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Saturday, August 31, 2013

Phoenix Cop Snatches Camera from Man after Being Photographed Jaywalking


By Carlos Miller

Raymond Michael had just left a court hearing over his previous arrest for photographing the federal courthouse when he spotted a Phoenix police officer jaywalking, so he snapped a photo.

That resulted in the cop snatching his video camera from him, then pulling out his own camera where he photographed Michael, before handing back the video camera ten minutes later and allowing him to be on his way.

Unfortunately, the cop turned off Michael?s camera, so we are unable to hear what took place during those ten minutes, but Michael says they kept demanding his identification and he kept asking if he was being detained.

?They said you are being detained for taking photos,? Michael said in a telephone interview with Photography is Not a Crime Sunday afternoon.

When he wouldn?t give them his identification, they snapped his photo, apparently to add him to him to their database of suspected camera-wielding terrorists, and returned his camera, allowing him to leave.

The fact that they let him go shows they knew all along they didn?t have enough to arrest him.

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Trooper Fired For Cavity Searching Women In Bikinis Driving Back From Beach Reinstated, 'Was Just Following Orders'


Chris | InformationLiberation

Trooper Jennie Bui was just "following the orders of a senior officer" when she inserted her fingers into two womens' privates in two outrageously invasive body cavity searches on the side of the highway, so Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw gave her her job back.

While "I was just following orders" was found to be an indefensible position during the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, when it comes to the Texas DPS, knowing you will blindly follow any order no matter how criminal makes you more than qualified for the job.

From the Dallas Mourning News:

Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw reinstated a female officer who was sued and placed before a grand jury after she conducted a body cavity search on two females stopped for speeding.

McCraw pointed out that the Brazoria County grand jury declined to take action against Trooper Jennie Bui. The trooper was fired in June after ?an extensive investigation? into the incident.

But McCraw said Bui was relatively inexperienced and was following the orders of a senior officer, Nathaniel Turner, who was initially suspended but since has been fired.

[...]?While the actions of Trooper Bui constitute misconduct, I believe her actions are mitigated such that she should not be terminated from the agency,? McCraw said.

He further said that, "Turner's conduct was unacceptable, and violated DPS policy and was outside any authorized training provided to Trooper Turner by DPS.?

Video report from KHOU:


_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.


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Latest Tyranny/Police State
- Cop Convicted Of Second-Degree Manslaughter For Shooting 5-Yr-Old Boy In Back Of Head Gets Record Expunged, Now Free Again To Become An Officer
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- "They Kidnapped Our Child": Why CPS Needs Transparency Now

I Feel sorry for the American people. It seems that the U.S. Gov't can use, ' I was just following orders, I didn't know it was against the law and It's a matter of national security, ' as a reason to commit crime. Nobody else can do that, why do you think you can get away with it. Good luck American people, you're going to need it. Nazis were "just following orders", too I am going to start using statist excuses in my daily life. "Citizen safety" will become part of my repertoire. "Based on my training and experience" will also be a key factor. Just think of the difference we could make if we all became a Citizen Peace Patrol armed with handguns and cameras streaming to Youtube and researched citizen arrest laws... Every time we observed police officers violate the law we could film them and effect a citizen's arrest. Oh, probably wise to keep some cash at home for bail money, but if enough of us did this it would make a difference.

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (found at the U.S. Copyright Office) and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
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Friday, August 30, 2013

Philly Cop Filmed Punching Small Woman In Face At Puerto Rican Day Parade Gets Job Back With Full Back Pay


Chris | InformationLiberation

Remember Police Lt. Jonathan Josey, the philly cop who decked a small woman in the face because he wrongly thought she threw beer at him? A few months ago we reported how a judge in a non-jury trial found him not guilty of simple assault after he told the judge he didn't mean to punch the woman in the face, 'he was only trying to knock a beer out of her hand.'

Anyone who watched the video can see that is a blatant lie, but the costumed criminals who run Philadelphia couldn't give a damn about producing justice, the only people they "serve" is themselves, so the judge felt entirely comfortable giving the public the finger and pardoning a fellow gang member.

Yesterday, another member of the same criminal class bestowed with the title of "arbitrator" ordered the cop get his job back -- with full back pay. In other words, punching a small woman in the face in a violent unprovoked attack netted the officer a year's paid vacation.

Josey apparently feels god himself helped him get his job back.

Josey put out the following message on his Facebook in response to the win:

First and foremost I want to give all glory, honor and thanks be to GOD, for carrying me throughout this entire ordeal. GOD IS GOOD.

Secondly, I would like to thank all of my family (extended & immediate), (real) friends who prayed unceasingly and were a constant source of encouragement. I am glad this is finally over. I asked that you continue to keep me in prayers as I return to doing the job that I love so much, serving this City. I will be stepping away from FB for a little bit, but I will return. Thank you all, God Bless!!

The woman he "served" up a knuckle sandwich to, Aida Guzman, said in reacting to the ruling, "I don't feel happy. I feel real, real sick. I don't know what to say."

Clearly, god abandoned her in favor of Josey... Either that, or the criminals who run Philly and think they are God chose to defend one of their fellow criminals over a lowly pleb tax-slave they rule over, I'm not sure which is the case...
_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.


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You pompus asswipe of a pig, god had nothing to do with your lies and treachery your fucking union , and a crack adeled arbitrator saved your affirmitive actioned ass you fucker. I'd sure like to see these asses without that badge.... who was the guy on the left side of the screen that squirted something? It hit her in the back and caused her to turn around. The cop went after the wrong target. He should have apologized after he saw the video but that would mean he could be responsible for his actions and be a real man. Oh, well. God hates liars. this prick will burn. wait for it.
Police Lt. Jonathan Josey, the philly cop who beats women, is a disgrace to the human race. Police Lt. Jonathan Josey is the true American Terrorist we should be worried about.

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Thursday, August 29, 2013

Disabled Vet Gets A Taste Of The 'Freedom' He Was Fighting For After Cop Kicks Him Off Boardwalk & Tickets Him Over Service Dog


Chris | InformationLiberation

Adam Kokesh once said if troops care about fighting for freedom, they should be fighting against the government, not for it. Here's a good example why from NBC40.net:
NORTH WILDWOOD - A disabled U.S. Army veteran, who served our country for 19 years, says he was kicked off the North Wildwood boardwalk last night, simply for having his service dog by his side.

Jared Goering served 1 tour in Iraq, 2 in Afghanistan, and spent 19 years as an active member of the Army. Jared said, "I served from 1993 to 2012." He then told NBC40 he couldn't sleep Thursday night because he felt so disrespected by a North Wildwood police officer.

Goering said, "Just like any veteran with disabilities with a service dog, to come back and be harassed and shown no respect, it upset me - it really bothered me. I was up most of the night thinking about it."

A North Wildwood police officer issued Jared and his wife a summons because of the dog. Goering said, ?I expected to get more respect from him because of the jobs that we both have to do."

"He mockingly asked if all veterans get service dogs," said Jared?s wife, Sally Goering, ?his dog is medically necessary and he is a service dog."

[...]The Goering family said, even after showing the officer the dog's service identification card, he still issued them a summons and kicked them off the boardwalk.


_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.

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Latest Tyranny/Police State
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I am going to start using statist excuses in my daily life. "Citizen safety" will become part of my repertoire. "Based on my training and experience" will also be a key factor. Just think of the difference we could make if we all became a Citizen Peace Patrol armed with handguns and cameras streaming to Youtube and researched citizen arrest laws... Every time we observed police officers violate the law we could film them and effect a citizen's arrest. Oh, probably wise to keep some cash at home for bail money, but if enough of us did this it would make a difference. We will make a public apology pending investigation. Aka City Hall speak for we will apologize if we are shamed into doing so.

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (found at the U.S. Copyright Office) and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

"Parallel Construction": Government Term for Lying About Its Investigations


By Randall Holcombe

President Obama pledged to create ?...an unprecedented level of openness in Government...? and to ?... work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.? With all the recent revelations about IRS abuses and NSA snooping that the president wants to keep secret, transparency in government increasingly appears to mean that government can know everything about us; we can know nothing about government.

