Montez Spradley, an Innocent Man Once on Death Row, Is Free
By Anna Arceneaux | ACLU | September 10, 2015
Montez Spradley is finally free. He walked out of prison late last week, after spending more than nine years behind bars — including three-and-a-half years on Alabama’s death row — for a murder he did not commit.
I began representing Montez seven years ago, not long after joining the ACLU. From the very first day that I met him, Montez maintained his innocence. No physical evidence ever tied him, a young Black man, to the 2004 murder of a 58-year old white woman in Birmingham. The prosecution instead relied on the highly tainted and inconsistent testimony of his disgruntled ex-girlfriend as well as a jailhouse snitch, who both claimed he had confessed to them.
Montez’s jurors did not want him to die. They voted 10-2 to sentence him to life, but the trial judge who presided over his first trial, Judge Gloria Bahakel, overrode their decision of life in prison and sentenced him to death, in a process known as “judicial override.” More than 20 percent of the men on Alabama’s death row have been sent there by Alabama judges, even though their juries voted for life. While Florida and Delaware still have judicial override on the books, only Alabama continues to use it with disturbing frequency. And Alabama judges almost never use override to reverse a jury’s death verdict to impose life. In fact, since 1976, death-to-life overrides have only happened nine times — and only once in the last 10 years — compared to 99 times the Montez way.
Montez was not the first innocent man to arrive to death row after a judge had overridden the jury’s life vote, and until the practice is shut down, he will not be the last. Residual doubt about a defendant’s guilt is often a major reason why a jury would vote for life. The fact that innocent people continue to be sentenced to death, especially when a jury would have spared their lives, is the very definition of a failed system.
Fortunately, in a rare victory, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals recognized that Montez’s first trial had been a “miscarriage of justice.” Still, it took years to untangle the web of police misconduct and judicial misconduct by Judge Bahakel that led to Montez’s conviction and death sentence.
Montez had heard rumors that his ex-girlfriend had been paid reward money, but it was not until we won his appeal, that we started to find evidence of the payments. And we learned that she had been paid an incredible sum for her testimony: $10,000. We learned that she had tried to back out before Montez’s trial and told the police that Montez had never confessed to her. Rather than honoring the truth, they dangled the $10,000 over her head and threatened to take her children away and to prosecute her for perjury if she did not “stick with her original story.”
Neither the police nor the prosecutors ever disclosed the payments to the defense. Judge Bahakel, before sentencing Montez to death, had signed off on a payment herself. Yet she never told Montez’s trial lawyers about it, and her order authorizing the payment never made it into the court file. We also knew that the lead detective on the case — the same one who authorized the payments — had lied on the stand about the ex-girlfriend’s statement to him. Unfortunately, such things are far too common in our system where the state often focuses on winning rather than justice.
Police and prosecutors are rarely held accountable for their misconduct. In fact, the lead detective on the case — the same one who lied on the stand at trial — was honored with an award from a victims’ rights group for solving this cold case that led to Montez’s arrest. No one should be rewarded for turning a blind eye to truth and justice, especially when it means an innocent person faces execution.
Montez is still a young man. More than anything, he wanted his freedom so he could be there for his children, and now he gets to be more present in their lives and watch them grow. But nothing can give him those years back, and he faces many challenges ahead.
Others have not fared as well. Innocent people, and people whose juries wanted them to live, remain on death row. For Montez and for them, it is time to reject the failed system of capital punishment.
Israel nuclear whistleblower Vanunu placed under house arrest over TV interview
RT | September 10, 2015
Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who served 18 years for exposing details concerning Israel’s clandestine nuclear program in 1986, has been put under house arrest for giving an interview to local media, thus allegedly violating terms of his release.
The Magistrate’s Court in Jerusalem on Thursday confined the nuclear whistleblower to a seven-day house arrest, prohibiting him from using the internet or talking to the press, following a police investigation launched the previous day.
Local media report that the investigation was initiated by Shin Bet (the Israel Security Agency), which has been monitoring Vanunu’s activities since his release in 2004.
The arrest was prompted by an interview the whistleblower gave to the local Channel 2 TV station last week. The news channel said the interview’s content had been cleared for broadcast by the military censor. It added that police also asked for the unedited footage of the interview, suspecting that Vanunu had discussed sensitive information.
Channel 2 refused to hand it over, however, citing the media’s right to protect its sources. This principle is an “important element in the system of rights and freedoms on which a democratic government is based,” the station’s lawyer asserted, as quoted by the Haaretz newspaper.
