yes, that’s it. Didn’t you find the timing of that odd? I mean, the information I gave you was back in late April. When did Keisling send that e-mail and then make his very public retraction? Two or three weeks ago? Give me a break. They wanted to discredit you and anyone who makes public their intentions as bad as they want to know where the leaks are coming from,” he stated. “Believe me when I tell you they are desperate on a number of levels.”

My source continued: “Don’t think for one second that the sudden resurrection of the information, as incorrect as it was by that state rep, was an accident, because it wasn’t,” he replied. “Maybe the rep was played and clueless to the original story, but the way the story was managed after the fact made you look like a fool, like a real nutcase,” he said. I thanked him for the reminder.

“That’s their playbook,” he emphasized. “Glenn Beck, you on CFP, your show and others who talk about Alinksy tactics are right. Remember, Alinsky when he wrote that ridicule is the most potent weapon, and there is no defense because it irrational and infuriating. Trust me when I tell you that you are going to get hit hard and called crazy, this time with much greater intensity. Expect it the closer we get to the end game. But, pay attention to who is exploiting the false rumors, and you’ll get an idea who is behind the larger agenda,” he added.

I asked my source for details. “What exactly is the plan? Can you give me specific details? How do you know about this plan ‘going hot?’”

“Okay, from what I’ve been able to learn, there have been a couple different plans or scenarios developed, ready to be implemented at a moment’s notice, but each are distinctly different in nature and timing.” stated my source. “This is done for a few reasons. Look how the weather changed the plans for Vice-President Joe Biden’s visit to Tampa. That’s just one example. They’ve got contingencies. They are watching the poll numbers. They are closely monitoring public sentiment.

The objective of the plan is that they want to portray Obama as a victim of racist hatred by the white gun owners, the people concerned about the Constitution, the people they consider fringe. They want to silence their critics, prove that talk show hosts are causing hatred, and that all gun owners are behind the recent shootings. That’s at the heart of the plan. But to understand just how insidious this is, you’ve got to understand the people who are behind it.”

Nero in the White House, Caligula at the DHS

My source continued, “I’ve been trying to get as much information as possible, but it’s not been easy. This is definitely a plan that has its origins at the highest levels of the White House, and seems limited to maybe a handful of the people closest to Obama. The only reason I know about this authorization order, or approval, or whatever you want to call it, is that there was a major slip up at the very upper level of DHS, and I mean the very upper level” he stated.

“Remember the news about sexual harassment, intimidation and all of the garbage that’s gone on between the people Napolitano brought in and promoted due to their ‘lifestyle’ preferences? These are some sick people, mental rapists and perverts, who she’s brought in to her innermost circle. They make Caligula look like a boy scout, at least with power and sex. Well, one of those people, close to Napolitano, was involved in a meeting where the concept and approval of a false flag was being discussed.”

“This is where they almost lost it. You’ve got to understand that this whole thing is very compartmentalized and we’re talking about a very small group of people in this meeting. This person knew some of the information, not all of it, and let some information slip to a counterpart. That counterpart, who found herself involved in a situation way over her head, talked. I won’t go any further, but that’s how I ended up learning the latest information,” said my source. “Now you should have an idea of how this slipped out. But they had a quick handle on damage control, given the circumstances behind the disclosure. Potentially embarrassing circumstances, sexual blackmail” he added.

I asked my source whether DHS is involved in the actual planning or staging of the event. In response, this source stated that Janet Napolitano and her closest aides are playing a supporting role. ” She has to be involved because she has to control the response to a staged event. She’s involved to coordinate and implement the clampdown, after the fact. She does what she’s told. From everything I’ve heard, I believe the plans come from Valerie Jarrett and possibly a close friend and Obama associate who has a very big stake in Obama’s re-election.”

“What happens and when it happens depends on the events of the next sixty days. If it appears that Obama does not have a lock on the next four years to finish what her started, what he has been told to do, then watch for it ‘going hot.’”
http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/archives/6640#more-6640

DWI atty. Jamie Balagia discusses the profit driven business of incarcerating Americans for DWI's.

Frightening reality - The police can track Americans movements through cellphones & other software.

The rapid spread of cellphones with GPS technology has allowed police to track suspects with unprecedented precision — even as they commit crimes. But the legal fight is only now heating up, with prosecutors and privacy activists sparring over rules governing the use of powerful new investigative tools.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit stirred the debate last week when it supported police use of a drug runner’s cellphone signals to locate him — and more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana — at a Texas rest stop. The court decided that the suspect “did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy” over location data from his cellphone and that police were free to collect it over several days, even without a search warrant.

The decision riled civil libertarians, who warned that it opened the door to an extensive new form of government surveillance destined to be abused as sophisticated tracking technology becomes more widely available. On Monday, six days after the appeals court ruling, the U.S. attorney in Arizona cited it in defending the use of cellphone location data to help arrest a suspect accused of tax fraud.

“We’re looking at the very frightening prospect of an excessive degree of government intrusiveness in our personal lives,” said Gerald L. Gulley Jr., the Knoxville, Tenn., lawyer who represented the drug-running suspect at the Texas rest stop. “I don’t think that people who go out and buy cellphones necessarily contemplated . . . the degree of intrusion in their personal life.” Gulley says he’ll appeal the case.

Many legal experts expect the issue eventually to find its way to the Supreme Court, which touched on it in a January ruling that police violated the rights of an alleged D.C. drug dealer by placing a tracking device on the underside of his car.

About 100 million Americans carry smartphones capable of emitting location data almost continuously. Even some less-sophisticated devices have such capacity, as do the navigation systems in automobiles and some laptop computers. Worldwide, 154 million smartphones were shipped to consumers in just the past three months, according to International Data, a market analysis firm. (The Global Positioning System functions often can be switched off, but that deactivates some phone features.)

Changing technology has long strained the legal strictures of the Fourth Amendment, whose prohibition on “unreasonable” searches and seizures was born of 18th-century law and guides the legal standards for when police can tap phones, use tracking devices and monitor a suspect’s Internet activity.