Here is another government policy, apparently long-standing, that only came to my attention through this article. There are so many disturbing things in the article that I hardly know where to start.

But, I?ll start with the idea of ?parallel construction,? in which ?...federal agents are trained to ?recreate? the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant?s Constitutional right to a fair trial.? If the government has evidence against you, not only do they not reveal where they got it, they actually lie about its origin. The article notes, ?If defendants don?t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence ? information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.?

Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who was a federal judge from 1994 to 2011, says she?s never heard of this. ?It sounds like they are phonying up investigations,? she said.

Meanwhile, ?...two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to ?recreate? an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily.?

The article offers an example: The Special Operations Division (SOD) of the DEA passes along a tip to state police to find a reason to stop a vehicle because they suspect the vehicle is involved in drug activity. The police find a reason to stop the vehicle, probably for a traffic violation, and find drugs.

The article says, ?After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as ?parallel construction.?? The article continues, ?The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods.?

That?s troubling enough. Government policy is to lie about their sources of information. But there?s more. What are those sources of information the SOD uses?

The article says, ?The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security.?

The most disturbing (to me) agency in that group is the IRS. According to the official line, your tax records are private and not to be shared among other government agencies, which prompted recent outcries with revelations that tax records were being used for political purposes. Now we find out that tax records are also being shared among two dozen partner agencies, including the DEA. Just that one sentence in the article should be fodder for outrage against our intrusive government; yet not much has been said about it since the articl


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I have another term for this: Evidence laundering. Use it a lot, because its connotation is that of criminal activity (which is what this is).

"Parallel construction" is nothing but a weasel term intended to avoid the criminal taint.

"Parallel Construction," may be the government's, "Term for Lying," but, so much truth is in that term, one might be struck by double-think, after having read it. (I was).

I have lots to say on the linked article, as well as this one, although, in order to do so, I would have to be holding (at the least) 6 mirrors.

"The article says,....." - Randall Holcombe. That quote alone, is doublethink; proof that all "terms," should be called into question. Articles "read," they don't "say," anything. Newspeak is tricky sometimes.
This article is written to aid the "Parallel (CON)structors." Even if, I were holding only 3 mirrors, (I am presently), I can see the CON in this CONstruct - as follows:

1. The headline - it suggests the king's college can outwit you, (mirror), while, simultaneously grabbing your attention.
2. The first paragraph - it reads, that government is watching you, (mirror), though, you can't watch them.... That is straight-out the "1984" script. (Big Brother can't see, for he's an ideology, not an actual person).
3. The linked article - it's a war construct. Government claims to have the right to watch you, (mirror) you must fight against them.

..."recreate the investigative trial to effectively cover up where the information originated..." - Randall Holcombe.

Randall, this quote is for you: "time travels forward, one, accelerates." - dave

I don't know about you Randall, but, I say: "take me anywhere but back."

Information originates as a notion, and, (though they've tried) this government continues to fall short of answering the questions, presented by those notions. In other words: "when you play god, you had better be prepared to take on god."

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Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The United States Government Does Not Want Americans To Travel Abroad


No other government on the face of this Earth wants to make it?s citizens more ill-at-ease, deathly afraid, or made to feel so guilty for stepping outside of it?s national boundaries as the United States of America. Rather than encouraging Americans to embrace overseas travel as one of the most educational, enjoyable, and emotionally and spiritually satisfying endeavors that people can undertake in the course of our painfully short lives, U.S. government departments and institutions are notorious for wanting to make even just the IDEA of pursuing international travel as unpleasant and unsettling as they can possibly muster.

You must look no further than the U.S. State Department?s ?Global Travel Alert? issued this past Friday (August 2nd 2013) to grasp the sheer ridiculousness and paranoia of the U.S. governments stance on it?s citizens travelling abroad. The alert, which is based upon the ?most specific, credible threat information in years? (but of course lacking any actual date or timing), warned of the potential for terrorist attacks, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, to be carried out by operatives of Al Qaeda and their associates.

It came less than a day after the department announced that it was closing U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere through the weekend because of a (of course) ?unspecified? terrorism threat. The global travel alert if effective through the end of August.

So going by the State Department?s advice and logic on this ?global? travel alert, we?re all supposed to reconsider our travel plans to ANYWHERE outside the United States? Or at least for the remainder of August? Even if I just want to camp out at Uluru in the middle of Australia, the Islamic bad guys are going to be out for my blood? Yep, the whole concept of a United States issued ?global travel alert? is just?.that?.LAME.

Let?s just flip the coin here for a moment. Have you noticed there is no such thing as a ?domestic travel alert? issued by the United States Department of State? I mean if you really think about it there SHOULD be. The United States literally has all of the most dangerous cities in the world under the umbrella of the term ?First World?. Comparing U.S. cities like Camden, New Orleans, Detroit, Memphis, or South Side Chicago with the likes of European cities such as Vienna, Zurich, Helsinki, Munich, or Copenhagen is somewhat akin to contrasting Hell with Heaven, at least certainly from a safety standpoint.

Yet the host countries of those cities don?t issue ?global travel alerts? specifically pointing out the United States as an area of greater safety concern (which it plainly is). They realize that the world is not perfect, and some safety risks which can theoretically happen anywhere are not going to be allowed to ruin their holiday plans.

You wanna talk about forces at work which are trying to ruin your holiday plans? Just take a look at the U.S. State Department?s website, particularly if you direct yourself to the ?threats to safety and security? section under ?country specific information?. A lot of the stuff you will read in this area of the website is absolutely horrifying. Seriously, just what sort of coffin-sized box do they want Americans to live in? Here are some direct quotations from a number of countries we would otherwise consider among the safest places in the world to visit.

AUSTRALIA ? Australia has an alert system for possible terrorist attacks. The threat levels range from ?low? to ?high.? The Australian Attorney General?s Office web site has up-to-date information regarding the current terrorism threat level. Depending on the alert, you should maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to increase your security awareness. (Threats To Safety And Security)

NEW ZEALAND ? Violent crime against tourists is rare; however, if you are traveling alone, you should be especially vigilant and avoid isolated areas. (Crime)

NORWAY ? Like other countries in the Schengen area, Norway?s open borders with its Western European neighbors also allow the possibility of terrorists entering/exiting the country with anonymity. Be vigilant with regard to your personal security. (Threats To Safety And Security)

FINLAND ? Finland remains largely free of terrorist incidents. However, like other countries in the Schengen area, Finland?s open borders with its Western European neighbors allow the possibility of terrorist groups anonymously entering and exiting the country. (Threats to Safety And Security)

Notice how the State Department clearly is not a fan of Europe?s open borders policy? They would much prefer to have the personal freedoms and civil liberties of Europeans be squandered, and have a T.S.A. equivalent for Europe rule over the continent with an iron fist in order to catch those pesky ?terrorists? who must be freely crossing the border between Germany and Denmark on a daily basis.

As for countries like Cuba, it is interesting to point out how the U.S. State Departments description of the country is frighteningly comparable to the modern day United States, though they want to pretend to remain oblivious to this fact. Also, in a bizarre twist to readers expectations (especially if the department is actually telling solo travelers in New Zealand to ?avoid isolated areas? which is exactly what most travelers to the country hope to spend a lot of time doing) they actually give a rare display of praise for North Korea.

NORTH KOREA ? North Korea does not release crime statistics. Violent crime is rare, and street crime against foreigners is uncommon in Pyongyang. (In truth, crime against travelers to North Korea is almost non-existent).

Beyond the endless scaremongering, there is another major reason why the U.S. government doesn?t want you to travel abroad. In the 21st century, they desperately want to avoid having you see for yourself just HOW FAR BEHIND our country has fallen. Our government has an incredibly fragile ego, and desperately wants to continue to tout that the United States is the ?greatest country on Earth?, which many of us are now aware is a totally false exclamation.