Vanunu’s defense attorney, Yemima Abramovich, said that the interview was not a breach of his parole, as Vanunu had only been prohibited from talking to foreign journalists.
“He is allowed to talk to Israeli journalists,” she said, as quoted by Ynetnews, stressing that “the interview was approved by the military censor.”
“I’ve been Mordechai Vanunu’s lawyer for many years,” she added. “He is out of prison, but isn’t really free. It’s impossible for him to live a normal life.”
A senior Israeli security official told DPA news agency that, according to his release agreement, Vanunu was forbidden from sharing any classified information he had obtained as an employee at the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, “even if he already published that information in the past.”
In the parts of the interview that were aired last Friday, Vanunu spoke about his personal life and motives for leaking information about the existence of Israel’s nuclear activities, which the country neither denies, nor admits. However, he didn’t go into detail about what he leaked to the British press in 1986.
It was a desire to “inform the citizens of the Middle East, the world, and the state of Israel” that had prompted him to act, Vanunu told Channel 2, saying he was horrified at the “danger” posed by the Israel’s nuclear weapons program while working there.
The African-born Israeli worked as a technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center until 1985. He leaked the information, including photographs, about Israeli’s nuclear activities to The Sunday Times in 1986.
Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, infamously organized a complex 1986 operation to abduct Vanunu and smuggle him back to Israel. It involved a female agent in disguise seducing the whistleblower and luring him into Rome. Once there, he was injected with a paralyzing drug and transported to an Israeli reconnaissance vessel docked under the guise of a merchant ship.
After serving an 18 year prison sentence, he was released on parole under the terms of which he is prohibited from leaving the state of Israel and having contact with foreigners, including the press. He was imprisoned again for three months in 2010 on the grounds that he had contacted foreign agents.
Grant F. Smith from the Institute for Research of Middle Eastern policy told RT that Vanunu is the key witness to Israeli’s nuclear program, which the state has kept secret.
“Vanunu did something nobody else was ever able to do,” he said. “He was able to take photos inside of Dimona to the London Sunday Times, and even more surprising – they published them. He has been considered to be the key witness to the fact that there is a nuclear weapons program research and development going on [in Israel]. He was also there right at the point where, according to Department of Defense Documents released recently, they were beginning hydrogen bomb research.”
READ MORE:
Israel gags famous nuclear whistleblower invited to speak at human rights conference
US-Israeli computer super-worm hit Russian nuclear plant – Kaspersky
Egypt: 680 death sentences handed down since 3 July 2013
MEMO | September 10, 2015
Nine anti-government defendants were sentenced to death in Egypt on Monday, bringing the number of those handed the death penalty to 680 since 3 July 2013, the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) said in a report on Tuesday.
The organisation said the Egyptian security services torture opponents of the Egyptian regime and commit crimes against them so as to force them to confess to “fabricated” charges so they can be given severe sentences that may amount to the death penalty.
Seven of those who have received the death penalty have already been executed. The total number of defendants whose papers were referred to the Grand Mufti has reached 1,734. The report pointed out that senior officials at Mansoura’s security directorate systematically exercise illegal detention, kidnapping, torture and the forgery of official documents and fabrications.
The AOHR UK noted that photographing the defendants in a degrading manner, humiliating and torturing them and forcing them to give false confessions that were dictated to them constitute “unacceptable behaviour both legally and morally; and are also serious human rights violations which, if added to other human rights violations in Egypt, underline the collapse of the moral and legal system among individuals in the Egyptian police.”
The organisation warned that the adoption of the anti-terror law poses a threat to defendants who had already been sentenced to death as the new law decreased their chances of avoiding the death penalty and having fair trials.
It invited UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to form a fact-finding committee with full powers to investigate crimes committed after 3 July 2013 and bring those responsible for these crimes to justice.
On Monday, the Terrorism Circuit at the Mansoura Criminal Court, headed by Judge Osama Abdul Zahir, sentenced to death nine young men, including four students, in case number 16,850 of the year 2014, in which 24 people from the province of Dakahlia are accused. The remaining defendants were sentenced to life in prison.
Yesterday the court referred the cases of 10 defendants to the Grand Mufti for his approval. They were sentenced on charges of killing a police sergeant, committing acts of violence against the army and police forces, forming a cell that seeks regime change, and possessing explosives and weapons.
AOHR UK said that defendants were subjected to torture to force them to make fabricated confessions. Such confessions would help the regime demonise its opponents and incite public hatred ahead of the judicial procedures.
