Boston police are spying on Americans, and storing thousands of license plates for "intelligence" purposes.

 By Kate Crawford:

This summer ACLU affiliates all around the country filed open-records requests seeking information about how government agencies are using automated license plate readers. One set of records, released this week to the ACLU of Massachusetts by the police department here in Boston, provides a snapshot of the data-collection practices that are taking place around the nation.

The records reveal that the Boston police collect an average of 3,630 license plate reads per day and store the information for 90 days, unless officers decide they want to hold onto it forever, “for investigatory or intelligence purposes and for discovery/exculpatory evidence.”

Collected license plate data is stored in a private database called “CopLink,” and is available to any police officer with CopLink access. The Boston police department’s surveillance center, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), stores the data locally. The police department allows its officers to use license plate recognition technology for “proactive” surveillance purposes. That raises significant privacy alarms. But those practices are allowed under BPD license plate reader policy.

You want to bet they're not sharing it? Have you ever heard of the RISS program? The Regional Information Sharing Systems^® (RISS) Program is a nationwide information sharing and investigative support program that serves thousands of local, state, federal, and tribal law enforcement and public safety agencies in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, Australia, Canada, England, and New Zealand. Officers, analysts, and other criminal justice partners rely on RISS for its proven and secure information sharing capabilities, as well as its professional, innovative, and critical investigative support services. RISS serves as a force multiplier, effectively and efficiently aiding agencies in tackling crime problems in their areas. RISS consists of six regional centers as well as a technology support center. The six RISS Centers are:

• Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network^® (MAGLOCLEN)
• Mid-States Organized Crime Information Center^® (MOCIC)
• New England State Police Information Network^® (NESPIN)
• Rocky Mountain Information Network^® (RMIN)
• Regional Organized Crime Information Center^® (ROCIC)
• Western States Information Network^® (WSIN)

RISS developed and continues to maintain the RISS Secure Intranet (RISSNET^™). RISSNET is a secure Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) law enforcement sharing cloud provider.  RISSNET houses and provides access to millions of pieces of data, offers bidirectional sharing of information, connects disparate systems, and acts as the communications infrastructure for a number of critical resources and investigative tools. More than 85 systems are connected or pending connection to RISSNET and more than 400 resources are available to authorized users. RISS has developed a number of information sharing resources available via RISSNET, including the RISS Criminal Intelligence Databases (RISSIntel^™), the RISS Officer Safety Event Deconfliction System (RISSafe^™), the RISS Officer Safety Website, the RISS National Gang Program (RISSGang^™), and the RISS Automated Trusted Information Exchange (ATIX^™).

Despite the ACLU's open-records request, there is still much we don’t know:

Though we asked for them, the department did not provide us with records showing how many LPR units it owns, or any information showing how many “hits” the BPD currently stores in its system.

We don’t know what kinds of LPR systems the Boston police use, either, because the department couldn’t find any procurement records, such as contracts or manufacturer marketing documents.

We did not receive any training materials other than one special order that serves as the department’s LPR policy—even though the special order states that all department employees who use LPR data or systems “shall participate in a training program regarding implementation of and adherence to this LPR policy.”

We also don’t know specifically which hotlists BPD uses in concert with LPR, though a disclosed policy governing its use says the lists are “either developed by the Department, or provided to the Department from another law enforcement entity,” and may include registered sex offenders.

The limited information we received in response to our request comes mostly from a special order, which serves as the department’s license plate reader policy. That document says LPR hotlists are updated once a week, providing plenty of room for error. However, the department requires that officers double-check the accuracy of all hits before taking “any police action that restricts the freedom of any individual,” which should mitigate problems resulting from obsolete hotlist data.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the policy is that the Boston police department authorizes license plate reader deployment for “proactive” data collection:

 As directed by the Superintendent in Chief, a Superintendent or Deputy Superintendant, District or Unit Commander, Investigatory Supervisor or an Intelligence Supervisor, LPR may be deployed to a defined geographical area for purposes of an ongoing investigation or an intelligence gathering operation. [emphasis added]

In other words, if the Boston police wanted to know who attended an anti-war meeting or went to Friday services at the mosque, they could park a cruiser with LPR technology in a strategic location and without lifting a finger collect a membership or attendance list of motoring activists or worshippers. The department does not require that police document any legitimate law enforcement purpose or in any other way justify the deployment of LPR for “an intelligence gathering operation,” opening the door for serious abuse. Yet more troubling, the police could store this information indefinitely.

Perhaps the most significant gap in our knowledge about how BPD uses license plate readers is how the technology’s significant powers are harnessed for surveillance purposes. Does the agency’s sharing of our location information with the private CopLink database mean that police nationwide can peer into our private lives on a whim, for no good reason? Is the data added to the CopLink system ever deleted?

We don’t know. But we do know that the department’s policy allows it to retain indefinitely and data-mine information about ordinary people accused of no crime.

This is all exactly backwards. We should know how more about the police are using this and other powerful surveillance tools—both in Boston and around the country—and the police shouldn’t know much at all about how we live our day-to-day lives unless they suspect we are engaged in criminal activity. After all, we are innocent until proven guilty. Or is that maxim of American jurisprudence now reversed?
 http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/boston-license-plate-data-goes-may-never-come-out 

ArsTechnica has created a list of which police departments are using or plan on using license plate scanners:

 In the course of this story, Ars 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/2012/09/your-car-tracked-the-rapid-rise-of-license-plate-readers/

New tracking frontier: Your license plates.

The rise of license-plate tracking is a case study in how storing and studying people's everyday activities, even the seemingly mundane, has become the default rather than the exception. Cellphone-location data, online searches, credit-card purchases, social-network comments and more are gathered, mixed-and-matched, and stored in vast databases.

Data about a typical American is collected in more than 20 different ways during everyday activities, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Fifteen years ago, more than half of these types of surveillance tools were unavailable or not in widespread use, says Col. Lisa Shay, a professor of electrical engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who studies tracking.

"What would the 1950s Soviet Union have done with the technology we have now?" says Col. Shay. "We don't have a police state in this country, but we have the technology."

Law-enforcement agents say they are using this information only to catch bad guys.

During the past five years, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has distributed more than $50 million in federal grants to law-enforcement agencies—ranging from sprawling Los Angeles to little Crisp County, Ga., pop. 23,000—for automated license-plate recognition systems. A 2010 study estimates that more than a third of large U.S. police agencies use automated plate-reading systems.

The information captured is considerable. Through a public-records act request, The Journal obtained two years' worth of plate information from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department in California. From Sept. 10, 2010, to Aug. 27, 2012, the sheriff's cameras captured about 6 million license-plate scans.

The sheriff's 49 camera-equipped vehicles scanned about 2 million unique plates. The average plate in the database was scanned three times over the two-year period. Less than 1% of plates were tracked extensively—hundreds of times, and occasionally thousands.

These private databases, each containing hundreds of millions of plates, could become the largest collection of people's movements within the U.S., says Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer for the Department of Homeland Security. "You could have a nationwide vision of where I was at a given time," says Ms. Callahan, who now runs the privacy practice at law firm Jenner & Block.

Law-enforcement officers say they use the technology to track down stolen cars, collect unpaid tickets and identify the vehicles of suspected criminals.

The two private plate-tracking companies identified by the Journal both say they act responsibly and are within their rights to collect the data. Scott A. Jackson, founder of MVConnect LLC, the parent company of one of the two firms, says he won't sell the data to the public or to marketers.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443995604578004723603576296.html

Three Years of WSJ Privacy Insights

The Wall Street Journal is conducting a long-running investigation into the transformation of personal privacy in America.