It is an embarrassment for the U.S. government when Americans visit South Korea, Germany, France, Italy, and even Turkey and witness first-hand just how wonderful, efficient, and fast the domestic intercity train systems run. It is an embarrassment for Americans to witness how the streets are kept cleaner and the highways better maintained in countries across Europe, and even in parts of Mexico. It is an embarrassment when they visit Australia, and drop their jaws at the revelation many of the locals are working jobs earning the annual equivalent of anywhere between $70,000 ? $120,000 U.S. dollars, which do not require any university education (and therefore no crippling student loan debt-slavery).

It is an embarrassment when Americans talk with university students in Scandinavia and realize it is not costing them a penny. It is an embarrassment when they walk the streets of Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro and safely come to the conclusion that the locals are more health conscious, better dressed, self-confident, and consistently attractive than pretty much anywhere at home. It is an embarrassment coming to the realization that Santiago, the capital of Chile and among the most populous cities in ?dangerous? Latin America, is actually a safer city than any U.S. metropolitan area of comparable size.

Basically, the U.S. government does not want you to become aware about a lot of really, really, good things that are available to people in other parts of the world that are severely lacking at home. They do not want you coming back to the United States and raving to your friends about how wonderful your destination was, having ideas of moving abroad to a country with better employment opportunities and/or financial rewards (Australia, Germany, Norway, etc.), or planning on early retirement to a country with wonderful year-round weather and a low cost-of-living in Latin America or Southeast Asia.

They don?t want you to figure out that it is possible to have a rich and full life without automobile dependency, which is a reality in many other countries. They don?t want you to visit a country that actually learns how to get along with the planet and requires only a token military budget, and where discretionary government funds can be spent on much more constructive or life-affirming pursuits.

NO. They want you to STAY in the United States and forever remain a dutiful U.S. taxpayer, slave to big oil and student loans, and to sit down and shut up as drones and bombs obliterate yet another country that has never harmed the United States in any way (it was Yemen this week right?). Traveling abroad, spending your money elsewhere, having a wonderful time, and then perhaps ultimately wanting to move yourself and your assets away, will make them very, very, grumpy indeed.

After all, it is easy for a population to be brainwashed into thinking that their country is the ?best in the world? when they have absolutely no frame of reference to any of the other 200+ sovereign states which exist in the world today. It?s easy to get a large segment of the population to actually believe countries like Iran are hostile when Hollywood propaganda films like ?Argo? portray every local as a bloodthirsty zealot out to claim an American scalp. Unfortunately for them, the reality is that Iranians are without doubt some of the friendliest and most hospitable people on this Earth, and embrace American travelers with cheerful gusto and sincere smiles.

Of course, you can simply ignore the government propaganda campaigns and societal warnings all you want. There is nothing stopping a U.S. citizen from taking off overseas, provided you have a valid passport, sufficient funds, and a thirst for adventure. What cannot be stopped is the end game, the dreaded T.S.A. ?Chat Down? when you return to the U.S.A. But I?ll leave that for another article.

So in the meantime, whatever you do, even though the risk of a supposed ?terrorist? attack is the most elevated in the Middle East and North Africa, pay heed to the State Department?s ?global travel alert? and cancel that trip you had planned to Norway or New Zealand later next week. Those countries are far too dangerous right now (maybe forever) and you?re going to be KILLED! Stay right here at home in the United States and spend your tourist dollars in New Orleans, Memphis, Camden, and the south side of Chicago instead. You?ll be 100% totally safe and secure!
_
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Monday, August 26, 2013

Social Pressure as a Means of Keeping Order


by Logan Albright

We tend to think of the law as one, big monolithic thing, a unified system under which we all must live. The rules governing what we can and cannot do may change over time, but the system itself is a constant, maintained by a centralized body of enforcers. Force is the operative term here, because the threat of force is really the only weapon the law has at its disposal to curb behaviors it deems undesirable. Break the law and you will either be fined, imprisoned or, in extreme cases, killed.

We have become conditioned to think that this threat of force is the only possible way of keeping order in a society, and that since force is such a dangerous thing, we must restrict who can legitimately use it. Thus, the state monopoly on law is built on the assumption that law and force are necessarily and inextricably intertwined. In fact, there is no reason to make such an assumption.

How, then, are we to enforce the laws of the land without the threat of violence? The answer, which can be found quite readily throughout history, and is still in use in a diluted form today, is simple social pressure from the members of the community. While this may sound laughable to some, it is a powerful force not to be underestimated, and has succeeded at keeping order with surprising success in the past.

A colorful example comes from England, where the term Rough Music was once used to describe a practice of community members banding together to drive out those who violated their social norms by banging pots and pans together in a symbolic ritual of humiliation and eventual expulsion. Shunning among the Amish is a comparable example.

Similar practices, albeit less dramatic, persist to this day in any area where there is a strong sense of community. Neighborhood associations use social pressure to enforce certain norms, with offenders suffering the vocal disapproval of their neighbors. It is important to remember that this is not vigilantism, where an individuals initiates force to seek personal justice, but rather a form of collective behavior towards the offender that in no way violates his rights. Instead of force, ostracization inflicts feelings of shame, guilt and isolation on those who refuse to obey the mores of the group. If the offense is great enough, others may refuse to do business with the offender entirely, eventually forcing him to leave the community altogether.

Apart from its non-violence, the method of keeping order via peer pressure has the advantage of being highly decentralized. Every community will have its own code of conduct, allowing people to sort themselves into areas which share their own set of values and principles. An atheist libertine need not be held to the standard of a conservative Christian community. An immigrant from China can choose to live in a community that upholds the customs of his heritage. There is no one-size-fits-all standard of behavior which inevitably fails to take into account cultural and philosophical differences within the population.

The obvious objection to this line of thinking is that social pressure is all well and good for small towns and isolated populations, but that in big cities there is simply no way for people to know each other well enough to enforce a standard of behavior as a group. This is a fair point, but the existence of tight-knit communities within large cities ? Chinatowns or other immigrant groups are the most common example ? show that a large population alone is not sufficient to render social pressure ineffective. I have written elsewhere about the fact that government welfare programs discourage the formation of communities, since the threat of misfortune can be met with a welfare check in place of the support of friends, neighbors, relatives and churches. In the absence of such programs, it would behoove ever prudent individual to develop some form of community as a type of insurance against hardship, in which case social pressure becomes a very effective means of behavioral control.

Of course, there are some crimes and some criminals for whom social pressure would be wholly inadequate. Those individuals mad enough to commit murders or rapes doubtless have little fear of what the neighbors might think. In such cases, force is indeed required, and punishment remains a legitimate province of the law (which still need not be monopolistic in nature, but that's a topic for another time.) However, for all the sorts of minor offenses that fill law books and clog up court systems, it seems entirely preferable to adopt a decentralized, non-coercive method of punishment that relies upon the human need for social interaction and the approval of one's peers instead of the cold impersonality of a prison cell.
_
Logan Albright is a writer and economist in Washington, DC.


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Saturday, August 24, 2013

The Police State Mindset in Our Public Schools


By John W. Whitehead

Once upon a time in America, parents breathed a sigh of relief when their kids went back to school after a summer's hiatus, content in the knowledge that for a good portion of the day their kids would be gainfully occupied, out of harm's way and out of trouble. Those were the good old days, before school shootings became a part of our national lexicon and schools, aiming for greater security, transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs and strip searches.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, instead of making the schools safer, we simply managed to make them more authoritarian. It used to be that if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school. Nowadays, students are not only punished for transgressions more minor than those--such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight--but they are punished with suspension, expulsion, and even arrest.

As a result, America is now on a fast track to raising up an Orwellian generation--one populated by compliant citizens accustomed to living in a police state and who march in lockstep to the dictates of the government. Indeed, as I point out in my book,?A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, with every school police raid and overzealous punishment that is carried out in the name of school safety, the lesson being imparted is that Americans--especially young people--have no rights at all against the state or the police. In fact, the majority of schools today have adopted an all-or-nothing lockdown mindset that leaves little room for freedom, individuality or due process.