The Precarious State of the Private-Sector Drone Industry
By Jay Stanley | ACLU | September 9, 2015
A lot of people are taking it as a given that drones will become ubiquitous in the coming years. But it seems to me that that’s far from a given; there is still a lot of uncertainty over the future of this technology (and therefore over the kinds of privacy threats and free expression opportunities that it will in the end present).
This is an industry that is still in a very early stage of its development, when it is highly sensitive to shocks. Incidents and accidents that happen at this stage can have lifetime effects, lasting many decades. That is especially true with a huge media spotlight on this technology. The amount of press coverage generated by the landing of a harmless toy drone inside the White House fence is indicative here.
Imagine the uproar if we were to see somebody put a gun on a drone and start shooting people remotely. Or drones used to bypass security perimeters and deliver explosives to a high-value target such as the White House. Even if the explosives did no more than blow a small hole in the White House lawn in the middle of the night, hurting no one, that would decisively alter the course of the drone industry.
Another possibility is some kind of spectacular accident. The safety record of this new technology is not great. There has been a lot of attention paid lately to drone “near-misses” with passenger airliners. (I have heard some experts express doubt that an accidental collision between a small drone and an airliner would cause the airliner to crash—but that’s certainly not something anyone wants subject to uncontrolled real-world tests.) Should a drone bring down an airliner, the drone industry might never recover. Even an accident in which a drone falls out of the sky could be a game-changer. If the 375-pound military drone that crashed onto an elementary school playground in Pennsylvania in April 2014 had killed children, we would likely be having a different conversation today.
Even without anything so dramatic, an accumulation of smaller accidents could shape the technology over time. Any technology that involves complex interactions with human beings will inevitably have some rocky times as we attempt to smoothly integrate it into life. If drones—even small lightweight private ones—are regularly crashing onto people’s rooftops, windshields, and heads, tolerance for the technology is likely to go down fast. If drones become popular enough that the skies over our neighborhoods are regularly criss-crossed with them, this could well happen—especially given the many unknowns such as whether territorially jealous birds will routinely attack them.
There may also be a nuisance factor. Even if large numbers of small drones constantly flying overhead turn out not to be dangerous, they may simply annoy people. To start with there’s the buzzing noise they make, and of course there’s also privacy. At the ACLU we have been most focused on the danger that drones will be used to construct regimes of constant wide-area surveillance. And there is a very real potential that private-sector drones may also become a tool for directly harmful privacy invasions. But even without such significant invasions, private-sector drones may spark nebulous feelings of intrusion. I found it interesting in this regard that firefighters in a recently circulated video found drones to be annoying enough that they tried to blast them out of the sky with their hoses. When a drone hovered over a crowd of hockey fans after a 2014 game in Los Angeles, a “mob mentality set in” as the LA Times put it, and “revelers were throwing everything they could to knock the drone down.”
I can’t claim to know what motivates people in incidents like these. I do know that while photography in public is a First Amendment right, as a matter of etiquette it is often unacceptable. As I’ve discussed before, training a camera on someone who does not want to be photographed may be constitutionally protected in public (as is yelling and swearing at them), but it is also perceived as rude.
These kinds of factors may add up to a general feeling by communities that they’d rather do without the putative advantages of widespread drone usage. In this drones may prove to fall into the same category as Google Glass—a widely anticipated and talked about technology that is naively viewed as inevitable, but ultimately one that remains confined to relatively narrow applications due to the subtleties and caprices of human etiquette.
All this makes it very hard to predict what will happen to this technology. In many ways what we’re witnessing is a race against time. If drones prove to be useful enough machines with enough practical benefits that Americans feel they can’t live without them, they’ll likely tolerate the occasional tragic accident or terrorist attack, as well as a good deal of annoyance. But if the disaster happens first, drones may never get a chance to prove themselves.
City of Boston’s license plate reader database was online in plain text with no password protection
PrivacySOS | September 8, 2015
The Boston Transportation Department has been operating a license plate tracking program seeking to identify parking scofflaws, people with expired insurance, stolen cars, and even people suspected of gang and terrorist ties, according to recently discovered documents. Up until a few weeks ago, this sensitive information about thousands of people, including every person with a Boston resident parking permit, was stored online in plain text for the world to see.