Combined with information from toll booths, credit card machines, merchant loyalty cards and security cameras, people in highly wired nations often move within a web of data that can allow governments to pinpoint individual movements down to the second.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/gps-technology-finding-its-way-into-court/2012/08/23/03db6030-ed42-11e1-a80b-9f898562d010_story.html

Merchant Loyalty (Tracking) Card Program:

The card can be used to accumulate points, dollars or rewards in a merchant’s store or business. The card can track visits, products purchased or total dollars spent. Merchants can also use the solution to track customer spending habits.

One of the most important advantages of having a Loyalty solution is that merchants have the ability to collect important cardholder demographic information like: name, address, email, birthday, and other items to then assist the merchant with building a database of opt-in customers that can be directly marketed to on a periodic basis. Customers’ spending patterns can be tracked and special targeted offers can be sent directly from the merchant. The programs can also help promote special
events, holidays, and slower days of the week.
http://www.giftcardtraining.com/docs/general/Loyalty_Program_Description.pdf
http://www.cardlogix.com/docs/whitepapers/CardLogix_WP_LoyaltyAndStoredValueCards.pdf

U.S. Customs to install lie detector kiosk booths on borders.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using border crossing stations in Arizona to test new technology to detect liars as they attempt to enter the country; travelers are subjected to a 5-minute interview with the kiosk, while microphones monitor vocal pitch frequency and quality, an infrared camera monitors eye movement and pupil dilation, and a high definition camera monitors facial expression.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using border crossing stations in Arizona to test new technology to detect liars as they attempt to enter the country.

The Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time (AVATAR) kiosk interviews travelers while searching for signs of deception.

Doug Derrick, a member of the University of Arizona team developing the AVATAR thinks the kiosk will be a success.

“What we’re looking for is changes in human physiology,” Derrick told CNN.  “We’ve had great success in reliably detecting these anomalies — things that people can’t really detect.”

Emergency Management reports that currently, the AVATAR is being tested at the Dennis DeConcini port in Nogales, Arizona on low-risk travelers who have been preapproved by human screeners as part of the CPB’s voluntary Trusted Traveler program.

The travelers are subjected to a 5-minute interview with the kiosk, which displays an animated face that asks close-ended questions in English or Spanish and uses sensors to detect whether the person is lying. Microphones monitor vocal pitch frequency and quality, an infrared camera monitors eye movement and pupil dilation, and a high definition camera monitors facial expression.

“People have a hard time detecting small changes in the frequency of the human voice, that a computer is much better at. People are accurate about 54 percent of the time at detecting deception. … We have got our machine as high as 90 percent in the lab,” Derrick said.
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20120821-border-patrol-kiosk-detects-liars-trying-to-enter-u-s

More information about the AVATAR kiosks can be found below:

http://mis.eller.arizona.edu/searchresults.asp?q=kiosk&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&sa=Search&cx=005163135645670103986%3Abndywbnwbpu&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&siteurl=mis.eller.arizona.edu%2Fnews%2F2012%2FAvatar_testing_begins_at_AZ_Mexico_border.asp&ref=www.arizona.edu%2Fsearch%2Fgoogle%2FAVATAR%3Fquery%3DAVATAR%26cx%3D017488205189097806253%253Ah_j_lbd-nb0%26cof%3DFORID%253A11%26sitesearch%3D&ss=1070j300534j5

Debate on brain scans as lie detectors highlighted in Maryland murder trial.

Gary Smith says he didn’t kill his roommate. Montgomery County prosecutors say otherwise.

Can brain scans show whether he’s lying?

Smith is about to go on trial in the 2006 shooting death of fellow Army Ranger Michael McQueen. He has long said that McQueen committed suicide, but now he says he has cutting-edge science to back that up.

While technicians watched his brain during an MRI, Smith answered a series of questions, including: “Did you kill Michael McQueen?”

It may sound like science fiction. But some of the nation’s leading neuroscientists, who are using the same technology to study Alzheimer’s disease and memory, say it also can show — at least in the low-stakes environment of a laboratory — when someone is being deceptive.

Many experts doubt whether the technology is ready for the real world, and judges have kept it out of the courtroom.

Over three days, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Eric M. Johnson allowed pretrial testimony about what he called the “absolutely fascinating” issues involved, from the minutiae of brain analysis to the nature of truth and lies. But he decided jurors can’t see Smith’s MRI testing.

“There have been some discoveries that deception may be able to be detected,” Johnson said, but he added that there’s no consensus that the results can be trusted. “These are brilliant people, and they don’t agree.”

Still, researchers and legal experts say they can envision a time when such brain scans are used as lie detectors. Standard polygraphs are generally not admitted in trials because some consider them deeply flawed. During his police interrogation, Smith said he would submit himself to a polygraph, but Johnson said such results would not be allowed as evidence.

Smith’s attorney, Andrew V. Jezic, argued in court that the MRI test should be allowed, and neuroscientists sparred over the credibility and usefulness in a jury trial.

Frank Haist, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, analyzed Smith’s brain scans. He was hired as a consultant in Smith’s case for No Lie MRI, a firm commercializing the technology. In his own research, Haist has used brain MRIs to study how people of different ages and races and those with autism process faces.

If Smith chooses to testify at trial, Haist said, “he would be asked and the jury would like to know: ‘Did he shoot Michael McQueen?’ Obviously, his answer would be no.” Jurors would see whether Smith was sweating or not, Haist said. They would see whether he appeared nervous. And they would make judgments.

The scans, he said, would give them one more factor to consider.

“You’re making a decision based on the way he looks, the way he acts. This is just another way he acts. It’s just looking at the way his brain is acting,” Haist said.

“The MRI is not a truth machine,” he said. “I can’t say with certainty that he is telling the truth.”

Other experts said the scans don’t prove whether Smith is being either deceptive or truthful.

New York University neuroscientist Liz Phelps told the court that there is “no evidence” that the scans are useful in revealing a “real-world, self-serving lie.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/debate-on-brain-scans-as-lie-detectors-highlighted-in-maryland-murder-trial/2012/08/26/aba3d7d8-ed84-11e1-9ddc-340d5efb1e9c_story.html?hpid=z4

Is eye scan technology the future of airport security?