For example, when high school senior Ashley Smithwick grabbed the wrong lunch sack--her father's--on the way to school, the star soccer player had no idea that her mistake would land her in a sea of legal troubles. Unbeknownst to Ashley, the lunchbox contained her father's paring knife, a 2-inch blade he uses to cut his apple during lunch. It was only when a school official searching through students' belongings found the diminutive knife, which administrators considered a "weapon," that Ashley realized what had happened and explained the mistake. Nevertheless, school officials referred Ashley to the police, who in turn charged her with a Class 1 misdemeanor for possessing a "sharp-pointed or edged instrument on educational property."

Tieshka Avery, a diabetic teenager living in Birmingham, Alabama, was slammed into a filing cabinet and arrested after falling asleep during an in-school suspension. The young lady, who suffers from sleep apnea and asthma, had fallen asleep while reading?Huckleberry Finn?in detention. After a school official threw a book at her, Avery went to the hall to collect herself. While speaking on the phone with her mother, she was approached from behind by a police officer, who slammed her into a filing cabinet and arrested her. Avery is currently pursuing a lawsuit against the school.

Unfortunately, while these may appear to be isolated incidents, they are indicative of a nationwide phenomenon in which children are treated like criminals, especially within the public schools. The ramifications are far-reaching. As Emily Bloomenthal, writing for the?New York University Review of Law & Social Change, explains:

Studies have found that youth who have been suspended are at increased risk of being required to repeat a grade, and suspensions are a strong predictor of later school dropout. Researchers have concluded that "suspension often becomes a 'pushout' tool to encourage low-achieving students and those viewed as 'troublemakers' to leave school before graduation." Students who have been suspended are also more likely to commit a crime and/or to end up incarcerated as an adult, a pattern that has been dubbed the "school-to-prison pipeline."
Moreover, as suspensions and arrests for minor failings and childish behavior become increasingly common, so does the spread of mass surveillance in our nation's schools. In fact, our schools have become a microcosm of the total surveillance state which currently dominates America, adopting a host of surveillance technologies, including video cameras, finger and palm scanners, iris scanners, as well as RFID and GPS tracking devices, to keep constant watch over their student bodies.

For example, in May 2013, Polk County School District in Florida foisted an iris scanning program on its students without parental consent. Parents were sent a letter explaining they could opt their children out of the program, but by the time the letter had reached parents, 750 children had already had their eyes scanned and their biometric data collected.

Making matters worse, these iris scanning programs are gaining traction in the schools, with school buses even getting in on the action. As students enter the school bus, they will be told to look through a pair of binocular-like scanners which will either blink, indicating that the student is on the right bus, or honk, indicating that they've chosen the wrong one. This technology is linked with a mobile app which parents can use to track their child's exact whereabouts, as each time their eyes are scanned the parent receives a print out with their photo and Google map location, along with a timestamp. Benefits aside, the potential for abuse, especially in the hands of those who prey on the young, are limitless.

It has been said that America's schools are the training ground for future generations. If so, and unless we can do something to rein in this runaway train, this next generation will be the most compliant, fearful and oppressed generation ever to come of age in America, and they will be marching in lockstep with the police state._
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead [send him mail] is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks).


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These reasons are precisely why I will not be sending my young'en to the government schools. Hopefully it will still be legal to home school him when the time comes or the guber-ment does not dip their slimy mits into the private schools curriculum. Also, parents beware....COMMON CORE IS COMING!

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Friday, August 23, 2013

This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories


by Phillip Smith

A pair of Indiana prison guards get in trouble over weed in separate incidents, a Florida deputy is apparently having way too much fun, and an Alabama cop gets nailed in a cocaine sting. Let's get to it:

In Chesterton, Indiana, an Indiana state prison guard was arrested last Tuesday after being caught reporting to work with nearly three-quarters of a pound of marijuana. Marcus Crenshaw, 27, went down after being stopped and searched as he reported for work. He is charged with one count of marijuana trafficking and is now lodged at the LaPorte County Jail. He has also been suspended without pay.

In South Bend, Indiana, an Indiana state prison guard was arraigned last Thursday on charges he had a marijuana grow-op in his home. The charges against Kenneth Bell, 26, came after police raided his home and found a dozen pot plants in the basement, along with other "drug-related materials." He is facing charges of marijuana possession and distribution. There is no indication it is connected with his job.

In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a Broward County sheriff's deputy was suspended without pay last Friday for allegedly having sex while on duty, dating escorts, and allowing the use of drugs in his presence. Deputy Michael Hennessey came under the spotlight in February, when an ex-girlfriend ratted him out. Since then, he has been under surveillance, and investigators also used undercover officers and confidential informants to try to nail him. The investigation revealed that he was in constant contact with his live-in girlfriend, "a known escort and drug user and dealer." A Friday search warrant said investigators were looking into the possibility he had committed two felony crimes, possibly conspiracy to deliver cocaine and illegal use of a two-way communication device to facilitate a felony.

In Pritchard, Alabama, a Prichard police officer was arrested Saturday after trying to buy five kilograms of cocaine in what turned out to be a sting operation. Officer Edmund Burke is now charged with trafficking cocaine, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of marijuana. He has two previous arrests, one for interfering with custody in 2000 and one for possession of a controlled substance in 2006.


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Thursday, August 22, 2013

Are Police in America Now a Military, Occupying Force?


By John W. Whitehead

Despite the steady hue and cry by government agencies about the need for more police, more sophisticated weaponry, and the difficulties of preserving the peace and maintaining security in our modern age, the reality is far different. Indeed, violent crime in America has been on a steady decline, and if current trends continue, Americans will finish the year 2013 experiencing the lowest murder rate in over a century.

Despite this clear referendum on the fact that communities would be better served by smaller, demilitarized police forces, police agencies throughout the country are dramatically increasing in size and scope. Some of the nation?s larger cities boast police forces the size of small armies. (New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg actually likes to brag that the NYPD is his personal army.) For example, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has reached a total of 10,000 officers. It takes its place alongside other cities boasting increasingly large police forces, including New York (36,000 officers) and Chicago (13,400 officers). When considered in terms of cops per square mile, Los Angeles assigns a whopping 469 officers per square mile, followed by New York with 303 officers per square mile, and Chicago with 227 cops per square mile.

Of course, such heavy police presence comes at a price. Los Angeles spends over $2 billion per year on the police force, a 36% increase within the last eight years. The LAPD currently consumes over 55% of Los Angeles? discretionary budget, a 9% increase over the past nine years. Meanwhile, street repair and maintenance spending has declined by 36%, and in 2011, one-fifth of the city?s fire stations lost units, increasing response times for 911 medical emergencies.

For those who want to credit hefty police forces for declining crime rates, the data just doesn?t show a direct correlation. In fact, many cities across the country actually saw decreases in crime rates during the 1990s in the wake of increasing prison sentences and the waning crack-cocaine epidemic. Cities such as Seattle and Dallas actually cut their police forces during this time and still saw crime rates drop.

As I point out in my new book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, there was a time in our nation?s history when Americans would have revolted against the prospect of city police forces the size of small armies, or rampaging SWAT teams tearing through doors and terrorizing families. Today, the SWAT team is largely sold to the American public by way of the media, through reality TV shows such as Cops, Armed and Famous, and Police Women of Broward County, and by politicians well-versed in promising greater security in exchange for the government being given greater freedom to operate as it sees fit outside the framework of the Constitution.

Having watered down the Fourth Amendment?s strong prohibitions intended to keep police in check and functioning as peacekeepers, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of having militarized standing armies enforcing the law. Likewise, whereas the police once operated as public servants (i.e., in service to the public), today that master-servant relationship has been turned on its head to such an extent that if we fail to obey anyone who wears a badge, we risk dire consequences.