In mid-August 2015, officials in Boston were surprised to receive a phone call from journalist Kenneth Lipp, who informed them that the Boston Transportation Department’s entire license plate reader database was online and available to download for anyone with an internet connection. There was no password guarding the database, which contained a million or so license plate reader records, the home addresses of every single person with a Boston parking permit, and lists of 2,500 people the police or FBI (it remains unclear which) have designated suspected gang members or terrorists, among other data.
Through some Googling, Lipp discovered that BTD’s license plate reader system, run by the Canadian technology giant Genetec, was dumping all of its records into an online server maintained by a Xerox subsidiary for the world to see—if it knew where to look.
Included in the files available on this public facing, password-free server were records suggesting that the Boston Police Department has been piggybacking off BTD license plate reader data for years. One of the files shows what appear to be records of automated emails from the BTD server to the Boston Police department’s stolen vehicle office, alerting the police each time a car on the stolen car hotlist encountered a BTD license plate reader.
I was surprised to discover these records because in 2013, in the wake of local reporter Shawn Musgrave’s expose on privacy and civil liberties problems with the department’s license plate reader program, the Boston Police told the public that it was scrapping the program altogether. The Xerox records suggest scrapping isn’t at all what occurred. Indeed, the automated emails from BTD’s license plate reader program to the Boston Police, left on the Xerox server for anyone to download at will, appear to have started at around the same time the cops told the public they’d stopped using license plate readers. That’s to say, instead of scrapping the program as the police told the public they would, BPD appears to have bootstrapped their license plate reader program from BTD data.
While the Boston Transportation Department’s license plate reader program is primarily used for parking enforcement, the records obtained freely online reveal that the information was processed for other purposes that go well beyond hunting for stolen cars.
Lipp reports for the Dig :
In collecting data, the BTD patrols city blocks—in some cases, both literally and figuratively sweeping the street with ALPR-equipped sanitation trucks—and not exclusively in search of plates belonging to scofflaws. Files obtained in our investigation reveal that as the BTD’s software searches databases, it alerts department operators if a plate is connected to a “convicted person on supervised release,” or to someone pegged to a “protection order.” Commonly called hotlists, these compendiums are created by fusing criminal intelligence from sources like the FBI’s National Crime Information Center and the AMBER Alert program, as well as from data furnished by banks, collection agencies, and the civil court system.
It’s not clear whether or how the public is any safer when authorities use massive watchlists. In Boston, a city of approximately 600,000 people, parking enforcement has one hotlist with 720,000 hits, each of which notes a plate number, location info, and available make and model data. Among the targets listed in August: 19 license numbers classified as “immediate threats,” nearly 4,000 affiliated with “wanted persons,” 25 plates linked to bad checks, 75 tied to payment defaults, and 468,617 flagged for cancelled insurance. Also exposed were 2,500 hits on a “Gang/Terrorist Watch…”
We don’t know for certain from which list the 2,500 people identified as gang members or terrorists were so designated, or who designated them, but a likely suspect is the FBI’s Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File (VGTOF) database.
According to a 2007 Inspector General report, the FBI at that time included nearly half a million people in this database, assigning them one of three codes meant to inform law enforcement “whether there is an active arrest warrant, a basis to detain the individual, or an interest in obtaining additional intelligence information regarding the individual,” respectively.
It’s not certain that the 2,500 people identified as “Gang/Terrorist Watch” in the Xerox/Boston Transportation Department license plate reader database were identified as such because of their inclusion in the FBI’s VGTOF, but it seems probable. The FBI may be interested to know that information about who is a suspected terrorist is posted on the internet for anyone in the world to download and peruse.
Government agencies routinely implore the public to trust them with our sensitive information, whether it’s license plate reader records detailing our movements and life patterns or information collected about political activists for so-called “public safety” purposes. But incidents like this one demonstrate that we should be very circumspect about allowing governments and corporations to collect, share, and manipulate information about us in secret.
Journalist Kenneth Lipp found this database and exposed it to the company and transportation department, triggering an added layer of security that shielded the information from the public. We will likely never know how many other people stumbled across it, or what they might have done with the information, before then.
Operation Flavius and the Killer Cameron
By Craig Murray | September 8, 2015
Exactly twenty years ago the European Court of Human Rights found that the British Government had acted illegally in shooting dead three IRA members in Gibraltar, even though the court accepted that the government had a genuine belief that they were planning a bombing attack. Indeed the court accepted the victims were terrorists, and refused compensation to their families on those grounds. But the court refused to accept there was no possibility of foiling the plot through methods other than summary execution.