Selected findings:

• Google bypassed the privacy settings on millions of Web browsers on Apple iPhones and computers— tracking the online activities of people who intended that kind of monitoring to be blocked. (2/17/12)
• The government follows the movements of thousands of Americans a year by secretly monitoring their cellphone records . (9/9/11)
• iPhone and Android apps secretly shared data about their users, a Journal investigation found. (12/10/10)
• Top apps on Facebook transmit personal identifying details to tracking companies, a Journal investigation found. (10/18/10)
• One of the fastest growing online businesses is that of spying on Americans as they browse the Web. (6/30/10)
• Plus, the global surveillance bazaar , a secretive phone-tracking "stingray" and RapLeaf's clever way of figuring out Web surfers' real names .
• See full privacy coverage

The Wall Street Journal has cataloged more than 20 different ways information about people can be recorded during everyday activities. Click the link below to find out which ones apply to you:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443995604578004723603576296.html#project%3DSURVEIL120928%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive

Police arresting youths & minorities for breaking curfews, clothing restrictions and spitting on the sidewalk.

East St. Louis - In response to a deadly two days, in which four people under 21 were killed, Mayor Alvin Parks announced Wednesday that a curfew is being enforced effective immediately for the city's youths.

Parks said teens under 17 will be picked up by police if not in school between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. They will be arrested if out after 10 p.m. without a parent.

Other activities also will be restricted, he said, allowing youths only to attend school, after-school programs, church and work unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. He also cautioned male residents against wearing royal blue or bright red clothing commonly associated with gangs. They could get picked up, too.

"There should be no reason for our kids to be running to the store," Parks said. "I know it's extreme, but right now our children are in danger."

"Everybody needs to know where their children are," he said. "In the daytime, school should be in. If anybody's under 17 and not in school, we're going to deal with them. But the Police Department can't do this alone. We just want to make sure these kids are going to school, make sure they're not on the streets."

He said his department will partner with several agencies, including the Illinois State Police, to beef up patrol in areas known for having high crime.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/east-st-louis-officials-institute-youth-curfew-put-limits-on/article_f34ce7e2-081d-11e2-a2e6-001a4bcf6878.html

"GunStat" program targets minorities for minor offenses like jaywalking, spitting on the sidewalk.

Philadelphia has a new harassment program called "GunStat' which identifies hotbeds of gun violence then tracks and targets potential offenders before they commit any crimes.

The police target an ever-expanding list of repeat offenders scooped up by the program,

Started in February, the initiative involves unprecedented collaboration among the police department, the District Attorney's Office, the mayor's and managing director's offices, the city probation department and several federal partners.

"If we can get these people in custody by whatever legal means to stop the violence, that's what we're trying to do," District Attorney Seth Williams said.

Under GunStat, police work with assistant district attorneys who are assigned to regional offices to identify the most violent offenders in the program's small target areas - a two-square-mile section of North Philly and a three-square-mile stretch of Kensington - based on arrests, gang affiliations and probation status.

Police keep close watch on the offenders and stop them for even the most minor offense, such as spitting on the sidewalk, so they can pat them down.

If an arrest is made, officials said, the assigned ADA is notified by the police and requests a higher bail. In some cases, they argue to revoke bail based on the person's record.

About seven months in, authorities are already seeing dramatic results.

Since GunStat started, according to the D.A.'s office, nearly 70 percent of the 473 suspects awaiting trial or a hearing on gun charges are still in custody. Williams said that before GunStat was implemented, most of those defendants would have been released "unless they had a terrible record of failing to appear."

The District Attorney's Office has already expanded the GunStat prosecution model to all six of its divisions, Williams said, but city officials said that they're cautious about letting the overall strategy grow too fast.
http://articles.philly.com/2012-09-27/news/34128336_1_gun-violence-violent-offenders-gun-charges

Local TV stations are spinning favorable political stories after accepting money from campaign donors.

Big winners in the million-dollar political ad wars this year are local television stations, many of which have conveniently avoided delving into the murky world of campaign donors as part of their news coverage for fear of biting the hand that feeds them.

Take the network affiliates in Milwaukee, for example.

During the two weeks before Wisconsin’s June primary featuring the nationally-watched gubernatorial recall vote, the local ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC stations didn’t broadcast any stories about the 17 groups buying air time to support or attack Governor Scott Walker.

But the stations did find time to produce 53 local news segments on Justin Bieber.

The media watchdog group Free Press also found that network affiliates in Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Tampa did virtually no fact-checking of the claims made in political ads purchased by the four Super PACs and independent groups spending the most in those markets.
 
In the case of Cleveland, the four affiliate stations failed to air any stories about the Koch brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity, while at the same time broadcasting the group’s anti-Obama attack ads more than 500 times.
 http://www.allgov.com/news/where-is-the-money-going/local-tv-stations-accept-big-money-for-political-adsand-dont-ask-questions-120926?news=845413

Left In The Dark... Local election coverage in the age of big-money politics:

With more than $3.3 billion in political ad spending projected by Election Day, Free Press has turned its attention to the local television stations airing these ads. Left in the Dark explores whether stations barraging viewers with political ads are balancing this out with coverage of the role money is playing in this year’s elections.

We focus on stations in five cities where ad spending has skyrocketed this year: Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Tampa. Left in the Dark asks the following questions:

• Are these stations reporting on the Super PACs and other “nonaligned” groups behind so many of the political ads airing in these cities?

• Are these stations reporting on the role television stations and their parent companies play as recipients of political ad money?

• Are these stations fact-checking political ads airing in their markets?

First, Left in the Dark analyzes coverage on Milwaukee’s ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates in the two weeks prior to Wisconsin’s June 5 recall election. This period saw an increase in ad spending similar to what stations in other battleground markets will expect before November’s general election.

Free Press sent volunteers into Milwaukee stations, where they inspected and photocopied broadcasters’ political files to identify the groups most actively buying political ads before the recall. We checked for mentions of these groups and their political ads in local news coverage.

We then compared these findings to the local coverage aired in August on affiliate stations in Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas and Tampa, as well as Milwaukee. On Aug. 2, affiliate stations in these and other large cities began posting their political files to a newly created online Federal Communications Commission database, which also houses other important station information.

In August, the most prominent political advertisers increased their buying in the five markets we studied. Indeed, viewers in all of these markets experienced a constant stream of political ads. (The four Tampa affiliates, for example, aired an average of more than 200 political ads a day in August.) What Free Press found in the local news coverage was disturbing:

The hundreds of hours of local news that aired in the two weeks prior to Wisconsin’s June 5 recall included no stories on the 17 groups most actively buying time on Milwaukee’s ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates. And while these stations were ignoring the impact of political ads, they found time to air 53 local news segments on Justin Bieber.

• Our August survey of the ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates in Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Tampa found a similar imbalance between political ads and news coverage. With one noteworthy exception (see sidebar, page 11), affiliates in Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Tampa did not fact-check any of the claims made in political ads placed locally by the four Super PACs and independent groups spending the most in those markets.

• Cleveland’s four affiliate stations provided no coverage of the Koch brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity, despite airing the group’s anti-Obama attack ads more than 500 times. Americans for Prosperity has reportedly spent more than $1.5 million to place ads on Cleveland television stations.

• Charlotte’s four affiliate stations provided no local reporting on the three top-spending political groups, the anti-Obama American Crossroads, Americans for Prosperity and Restore Our Future. From Jan. 1–Aug. 31, 2012, these three groups cumulatively spent more than $4 million to place ads on Charlotte stations.

In August, only one Las Vegas affiliate ran a news segment on political advertising. During its 6 p.m. newscast on Aug. 13, KLAS aired an entire ad produced by the Super PAC Restore Our Future. The station noted that the ad “criticizes President Obama’s handling of the economy” and would air in Las Vegas. There was no additional commentary or analysis.

What happened in Milwaukee in advance of the recall is now playing out on television screens in battleground states across the country. The lack of reporting on political ad spending is egregious given just how many political ads these stations air — ads that are producing record revenues for station owners.

This profiteering may explain broadcasters’ reluctance to investigate the relationship between political ad spending and local media. In exchange for this massive influx of cash, broadcasters must take their public interest obligations seriously. They must cover the money that’s poisoning our politics, expose the groups and individuals funding political ads in their markets, and address the falsehoods presented in most of these spots.
http://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/resources/left-in-the-dark-timothy-karr.pdf 

New York Times a “Propaganda Megaphone” for war, says former reporter.