Consider that in 1980, there were roughly 3,000 SWAT team-style raids in the US. By 2001, that number had grown to 45,000 and has since swelled to more than 80,000 SWAT team raids per year. On an average day in America, over 100 Americans have their homes raided by SWAT teams. In fact, there are few communities without a SWAT team on their police force today. In 1984, 25.6 percent of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team. That number rose to 80 percent by 2005.

The problem, of course, is that as SWAT teams and SWAT-style tactics are used more frequently to carry out routine law enforcement activities, Americans find themselves in increasingly dangerous and absurd situations. For example, in late July 2013, a no-kill animal shelter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was raided by nine Department of Natural Resources (DNR) agents and four deputy sheriffs. The raid was prompted by tips that the shelter was home to a baby deer that had been separated from its mother. The shelter officials had planned to send the deer to a wildlife rehabilitation facility in Illinois, but the agents, who stormed the property unannounced, demanded that the deer be handed over because citizens are not allowed to possess wildlife. When the 13 LEOs entered the property ?armed to the teeth,? they corralled the employees around a picnic table while they searched for the deer. When they returned, one agent had the deer slung over his shoulder in a body bag, ready to be euthanized.

When asked why they didn?t simply ask shelter personnel to hand the deer over instead of conducting an unannounced raid, DNR Supervisor Jennifer Niemeyer compared their actions to drug raids, saying ?If a sheriff?s department is going in to do a search warrant on a drug bust, they don?t call them and ask them to voluntarily surrender their marijuana or whatever drug that they have before they show up.?

If these raids are becoming increasingly common and widespread, you can chalk it up to the ?make-work? philosophy, in which you assign at-times unnecessary jobs to individuals to keep them busy or employed. In this case, however, the make-work principle is being used to justify the use of sophisticated military equipment and, in the process, qualify for federal funding.

It all started back in the 1980s, when Congress launched the 1033 Program to allow the Department of Defense to transfer surplus military goods to state and local police agencies. The 1033 program has grown dramatically, with some 13,000 police agencies in all 50 states and four US territories currently participating. In 2012, the federal government transferred $546 million worth of property to state and local police agencies. This 1033 program allows small towns like Rising Star, Texas, with a population of 835 and only one full-time police officer, to acquire $3.2 million worth of goods and military gear from the federal government over the course of fourteen months.

Military equipment sent to small towns has included high-powered weapons, assault vehicles and tactical gear. However, after it was discovered that local police agencies were failing to keep inventories of their acquired firearms and in some cases, selling the equipment for a profit, the transfer of firearms was temporarily suspended until October 2013. In the meantime, police agencies can still receive a variety of other toys and gizmos, including ?aircraft, boats, Humvees, body armor, weapon scopes, infrared imaging systems and night-vision goggles,? not to mention more general items such as ?bookcases, hedge trimmers, telescopes, brassieres, golf carts, coffee makers and television sets.?

In addition to equipping police with militarized weapons and equipment, the government has also instituted an incentive program of sorts, the Byrne Formula Grant Program, which awards federal grants based upon ?the number of overall arrests, the number of warrants served or the number of drug seizures.? A sizable chunk of taxpayer money has kept the program in full swing over the years. Through the Clinton administration, the program was funded with about $500 million. By 2008, the Bush administration had reduced the budget to about $170 million, less out of concern for the militarization of police forces and more to reduce federal influence on law enforcement matters. However, Barack Obama boosted the program again at the beginning of his term, using the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to inject $2 billion into the program.

When it comes to SWAT-style tactics being used in routine policing, the federal government is one of the largest offenders, with multiple agencies touting their own SWAT teams, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Consumer Product Safety Commission, NASA, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the US National Park Service, and the FDA.

Clearly, the government has all but asphyxiated the Fourth Amendment, but what about the Third Amendment, which has been interpreted to not only prohibit the quartering of soldiers in one?s home and martial law but standing armies? While most Americans?and the courts?largely overlook this amendment, which at a minimum bars the government from stationing soldiers in civilian homes during times of peace, it is far from irrelevant to our age. Indeed, with some police units equivalent in size, weaponry and tactics to military forces, a case could well be made that the Third Amendment is routinely being violated every time a SWAT team crashes through a door.

A vivid example of this took place on July 10, 2011, in Henderson, Nevada, when local police informed homeowner Anthony Mitchell that they wanted to occupy his home in order to gain a ?tactical advantage? in dealing with a domestic abuse case in an adjacent home. Mitchell refused the request, but this didn?t deter the police, who broke down Mitchell?s front door using a battering ram. Five officers pointed weapons at him, ordering him to the ground, where they shot him with pepper-ball projectiles.

The point is this: America today is not much different from the America of the early colonists, who had to contend with British soldiers who were allowed to ?enter private homes, confiscate what they found, and often keep the bounty for themselves.? This practice is echoed today through SWAT team raids and the execution of so-called asset forfeiture laws, ?which allow police to seize and keep for their departments cash, cars, luxury goods and even homes, often under only the thinnest allegation of criminality.?

It is this intersection of law enforcement and military capability which so worried the founding fathers and which should worry us today. What Americans must decide is what they?re going to do about this occupation of our cities and towns by standing armies operating under the guise of keeping the peace.


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there is only one thing to do.watch me get arrested again because of some ass wipes brainwashed,myopic,piggish imagination.never again! the biggest gang in America is only slightly better than the black,white,brown,yellow gangs etc.there are many good people and good gangs that are far superior. to the cops.

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Wednesday, August 21, 2013

How Medical Innovation Redefines Our World

Jeffrey Tucker

On a Sunday afternoon swim, a 6-year-old boy was bugging me in a sweet sort of way. He rode up and down the handrail on the stairs in the shallow end of the pool where I was trying to sit in peace. He was laughing and talking, but I couldn't understand a word through the giggles.

I spoke to him to try to engage him in conversation.

His mother was sitting on the side of pool and said to me, "He can't hear a word you are saying."

I thought by that she meant that when he is having fun, he is not interested in adult conversation. So I laughed and tried again. She clarified what she meant: He is completely deaf. Literally, he can't hear anything.

I felt embarrassed.

But then she added something that amazed and surprised me. She said that when he is not swimming, he wears equipment that allows him to hear completely normally. He just has to take off the equipment for the water.

I asked for details, simply because, for whatever reason, I hadn't really known about this technology. As she explained, the boy's disability became apparent in the first few weeks of his life. In any other era, he would never have heard a sound. Fortunately, starting in the year 2000, implants became available for children. The ear implants that give him hearing came after about six months. Since then, he has heard nearly as well as everyone else.

My jaw just dropped open. Here is a miracle of our time, a brilliant example of how technological progress isn't really about machines and efficiency, but about the quality and vibrancy of human life itself.

Deafness has been part of human life as far back as we can look in recorded history. It is mentioned by Aristotle, and Socrates was said to have addressed the issue. It is mentioned in Hebrew law and by the fathers of the Christian religion. It figured into folklore throughout the Middle Ages. Most of what was written and said treated deafness as a curse.

With growing enlightenment as to the nature of disability, we began to see real therapeutic efforts toward helping the deaf. In the 19th century, universities were founded. Languages were codified. Activists worked to have society treat deafness not as a wicked malady, but as a condition that comes with special gifts. A more humanitarian approach replaced age-old bias and even demonization.

Then, suddenly, everything changed. In our own time, vast numbers of deaf people have been given hearing, even from infancy. Technology changed everything. "Cochlear implants" became accessible to vast numbers of people. These small machines are put deep inside the ear to fix what is really just a small physical problem, and they are operated by sophisticated equipment that is barely visible.

It is today entirely possible that a deaf person will never know the fate of millions and millions of people throughout history, that of never hearing a song or the spoken world. The world has been opened up to them through the efforts of scientists and commercial providers over the course of some 50 years. As usual, when the solution arrives, people tend to forget the problem ever existed. That is where we are headed with deafness today.

As alert as I am to the surprises brought to us by market-based experimentation and innovation, learning of this genuinely surprised me. I suppose I had thought deafness was a permanent accident that humanity would always deal with. Before the late 19th century, people probably thought the same about infant mortality and hundreds of diseases that have since been cured. In the Middle Ages, it must have been this way with tooth pain, the pain of childbirth, and the inability to communicate with anyone outside your immediate vicinity.