The Future Passenger Experience, a recently issued white paper from AOptix Technologies. The 10-page document presents an idyllic future in which a traveler shows up at an airport, tosses his bag on a conveyor belt, breezes through security, and boards a plane without ever dealing with another human or handling any documents. This is all accomplished with new face and iris scanners that can quickly identify a person—even a fidgety one—and automatically approve his progression through the normally onerous process of getting on an airplane.
http://www.aoptix.com/images/downloads/Future-Passenger-Experience.pdf

AOptix, a 100-person outfit based in Silicon Valley, says it has the technology to pull off this vision of the future. The company has developed a scanner that can snap an iris from a few feet away in about a second. “It has to be easy enough for an 80-year-old Tibetan grandmother who has never flown before,” says Dean Senner, chief executive officer of AOptix. Senner is championing the idea that by 2020 the vast majority of people will be processed automatically at airports by matching iris scans against databases.
 
Will the airport of the future be able to verify the identity of passengers with a quick eye scan?
Aoptix Technologies Inc., a Campbell-based high-tech company, has developed iris scan technology the company hopes can be used by the Transportation Security Administration to verify passenger identification in a matter of seconds.
http://www.findbiometrics.com/companyprofiles/AOptix-Technologies

To market, sell and develop such technology, Aoptix announced last week it had acquired $42 million in additional funding from investors, bringing the total amount it has raised to $123 million since it launched in 2000.

Aoptix’s scanning technology is already used to identify passengers coming in and out of the international departure lounge at London’s Gatwick Airport and for border control in Qatar. It has not been used in the U.S., said Aoptix spokeswoman Amanda North.

The advantage of the Aoptix technology, she said, is that the scanning device can confirm the identification of a passenger from up to six feet away in about two seconds.

The company is in negotiations with the TSA to bring the technology in the U.S., according to North.

“A lot of airports have seen this as an advantage and I think the U.S. is looking at this as well,” she said.

TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said he could not confirm whether his agency has met with Aoptix officials but said the TSA is interested in using biometric technology at the nation’s airports. 
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-22/through-airport-security-in-the-blink-of-an-eye
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-eye-scan-technology-20120824,0,4993492.story 

Click the link below for more whitepapers such as: 

"Revolution in Airport Security"
"Suitability of Face"
http://www.aoptix.com/download-center#Future

Training our children for incarceration, another state implements GPS tracking of it's students.

Austin, TX - The new school year is bringing a brand new truancy program to the Austin school district that no one else in Central Texas has tried.

A combination of global positioning system technology and mentors will be used to try and keep students who have a history of skipping class out of court and in school.

With parent permission, as many as 1,700 students across eight high schools will be equipped with a GPS device that looks a lot like a cellphone. They will also each be teamed up with a mentor whom they have to check-in with using the device several times a day.

Austin high schools participating:

• Akins HS
• Crockett HS
• Eastside Memorial HS
• Lanier HS
• LBJ Early College HS
• McCallum HS
• Travis HS
• Reagan Early College HS
• International HS

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/austin/AISD-hopes-GPS-program-helps-attendance

Kids who skip school are tracked by GPS.

ANAHEIM – Frustrated by students habitually skipping class, police and school officials in Anaheim are turning to GPS tracking to ensure they come to class.

The Anaheim Union High School District is the first in California to test Global Positioning System technology as part of a six-week pilot program that began last week, officials said.

Seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device, about the size of a cell phone.

Each morning on schooldays, they get an automated phone call reminding them that they need to get to school on time.

Then, five times a day, they are required to enter a code that tracks their locations – as they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunchtime, when they leave school and at 8 p.m.

It has been well received in places like San Antonio and Baltimore. Where the GPS technology has been implemented, average attendance among the chronically truant jumped from 77 percent up to 95 percent during the six-week program.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/school-288730-students-program.html

Q. and A with Miller Sylvan, regional director of the firm helping with the GPS program, talked about tracking chronically truant students:

Q. Why don't you just attach the GPS devices to the students?

A. We don't want to criminalize the kids or have them wear any bracelet or something around their ankle that would stigmatize them. The students are frequently entering a code and interacting with the device, so we think it's the best way to let them carry it.

Q. Why is Anaheim the first in the state?

A. Anaheim already has a strong GRIP (Gang Reduction and Intervention Partnership) program that the truancy program can easily compliment. We've been talking to school districts in San Diego and Los Angeles also, but Anaheim is the first.

Q. Why do the students have to enter a code when it's a GPS device that could track them at any time?

A. We want the students to be interactive with the device and take steps to let us know where they are. That helps teach them the discipline they need to be responsible. It gets them thinking about their schedule.

Q. Who are the coaches who speak directly to the students?

A. We hire them from the community. They come from a range of backgrounds, including school counselors, church leaders and business leaders who have a passion for helping kids. We have them talk with the students, usually for about 10 minutes, three times a week so they can keep up with what's happening in the students' lives and provide real help to get them to class.

Q. What happens if students still don't come to class?

A. We will communicate with the attendance offices at the schools, who will follow protocols. Sometimes that means sending out a police officer to check on the student and make sure they get to class.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/students-288732-class-don.html

The "Intelligence Led Policing" program reveals how local police share infromation with the Feds.

The purpose of this paper is to report on new experimentation with Intelligence-Led Policing (ILP) to arenas of crime and disorder and beyond terrorism. The Bureau of Justice Assistance, through a competitive grant program.

Innovation in policing has been characterized by leaders creatively applying ideas or principles from other disciplines to the policing enterprise. For example, the professional era of policing was born through former Berkley, California, police chief August Vollmer, who applied contemporary business management principles as well as ethical standards and a sense of professionalism to policing. His protégé, O.W. Wilson, expanded Vollmer‟s vision, particularly by applying management philosophy that was contemporary at the time, such as Frederick Winslow Taylor‟s The Principles of Scientific Management. Besides being a police leader, Mr. Wilson authored several policing books, the most widely used of which was Police Administration. Not only did Mr. Wilson solidify the professional model of policing, he also laid a solid foundation of thoughtful, empirically based police management and service delivery that was responsive to crime problems within the community.

Many experiments and innovations built on this foundation—inquiries into the wide array of police services by the President‟s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice; the Police Foundation‟s wide array of research, particularly on police patrol; and the early research efforts by the predecessor to the Office of Justice Programs, the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice.

CompStat, led by former New York Police Commissioner (and former Los Angeles Police Chief) William Bratton. CompStat integrated many of the lessons learned from previous experimentation: a scientific analysis of crime problems, an emphasis on creative and sustained approaches to solving the crime problems, and strict management accountability. In many ways, CompStat introduced the era of smart policing.