The New York Times has essentially become a “propaganda megaphone” to peddle the establishment’s narrative — especially when it comes to war — charged foreign correspondent Daniel Simpson, who resigned from the paper in disgust. According to Simpson, the paper, which is often lambasted and ridiculed by conservatives and libertarians for its blatant “liberal” bias, is actually just a propaganda tool for the ruling establishment.

In an explosive interview with the Kremlin-funded RT media broadcaster, the former Times correspondent, who was based in the Balkans during his stint at the newspaper, offered an inside look at how it all works. What appears to have bothered him more than anything was how the supposed paper “of record” was so determined to sell the Iraq war to the American people, even if it meant basically lying or repeating government lies to do so.

"It seemed pretty glaringly obvious to me that the 'news fit to print' was pretty much the news that's fit to serve the powerful," Simpson explained, citing the warmongering over Iraq as a prime example. "The way that the paper's senior staff think is exactly like those in power — in fact, it's their job to become their friends."

An ambitious reporter, Simpson joined the paper a decade ago when he was just 27 years old. He had been hired to report on the Balkans, where the U.S. government and other Western powers had intervened in an internal conflict. However, within a few months, disillusioned by the Times' war-mongering, he resigned.   

"I was young and naive and idealistic, I suppose. I thought I was going to be holding people in power to account," said Simpson, who wrote a recently published book about his experiences entitled A Rough Guide to the Dark Side. "It turned out instead that when I joined in 2002, the New York Times was very much engaged in doing exactly what those in power wanted them to do, and printing fake intelligence information to start the war in Iraq."

As the establishment’s propaganda about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq was getting in full swing, Simpson said he was asked to report bogus information about Serbians selling WMD delivery parts to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The Serbs, however, were actually just selling spare airplane parts, not WMD delivery systems, he explained.

"They were looking for every possible way of getting this weapons-of-mass-destruction story into the news media," Simpson told RT, adding that the Washington Post quickly jumped on the dubious allegations. "So I came under enormous pressure from my bosses to start looking at it the same way, and I couldn't see any evidence for doing that."

While the Times did apologize for some of its most outrageously bogus WMD “reporting” — or war-mongering, as critics have labeled it — the paper "hasn't really changed its policy," Simpson explained. Among other problems, he pointed to Howell Raines, the executive editor during his time at the paper, who wrote a long article in the Atlantic after losing his job in 2004 that offered insight into the way top officials at the paper view its role.

Raines wrote that the Times was “the indispensable newsletter of the United States' political, diplomatic, governmental, academic, and professional communities.” To Simpson, though, the former executive editor was basically admitting that "he sees his newspaper as being this propaganda megaphone for those who run the world."
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/12943-new-york-times-a-%E2%80%9Cpropaganda-megaphone%E2%80%9D-for-war-says-former-reporter

Free the Files: Help us reveal dark money in the election.

Outside groups are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the coming elections—money that has long been hard to track.

This summer, the Federal Communications Commission ordered TV stations to pull back the curtain a bit, requiring them to publish online detailed records of political ad buys. Before, these records were only available by visiting stations in person, an issue ProPublica spotlighted in our Free The Files coverage. So far the new rule only covers the top 50 markets, and it's impossible to search these files by candidate or political group—meaning it’s impossible to get a full picture of the spending. 

We’re rebooting Free the Files with a new tool to help detail campaign ad filings in 33 swing markets. Every day, we’ll be pulling fresh files from the FCC website, and asking for your help extracting key data points that will help uncover outside spending in the final days of the campaign.

Every file you help free will be added to our page, so we’ll all be able to get a better picture of the outside groups’ spending.

What do we expect to find in the FCC filings? A range of information – from identifying which outside groups are buying ads and where, to finding new groups that enter the fray late in the game, to details on who is behind opaque nonprofits that are playing a larger role in the election. That’s how ProPublica’s Justin Elliott found the players behind the Government Integrity Fund, a little-known nonprofit that has spent big money to unseat Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio.

 https://projects.propublica.org/free-the-files/

Mainstream media takes money from foreign dictators to run flattering propaganda.

 
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that the American media act as presstitutes for rich and powerful Americans.

But it turns out that the American media will turn “tricks” for foreign johns as well …

Specifically, three time Emmy award winning reporter Amber Lyon was until very recently a respected CNN reporter.

Lyon was fired from CNN after she refused to stop reporting on her first-hand experience of the systematic torture and murder of peaceful protesters by the government of Bahrain.

Lyon’s special report on Bahrain was scheduled to run on both CNN’s U.S. and international networks, but was pulled after only a limited showing due to pressure from the Bahrainis and their lobbyists.

At the same time that Lyon was risking her life to do on-the-ground reporting in Bahrain, another CNN journalist was filming a paid propaganda piece on how the Bahraini leaders are a bunch of friendly pro-democracy reformers.

That’s right … the Bahraini government paid CNN to do what was literally an infomercial for that brutal regime and pretend it was real journalism.

Lyon says that China and many other foreign, authoritarian regimes also pay CNN and other mainstream networks to run flattering propaganda pieces.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/09/3-time-emmy-award-winning-cnn-journalist-mainstream-media-takes-money-from-foreign-dictators-to-run-flattering-propaganda.html 

Mainstream media admits loss of credibility.

On Fox’s America Live with Megyn Kelly, the headline was “Americans losing faith in mainstream media?” According to a new Gallup Poll, 60% of those asked had little or no trust in the mainstream media and 40% had a great deal to a fair amount of trust. Only a sleazy propagandist could take the fact that they have been found out to be a sleazy propagandist, and twist it like Megyn Kelly and her guests did.

The poll consisted of 1017 adults. What I would like to know is where they found 1017 people who still actually take the mainstream media seriously in any manner. Why didn’t they just tell the truth and say they had polled their entire listening audience and that they all work for the networks?

Literally everything coming out of the mainstream is a lie or distortion, including the fraudulent opinion polls. Of course Kelly and company, being the propagandists they are, blamed the low opinion of themselves and the other so called journalists on the leftist liberals, who they say are refusing to report anything bad about Obama.
 http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/mainstream-media-admits-loss-of-credibility/22649/#more-22649

The Ad Wars: From every source, a different number.

Tracking campaign ads in the 2012 elections is no easy feat. Between the flurry of spots from the Obama and Romney campaigns as the presidential race enters its home stretch, and the massive expenditures by outside groups such as super PACs, it is hard to get a handle on who is spending what to influence the nation’s biggest political decision.

The confusion is being aggravated by another basic obstacle: that each major source of data on campaign ad spending provides widely different figures.

Last week, we reported that two of the key sources of hard numbers on ad spending, the Federal Election Commission and the private research group Kantar Media, provided vastly divergent numbers and had broad differences in their methodologies. Today, we look at another leading source of campaign spending data—Smart Media Group, an ad-buying firm whose statistics on presidential ad expenditures are cited by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal—and find that their statistics deviate drastically from both Kantar and the FEC.

The graphic below shows the three sources’ respective totals for several outside organizations buying broadcast ads in the presidential campaign. (We examined buys between March 19 and September 9 in order to cover the same time period for all of the groups.) The discrepancies are staggering: for example, Smart Media Group’s ad tracking service SMG Delta finds that the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA spent $48.1 million over this period while Kantar found that they spent only $8.1 million, less than a fifth of SMG Delta’s total.



The result is that candidates and deep-pocketed influence groups continue to run ads amid a haze of uncertainty—and avoid the scrutiny that comes with a clear accounting of their activities.

Paul Winn, the political director of Smart Media Group, said its approach includes local cable stations and reflects the increase in ad rates that occurs shortly before an election. But he declined to offer further explanation of how SMG Delta gets its statistics. “We don’t really discuss our methodology, other than that we stand by the numbers we produce,” Winn said.

