Category: The Regime

The former Yugoslavia

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

Trebinje, Bosnia and Herzegovina

I was thinking about this today. I was actually involved in organizing people to call the White House and get them to intervene in Yugoslavia. Boy, was I naive. Everything I’ve read since them tells me the war had much more to do with neoliberal economic interests, and not humanitarian intervention. In fact, there’s reason to believe the “ethnic cleansing” was a manufactured rational for the bombings and subsequent NATO control.

The older I get, the more I see there really is no such thing as a “good war.”

License-plate reader company claims First Amendment right to build a 1.8-billion-image database

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

License Plate Readers on AZ DPS Patrol Car

Did you know these companies cruise the parking lots of clinics and doctor’s offices, taking pictures of the license plates? They sell them to Big Pharma so the companies can target you to sell you stuff. So this Tech Dirt article tells us about how Big Data wants to preserve that:

Private companies engaging in large-scale surveillance are pushing back against the push back against large-scale surveillance… by filing lawsuitsalleging their First Amendment right to photograph license plates is being infringed on by state laws forbidding the use of automatic license plate readers by private companies.

Now, these laws aren’t saying law enforcement agencies can’t use these readers. They can. What they do say (or did… Utah’s law was amendedafter a lawsuit by license plate reader company Vigilant) is that private companies, like repossession firms and tow truck services, can’t use these readers. But apparently they do, and those who manufacture and support the equipment would like to continue capturing this market.

Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica reports that Vigilant has filed another lawsuit, this time against the state of Arkansas, arguing that a state law curbing the use of LPRs by private companies tampers with its free speech rights.

In this case, the two firms in question—Digital Recognition Network (DRN) and Vigilant Systems—generate, maintain, and share access to the license plate reader database with law enforcement.The new Arkansas state law took effect in 2014, and it bans the private collection of license plate reader data while still allowing the cops to use the devices, usually mounted on patrol cars. The two companies say that their First Amendment rights are being violated, as they are allowed to photograph—even under an automated, high-speed process that is then shared with law enforcement—any and all license plates, anywhere.

There’s a bit of a disconnect in Viglant’s/DRN’s logic, but one that’s a bit troublesome for the courts to address. By portraying the capture of license plates at a rate of nearly 1,000 per hour as little more than a digital version of someone taking individual photographs of publicly-displayed plates, the companies hope to make its technology look less intrusive than it is.

The troublesome part is that courts have held that privacy violations that don’t exist in the singular can’t magically be summoned by en massecollections. There are definitely privacy concerns, however, especially when this information is used (and misused) by law enforcement. But the companies argue that there’s nothing personally identifiable about a license plate, at least without access to other databases like those held by states’ departments of motor vehicles. (Oddly, law enforcement officials have madethe same argument, despite having this access.) This is true, but it’s of little comfort when the privately-held database contains 1.8 billion records and is growing at the rate of 70 million per month.

Score one for our civil liberties

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Surveillance...

I imagine this ruling will also apply to the license-plate camera data being retained “indefinitely” by local police departments:

No doubt, other law enforcement agencies would love having that kind of capability with all the information they gather up in their ongoing activities. But as of yesterday, that may just be just a police-state fantasy, as a federal court ruled that such a “collect it all” and “store it forever” ideology is unconstitutional.

In that little-noticed but potentially significant ruling (coming in a tax case), the Second Circuit declared that defendant Stavros Ganias’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when law enforcement held copies of his entire hard drives for nearly three years and then accessed documents from those drives that were not covered by the original search warrant. The court’s ruling declared that the Constitution does not permit “officials executing a warrant for the seizure of particular data on a computer to seize and indefinitely retain every file on that computer for use in future criminal investigations.”  The ruling goes on to note (emphasis added):