Stimulated by the new law enforcement role in intelligence as a result of the 9/11 attacks, the concept of ILP emerged in the United States. With roots in the British National Intelligence Model, American ILP relies on analytically understanding multijurisdictional crime threats, developing a pathway toward solving the crime problems, and relying on proactive information sharing, both within the agency and externally with other law enforcement agencies, to maximize the number of law enforcement personnel who may identify indicators of threats and intervene. The lessons learned from police research, community policing, and CompStat provided important insight into how to shape American ILP.

Applying these concepts to pervasive crimes of violence, the Bureau of Justice Assistance14 (BJA) provided a solicitation for proposals for law enforcement agencies to develop initiatives to fight violence using ILP under the Targeting Violent Crime Initiative (TVCI). The case studies summarized in this publication illustrate how ILP can be used by law enforcement agencies of all sizes to deal with crime problems.

Collaboration—Information sharing and collaboration among various state, local, and federal agencies were an obvious factor in successful programs and quickly emerged as a major criterion for inclusion.

Aggressive information gathering, specific analysis, and structured classifications for mass “real-time” communication paths for “actionable intelligence dissemination” to all stakeholders in the area of operations.

The operational plan initiated by the Oregon Medford police dept. might be called total immersion in the community. Officers are expected to be community problem solvers, and everyone has an electronic list of community resources available to address virtually any problem encountered. (police are now in the propaganda business)

The Medford police dept. has created an information sharing environment that embraces collaboration with its community and regional law enforcement agencies. Specific problems have been addressed with special programs, some of which are unique. Tying it all together is the Tactical Information Unit, which serves as both a clearinghouse for information as well as a crime analysis unit.

School Resource Officers (SRO)—The pulse of the community can be easily gauged through contacts with the children. The police department assigns SROs to every school in the community on a full-time basis. Close contact with children, especially teenagers, allows officers to detect problems as they develop.

When all of these efforts are combined, the programs initiated by the Medford police dept. represent a total immersion of law enforcement and social services into the community. The commitment to community involvement and information sharing has produced an environment of cooperation between the police and their constituents rarely seen in contemporary society. Boasting approval ratings of well above 90 percent, coupled with clearance rates for all crimes in excess of 80 percent, the Medford Police dept. level of success is truly astounding.

Secure office space to serve as the intelligence center was obtained, an intelligence analyst was hired with BJA funds, an investigative deputy was assigned to the intelligence center, and all personnel—including the Sheriff and Chief Deputy—attended both BJA- and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-funded intelligence training. Critical to the success of this effort was buy-in from not only the sheriff‟s deputies but also the chiefs of police and officers in Claxton and Hagan. The support and participation of the agencies were gained surprisingly fast because the intelligence center provided useful information quickly and consistently.

Multiagency investigative efforts—In particular, a partnership with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) served an important role for investigating and prosecuting offenders on gun law violations. Moreover, ATF provided lab support for DNA comparisons. Local law enforcement, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), and federal agencies beyond the ATF bought into the concept and participated with both personnel and resources. It must be stressed that while the sheriff‟s office is the lead agency, this is a true collaborative effort with a high level of commitment by participating agencies.

The National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan recommends that every law enforcement agency, regardless of size, develop an intelligence capacity. The Evans County Sheriff‟s Office took this recommendation to heart and demonstrated that ILP could be effectively implemented in a small, rural law enforcement agency.
https://www.bja.gov/Publications/ReducingCrimeThroughILP.pdf

The National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan:
http://www.it.ojp.gov/documents/ncisp/National_Criminal_Intelligence_Sharing_Plan.pdf

Police charge a man with DWI after eavesdropping on bathroom cell phone conversation.

Minneapolis, MN - A Tuesday night trip to a Rosemount bar last December drew a line between one man’s rights and the law.

Derek Boykin says the Rosemount Police Department went too far when they went after him in a bathroom.

Boykin was out with friends at a bar when he left at around 9 p.m.

“I stopped here at this Kwik Trip gas station to use the bathroom for a minute,” he said.

Boykin said he didn’t know it, but police pulled in behind him.

The police report from that night said the officer wanted to talk to Boykin about his car’s dark windows. The officer found him in the bathroom and said he overheard Boykin on the phone saying, “He’s going to arrest me for DWI.”

On the video you can see the officer first took several looks under the stall then got a stool to look over it.

“That put himself in a position that not only made me uncomfortable, but would make anyone feel uncomfortable,” Boykin said.

Eventually, three officers walked him out. Boykin blew a .096 and police arrested him for drunken driving.

“I drank that evening, yes,” Boykin said.

But, earlier this summer, a judge threw out the charges, saying under the 4th Amendment Boykin had an expectation to privacy. The officer may not have known he’d been drinking if he hadn’t overheard that private phone call.

Derik Fetting, a law professor at Hamline University, says it’s up to the government to justify its evidence gathering is reasonable.

“The 4th Amendment protects all citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures,” Fetting said. “Every search and seizure case is highly fact specific.”

No one from the Rosemount police dept. would talk on camera, but a lieutenant said it’s using the case as a teaching tool.
 
Watch the video: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2d1_1344971844&comments=1

Police report: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/97135857/Police%20Report%20122711.pdf

Judges ruling: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/97135857/Judges%20Ruling.pdf

MN statute Interference with privacy: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=609.746

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2012/08/22/right-to-privacy-protects-man-from-police-bathroom-probing/

Politicians caught using data mining technology which reveals Americans' personal information.

Washington, D. C. - Building upon its fundraising prowess, Mitt Romney's campaign began a secretive data-mining project this summer to trove through Americans' personal information — including their purchasing history and church attendance — to identify new and likely wealthy donors, The Associated Press has learned.

The project employs strategies similar to those the business world uses to influence the way Americans shop and think. Now they're being used to sway presidential elections. The same personal data consumers give away — often unwittingly when they swipe their credit cards or log into Facebook — is now being used by the people who might one day occupy the White House.

Businesses use those kinds of analytics firms to answer key questions for clients, such as where to build a retail store or where to mail pamphlets touting a new product. The analysis doesn't directly bring in campaign contributions, but it generates the equivalent of sales leads for Romney's campaign.