In the light of the decision that Operation Flavius contravened Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, it is difficult to understand how the government can claim its killing of British men in Syria, with no trial, is anything other than murder. I personally find it difficult to imagine technically how men journeying in a car in Syria were imminently able to instantly wreak havoc in the UK so that it was impossible to prevent by any method other than their execution without trial. The level of certainty required for that decision would involve sufficient knowledge of what was to happen in the UK to stop it here. If there was vagueness about what was actually to happen in the UK, there cannot have been the certainty about the threat claimed. It is a logical impasse.
Frankly in twenty years of experience working with British security services their level of accuracy (remember Iraqi WMD) was never that good. And everybody is fortunately now deeply sceptical about the continual claims by the security services that there are thousands of dedicated Islamic terrorists in the UK conducting hundreds of plots every year, and yet miraculously never actually managing to kill anybody.
Just in case anybody had not worked out yet that the Guardian is a disgraceful neo-con rag, it has an article by its “legal correspondent” Joshua Rozenberg, married to the even more rabid Zionist militarist Melanie Phillips (who still believes the Iraqi WMD exist, hidden in the bed of the Euphrates). Rozenberg assures us it is absolutely legal for the British government to kill us without trial if it wants. He even suggests the murdered Mr Khan would not object:
“If he was waging war on British troops and civilians, he can hardly complain the UK’s armed forces were one step ahead of him.”
Astonishingly for a lawyer, the disgraceful Rozenberg does not seem to notice that the opening “if” is rather important. “If Mr Jones was engaged in insurance fraud, he can hardly complain at being banged up for twenty years”, so according to Mr Rozenberg we can dispense with all that nonsense about trials and evidence and just take the government’s word for it. Not to mention that the government has now instituted summary execution without trial in a country that does not even have the death penalty.
As I have argued, it is not unusual for British people to go to fight abroad. There were British citizens in the Israeli Defence Forces participating in the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza last year. Our neo-con governments of both blue and red Tories have positively encouraged the mercenary companies Executive Outcomes/Sandline/Aegis of Tony Buckingham and Tim Spicer. There are Britons fighting now in the Ukraine. We started by positively encouraging factions in the Syrian civil war, with the Saudis and CIA arming and training them and some of those factions helped constitute ISIL. There is no evidence at all that Islamic State had any interest in attacks in the UK until we started to attack it. (That is not to say it is not a very bad organisation and did not commit actions against UK citizens in its “Caliphate area”. But it did not threaten the UK).
For the government to claim the right to kill British people through sci-fi execution, based on highly unreliable secret intelligence and a secret declaration of legality, is so shocking I find it difficult to believe it is happening even as I type the words. Are we so cowed as to accept this?
Why do Police Ignore Federal Guidelines and Shoot at Moving Vehicles, Killing Occupants?
By Noel Brinkerhoff and Steve Straehley | AllGov | September 7, 2015
Federal guidelines recommend police avoid shooting into moving vehicles because innocent people can be killed and it’s ineffective at stopping cars. Police continue to use this deadly tactic, however.
An investigation by The Guardian found at least 30 incidents in 2015 of police firing their weapons into moving cars or trucks, killing at least one person each time.
Black men made up more than 25% of those, although they comprise only 6% of the driving-age population, Jon Swaine, Jamiles Lartey and Oliver Laughland wrote.
The British newspaper reported police involved in those shootings justified the use of deadly force by claiming the vehicles they shot at posed a threat to them or their colleagues. But The Guardian found almost all of the incidents were examples of police ignoring federal guidelines that say officers should open fire only if a driver presents a separate deadly threat, such as a gun. In the cases examined by the newspaper, none of those killed were pointing guns at police, and in only three cases were police aware there was a weapon in the vehicle.
“If an officer puts himself in a position where they have no alternative but to use deadly force, they will use deadly force,” Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told The Guardian. “What you really want them to do is think ‘I should not stand in front of this car. I should not put myself in a position where I have no alternative.’”
The U.S. Department of Justice does not recommend shooting into moving cars because experts say it is widely viewed as ineffective for stopping oncoming vehicles, and doing so poses risks to innocent parties. Police departments in Denver, New York City, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Miami Beach, Los Angeles and Albuquerque, among other cities, heed this recommendation.
Others haven’t adopted it. Police in Indianapolis, for example, have twice in recent months shot and killed drivers in their cars. That department’s policy states that police may fire into vehicles if it’s “reasonably perceived that the vehicle is being used as a weapon against the officer or others.”