All human problems seem intractable and perpetual when they are ever-present. But there are always a few among us who do not see problems this way. They see problems as rooted in the lack of some technological solution. And they get to work on a fix. Given time, given resources, given an open market in which to sell their fixes, they change history.

Work on fixing the problem of deafness through cochlear implants began in the 1950s, but no technology works out of the box. It takes learning and trying among many people who attempt marginal improvements, one bit at a time. Work picked up in the 1970s as the prospect of commercial viability of implants inspired more manufacturers to work with doctors and scientists.

As always, it took longer than it should have, but implants for adults were finally approved by the FDA in 1984. It wasn't until just 13 years ago, however, that the government approved them for use in children as young as 6 months old. Another factor that slowed down development, as always, was the patent, which essentially assigned a monopoly of knowledge to certain individual firms. Even now, the market is hobbled and the devices overly expensive because of them. In other words, without government intervention, we would have seen more progress sooner.

Even so, I was fascinated to see a real-life example of how science and commerce radically changes life itself. How many people would have even imagined such a thing 100 years ago? Very few. Here is a beautiful example of how allowing entrepreneurs to be free of restrictions gives rise to genius solutions to problems most everyone else thinks are permanent.

And there is a still a long way to go. Already, this nice family that I met is looking into getting the next edition of the implants the child is using, because the new version is actually waterproof. He will be able to swim and hear at the same time. There are still other factors that need improvement: battery life, cosmetic appearance, the stability of the machinery itself, etc. And everyone looks forward to the day when the entire apparatus can be implanted with no external operation at all. These times are not far off.

Oh, and by the way, the implants are all manufactured by those kinds of capitalistic institutions everyone loves to hate. There is Cochlear Limited in Australia, Advanced Bionics (in the U.S, but a division of a Swiss company), and Med-El in Austria.

All are for-profit enterprises.

As we think about such things ? seeming miracles accomplished through science and market entrepreneurship ? what can we say about today's anti-technology and socialist attitudes among the educated elite? The greens are habituated to be against all industrial progress. The neo-Luddites put down every advance. The socialists tell us that all solutions come from the public sector. Books and articles appear daily that tell us about the evils of technology and how it is ruining human community.

Meanwhile, people sneer at smartphones, gaming, and social media, and speak with trepidation about how Google Glass is going to turn us into cyborgs. The romantics long for a return to the simple life.

But do these people consider the lives of people such as this boy I met? Here is the truth: The return to the simple life means that deafness will not be cured. The simple life means pain, suffering, hunger, disease, malnutrition, early death, and the horror of struggling every day just to live another day. Every bit of the progress humanity has made over the state of nature is due to the unleashing of human creativity in the framework of an open society and an open market. This is the way to unleash the genius of innovative human service.

This is the path of progress. The path of regress is the opposite: command, regulate, control, coerce, and rule by those who imagine that they know what we need and construct a political order to impose it on us. Under such forms of political management, answers to intractable problems do not emerge through the regulatory thicket.

In the end, this is what is most scary about health care solutions like Obamacare. It is not so much how such political solutions misallocate existing resources. The real problem is how such systems lock down and control human creativity and end up preventing us from discovering what we currently do not know. They stop the emergence of seeming miracles such as tools to allow the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the lame to walk again.

Might we someday truly find a cure for the remaining horrors in our world, such as cancer? It can happen, provided we have systems that are open to experimentation, commercial creativity, and trial and error. I met the living proof of this, a happy boy who will never know a world in which there was no solution for his disability.
_
Jeffrey Tucker is the publisher and executive editor of Laissez-Faire Books, the Primus inter pares of the Laissez Faire Club, and the author of Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo, It's a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes, and A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Build Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age, among thousands of articles. Click to sign up for his free daily letter. Email him: tucker@lfb.org | Facebook | Twitter | Google


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Federal Judge: NYC Stop And Frisk Violates The 4th Amendment


by Timothy Geigner

For anyone who might not know already, New York City's infamous stop and frisk program is the completely useless policy of the police department to go around randomly molesting anyone they deem to be suspicious, or more correctly described as brown-skinned. It appears that everyone who isn't a member of the NYPD or the current mayor of New York hates this program as much as I do, including AG Eric Holder and the NY City Council. Still, that didn't keep Chuck Schumer from trying to export this interracial softcore porn policy to the federal level by recommending Police Chief Ray Kelly as the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Kelly's resume, however, may take a bit of a hit.

That's because a federal judge recently declared that the stop and frisk program violated tens of thousands of people's constitutional rights, which is the kind of thing that most folks frown on.

In a decision issued on Monday, the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled that police officers have for years been systematically stopping innocent people in the street without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. Officers often frisked these people, usually young minority men, for weapons or searched their pockets for contraband, like drugs, before letting them go, according to the 195-page decision.

These stop-and-frisk episodes, which soared in number over the last decade as crime continued to decline, demonstrated a widespread disregard for the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, according to the ruling. It also found violations with the 14th Amendment.

Now, it's worth noting that Scheindlin didn't order that the program be stopped immediately or set a time and date for Mayor Bloomberg's lobotomy, which I found disappointing, but instead has appointed an outside legal counsel to oversee the police department and ensure that any random stopping and frisking of citizens is done constitutionally. That means no stops without reasonable suspicion. The problem, however, has been how police officers thus far have fudged their own reports on why they were stopping people.
While the Supreme Court has long recognized the right of police officers to briefly stop and investigate people who are behaving suspiciously, Judge Scheindlin found that the New York police had overstepped that authority. She found that officers were too quick to deem as suspicious behavior that was perfectly innocent, in effect watering down the legal standard required for a stop.
Obviously no outside legal overseer is going to be able to witness any sizable number of these stops, meaning there is a high likelihood that officers will continue to manufacture suspicion that is unfounded. In addition, it's well known that police officers consider themselves members of a fraternal organization, with all of the implications such a membership carries with it. How accurate a picture this outside counsel will get of these stops moving forward is an open question with a likely problematic answer.

That's why, while we should all be pleased that Judge Scheindlin ruled against stop and frisk, I think it would have been far better to scrap it entirely and make police play by the rules that are already prescribed by our constitution.

Floyd Liability Opinion 8 12 13 (PDF)


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Tuesday, August 20, 2013

In Bid for Tanks, NH Police Label Protest Groups 'Terrorists'


Disclosure comes amidst growing call against militarization of police forces
Lauren McCauley


In a bid to bring armored vehicles to the small, capital city of Concord, New Hampshire, the local police department is trying to exploit peaceful activist groups such as Occupy New Hampshire and the libertarian Free State Project as "terror threats."

Through a right to know request, the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union (NHCLU)?as part of an ongoing project against the militarization of local law enforcement agencies?obtained a grant filed by the Concord Police Department requesting $258,000 from the Department of Homeland Security for an armored BearCat vehicle.

"The State of New Hampshire?s experience with terrorism slants primarily towards the domestic type," the grant states, adding that?with groups such as the "Free Staters" and Occupy NH active and presenting "daily challenges"?the "threat is real and here."

"It's far from clear to us why an armored vehicle would be necessary to address what are generally, by and large, non-violent movements that in fact provide little or no threat to the security of our state," said Devon Chaffee, executive director of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union.

Calling the police grant "absolutely false and absurd," Occupy NH points out that the group?better known for litter pick-ups and "too-polite political bird dogging"?has not been functioning since July of 2012 and has not had a "notable Occupy gathering since April of 2013."

"Occupy New Hampshire has a statement of non-violence," they continue, adding that the libertarian Free State project has a "non-aggression principle."

According to Concord police chief John Duval, last fall the city council "unanimously" approved the grant application.

Described by Duval as an "armor-plated box on wheels," the Lenco BearCat G3 has been requested for use in responding to acts of terrorism involving "chemical, biological, and radiological materials as well as explosive gases" and smaller-scale crises such as "suicidal and hostage situations."