The project relies upon a sophisticated analysis by powerful computers of thousands of commercially available, expensive databases that are lawfully bought and sold behind the scenes by corporations, including details about credit accounts, families and children, voter registrations, charitable contributions, property tax records and survey responses. It combines marketing data with what is known in this specialized industry as psychographic data analysis, which tries to ferret out Americans' consumer behavior and habits.

An early test analyzed details of more than 2 million households near San Francisco and elsewhere on the West Coast and identified thousands of people who would be comfortably able and inclined to give Romney at least $2,500 or more.

An AP analysis this week determined that Romney's campaign has made impressive inroads into even traditionally Democratic neighborhoods, collecting more than $350,000 this summer around San Francisco in contributions that averaged $400 each. High-dollar donors have been essential to Romney's election effort, unlike Obama, who relies on more contributors giving smaller amounts.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-exclusive-romney-uses-secretive-data-mining

TSA's shoe scanners are a failure yet they continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on similar technology.

Washington, D.C. - After spending millions of dollars testing four different scanning devices that would allow airline passengers to keep their shoes on at security checkpoints, the U.S. government has decided for now that travelers must continue to remove their footwear, by far the leading source of frustration and delays at the airport.

The Transportation Security Administration said it had rejected all four devices because they failed to adequately detect explosives and metal weapons during tests at various airports. One of the scanners is now used in airports in 18 countries. 

Last September, Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Homeland Security Department raised hopes when she said that research and development on scanning machines was progressing and that air travelers would eventually be able to keep their shoes on. 

But nearly a year later, the T.S.A., which is overseen by Homeland Security, said it was not any closer to finding a solution. Lisa Farbstein, a spokeswoman for the agency, would not address why it had rejected the devices.

In 2007, the agency tested a General Electric shoe scanner at Orlando International Airport. The next year, it tested two scanning machines made by L3 Communications at Los Angeles International Airport. But none of them passed agency muster. 

It also tested a device called Magshoe, which is intended to detect metal and is made by IDO Security, an Israeli firm, that deploys the scanner in hundreds of airports and cruise ships around the world, including in China, Italy and Israel. 

Michael Goldberg, the company’s president, said the machine can detect explosives containing metal, but not plastic explosives. 

Mr. Goldberg said the machine performed flawlessly in tests with the T.S.A. But the agency did not think so. 

He said no current technology can detect all of the various chemical compounds used as explosives. Current X-ray machines used to scan shoes can detect metal but are not much help in finding liquids or gels that can be used as explosives.

The government has a $1.4 million contract with Morpho Detection, a subsidiary of the French defense giant Safran, to develop a shoe-scanning machine.

Many security experts say the security agency is too focused on technologies for intercepting things — guns, knives, explosives — instead of focusing on stopping people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/us/shoe-scanners-fail-tests-at-us-airports.html?_r=1

Why is the Obama administration continuing to fight to detain Americans indefinitely?

The Obama administration continues to defend its right to violate the rights of the people it is supposed to govern. On August 6, Department of Justice lawyers filed an appeal in federal court against a recent ruling that temporarily enjoined section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which gives powers to the military to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens — on U.S. soil — without charge or trial. The case, and the organizing that surrounds it, will have profound implications for basic constitutional rights, though it has been largely ignored by the mainstream media.

The so-called anti-terrorism legislation was signed on New Year’s Eve by President Barack Obama and went into effect on March 1, 2012. The NDAA had been the target of little public scrutiny in 2011, but after its passage both Congress and the Obama administration became targets of outrage among liberals and conservatives alike for the act’s alleged unconstitutionality.

As anti-NDAA sentiment spread in the blogosphere, often thanks to Occupy social media networks, journalist Chris Hedges announced on January 17 that he was suing Barack Obama for infringing on his constitutionally-protected rights.

In a widely discussed article, Hedges contended that the NDAA was “a catastrophic blow to civil liberties” and that the vague and opaque wording of the law left too much room for broad interpretation of who was to be considered:

Section 1021 of the bill defines a “covered person” — one subject to detention — as “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

The bill, however, does not define the terms “substantially supported,” “directly supported” or “associated forces.”

Six others joined Hedges as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, including Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky. All of them expressed worry over the broad powers defined in the NDAA and how its provisions might apply to them, their work and their colleagues. Lawyers for the plaintiffs — Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran — agreed that their clients had the standing and the right to challenge the NDAA in court.

Plaintiff Tangerine Bolen, co-founder of the pro-transparency organization Revolution Truth, wrote in an a recent op-ed about the surreal nature of suing her own government:

We are fighting for due process and for the first amendment — for a country we still believe in and for a government still legally bound by its constitution. If that makes us their “enemies”, then so be it. As long as they cannot call us “belligerents,” lock us up and throw away the key — a power that, incredibly, this past week U.S. government lawyers still asserted is their right. Against such abuses, we will keep fighting.

The court documents reveal an ambiguous interpretation of what the government believes its powers to be over its citizens. Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer and scholar, reported on the government’s inability — some might say refusal — to further define the categories named in section 1021 before the court. The government’s reluctance to specify the broad and vague terms such as “substantially supported” and “associated forces” highlights the legal gray area that the executive branch tries to maintain surrounding the powers under its purview.

When the hearings resumed last week in federal court, plaintiffs were hoping for a permanent injunction, but the government gave notice of appeal before Forrest issued a final ruling. Regardless, the temporary restraining order remains even as there are suspicions that the government may be in contempt of Judge Forrest’s ruling because the government says it does not track those whom it detains or for what reasons. The case will be heard in appellate court before likely heading toward the Supreme Court.

The government’s actions reveal its commitment to giving the military broad policing and detention power over U.S. citizens. Hedges, in an email after the ruling, commented that the government’s actions send a clear signal: “The Obama administration is determined to continue its assault on basic civil liberties, including due process, despite interference from the courts.”
http://truth-out.org/news/item/11124-the-battle-over-ndaas-police-state-provisions-continues-in-court

Courts across the country are allowing police to ask Americans to “show them their papers.”

Courts are beginning to allow the so-called “show me your papers” clauses of tough new state immigration laws to take effect. But they’re warning states that the US Constitution frowns on any hint of profiling.