According to Elizabeth Wilner, Vice President of Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, SMG Delta obtains its statistics by leveraging its position as an ad-buying firm for Republican candidates. Broadcasters offer regular updates to ad buyers on the activities of other ad placement firms, which cumulatively offer a national picture of political spending.

“It’s a longstanding courtesy that stations provide to media buyers,” Wilner said. “He [Smart Media Group director Kyle Roberts] is turning around and selling that information to NBC News and anyone else who is paying him for it.”

According to an NBC News article, SMG Delta’s data includes radio ads in addition to television ads. Winn, Smart Media Group’s political director, did not return follow-up phone calls or an email seeking to confirm these differences in the two groups’ methodologies.

The vastly differing statistics from each of the leading sources on spending in the ad wars raises a basic question: What should reporters do to provide the best information to their audience?

One answer is to be precise and accurate in describing their sources of data. For example, Kantar statistics are estimates rather than exact totals, a difference that should be reflected in descriptions of them. There is also an important distinction between ad reservations and ads that have already aired, and this should be noted rather than simply referring to “TV ad spending.”

A second takeaway is that ad spending takes place in a volatile marketplace, in which rates rapidly change, many ads can be preempted and then must be refunded, and candidates and outside groups pull ads on short notice as they reallocate resources. Robin Kolodny, a political science professor at Temple University who studies campaign advertising, said a precise picture of TV ad spending will not emerge until early December when broadcasters disclose invoices that, unlike order forms, provide the costs and details of which political ads actually aired. “It’s much easier to do it after the fact then it is in real time,” Kolodny said. “That’s the real lesson.”

Finally, there is far more to be learned about campaign ad spending than simply overall expenditure totals. Unlike SMG Delta or the FEC, Kantar provides spot counts, which The New York Times yesterday described as a better measure of the ad wars than spending because it reflects an organization’s reach rather than the disparate prices that campaigns and outside groups pay for airtime. Kantar also offers a breakdown of the content of ads, which provides insight into campaign strategy and messaging. “Advertising isn’t just about the money,” said Wilner of Kantar’s campaign analysis team.
http://www.cjr.org/swing_states_project/the_ad_wars_from_every_source.php

Keeping police out of your smartphone is a tough propostion.

 By Chris Soghoian:

Smartphones can be a cop's best friend. They are packed with private information like emails, text messages, photos, and calling history. Unsurprisingly, law enforcement agencies now routinely seize and search phones. This occurs at traffic stops, during raids of a target's home or office, and during interrogations and stops at the U.S. border. These searches are frequently conducted without any court order.

Several courts around the country have blessed such searches, and so as a practical matter, if the police seize your phone, there isn't much you can do after the fact to keep your data out of their hands.

However, just because the courts have permitted law enforcement agencies to search seized smartphones, doesn't mean that you—the person whose data is sitting on that device—have any obligation to make it easy for them.

The Android mobile operating system includes the capability to lock the screen of the device when it isn't being used. Android supports three unlock authentication methods: a visual pattern, a numeric PIN, and an alphanumeric password.

The pattern-based screen unlock is probably good enough to keep a sibling or inquisitive spouse out of your phone (providing they haven't seen you enter the pattern, and there isn't a smudge trail from a previous unlock that has been left behind). However, the pattern-based unlock method is by no means sufficient to stop law enforcement agencies.

After five incorrect attempts to enter the screen unlock pattern, Android will reveal a “forgot pattern?” button, which provides the user with an alternate way method of gaining access: By entering the Google account email address and password that is already associated with the device (for email and the App Market, for example). After the user has incorrectly attempted to unlock the screen unlock pattern 20 times, the device will lock itself until the user enters a correct username/password.

What this means is that if provided a valid username/password pair by Google, law enforcement agencies can gain access to an Android device that is protected with a screen unlock pattern. As I understand it, this assistance takes the form of two password changes: one to a new password that Google shares with law enforcement, followed by another that Google does not share with the police. This second password change takes place sometime after law enforcement agents have bypassed the screen unlock, which prevents the government from having ongoing access to new email messages and other Google account-protected content that would otherwise automatically sync to the device.

Anticipatory warrants

As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google was served with a search warrant earlier this year compelling the company to assist agents from the FBI in unlocking an Android phone seized from a pimp. According to the Journal, Google refused to comply with the warrant. The Journal did not reveal why Google refused, merely that the warrant had been filed with the court with a handwritten note by a FBI agent stating, "no property was obtained as Google Legal refused to provide the requested information."
It is my understanding, based on discussions with individuals who are familiar with Google's law enforcement procedures, that the company will provide assistance to law enforcement agencies seeking to bypass screen unlock patterns, provided that the cops get the right kind of court order. The company insists on an anticipatory warrant, which the Supreme Court has defined as “a warrant based upon an affidavit showing probable cause that at some future time, but not presently, certain evidence of crime will be located at a specific place.”

Although a regular search warrant might be sufficient to authorize the police to search a laptop or other computer, the always-connected nature of smartphones means that they will continue to receive new email messages and other communications after they have been seized and searched by the police. It is my understanding that Google insists on an anticipatory warrant in order to cover emails or other communications that might sync during the period between when the phone is unlocked by the police and the completion of the imaging process (which is when the police copy all of the data off of the phone onto another storage medium).

Presumably, had the FBI obtained an anticipatory warrant in the case that the Wall Street Journal wrote about, the company would have assisted the government in its attempts to unlock the target's phone.

For real protection you need full-disk encryption

Of the three screen lock methods available on Android (pattern, PIN, password), Google only offers a username/password based bypass for the pattern lock. If you'd rather that the police not be able to gain access to your device this way (and are comfortable with the risk of losing your data if you are locked out of your phone), I recommend not using a pattern-based screen lock, and instead using a PIN or password.
However, it’s important to understand that while locking the screen of your device with a PIN or password is a good first step towards security, it is not sufficient to protect your data. Commercially available forensic analysis tools can be used to directly copy all data off of a device and onto external media. To prevent against such forensic imaging, it is important to encrypt data stored on a device.

Since version 3.0 (Honeycomb) of the OS, Android has included support for full disk encryption, but it is not enabled by default. If you want to keep your data safe, enabling this feature is a must.

Unfortunately, Android currently uses the same PIN or password for both the screen unlock and to decrypt the disk. This design decision makes it extremely likely that users will pick a short PIN or password, since they will probably have to enter their screen unlock dozens of time each day. Entering a 16-character password before making a phone call or obtaining GPS directions is too great of a usability burden to place on most users.

Using a shorter letter/number PIN or password might be good enough for a screen unlock, but disk encryption passwords must be much, much longer to be able to withstand brute force attacks. Case in point: A tool released at the Defcon hacker conference this summer can crack the disk encryption of Android devices that are protected with 4-6 digit numeric PINs in a matter of seconds.

Hopefully, Google's engineers will at some point add new functionality to Android to let you use a different PIN/password for the screen unlock and full disk encryption. In the meantime, users who have rooted their device can download a third-party app that will allow you to choose a different (and hopefully much longer) password for disk encryption.

What about Apple?

The recent Wall Street Journal story on Google also raises important questions about the phone unlocking assistance Apple can provide to law enforcement agencies. An Apple spokesperson told the Journal that the company "won't release any personal information without a search warrant, and we never share anyone's passcode. If a court orders us to retrieve data from an iPhone, we do it ourselves. We never let anyone else unlock a customer's iPhone."

The quote from Apple's spokesperson confirms what others have hinted at for some time: that the company will unlock phones and extract data from them for the police. For example, an anonymous law enforcement source told CNET earlier this year that Apple has for at least three years helped police to bypass the lock code on iPhones seized during criminal investigations.

Unfortunately, we do not know the technical specifics of how Apple retrieves data from locked iPhones. It isn't clear if they are brute-forcing short numeric lock codes, or if there exists a backdoor in iOS that the company can use to bypass the encryption. Until more is known, the only useful advice I can offer is to disable the “Simple Passcode” feature in iOS and instead use a long, alpha-numeric passcode.