Concord hopes to join other New Hampshire towns Keene and Manchester, who already own BearCat tanks.

The controversy comes amidst a growing call against the militarization of police forces where?with federal funding?neighborhood officers are being "armed with the weapons and tactics of war."

"Equipping state and local law enforcement with military weapons and vehicles, military tactical training, and actual military assistance to conduct traditional law enforcement erodes civil liberties and encourages increasingly aggressive policing, particularly in poor neighborhoods and communities of color," said Kara Dansky, senior counsel for the ACLU's Center for Justice.

Ahead of an August 12 public hearing about the proposed purchase of the BearCat, Occupy NH will be holding a meeting on Friday to discuss the arming of their "sleepy little state" and consider pursuant actions against the agents "who are so threatened by the peaceful citizens" of New Hampshire.


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Monday, August 19, 2013

"They Kidnapped Our Child": Why CPS Needs Transparency Now


In April 2013, police officers and a social worker from Sacramento County's Child Protective Services entered the home of Anna and Alex Nikolayev and took their baby, Sammy, away from them. They had no warrant.

"What they'd done was, basically, kidnapped our child with the help of police," says Alex Nikolayev. The young, first-time parents were not notified of where Sammy was being taken and wouldn't find out for a full 24 hours. According to the Nikolayevs, the dispute stemmed from the parents' desire to obtain a second medical opinion before subjecting Sammy to major heart surgery.

The Nikolayev's story made national headlines thanks to footage from a camcorder Anna Nikolayev set up on the kitchen table. It also caught the attention of California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, who spearheaded an audit of the agency.

"The secrecy by which CPS operates is a massive problem. Because when you have secrecy and unchecked power, you have a recipe for corruption and abuse," says Donnelly.

The secrecy surrounding CPS stems from the nature of California's juvenile dependency courts, which only allow limited press access and seal all court records. While media and other interested parties can petition the court to open the records, this can be a lengthy process and by no means guarantees results. ReasonTV petitioned the court to open the records in the Nikolayev's case and, almost two months later, we have still not received a ruling from the judge.

The issue of funding is one that many critics of CPS are quick to raise, most prominently and frequently by the late Georgia state senator Nancy Schaefer. While the funding incentives for any government agency are complicated and seemingly impossible to divine, Orange County Social Services Agency Director Michael Riley, who oversees Orange County CPS, testified in a deposition related to Hardwick's case that putting more children into the foster system can boost the agency's budget.

"Let's say you spend ten dollars a year. So, then, for the following year, your base then would be ten dollars," says Riley. The lawyer questioning Riley then points out that failure to use the entire base would result in a lowering of the base for the next year. He then asks Riley if the funding stream is tied to how many children they bring into Orange County's children's home, Orangewood.

"It's tied to the number of children we have in the foster system," says Riley.

We reached out to both Sacramento County and Orange County Social Services Agencies in the production of this story, and representatives with both were happy to talk with us. However, because of the closed dependency courts, neither representative could comment on details of specific cases. The absurdity of this charade reached such heights that Sherri Heller, who runs Sacramento County's Health and Human Services, told us that she could not even confirm nor deny that Sacramento County CPS was even involved in the Nikolayev case, despite widespread reporting and video evidence that it was. It's not just parents and children who suffer from the secrecy. CPS workers and their managers say they are not happy about this situation either and feel that more openness and transparency would help them to communicate their side of the story clearly.

"Most of us in this field are eager for the public to understand what happened and why," says Heller. "It is a source of great dismay to us when we are accused of hiding behind the confidentiality law."

In the immediate wake of the Nikolayev case, parents gathered in Sacramento to support the audit and testify in front of the audit committee. The audit is set to proceed in the next few months, and the auditor will choose three county agencies to examine. But for parents like Deanna Hardwick, who's experienced the power of this agency first-hand, a state-level audit is just the beginning of a broader movement towards transparency and accountability.

"Once the American people are able to be made aware that this is going on, I think that will be a real step forward towards making sure that there's accountability and making sure that the agency is working towards keeping families together rather than separating them," says Hardwick.

About 10 minutes.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Paul Detrick, Tracy Oppenheimer, and Weissmueller.


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CPS get extra money for babies with blue eyes. CPS and other so called protecting children agencies like dyfs need to be abolished. Just about everything the government provides thats serves and protects people are failures. This is what happens when you turn away from God and look to the devil which is our big government bureaucracy. if you fail to give your life in the fight against satan,
then you lose both your life and your soul.

i pray for this family,
the rest of the country needs to wake up, fight satan, and be willing to give their life doing so.

cops? read the Bible passages of roman soldiers during the time of Christ's crucifixion. that's you. still wanna remain on that "winning" team? it is your choice, and you will reap the result, i guarantee it. repent before it's too late for your soul - it's up to you, this may be your last warning, who knows what'll happen on your next shift.

Anonymous 12169, I agree. But only as a last resort, I believe God wanted us to live life on this EArth to its fullest, and that means staying alive by whatever means possible. However, if any government agency were to come to my door at this moment, and beat it down just to get to me and lock me up for life, only then would I have to take one or two out before killing myself.

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Sunday, August 18, 2013

Owner of Snowden's Email Service on Why He Closed Lavabit Rather Than Comply With Gov't

Lavabit, an encrypted email service believed to have been used by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, has abruptly shut down. The move came amidst a legal fight that appeared to involve U.S. government attempts to win access to customer information. In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we are joined by Lavabit owner Ladar Levison and his lawyer, Jesse Binnall. "Unfortunately, I can?t talk about it. I would like to, believe me," Levison says. "I think if the American public knew what our government was doing, they wouldn?t be allowed to do it anymore." In a message to his customers last week, Levison said: "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit." Levison said he was barred from discussing the events over the past six weeks that led to his decision. Soon after, another secure email provider called Silent Circle also announced it was shutting down.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AARON MAT?: We turn now to the news an encrypted email service believed to have been used by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has abruptly shut down. The move came amidst a legal fight that appeared to involve U.S. government attempts to win access to customer information.

The owner of Lavabit, Ladar Levison, wrote a message online saying, quote, "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit." Ladar Levison said he was barred from discussing the events over the past six weeks that led to his decision.

He went on to write, quote, "This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States."

Later on Thursday, another secure email provider called Silent Circle also announced it was shutting down.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, in a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we go to Washington, D.C., where we?re joined by Ladar Levison, founder, owner and operator of Lavabit. We?re also joined by his lawyer, Jesse Binnall.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Ladar Levison, let?s begin with you. Explain the decision you made.

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah, well, I?ve--thank you, Amy. I?ve compared the decision to that of, you know, putting a beloved pet to sleep, you know, faced with the choice of watching it suffer or putting it to sleep quietly. It was a very difficult decision. But I felt that in the end I had to pick between the lesser of two evils and that shutting down the service, if it was no longer secure, was the better option. It was, in effect, the lesser of the two evils.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you facing? When you say "the lesser of two evils," what was the other choice?

LADAR LEVISON: Unfortunately, I can?t talk about that. I would like to, believe me. I think if the American public knew what our government was doing, they wouldn?t be allowed to do it anymore, which is why I?m here in D.C. today speaking to you. My hope is that, you know, the media can uncover what?s going on, without my assistance, and, you know, sort of pressure both Congress and our efforts through the court system to, in effect, put a cap on what it is the government is entitled to in terms of our private communications.

AARON MAT?: For those who aren?t familiar with what encrypted email is, can you walk us through that and talk about what your service provided?