To Learn More:
Moving Targets (by Jon Swaine, Jamiles Lartey and Oliver Laughland, The Guardian )
Should Police Shoot at Moving Cars? (by Michael Anthony Adams, Indianapolis Star )
Denver Police Change Policy on Shooting at Cars (by Noelle Phillips, Denver Post )
Police Shoot to Death One Unarmed Person Every 3 Days in U.S. (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )
Police Officer Goes on Trial for Firing 49 Shots at Two Unarmed Drug Users (by Danny Biederman and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )
Buy the Rights-Abusing Cops Lunch Says Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | September 3, 2015
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick issued a statement Wednesday that says that, to counter “America’s negative attitude toward our law enforcement officers,” people should all-but grovel at the feet of any police they come across. Patrick even suggests that “financially able” individuals (who presumably are already paying cops’ salaries via taxes) pay for the lunches of any cops they may see in a restaurant.
Here is Patrick’s complete list of groveling suggestions:
Join me in changing this negative attitude toward those that protect us, by practicing the following:
Start calling our officers sir and ma’am all of the time. It’s a show of respect they deserve.
Every time you see an officer anywhere, let them know you appreciate their service to our community and you stand with them.
If you are financially able, when you see them in a restaurant on duty pick up their lunch check, send over a dessert, or simply stop by their table briefly and say thank you for their service.
Put their charities on your giving list.
If your local law enforcement has volunteer-citizen job opportunities, sign up.
Interestingly, Patrick never mentions in his statement that a major contributor to the negative attitude many people in Texas and across America have toward cops is the many times cops act in manners bereft of respect for the rights, property, health, and lives of the individuals they encounter.
How about the cops who abused Sandra Bland or Angel and Ashley Dobbs in Patrick’s home state? “Thank you sir. Thank you ma’am. Please, let me pay for that sandwich!”
While some people would say that these abusive cops are just a few bad apples, reading through articles by Rutherford Institute President John W. Whitehead or journalist William N. Grigg, it becomes clear that the basket contains many bad apples. The fact is that many cops are more intent on harassing, abusing, and dominating people they encounter than on serving and protecting them. Rather than disrespect for cops being, as Patrick seems to believe, some irrational, mystical belief that showed up out of nowhere, the disrespect is a logical response to the horror show of abusive cops that plays out again and again in this age of police militarization.
Though often overlooked, the war on drugs is an underlying cause of the worsening police conduct. Because the growth, manufacture, sale, transfer, and use of drugs are nonviolent and victimless activities, with no complaining victim, police have resorted to all kinds of invasive, deceptive, and destructive tactics in fighting the war. For example, the drug war has been used as an excuse for vast expansion of police practices including covert surveillance, sting operations, pretext traffic stops, asset seizures without any court hearing whatsoever, and SWAT team raids on homes and businesses. All of this is supposedly justified to protect people from themselves.
Of course, the drug war, like alcohol prohibition before it, has also spawned gangs fighting over turf. This violence, in turn, is used as an excuse for the further militarization of the police — in equipment, tactics, and mindset.
But, according to Patrick, we should be thankful for the SWAT team members who raided a home last night, pointing guns at all the suddenly awoken family members, turning the place upside down in an effort to find even a fraction of an ounce of a forbidden drug, and maybe shooting someone or the family’s pet dog to boot.
The drug war corrosion runs even deeper. Beyond the SWAT team members, there are also the undercover cops trying to snag individuals in drug sale stings, the traffic cops who make up pretenses to conduct drug searches without consent or pressure drivers to “consent” to searches, and even the desk-bound cops who handle the paperwork that allows the drug war machine to relentlessly move forward.
Patrick laments that “America’s negative attitude toward our law enforcement officers” may result in less people choosing to become cops. Yet, having less cops around can actually lead to much enhanced safety.
Let’s call off the war on drugs, its danger-enhancing police practices, and the related drug war exception to the Fourth Amendment. Let people exercise their right to grow, manufacture, sell, transfer, and use drugs as they see fit. Let the violence prohibition engenders wither. Free the drug war prisoners.
With the end of the drug war, the number of cops can be significantly reduced. Ending the war may also be the single biggest step that may be taken immediately to increase Texans’ and Americans’ respect for police.
Texas Police Shot Man in Back, Autopsy Disproves Police Claim Victim “Charged At Officers”
By Cassandra Fairbanks | PINAC | September 2, 2015
The El Paso Police Department has maintained that Erik Salas Sanchez, 22, was shot for charging at police, however, the autopsy report has revealed that he was shot in the back.