“About 90% of Americans are walking around with a portable tracking device all the time, and they have no idea.” – Christopher Calabrese, lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington office, “What Your Cell Phone Could Be Telling the Government,” By Adam Cohen, 2010.

“I can tell you that everybody that attended an Occupy Wall Street protest, and didn’t turn their cell phone off – and sometimes even if they did – the identity of that cell phone has been logged, and everybody who was at that demonstration, whether they were arrested, not arrested, whether their photos were ID’d, whether an informant pointed them out, it’s known they were there anyway. This is routine.” – Privacy SOS

“The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded.” – Vance Packard, American journalist.

“Every object the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record. This will generate a wealth of information for public security organizations, and create huge opportunities for more effective and productive public security efforts.” – EU Council Presidency paper.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-security-free-speech/keeping-government-out-your-smartphone
 http://endthelie.com/2012/09/28/big-brother-is-already-here/

Fifth Circuit Magistrate Judge Smith responds to cell phone privacy and how it affects every American.

By Orin Kerr:

Although I wasn’t planning to post any more on the Fifth Circuit cell-site case, I happened to notice that Magistrate Judge Smith recently posted a new essay on SSRN that is in significant part a response to my amicus brief and my criticisms of his decision. I thought it only fair to point readers to his paper and explore Smith’s argument in some detail. I’ll then offer my thoughts in response at the end.

In his essay, Standing Up for Mr. Nesbitt, forthcoming in the University of San Francisco Law Review, Smith argues that magistrate judges must “stand up” and protect ordinary citizens from “an increasingly surveillance-happy state” because “Congress and the Supreme Court have yet to do so.” None of the three branches of government are standing up to protect the ordinary citizen, Smith argues. The Executive Branch can’t regulate itself, and Congress has not addressed some important issues effectively. The Supreme Court has failed to step in, too, as it has hardly touched electronic privacy and it has expressed caution about its own role in recent decisions. With all three branches failing to protect the ordinary citizen, Smith argues, magistrate judges must step in and “play goalie for the missing side.” That is, magistrate judges must correct for the failures of the three branches by representing the side of the target of the investigation. He explains:

Almost by default, then, these matters have been left to the lowest limb of the Judicial Branch, the magistrate judge. Unlike the Supreme Court we don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing our cases, waiting until various appellate courts have weighed in with their considered judgment on difficult or novel issues of law. We are on the front lines, grappling hand to hand with the various, novel, and creative surveillance technologies deployed by law enforcement. . . . Under these circumstances, it necessarily falls to the magistrate judge to ensure that the target’s legal rights are respected. [The magistrate judge's] role is not that of an umpire calling balls and strikes, but more like a referee in a one-sided soccer match forced to play goalie for the missing side.

Smith acknowledges that it is difficult to to decide cases in ex parte proceedings with no actual factual record, but he reasons he can do so under the legislative fact doctrine. The Supreme Court has relied on legislative facts outside the record in its major rulings on applying the Fourth Amendment to new technologies such as Berger v. New York, Smith v. Maryland, and Kyllo v. United States. If the Supreme Court can rely on legislative facts outside the record, Smith reasons, then magistrate judges should be able to create a record in an ex parte proceeding by doing their own Internet research and announcing the results of their research as “the facts”:

A magistrate judge forced to decide such questions as a matter of first impression need not hesitate to use the same tools, extra record or not, that appellate courts regularly employ for the same task. And the digital revolution has made that tool more powerful than ever, with massive amounts of information “just a Google search away.”

Smith then turns directly to my criticism of his decision. He begins by saying that I argued that “magistrate judges are never permitted, much less forced, to decide constitutional questions unless a statute expressly confers such authority.” I haven’t made such an argument, so I’m not sure exactly what he has in mind. Smith then directly addresses my argument that the issues are not ripe at the time of the application. Although Smith calls this argument “profoundly misguided,” he unfortunately does not address any of the case law or mention the Fifth Circuit’s ripeness standard. Instead, Smith makes three broader arguments for why he believes he has the power to rule on the constitutionality of the execution of the search at the time of the application for a 2703(d) order.

First, Smith argues that warrant applications are inherently prospective, so the fact that magistrate judges can rule on probable cause and particularity in warrant applications implicitly confers power to rule prospectively in Fourth Amendment cases generally. Second, Smith argues that the Supreme Court’s scheme of remedies are inadequate to protect privacy if magistrate judges don’t rule prospectively: Supreme Court doctrines limiting the scope of the exclusionary rule mean that appellate courts are not in a place to adequately protect privacy. Third, Smith argues that the absence of any other legal actor and the judicial oath requires magistrate judge to “stand up” for targets of investigations:

Magistrate judges swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, the same judicial oath taken by Article III judges. When a federal agent walks into our chambers to request an electronic surveillance order, there is nobody there but us to make sure the Constitution is followed. If we sign a warrant that in our considered opinion violates the Fourth Amendment, then we have violated our solemn oath.

I think Judge Smith’s perspective is fascinating, and I appreciate his response and attentiveness to academic criticism. At the same time, I think his perspective is deeply misguided. Judge Smith assumes that if none of the three branches of government created by the Constitution are protecting privacy in ways that he finds sufficient, then he has an inherent power to intervene and restore balance. He thus envisions magistrate judges as a kind of Fourth Branch that can and should step in when the other three branches of government are not doing enough. They can “stand up” for privacy when the three branches of government haven’t acted yet. I have a lot of respect for the hard-working magistrate judges in our federal system, but Smith’s understanding flips the tripartite scheme of the United States Constitution on its head. Magistrate judges are only adjuncts to Article III judges. They don’t have the power to enact corrective rules in response to Supreme Court decisions that they personally find inadequate or statutes that they don’t think have been amended by Congress with appropriate speed.

I’ll go into more detail on the problems with Judge Smith’s analysis below the fold...

First, Judge Smith appears to misunderstand the difference between legislative facts and adjudicative facts. In Judge Smith’s telling, adjudicative facts are facts about a particular case, while legislative facts are “generalized facts about the world.” Smith thus uses the ex parte nature of the application process to take the adjudicative facts as to how the Fourth Amendment will apply and to just re-label all the facts as legislative facts. That is, since Smith doesn’t actually know the facts of this particular case, he applies the law to a generalized set of facts that he images are the usual facts. Because the generalized set of facts are not based on any specific case, he calls those facts “legislative facts” and he applies the law to the legislative facts to reach his holding. But this is just sleight of hand, not legal analysis. Under Fifth Circuit precedent on the distinction, legislative facts are facts that are universally true, while adjudicative facts are facts that can vary from case to case. See United States v. Bowers, 660 F.2d 527, 531 (5th Cir. 1981). By denying the order because the Fourth Amendment will be violated based on the facts he has announced, Judge Smith is obviously treating those facts as adjudicative facts — that is, facts that are being taken as the facts in this case but that might be different in other cases. Because then facts he announces are treated as the factual record in the case, and the facts over which the law is applied, they are adjudicative facts rather than legislative facts.

Second, Judge Smith’s argument about search warrants being prospective is also erroneous. Smith ignores the critical difference between the facial validity of an application for an order and the lawfulness of the order’s execution. See United States v. Grubbs, 547 U.S. 90, 97–99 (2006) (holding that ex ante restrictions on searches pursuant to warrant must be limited to the facial requirements of particularity and probable cause, with an ex post right “to suppress evidence improperly obtained and a cause of action for damages” based on the unlawful execution of the search). Facial validity is an ex ante check of the government’s interest in the case that is clear from the four corners of the application. In contrast, the lawfulness of an order’s execution requires an ex post fact-specific analysis of specifically what the police did in when they carried out the order. See Kerr, Ex Ante Regulation of Computer Search and Seizure, 91 Va. L. Rev. 1241 1291-2 (2010). Of course magisrtrate judges have to ensure that applications are facially valid ex ante. Thus, in the case of a warrant, they need to determine if the affidavit establishes probable cause and the proposed warrant is sufficiently particular; in the case of a 2703(d) order, they need to determine if the application established specific and articulable facts; and in the case of a pen register order, they need to determine if the required certification has been made. But these ex ante checks are not prospective. Rather, they are limited to whether the application satisfies the relevant facial requirements of the order, regardless of how the order will be executed.