The US Supreme Court in June upheld “show me your papers” provisions in Arizona, which allow law-enforcement officials to ask for the immigration documents of people they suspect might be in the country illegally during routine stops. Now, lower courts are beginning to lift injunctions on similar laws in Georgia and Alabama, and a state judge was set to rule on whether to lift an injunction against it in Arizona itself, where Gov. Jan Brewer said that “the heart” of the state’s controversial law should “be allowed to take effect.”

As these laws take hold in the real world, focus is likely to shift to local and state police, who stand to face enormous pressure to use their expanded discretionary powers fairly and judiciously.

“The idea that this is the rubber hitting the road is exactly right,” says Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, in Washington. “Law enforcement already has lots of opportunities to stop most people on a daily basis for entirely minor offenses. The question is, stopping people for spitting on the sidewalk or driving with a broken taillight, are we going to see those increase in jurisdictions … that have the ‘papers, please’ provision? In other words, you cannot use the possibility that someone is undocumented to justify the stop in the first place.”

The issue has powerful emotional resonance in a country that historically valued freedom from government intrusion, raising the question of whether the “immigration laws really catch more people in the net than the Constitution should allow,” says Leon Friedman, a law professor at Hofstra University.

These concerns relate to the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from warrantless searches and seizures and restricts police from conducting random ID checks of people walking around on American streets. The immigration laws passed legal muster because a person has to have been detained or accused of a crime before police check their name against the e-Verify system, a federal immigration database.

“You can’t just stop them on the street and say, ‘Show your identification,’ ” Professor Friedman says. “There has to be a legitimate reason for stopping or arresting them, and then you can’t keep them indefinitely. In fact, the states have said, ‘We can keep you for a week,’ but the Supreme Court said they can’t do that.”

The general tenor of the courts is one of skepticism about the new breed of laws. For example, the 11th Circuit Court, which oversees Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, struck down significant parts of the Alabama and Georgia laws, including the creation of new crimes to punish those who aid, abet, even employ, illegal immigrants. Courts also nixed provisions that mandated immigrants carry their residency papers on them at all times.

Most significantly, the 11th Circuit struck down an Alabama provision that required school students to inform the state education department about their legal status, an exercise the state claimed was merely informational to be used to build better policy.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0821/Will-Arizona-inspired-illegal-immigration-laws-run-afoul-of-Constitution
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/arizona-show-me-your-papers-law-immigration/2789/

Local police departments to use facial recogntion software from the FBI.

 The FBI is expanding the pilot project of its facial recognition software and will be offering a free-of-charge client software version later this summer to law enforcement agencies. 

The Universal Face Workstation will enable law enforcement agencies to conduct automated facial/photo searches with minimal resource investment.

The facial recognition system was piloted in February with the state of Michigan, which is currently submitting searches to the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, according to Jerome Pender, the division’s deputy assistant director. He spoke in a recent statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law in a hearing on facial recognition technology and privacy and civil liberties issues. 

Several other states are now joining the initiative. “[Memorandums of understanding] have also been executed with Hawaii and Maryland, and South Carolina, Ohio and New Mexico are engaged in the MOU review process for facial recognition pilot participation. Kansas, Arizona, Tennessee, Nebraska and Missouri are also interested in facial recognition pilot participation,” Pender said.

The agency’s facial recognition pilot provides a search of a repository of nearly 13 million criminal mug shot photos taken at time of booking. It is scheduled to be fully operational in the summer of 2014. 

Some have expressed privacy concerns about the system. In the same hearing, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), chairman of the subcommittee, said he scheduled the hearing because “there is no law regulating law enforcement use of facial recognition technology.”

“Facial recognition creates acute privacy concerns that fingerprints do not. Once someone has your faceprint, they can get your name, they can find your social networking account and they can find and track you in the street, in the stores you visit, the government buildings you enter, and the photos your friends post online,” he said. “I fear that the FBI pilot could be abused to not only identify protesters at political events and rallies, but to target them for selective jailing and prosecution, stifling their First Amendment rights. Curiously enough, a lot of the presentations on this technology by the Department of Justice show it being used on people attending political events or other public gatherings. I also fear that without further protections, facial recognition technology could be used on unsuspecting civilians innocent of any crime -- invading their privacy and exposing them to potential false identifications.”

The FBI has stressed that CJIS holds only criminal mug shots and can be accessed only by authorized law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, participants are required to detail in their MOU the purpose, authority, scope, disclosure and use of information and the security rules and procedures associated with piloting, said Pender.

“We certainly do not store photographs obtained from other sources such as social media,” David Cuthbertson, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services, said in an FBI podcast on the issue.

However, according to the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, previous statements from agency employees “suggests the FBI wants to be able to search and identify people in photos of crowds and in pictures posted on social media sites -- even if the people in those photos haven’t been arrested for or even suspected of a crime. The FBI may also want to incorporate those crowd or social media photos into its face recognition database.” 

Additional documents released by the FBI discuss the FBI’s plans to combine civil and criminal biometrics records, although they have always been kept separate in the past, noted EFF. 

The FBI’s facial recognition software is part of its Next Generation Identification program, a multi-year initiative to develop additional biometric identification capabilities. Last month the agency issued a request for information from academia, private industry and law enforcement agencies on how to build a tattoo database. 

Currently the FBI has two other parts of the program in progress: the national palm print system, scheduled to deploy in the spring of 2013; and the iris pilot, scheduled for late summer or fall of 2013.

http://gcn.com/articles/2012/08/20/fbi-facial-recognition-software-open-to-police.aspx
http://www.allgov.com/news/where-is-the-money-going/fbi-prepares-billion-dollar-iris-recognition-database?news=844739
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/fbis_facial_recognition_coming_state_near_you

How the police use your smartphone to track your every move.

Advanced technology now provides government agents and police officers with the ability to track our every move. The surveillance state is our new society. It is here, and it is spying on you, your family and your friends every day. Worse yet, those in control are using life’s little conveniences, namely cell phones, to do much of the spying. And worst of all, the corporations who produce these little conveniences are happy to hand your personal information over to the police so long as their profit margins increase. To put it simply, the corporate-surveillance state is in full effect, and there is nowhere to hide.