The police claim that Sanchez had threatened them with a “metal object,” and charged at the officers.
The cops allegedly attempted to tase Sanchez, but were unsuccessful, and that is when a 10-year-veteran Texas police officer opened fire with his service weapon.
Sanchez was shot three times, in the right side of his back, the left side of his back, and his buttocks. Quite a feat, as he was allegedly “charging at the officers.”
He was then handcuffed despite the severe injuries, and died soon after at the Del Sol Medical Center.
This west Texas police agency has released few details surrounding the incident which took place on April 29, when police were called to respond to a burglary in Sanchez’ neighborhood.
The fatal encounter did not take place at the residence that was allegedly burglarized however, and police will only say it was “different than the location he was suspected of burglarizing.”
The victim’s mother maintains that the shooting took place outside the home she shared with her son, after police arrived and asked her to come outside.
Erik Sanchez shouted in reply to the cops, which isn’t illegal.
It remains unclear why the El Paso police officers went to the family’s home in the first place.
The Mexican Consulate has also been involved with assisting the family, as Sanchez was a Mexican citizen who was living legally in the United States as many families whose lives straddle the border.
Mexico’s Consul General Jacob Prado is calling for a full investigation of the incident.
The El Paso officer who shot Sanchez was placed on administrative leave for a few days following the incident. We all know that’s just cop speak for paid vacation.
The officer is supposed to remain on administrative duties pending the outcome of the investigation by the Texas Rangers, the El Paso Police, and the District Attorney’s office.
The investigation is anticipated to be complete by “early next year,” according to Prado.
82 Groups in US Demand Investigation of ‘Muslim-Free Zones’
teleSUR | September 2, 2015
In an open letter to the DOJ, 82 groups led by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), expressed concern over a growing trend of businesses refusing to serve customers perceived as Muslim.
“American businesses posting ‘Muslim-Free Zone’ declarations are no different than the ‘Whites Only,’ ‘No Dogs, No Jews,’ ‘No Mexican’ and ‘Irish Need Not Apply’ signs that were posted during past shameful periods of our nation’s history that we hoped were over,” the letter stated.
The letter lamented the DOJ has “remained silent” on the issue, and called on the department to determine whether “Muslim-free zones” violate Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“Title II specifically prohibits discrimination by places of entertainment like, in many instances, firing ranges,” the letter read.
Signatories to the letter include the American Civil Liberties Union, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and others.
“The broad range of groups calling for government action on the ‘Muslim-free zone’ issue clearly indicates that the U.S. Department of Justice should speak out and take concrete action to protect the constitutional rights of American Muslims,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.
At least one business that has declared itself a “Muslim-free zone” is currently being sued by CAIR.
The lawsuit accuses Florida Gun Supply of Inverness and its owner Andrew Hallinan, 28, of violating the federal public accommodations law and seeks an injunction to stop the discrimination, according to the complaint.
Amendments to CISA “Cybersecurity” Bill Fail in All Regards
By Mark Jaycox | EFF | September 1, 2015
Although grassroots activism has dealt it a blow, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) keeps shambling along like the zombie it is. In July, Senator McConnell vowed to hold a final vote on the bill before Congress left for its six-week long summer vacation. In response, EFF and over 20 other privacy groups ran a successful Week of Action, including over 6 million faxes opposing CISA, causing the Senate to postpone the vote until late September.
Senators submitted many amendments to the bill before going on vacation. The amendments, like the original language of the bill, fail to address key issues like the deep link between these government “cybersecurity” authorities and surveillance, as well as the new spying powers the bill would grant to companies.
But “cybersecurity” is already intimately tied to surveillance—a problem CISA would only worsen. Documents released by the New York Times reveal the government used the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative (CNCI) to pay telecommunications companies to spy on consumers using their networks. The CNCI includes initiatives for information gathering, but it’s always been presented to the public as fostering research and encouraging public awareness of cybersecurity problems—not spying on Americans’ Internet traffic.
The revelations are stunning. The NSA paid telecommunications companies nearly $300 million dollars in the 2010 fiscal year to invest in surveillance equipment as part of the CNCI. In fact, STORMBREW’s Breckenridge site was “100% subsidized with CNCI funding.”
In contrast, the DHS only requested $37.2 million during the same time period to support research and development in cybersecurity science and technology. Even if DHS received what it requested, does the American public really want surveillance to outweigh research and education 10 to 1?