Third, Judge Smith’s point about the judicial oath and the need to follow the Constitution misses the point entirely. The limits of Article III are just as much a part of the Constitution as the Fourth Amendment is. Indeed, the limits on Article III are the parts that regulate judges directly: They make it a violation of the U.S. Constitution for judges to rule on disputes that are not ripe. The idea that Judge Smith cannot be cabined by ripeness doctrine in his efforts to protect the Fourth Amendment is akin to arguing that Judge Smith must violate the Constitution in order to save it. Surely that can’t be right.
http://www.volokh.com/2012/09/28/fifth-circuit-cell-site-case-magistrate-judge-smith-responds-and-defends-his-decision/ 

For more info read: "Do Users of Wi-Fi Networks Have Fourth Amendment Rights Against Government Interception?"
http://www.volokh.com/2012/09/24/fourth-amendment-rights-for-users-of-wi-fi-networks-both-encrypted-and-unencrypted/

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attacked the DOJ for colluding with Media Matters for America.

 A spokesman for Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attacked the Department of Justice for using its Office of Public Affairs to collude with left-wing advocacy organization Media Matters for America on Wednesday.

“The leader has said that the best way to address these types of actions is to change the administration,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart told The Daily Caller. “And the bottom line is this: If the Justice Department had spent as much time getting to the bottom of Fast & Furious as it has on this, it wouldn’t have taken so long to start getting some real answers.”

McConnell has been an outspoken critic of political groups like Media Matters operating under tax-exempt statuses.

Last week, TheDC published a series of emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, that show Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler and Media Matters staffers working together on posts that attack reporters covering DOJ scandals, as well as other administration critics.

House oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa said the email evidence laying out the targets resemble former President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.”

“Not since Richard Nixon have we seen a president who puts together an enemies list and has a whole team pursuing it,” Issa said in a Fox News appearance. “That’s what’s happened in this administration. It’s sad. It’s not the America I want to see going forward. I sincerely hope that after the election, regardless, the American people will have made a statement that they won’t tolerate this.

 Several of the targets of Schmaler’s communications with Media Matters have called for her to resign or be fired, including now-former DOJ official Chris Coates — who at the time Schmaler seemingly worked against him was a current DOJ employee. Others have demanded that she be investigated for potential violations of the Whistleblower Protection Act.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/27/mitch-mcconnell-bashes-justice-dept-for-media-matters-coordination/

"Shaken Baby" syndrome is it linked to vaccinations?

By Chris Savage, Queensland Police officer
Jim Stone, Editor:

 "I was in the Queensland Police Service for 20 years and I saw first hand how the vaccines caused death and the police would investigate, and while supported by the medical system would prosecute the parents for the injuries and death caused by the vaccines."


I joined the Queensland Police Service in Queensland Australia in 1989 at the age of 27. In my work as a State Police officer I would be called to sudden deaths to investigate the circumstances. This included babies and young children.

I attended several where the baby was found dead by one of the parents in the morning, in Australia the term "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome" is used to describe this outcome. Notice how the "syndrome" is frequently used - I believe this serves the purpose of mystifying the problem and therefore the cause. Another is "gulf war syndrome" which is clearly caused by the Anthrax vaccine.

I began to dig deeper whenever I had the opportunity to conduct investigations into the infant deaths. In 1993 I was the first response to a 6 month old baby death. I went to the hospital because the baby had been taken there by ambulance, and at the hospital I obtained the testimony of the mother. In her statement she told me that her baby was eating and sleeping normally but when the baby was vaccinated at the age of 2 months (which was the vaccine policy in Australia) the baby then would not sleep and would not eat properly and suffered frequent convulsions.

She went to several doctors trying to find an answer. They gave her a common drug called "Panadol" which did not do anything. The convulsions continued so she went to another doctor who gave her another drug which also did not work. The baby continued to convulse and vomit frequently. The little girl would not sleep and the mother was sleep deprived also.

Because the situation was so desperate, the mother went doctor shopping. The other doctors simply gave her more drugs. At the age of about 5 months the baby died. The QPS then charged the mother for causing the death by using a forensic report which showed slightly elevated drug levels. Fortunately in this particular case the Director of Public Prosecutions did not want to proceed with a murder charge because the mother provided a statement which outlined normal sleep and eating prior to the vaccine.

Another incident occurred when I saw a father come through the Ipswitch District Watchhouse Q1D on the charges of Manslaughter (similar to 2nd degree murder) of a 5 year old that had suffered a severe reaction to the initial vaccines and was brain damaged. The QPS relied on the false medical premise titled "shaken baby syndrome" - there is that "Syndrome" word again.

The child succombed to the injuries from the vaccines and the QPS opted to blame the father on the basis of "Shaken Baby Syndrome" but there was no evidence other than the vaccine for the cause of the injuries when the "shaken baby" accusation was applied.

I have seen grieving parents charged with causing the deaths of their babies,

The highest risk period for death by vaccine was at two months when the babies are given all the vaccines;

When the detectives investigate the death of a baby they interview each parent separately. If there are any conflicting versions of the story they use the differences to attack the parents credibility and rely on the flawed "shaken baby syndrome" medical evidence. If there is no conflict, even a minor one in the parent testimony, the police then turn it over to a "medical doctor" who has "experience" with "shaken baby syndrome" and attempt to prosecute from that angle.

If the parents tell the investigator they picked up the lifeless baby and shook it to wake it, the police will prosecute even though the baby was already dead. Since "shaken baby syndrome" has no hard evidence, such as bruising or other injury, it's the perfect way to blame parents for damage caused by vaccines.
http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/queensland.html

Private prisons profits on the rise as immigration arrests continue to grow.

 For three years in a row, more people have been convicted of immigration offenses than of any other type of federal crime, according to the United States Sentencing Commission. Illegal re-entry into the United States was the most commonly filed federal charge last year, marking a dramatic shift in the makeup of the U.S. criminal justice system, which has been dominated by drug crimes in recent decades.

As a surge of new immigration offenders flow into the federal prison system, they are being held primarily in private prisons operated by multibillion-dollar corporations that contract with the government. Federal prison officials argue that privatization saves money and frees up space for more violent criminals in government-run prisons.

But critics contend that the expanding web of privatized prisons for undocumented immigrants is substandard, where prisoner uprisings have become common due to poor conditions and inadequate medical care.

"These are basically second-class prisoners," said Judith Greene, the director of Justice Strategies, who has researched the rise of private prisons over nearly three decades and recently wrote a report on federal prisons for undocumented immigrants. "They're hiring cheap labor, and they're not putting dollars into the things that keep prisoners relatively content: medical care and food."

Congress is on the verge of appropriating more than $25 million for another 1,000 contracted private prison beds to hold more undocumented immigrant offenders, and the offer from the federal Bureau of Prisons contains a 90 percent occupancy guarantee. Nearly 100 civil and human rights groups wrote a letter this month urging prominent members of the Senate and House appropriations committees to vote against additional expansion.

"We call upon you to redirect funding from the wasteful prosecution and incarceration of low-level immigration violations and focus resources instead on correctional programs that will better prepare federal prisoners for constructive lives when they are released," read the letter.

A series of academic reports, including studies performed by Federal Bureau of Prisons researchers, have found minimal cost savings at private prisons. Other reports have found that conditions inside private federal prisons are comparatively worse than in government-run facilities, with more overall prisoner misconduct occurring inside private prisons.

Beginning in 1999, the Federal Bureau of Prisons began looking to the private sector to run facilities housing so-called criminal aliens, or non-citizens serving time for federal crimes.