Using the data transferred from, received by, and stored in your cell phone, police are now able to track your every move. Your texts, web browsing, and geographic location are all up for grabs. Using “stingray” devices, often housed in mobile surveillance vans, federal agents track the cell phones of unsuspecting people. By triangulating the source of a cell phone signal, agents are able to track down the whereabouts of the person holding it. These surveillance sweeps target all cell phone signals, not just those of criminal suspects. Examples of extralegal police surveillance in the years since 9/11 are numerous, from the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program to the NYPD’s spy network that targeted Muslims in the New York area.

Unfortunately, the now widespread tactic of spying on people via their cell phones resides in a legal grey area, which has allowed police agencies to take drastic steps to record the daily activity of all Americans. Whereas cell phone tracking once fell only in the purview of federal agents, local police departments, big and small, are beginning to engage in cell phone tracking with little to no oversight. Small police agencies are shelling out upwards of $244,000 to get the technology necessary to track cell phones. And as you might expect, most police departments have attempted to keep knowledge of their cell phone tracking programs secret, fearing (as they should) a public backlash.

Federal courts are divided on the issue, some saying that a warrant is necessary before executing a cell phone search. However, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently ruled that tracking the location of a cell phone without a warrant is legal and, thus, not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. This lack of concern for the Fourth Amendment – which requires reasonable suspicion that you’re up to something illegal before the police conduct surveillance on you – is widely shared among the federal and state courts. In fact, courts issue tens of thousands of cell tracking orders a year, allowing police agencies to accurately pinpoint people’s locations within meters. Unless they’re charged with a crime, most people remain unaware that their cell data has been tracked.

Although government agencies are increasingly acquiring the technology to track cell phones themselves, most rely on cell phone companies to provide them with the user data. In July 2012, it was revealed that cell phone carriers had responded to an astonishing 1.3 million requests from police agencies for personal information taken from people’s cell phones. One of the larger carriers, AT&T, responds to roughly 700 requests a day, 230 of which are so-called “emergencies,” exempting them from standard court orders. This number has tripled since 2007. Sprint received the most requests, averaging 1,500 per day. The number of requests is almost certainly higher than 1.3 million, and the number of people affected much higher, because a single request often involves targeting multiple people.

Unfortunately, with intelligence gathering and surveillance doing booming business, and corporations rolling out technologies capable of filtering through vast reams of data, tapping into underseas communication cables, and blocking websites for entire countries, life as we know it will only get worse. As journalist Pratap Chatterjee has noted, “These tools have the potential to make computer cables as dangerous as police batons.” Telecoms hold on to user data, including text messages and Internet browsing history, for months to years at a time. This, of course, has some ominous implications. For example, British researchers have created an algorithm that accurately predicts someone’s future whereabouts at a certain time based upon where she and her friends have been in the past.

So where does this leave us? As George Orwell warned, you have to live with the assumption that everything you do, say and see is being tracked by those who run the corporate surveillance state.

http://lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead52.1.html

Another town to raise revenue by combining drug-sniffing dogs & assest forfeiture.

They say a dog is man’s best friend, and the town of Henry, Tennessee is hoping that dogs can help the town raise revenue in tough times. (Scroll down & look for the headline: Henry Board approves K9 program, part time help for office)

At the Henry Mayor and Board of Alderman meeting on Tuesday, board members decided to allow police chief David Andrews to institute a K9 program for the Henry Police Department.

Andrews told board members that the city is missing out on possible revenues that a K9 would bring. He said when you make traffic stops and the driver refuses to allow a search, their hands are tied. If a drug dog alerts on a vehicle, its gives officers probable cause to search a vehicle for drugs or illegal proceeds from drugs. More drug arrests and drug, cash, and vehicle seizures lead to more revenues coming in for the police department and city.

Andrews said the military has a drug dog program and he could get a dog for the city at no upfront cost. The dogs are usually labs and are very gentle, and come trained as drug dogs. Andrews said four hours per week of training is required but the officers will work that into their regular hours. The dog would stay at the officers residence at night and any monies for food, water, and vet care would come from the drug fund.

Cashing in: Sheriffs' offices join war on drugs:
http://m.amarillo.com/news/local-news/2010-11-22/cahing

Police are using license plate readers to collect millions of Americans travel records every day.

Tiburon, CA. - Tiburon, a small but wealthy town just northeast of the Golden Gate Bridge, has an unusual distinction: it was one of the first towns in the country to mount automated license plate readers (LPRs) at its city borders—the only two roads going in and out of town. Effectively, that means the cops are keeping an eye on every car coming and going.

A contentious plan? Not in Tiburon, where the city council approved the cameras unanimously back in November 2009.

The scanners can read 60 license plates per second, then match observed plates against a "hot list" of wanted vehicles, stolen cars, or criminal suspects. LPRs have increasingly become a mainstay of law enforcement nationwide; many agencies tout them as a highly effective "force multiplier" for catching bad guys, most notably burglars, car thieves, child molesters, kidnappers, terrorists, and—potentially—undocumented immigrants.

Today, tens of thousands of LPRs are being used by law enforcement agencies all over the country-practically every week, local media around the country report on some LPR expansion. But the system's unchecked and largely unmonitored use raises significant privacy concerns. License plates, dates, times, and locations of all cars seen are kept in law enforcement databases for months or even years at a time. In the worst case, the New York State Police keeps all of its LPR data indefinitely. No universal standard governs how long data can or should be retained.

Not surprisingly, the expanded use of LPRs has drawn the ire of privacy watchdogs. In late July 2012, the American Civil Liberties Union and its affiliates sent requests to local police departments and state agencies across 38 states to request information on how LPRs are used.

The system is not without flaws. It tends to yield numerous false positives because the hot list data received from the California Department of Motor Vehicles takes a long time to be updated—and because the system cannot distinguish out-of-state plates. This creates a problem if, for instance, California plate ABC123 has been reported as stolen and is on the hotlist, and then someone drives through Tiburon with Oregon plate ABC123. (Other LPR systems can distinguish the plates from different states.)

Hutton showed me an example of a unique California vanity plate that the department gets a hit on every day, because that same plate from a different state was reported stolen. The Tiburon authorities pulled over the local resident once, his story checked out, but his plate turns up again every time he enters or leaves the city.