The news is compounded by other recently-released Snowden documents that show how the NSA uses foreign intelligence laws to run an intrusion defense system (IDS) on US soil. The documents show that a Justice Department memo gave the agency permission to monitor Internet cables, “without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware.”
CISA—and its amendments—do not even begin to address these serious problems. Instead, they mandate information sharing with the intelligence community, creating even more cyberspying.
EFF will continue to oppose CISA—even if some of these amendments pass—because CISA’s vague definitions, broad legal immunity, and new spying powers allow for a tremendous amount of unnecessary damage to users’ privacy, and it’s highly unlikely that the public will learn about it. Even an amendment (#2612) offered by by Senator Al Franken, which narrows some of the definitions in CISA, does little to clarify its most troubling provisions.
What’s worse is that information-sharing bills like CISA are being painted as silver bullets to data breaches. They aren’t. The bills don’t address problems like unencrypted files, poor computer architecture, un-updated servers, and employees (or contractors) clicking malware links.
Awful Amendments
Plenty of the amendments would make the bill even worse. We’ve already discussed the horrible CFAA amendment, #2626, proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. The amendment not only increases the scope of the already expansive Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) but also authorizes injunctions against botnets (amending 18 U.S.C. § 1345) in a way that creates serious constitutional issues. After all, much of what DOJ and FBI want to do in shutting down botnets is, arguably, a search or a seizure under the Fourth Amendment; moreover, such injunctions may prevent users from communicating, thus raising First Amendment issues. The amendment is a great example of how not to amend the draconian CFAA. If the Senate wants to improve the CFAA, it should take a page out of our book.
Senator Carper has proposed another dubious change to CISA, amendment #2627. The bill attempts to codify the Department of Homeland Security’s EINSTEIN program without any public debate. EINSTEIN is an intrusion detection system—the parent of which was created by the NSA—to scan incoming Internet traffic to the federal government like emails and other connections. DHS has not told the public what agencies are using EINSTEIN. It’s possible that when you email your representative, DHS may also receive a copy. Before codifying EINSTEIN, DHS must be more transparent about the program. The most recent update from DHS about the program is from 2013, and many concerns have been raised about EINSTEIN’s legality and privacy implications. Unlike CISA, Senator Carper’s amendment mandates federal agencies create a plan to identify sensitive information and encrypt it; however, the clause exempts the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. Nor does the amendment authorize additional funding for federal agencies to improve security.
Senator Carper’s attempt to make a horrible bill marginally better is admirable, but he—along with other Senators—should oppose the bill. Even the best amendments fail to fix CISA’s serious flaws.
Not Awful Amendments
Some of the amendments try to narrow the scope of the bill. Senator Chris Coons’ amendment #2552 would limit information sharing to that necessary to describe or identify a cybersecurity threat, while Senator Wyden’s amendment (#2621) would require companies and the government to remove personal information unrelated to the threat.
But these well-meaning changes don’t address the root problems in the bill: the outrageously broad and vague definition of “cybersecurity threat” and the granting of new authorities to spy on users. Senator Franken’s amendment #2612 attempts to address that definition, but even his amendment isn’t enough. Again, no amendment scales back the two new authorities to spy on users and launch countermeasures in the bill.
Other amendments are better, including Senator Patrick Leahy’s #2587, which would remove the current CISA provision exempting all “cyber threat indicators and defensive measures” received by the government from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act and may help ensure the public can obtain information about how, if CISA is enacted into law, the information “sharing” system actually operates; Senator Jeff Flake’s 6-year sunset (#2582); and, Senator Mike Lee’s email privacy amendment (#2556), which would codify US v. Warshak by amending the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to require warrants for email and other stored content.
While some advocates will paint these amendments as “steps forward,” the amendments merely shuffle deck chairs on the Titanic—even with the better amendments, the bill is still a bad idea. The Senators are going about the wrong strategy. Democrats and libertarian Republicans should be opposing CISA outright. That’s why we’re asking users to continue emailing their Senators to stop this bill. While CISA is the very definition of a zombie bill, the public outcry against it has made a difference. But we can’t stop now. Join us by tweeting, faxing, or emailing your Senator.
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This year, Palestinians and their supporters mark the 100th anniversary of The Balfour Declaration, a written statement from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
For Palestinians, The Balfour Declaration was the beginning of their plight: a century of ethnic cleansing at the hands of European newcomers who claim Palestine as their historic home. Yet, for some reason, supporters of the Palestinians are desperate to suppress discussion of the motivation for the Balfour Declaration – how and why did it come about? … continue
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