Over the years, the Bureau of Prisons has provided a steady source of revenue to private prison companies. Corrections Corporation of America took in $205 million from Bureau of Prisons contracts at the end of 2011, up from $132 million at the end of 2002, according to company financial statements. The GEO Group took in $258 million from federal prison contracts at the end of 2011, up from $64 million at the end of 2004, according to securities filings.

The average sentence for illegal re-entry is between one and two years, though those convicted of the crime can be held up to 10 years if the offender has a criminal history in the U.S., according to a recent report from Grassroots Leadership, a criminal justice advocacy group.

For private prisons, according to the group's report, "The threat of a 100 percent criminal referral rate at the border presents an enormous opportunity to expand."

Federal immigration arrests have doubled since 2005, and the number of criminal immigration suspects referred to U.S. attorneys' offices has jumped from fewer than 40,000 in 2006 to more than 84,000 in 2010, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report released this summer.

 
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/27/private-prisons-immigration_n_1917636.html

Realigning justice resources: A review of population and spending shifts in prison and community corrections.
http://www.vera.org/files/Full%20Report.pdf

A new bill would require police to seek a warrant before reading Americans emails.

A new bill introduced today in the US House of Representatives seeks to require warrants before police can trawl through your e-mail or track your cell phone, reports CNET. The legislation is backed by several technology companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter. But given the government's history with privacy bills, it faces a high chance of getting blocked by the Department of Justice.

The bill was introduced by Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and would require officers to get a warrant before accessing e-mail or location information. Access to these data types is a notorious gray area in US courts.

In August, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that law enforcement officials were within their right to access the location data from a man's cellphone without a warrant. The basis for this ruling was the Stored Communications Act, which states authorities may not access the content of communications, but are allowed to see where and to whom they went. Prosecutors have been using this law to justify access to location data for some time, but the interpretation has been increasingly called into question by civil liberties groups.

Lofgren's bill would amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that went into effect in 1986—the olden cellular days, before even Zach Morris had GPS in his phone. Such bills in the past have been blocked by the Department of Justice on the grounds that making access to information in the cloud and on cellular networks would make police investigations more difficult; this one may face a similarly unsuccessful road.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/cops-dont-need-a-warrant-to-see-your-e-mail-but-they-might-soon/

Warning do not Tweet ever! Government to monitor Tweets to see if you're sick.

The following document was produced by the Department of Health and Human Services as part of their “Now Trending Challenge” to develop applications for monitoring disease outbreaks via Twitter. The document contains lists of various terms that are associated with a number of diseases from the common cold to diphtheria. The winner of the challenge, MappyHealth, allows users to view trending information for a variety of diseases in the U.S. and abroad. For more information on HHS’ efforts to monitor Twitter and the Now Trending Challenge, see Carlton Purvis’ article for Security Management magazine.

http://publicintelligence.net/hhs-twitter-monitoring/

Seatttle police department to monitor Tweets and publish local Tweets.

The Seattle police department, which presides over one of the nation’s more tech-savvy — if not saturated — cities, is diving in to find out, in a project that began last week with 51 hyper-local neighborhood Twitter accounts providing moment-to-moment crime reports.

The project, called Tweets-by-beat, is the most ambitious effort of its kind in the nation, authorities in law enforcement and social media say, transforming the pen and ink of the old police blotter into the bits and bytes of the digital age. It allows residents — including, presumably, criminals — to know in almost real time about many of the large and small transgressions, crises, emergencies and downright weirdness in their neighborhoods. 

Say you live on Olive Way east of downtown. There was an “intoxicated person” on your street at 3:31 a.m. Monday, so the neighborhood report said, as well as a “mental complaint,” unspecified and mysterious, nearby at 9:30 a.m. Sunday was busy for property crime on the beat, with two burglaries and a shoplifting case, along with a grab bag of noise and disturbance complaints, accident investigations and a several reports of “suspicious vehicles.” 

“More and more people want to know what’s going on on their piece of the rock,” said the chief of police, John Diaz. “They want to specifically know what’s going on in the areas around their home, around their work, where their children might be going to school. This is just a different way we could put out as much information as possible as quickly as possible.” 

Not everything that happens in a neighborhood will automatically pop up in 140 characters or fewer. Sex crimes were excluded, on the theory that Web attention could discourage people from reporting a rape or sexual assault, and domestic violence cases will remain off the Twitter list as well for similar reasons. Drawing attention to a private matter and alerting neighbors, department officials said, could make things worse for the victim. 

The reports are also structured with an automatic one-hour delay, aimed at preventing people from learning about an investigation in progress and swarming over to gawk and perhaps interfere. 

“This is trailblazing stuff,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “It shows a willingness I haven’t seen in large supply to really affirmatively make available, warts and all, a clear picture to people of what’s going on.”

One law enforcement media expert, Capt. Mike Parker, who oversees the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s sprawling public communications system, said he thought the deeper impact of Seattle’s program could be the message it sends to other police agencies, which he said are in many cases timid or uncertain about how to use the new social media tools.

“It gives confidence to other police leaders as well that it’s O.K. to do that,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/us/seattle-police-department-uses-twitter-to-report-crime.html?ref=us&_r=1&

Police chief sued as police place over one thousand people into "protective custody."

 Foxboro, MA- Police Chief Edward O'Leary has been sued by two concertgoers detained for alleged drunkenness before a Bruce Springsteen show at Gillette Stadium last month in a civil action (pdf.) that could have a profound impact on police procedure at future concerts.
http://www.civil-rights-law.com/storage/1%20-%20Complaint.pdf

The suit by Paul Weldner and Dr. Timothy Dutton, both from Maine, was filed in federal court, alleging they were held under an illegal policy in which police simply round up people they think are drunk.

An attorney for the men says he's seeking class-action status for the suit, alleging the police policy has been in effect at other concerts affecting hundreds of people, if not more.
 
"This is a civil rights class action for money damages against Edward T. O’Leary, the
police chief of the Town of Foxborough, and the Town of Foxborough for establishing a policy of taking people into protective custody even though the people detained were not incapacitated by alcohol consumption. As a result of this policy, over one thousand people were handcuffed and placed in cells merely because a police officer felt they were under the influence of alcohol.
Defendants’ policy caused people to be taken into custody without regard to whether they were
incapacitated, which is the legal standard under the protective custody statute. This violated the Plaintiffs’ constitutional right to be free from unreasonable seizures."

Weldner and Dutton are suing to strike down the policy and for unspecified damages, citing "emotional distress and humiliation."

In the Springsteen incident, the pair was on a bus trip organized by Dutton to take about 50 fans from the Portland, Maine, area to the Aug. 18 show at Gillette Stadium.

Both men were drinking, but neither was "incapacitated" - the state's legal standard for putting people into protective custody, the lawsuit said.

"We are confident that ... (police) were basically casting the net too wide," said David Milton, an attorney for the plaintiffs. "The statute's called protective custody. It's not meant to be preventive detention."

Milton said he believes more than 1,000 people were also wrongly detained under O'Leary's policy, including at the Aug. 24-25 New England Country Music Festival at Gillette Stadium. He's seeking class-action status.

Sixty-six people were taken into protective custody at the Springsteen concert, which drew an audience of 46,700 fans.

Weldner, 25, said officers handcuffed him, claiming he was "too drunk," after he stumbled briefly while moving from the sidewalk to the street as he walked in a crowd to the stadium.

Weldner said police repeatedly refused to give him a sobriety test and held him for more than six hours at the stadium, then at the police station, the suit said.

The lawsuit said Dutton was in the ticket line when he protested that police were taking his girlfriend into custody. They told him to get back in line, and when he didn't, they detained him for six hours, releasing him after the show about 1 a.m., according to the suit.

Milton said a breath test indicated his client had a blood alcohol level of 0.07, below the legal level of 0.10 to be presumed drunk. Drunken driving charges can leveled in Massachusetts if the driver registers 0.08 percent on an alcohol breath test.