In addition, the cameras miss some plates. When I saw the LPR system, for instance, I slowed down to get a better look. By the time I reached Blackfield Drive, I knew I had to turn around to get closer, so I made a U-turn and pulled over in the shoulder directly across from the cameras. I parked my car, and walked over to the island to snap a few pictures with my phone. I got back in my car, drove ahead 20 feet or so while still on the shoulder, and then moved over to the left turn lane, making a second U-turn to head back toward the police station. When I asked Capt. Hutton to see my own log entry, the camera had only recorded my inbound entries. Pulling over to the shoulder apparently put me out of range of the camera—a pretty easily exploitable weakness. I'd "hacked" the Tiburon Police LPRs without even trying.

LPR systems are doing big business at the moment. The country's largest such company, Federal Signal Corporation (FSC), which sells LPRs under its PIPS brand name, says it has sold 20,000 mobile systems across North America and another 15,000 fixed devices across the United States and the United Kingdom.

"We work with the 25 largest cities in the United States, over 100 cities in the US and over 200 in North America, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and in Mexico," said Tim O'Leary, a company vice president, in an interview with Ars. "We think the market is growing at 8 to 10 percent, adjusted growth rate, annually."

In its SEC filing earlier this year, FSC said its sales of LPRs were up by $2.1 million in 2010 alone. One of its primary competitors, Elsag North America, says it has worked with 1,200 agencies nationwide, while declining to state how many LPRs it has sold.

The New York Police Department began using LPR devices made by Elsag in 2006. As of 2011, the NYPD told the New York Times that it maintains 108 stationary LPRs and 130 mobile devices (Elsag's "Mobile Plate Hunter".)

The Times also wrote that in 2005, the year before LPRs were introduced, New York City had nearly 18,000 reports of stolen cars, a figure that fell to just over 10,000—a drop of over 40 percent—in the next six years. The NYPD attributes the benefits of LPR technology to being "directly responsible" for recovering over 3,600 stolen cars and for issuing summons to nearly 35,000 unregistered vehicles.
New York isn't alone in its love of LPRs. Washington, DC, with its 250 cameras, has more than one LPR per square mile, likely the highest concentration in the country.

In September 2011, the FBI reported that its Criminal Justice Information Services Advisory Policy Board (CJIS APB) had approved the use of LPRs years earlier through a pilot project conducted by the Ohio State Highway Patrol. That pilot has since expanded to "46 states, the District of Columbia, 33 local agencies, and one federal agency," which have "formal agreements with the FBI to receive the [National Crime Information Center] information for the purpose of using LPRs."

The FBI also added that a survey of its pilot partners "reported a total of 1,102 stolen vehicles recovered with a value of more than $6.5 million, as well as contraband recovered that included stolen license plates, stolen property, vehicles, drugs, weapons, larceny proceeds, suspended registrations, credit cards, and a police badge. Also as a result of the LPR technology, participating agencies located 818 subjects listed in the Wanted Persons File and 19 listed in the Missing Persons File. Another 2,611 persons were apprehended."

The recent uptick in LPR deployments is likely due to a combination of price drops—each camera can cost between $8,000 and $20,000 now—and increased federal grants for the tech. Various agencies, in particular the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and Customs and Border Protection have issued many millions of dollars in federal grants to state and local law enforcement to buy the hardware. (Both FSC and Elsag provide prominent links on their websites to help cops apply for these grants, too.)

Help ArsTechnica watch the watchers.

In the course of this story, ArsTechnica e-mailed the state law enforcement agencies of all 50 states to learn more about how LPRs are used; we received replies from just a handful. We followed up with FOIA and public information requests asking for LPR purchase orders, privacy guidelines, and other documents from ten state, ten local, and three federal agencies, including the FBI, the DEA, and Customs and Border Protection.

We learned, for example, that the Bismarck, North Dakota Police Department and the Hawaii State Police both deny using LPRs at all. The Delaware State Police, meanwhile, says it owns three readers. After a month, we've had relatively few responses, though many of the requests are still pending.

We've created two spreadsheets outlining what we've found so far, and we have uploaded the most extensive documents (from Ohio) to Scribd. Ars readers can help us continue the investigation by querying their own local, county, and state authorities; just click here to generate a public records request letter to your local law enforcement agency. (Thanks to MuckRock for providing a nice template.) Send it in—and when you get results, feel free to share them with us for followup reporting.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/your-car-tracked-the-rapid-rise-of-license-plate-readers/ 

U.S. Customs tracks millions of license plates & shares data with insurance firms.

It may come as little surprise that every time you cross the border, cameras record your license plate number and feed it into a database of driver locations. More disturbing, perhaps, is the fact that the government seems to share that automobile surveillance data with an unexpected third party: insurance companies.

Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and released Tuesday by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) catalogue just how pervasive automatic license plate readers have become at the Mexican and Canadian borders, with cameras placed in dozens of U.S. cities each capturing images of millions or tens of millions of plates a year. But the FOIA’d records (PDF here) also include memos outlining the sharing of that license plate data between the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and most significantly, the National Insurance Crime Bureau, an Illinois non-profit composed of hundreds of insurance firms including branches of Allstate, GEICO, Liberty, Nationwide, Progressive, and State Farm.

“This is warrantless collection of very private data, location data about where you’ve been and when,” says Ginger McCall, an attorney with EPIC. “It’s being shared with unknown organizations, not just in the government where there may be Privacy Act protections, but outside the government with third parties, possibly in contravention of the Privacy Act.”

According to an undated “memorandum of understanding” included in EPIC’s document release, license-plate reader “information on vehicles departing from and arriving into the United States will be provided to the [National Insurance Crime Bureau or] NICB for the purpose of deterring the export of stolen vehicles, identifying vehicle theft patterns and trends…and returning vehicles to the rightful parties of interest.” The data can also be used, according to the document, to identify so-called “owner-give-up” insurance fraud, in which a vehicle’s owner fakes its theft by giving it to a friend and claiming it as stolen.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/21/documents-show-u-s-customs-tracking-millions-of-license-plates-and-sharing-data-with-insurance-firms/

 

Government standard for vehicle "Event Data Recorders" will go forward.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has denied a petition for rulemaking that would delay the effective date of national requirements for event data recorders. The government requirements for the devices that are installed in vehicles will be effective on September 1, 2012. Commonly referred to as "black boxes," event data recorders collect and store vehicle operation information before, during, and after a vehicle crash, including vehicle location, driver speed, seat belt use, and number of vehicle occupants.
http://epic.org/2012/08/government-standard-for-vehicl.html