LADAR LEVISON: Certainly. You know, I?ve always liked to say my service was by geeks, for geeks. It?s grown up over the last 10 years, it?s sort of settled itself into serving those that are very privacy-conscious and security-focused. We offered secure access via high-grade encryption. And at least for our paid users, not for our free accounts--I think that?s an important distinction--we offered secure storage, where incoming emails were stored in such a way that they could only be accessed with the user?s password, so that, you know, even myself couldn?t retrieve those emails. And that?s what we meant by encrypted email. That?s a term that?s sort of been thrown around because there are so many different standards for encryption, but in our case it was encrypted in secure storage, because, as a third party, you know, I didn?t want to be put in a situation where I had to turn over private information. I just didn?t have it. I didn?t have access to it. And that was sort of--may have been the situation that I was facing. You know, obviously, I can?t speak to the details of any specific case, but--I?ll just leave it at that.

AMY GOODMAN: NSA leaker Edward Snowden recently described your decision to shut down Lavabit as, quote, "inspiring." He told The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, quote, "America cannot succeed as a country where individuals like Mr. Levison have to relocate their businesses abroad to be successful. Employees and leaders at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are. The defense they have offered to this point is that they were compelled by laws they do not agree with, but one day of downtime for the coalition of their services could achieve what a hundred Lavabits could not."

Snowden went on to say, quote, "When Congress returns to session in September, let us take note of whether the internet industry?s statements and lobbyists--which were invisible in the lead-up to the Conyers-Amash vote--emerge on the side of the Free Internet or the NSA and its Intelligence Committees in Congress."

Ladar, you were the service provider for Edward Snowden?

LADAR LEVISON: I believe that?s correct. Obviously, I didn?t know him personally, but it?s been widely reported, and there was an email account bearing his name on my system, as I?ve been made well aware of recently.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald also wrote, "What is particularly creepy about the Lavabit self-shutdown is that the company is gagged by law even from discussing the legal challenges it has mounted and the court proceeding it has engaged. In other words, the American owner of the company believes his Constitutional rights and those of his customers are being violated by the US Government, but he is not allowed to talk about it."

Greenwald goes on to write, quote, "Just as is true for people who receive National Security Letters under the Patriot Act, Lavabit has been told [that] they would face serious criminal sanctions if they publicly discuss what is being done to their company."

Ladar Levison, why did you start Lavabit?

LADAR LEVISON: Well, just to add one thing to Greenwald?s comments, I mean, there?s information that I can?t even share with my lawyer, let alone with the American public. So if we?re talking about secrecy, you know, it?s really been taken to the extreme. And I think it?s really being used by the current administration to cover up tactics that they may be ashamed of.

But just to answer your question, why did I start Lavabit? It was right out of college. I was sitting around with a group of my friends. I owned the domain name nerdshack.com, and we thought it would be cool to offer, you know, a free private email with a large quota, just like Gmail, and we sort of built the service along those lines. And as I was designing and developing the custom platform, it was right around when the PATRIOT Act came out. And that?s really what colored my opinion and my philosophy, and why I chose to take the extra effort and build in the secure storage features and sort of focus on the privacy niche and the security focus niche. And it?s really grown up from there. We?ve seen a lot of demand for, you know, people who want email but don?t necessarily want it lumped in and profiled along with their searches or their browsing history or any of their other Internet activities. And that?s really where we?ve focused and really how we?ve grown over the years, up to when I shut down 410,000 registered users.

AARON MAT?: And, Ladar, during this time, you?ve complied with other government subpoenas. Is that correct?

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah, we?ve probably had at least two dozen subpoenas over the last 10 years, from local sheriffs? offices all the way up to federal courts. And obviously I can?t speak to any particular one, but we?ve always complied with them. I think it?s important to note that, you know, I?ve always complied with the law. It?s just in this particular case I felt that complying with the law--

JESSE BINNALL: And we do have to be careful at this point.

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah, I--

JESSE BINNALL: But I think he can speak philosophically about the--his philosophy behind Lavabit and why it would lead to his decision to shut down.

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah, I have--

AMY GOODMAN: That?s Jesse Binnall, by the way. And, Jesse, how difficult is this for Ladar Levison, what he can say, what he can?t say? How high are the stakes here?

JESSE BINNALL: The stakes are very high. It?s a very unfortunate situation that, as Americans, we really are not supposed to have to worry about. But Ladar is in a situation where he has to watch every word he says when he?s talking to the press, for fear of being imprisoned. And we can?t even talk about what the legal requirements are that make it so he has to watch his words. But the simple fact is, I?m really here with him only because there are some very fine lines that he can?t cross, for fear of being dragged away in handcuffs. And that?s pretty much the exact fears that led the founders to give us the First Amendment in the first place. So it?s high stakes.

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah.

AARON MAT?: And, Ladar, in your letter, you write that "A favorable decision would allow me to resurrect Lavabit as an American company." So, are you suggesting perhaps that you would consider moving it abroad?

LADAR LEVISON: I don?t think I can continue to run Lavabit abroad as an American citizen. I would have to move abroad, effectively, to administer the service. As an American citizen, I?m still subject to the laws and jurisdiction of the United States, particularly as long as I continue to live here. You know, that?s why I have a lot of respect for Snowden, because he gave up his entire life, the life that he?s known his entire life, so that he could speak out. I haven?t gotten to that point. I still hope that it?s possible to run a private service, private cloud data service, here in the United States without necessarily being forced to conduct surveillance on your users by the American government.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you say, Ladar, if you?ve received a national security letter?

LADAR LEVISON: No.

JESSE BINNALL: Unfortunately, he can?t.

AMY GOODMAN: We?re going to talk about that in a minute, the overall issue of what these are, for listeners and viewers who are not familiar with this. But, Ladar Levison, soon after you pulled the plug on Lavabit, another encrypted email provider called Silent Circle also shut down. Mike Janke, Silent Circle?s CEO and co-founder, said, quote, "There was no 12-hour heads up. If we announced it, it would have given authorities time to file a national security letter. We decided to destroy it before we were asked to turn (information) over. We had to do scorched earth." Ladar, your response?

LADAR LEVISON: I can certainly understand his position. If the government had learned that I was shutting my service down--can I say that?

JESSE BINNALL: Well, I think it?s best to kind of avoid that topic, unfortunately. But I think it is fair to say that Silent Circle was probably in a very different situation than Lavabit was, and which is probably why they took the steps that they did, which I think were admirable.

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah. But I will say that I don?t think I had a choice but to shut it down without notice. I felt that was my only option. And I?ll have to leave it to your listeners to understand why. But it?s important to note that, you know, Lavabit wasn?t the first service provider to receive a government request, and we?re not the first service provider to fight it. We?re just the first service provider to take a different approach. And it could very well be because of our size that we have that option. We?re wholly focused on secure email. Without it, we have no business. You take a much larger provider with a greater number of employees, and shutting down a major section of their company, when they have to answer to shareholders, may not be a viable option.

AMY GOODMAN: Why have you decided to speak out today, Ladar?

LADAR LEVISON: Because my biggest fear when I shut down the service was that no good would come of it. And I?m hoping that by speaking out, I can prompt, hopefully, Congress to act and change the laws that put me in this circumstance to begin with. I know that?s a little ironic, considering I can?t speak about the specific laws that put me in this position, but, you know, there?s a real need in this country to establish what the rights are of our cloud providers. And unless we take actions to ensure that, you know, we can continue to operate secure, private services, I think we?re going to lose a lot of business over the next few years. And I think all the major providers, not just Lavabit, have gone on record to say the same.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think people should use email?

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah, I think it?s a great way to communicate. I think we?re entering a world where we have any number of ways of communicating, from postal mail to Twitter, to text messaging, to Facebook, to instant messenger, to email, to telephone, to video chat. They all kind of blend together. They all sort of fit their own niche, their own purpose. And I think email still has a very important role to play in communication between people.

AMY GOODMAN: Should we just assume it?s all being read?

LADAR LEVISON: I think you should assume any communication that is electronic is being monitored.

AMY GOODMAN: We?re going to break and then come back to our discussion. And we?ll be joined by a service provider who did get a national security letter and is now able to talk about it. We?ve been speaking with Ladar Levison, Lavabit owner, who just shut down the--as a service provider, provided services to Edward Snowden; and Jesse Binnall, his lawyer. We?ll be back in a minute.


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