And under state law, even if a person is drunk in public, that's not illegal and hasn't been for decades, Milton said.

To be held in protective custody, a person must be "incapacitated," meaning they're either unconscious, in need of medical attention, being disorderly or likely to suffer or cause physical harm or damage property, the suit said.

Milton said his clients were none of these things.
http://www.thesunchronicle.com/foxboro/foxboro-police-chief-sued/article_33f2a5fc-9c20-5169-bd61-0bac93322a63.html

Rent-to-own laptops were secretly recording users having sex and more.

Seven rent-to-own companies and a software maker are settling charges with the Federal Trade Commission that rental computers illegally used spyware that took “pictures of children, individuals not fully clothed, and couples engaged in sexual activities.”

As per the course, the FTC slapped the hand of DesignerWare of North East Pennsylvania and the rent-to-own companies. The settlement, announced Tuesday, only requires them to halt using their spy tools, which has been employed on as many as 420,000 rentals.

The software, known as Detective Mode, didn’t just secretly turn on webcams. It “can log the keystrokes of the computer user, take screen shots of the computer user’s activities on the computer, and photograph anyone within view of the computer’s webcam. Detective Mode secretly gathers this information and transmits it to DesignerWare, who then transmits it to the rent-to-own store from which the computer was rented, unbeknownst to the individual using the computer,” according to the complaint.

What the FTC deemed unlawful was an add-on program called Detective Mode, which at the rental company’s command could gather data from a renter’s computer and transmit it to DesignerWare's servers every two minutes for 60 minutes, or until the rent-to-own store told it to stop.

Detective Mode also enabled the rent-to-own stores to make a renter's computer display a fake software registration window that asked the user to enter a name, address and phone number. The window could not be closed until the information had been entered.

The FTC's complaint also noted that photos taken by Detective Mode's webcam included pictures of children, individuals not fully clothed and couples engaged in sexual activities.

The FTC said PC Rental Agent was licensed by 1,617 rent-to-own stores in the United States, Canada and Australia.As of August 2011, the agency said it had been installed in 420,000 computers worldwide.

Thorleifson said no money would be collected as part of the settlement with the FTC, but the firms, without admitting wrongdoing, agreed to deactivate Detective Mode and stop spying on its renters.

Under the settlement, the companies can still use tracking software on their rental computers, so long as they advise renters, the FTC said. The companies include Aspen Way Enterprises Inc.; Watershed Development Corp.; Showplace Inc., doing business as Showplace Rent-to-Own; J.A.G. Rents LLC, doing business as ColorTyme; Red Zone Inc., doing business as ColorTyme; B. Stamper Enterprises Inc., doing business as Premier Rental Purchase; and C.A.L.M. Ventures Inc., doing business as Premier Rental Purchase.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/laptop-rental-spyware-scandal/
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-designerware-pc-rental-agent-20120925,0,992059.story

(Videos) Private investigator Steven Rambam "All protesters are routinely scanned and skimmed by drones."

In-depth look at how we've lost our privacy & how easy it is to find information pertaining to just about anyone.

A prominent private investigator operating out of New York and Texas has noted that anyone engaging in any large scale protest, is now subjected to scanning by drones that skim their personal information from their cell phones.

In a talk entited “Privacy is dead”, private investigator Steven Rambam told an audience of hackers and privacy activists at HOPE 9 in New York recently that the authorities have the capability to extract real-time data on individuals by “surveying” their electronic devices, and do so as a matter of routine.

Rambam, who has conducted several thousand missing-person searches over almost three decades, claims that the practice is considered a “legitimate investigatory technique”, and that anyone who protested with the Occupy Wall Street movement would have been subjected to it.

“One of the biggest changes is the ability to track your physical location.” Rambam told the crowd.

“I’m sorry I came in at the end of the previous talk. I heard them talk about surveying cell phones with a drone, in a wide area — this is something that is done routinely now.” he added, referring to a previous discussion on government spying.

“I can tell you that everybody that attended an Occupy Wall Street protest, and didn’t turn their cell phone off, or put it — and sometimes even if they did — the identity of that cell phone has been logged, and everybody who was at that demonstration, whether they were arrested, not arrested, whether their photos were ID’d, whether an informant pointed them out, it’s known they were there anyway. This is routine.” Rambam noted.

“I can tell you that if you go into any police station right now, the first thing they do is tell you, ‘Oh I’m sorry you’re not allowed to bring a cell phone in there. We’ll hold it for you.’ Not a joke. And by the way it’s a legitimate investigatory technique.”

“Cell phones are now the little snitch in your pocket. Cell phones tell me where you are, what you do, who you talk to, everbody you associate with. Cell phone tells me [sic] intimate details of your life and character, including: Were you at a demonstration? Did you attend a mosque? Did you demonstrate in front of an abortion clinic? Did you get an abortion?” Rambam told the audience.

During the lecture, Rambam also noted that such police and government data collection techniques are “amateur” compared to big business.

“Where you work, what your salary is, your criminal history, all the lawsuits you’ve been involved in, real property…everything you’ve ever purchased, everywhere you’ve ever been…Your information is worth money.” Rambam noted.

“Your privacy today isn’t being invaded by big brother — it’s being invaded by big marketer,” he concluded.

Everyone who attended OWS with a cell phone had their identity logged, says security expert.

Everyone who attended OWS with a cell phone had their identity logged, says security expert.

While we in the civil liberties community disagree strongly with private investigator Steven Rambam's admonition to "Get Over It," after listening to him describe electronic surveillance powers it's hard to disagree with the first part of the title of his talk: "Privacy Is Dead." (Part two of the talk is below.)

"Where you work, what your salary is, your criminal history, all the lawsuits you've been involved in, real property...everything you've ever purchased, everywhere you've ever been...Your information is worth money. Your privacy today isn't being invaded by big brother -- it's being invaded by big marketer," he told an audience of hackers and privacy activists at HOPE 9 in New York during the summer of 2012.
Lots of the talk is about big corporations and their insatiable hunger for data about all of us, but Ramdam also addresses government spying:

One of the biggest changes is the ability to track your physical location. I'm sorry I came in at the end of the previous talk. I heard them talk about surveying cell phones with a drone, in a wide area -- this is something that is done routinely now. [Note: Is that what these microwave antennas were used for at Occupy Wall Street in mid September?]

I can tell you that if you go into any police station right now, the first thing they do is tell you, "Oh I'm sorry you're not allowed to bring a cell phone in there. We'll hold it for you." Not a joke. And by the way it's a legitimate investigatory technique. But cell phones are now the little snitch in your pocket. Cell phones tell me where you are, what you do, who you talk to, everbody you associate with. Cell phone tells me [sic] intimate details of your life and character, including: Were you at a demonstration? Did you attend a mosque? Did you demonstrate in front of an abortion clinic? Did you get an abortion?

The entire lecture can be viewed below in two videos:

http://www.infowars.com/privacy-expert-all-protesters-are-routinely-scanned-and-skimmed-by-drones/
http://privacysos.org/node/825

More videos from the conference:
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=hts&oq=&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS485US485&q=Hackers+On+Planet+Earth#q=Hackers+On+Planet+Earth&hl=en&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS485US485&prmd=imvns&source=univ&tbm=vid&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=AfthUL3LDcTo0QGz84GYDw&ved=0CHYQqwQ&fp=1&biw=1043&bih=870&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&cad=b&sei=vSBjUMb3EOHy0gGNkIHwAQ

EFF at hackers on planet earth.

Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE), one of the most creative and diverse hacker events in the world. HOPE Number Nine will be taking place on July 13, 14, and 15, 2012 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. Several EFF staffers from the legal, tech, and activism teams will be giving presentations. Stop by the EFF booth at HOPE for an invite to our Speakeasy meetup at a secret location on Friday night. Here is a round-up of talks you should make sure not to miss.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/06/eff-hackers-planet-earth