If the 2003 warrant authorized the Government to retain all the data on Ganias’s computers on the off-chance the information would become relevant to a subsequent criminal investigation, it would be the equivalent of a general warrant. The Government’s retention of copies of Ganias’s personal computer records for two-and-a-half years deprived him of exclusive control over those files for an unreasonable amount of time. This combination of circumstances enabled the Government to possess indefinitely personal records of Ganias that were beyond the scope of the warrant while it looked for other evidence to give it probable cause to search the files. This was a meaningful interference with Ganias’s possessory rights in those files and constituted a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment…

The Government had no warrant authorizing the seizure of Ganias’s personal records in 2003. By December 2004, these documents had been separated from those relevant to the investigation of American Boiler and IPM. Nevertheless, the Government continued to retain them for another year-and-a-half until it finally developed probable cause to search and seize them in 2006. Without some independent basis for its retention of those documents in the interim, the Government clearly violated Ganias’s Fourth Amendment rights by retaining the files for a prolonged period of time and then using them in a future criminal investigation. 

Of course, upon developing probable cause in the expanded investigation, the government could have gone back to the defendant with the second warrant and re-copied his hard drive. But the court notes that because “Ganias had altered the original files shortly after the (original) 2003 warrant, the evidence obtained in (second warrant) would not have existed but for the Government’s retention of those images.” That indefinite NSA-esque retention of all information – even stuff not covered by the original warrant – is what is the court says is unconstitutional.

Kucinich: Stop calling the war a ‘mistake’

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Dennis Kuchinich

I think I’m gonna go with what Dennis Kucinich said:

As Iraq descends into chaos again, more than a decade after “Mission Accomplished,” media commentators and politicians have mostly agreed upon calling the war a “mistake.” But the “mistake” rhetoric is the language of denial, not contrition: it minimizes the Iraq War’s disastrous consequences, removes blame, and deprives Americans of any chance to learn from our generation’s foreign policy disaster.

The Iraq War was not a “mistake” — it resulted from calculated deception. The painful, unvarnished fact is that we were lied to. Now is the time to have the willingness to say that.

In fact, the truth about Iraq was widely available, but it was ignored. There were no WMD. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. The war wasn’t about liberating the Iraqi people. I said this in Congress in 2002. Millions of people who marched in America in protest of the war knew the truth, but were maligned by members of both parties for opposing the president in a time of war — and even leveled with the spurious charge of “not supporting the troops.”

I’ve written and spoken widely about this topic, so today I offer two ways we can begin to address our role:

1) President Obama must tell us the truth about Iraq and the false scenario that caused us to go to war.

When Obama took office in 2008, he announced that his administration would not investigate or prosecute the architects of the Iraq War. Essentially, he suspended public debate about the war. That may have felt good in the short term for those who wanted to move on, but when you’re talking about a war initiated through lies, bygones can’t be bygones.

The unwillingness to confront the truth about the Iraq War has induced a form of amnesia which is hazardous to our nation’s health. Willful forgetting doesn’t heal, it opens the door to more lying. As today’s debate ensues about new potential military “solutions” to stem violence in Iraq, let’s remember how and why we intervened in Iraq in 2003.

2) Journalists and media commentators should stop giving inordinate air and print time to people who were either utterly wrong in their support of the war or willful in their calculations to make war.

By and large, our Fourth Estate accepted uncritically the imperative for war described by top administration officials and congressional leaders. The media fanned the flames of war by not giving adequate coverage to the arguments against military intervention.

The Wire

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

wire

Don’t worry, I’m sure we can trust them all to do the right thing:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has been quietly advising local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology they are using to sweep up basic cellphone data from entire neighborhoods, the Associated Press has learned.

Citing security reasons, the U.S. has intervened in routine state public records cases and criminal trials regarding use of the technology. This has resulted in police departments withholding materials or heavily censoring documents in rare instances when they disclose any about the purchase and use of such powerful surveillance equipment.

Federal involvement in local open records proceedings is unusual. It comes at a time when President Barack Obama has said he welcomes a debate on government surveillance and called for more transparency about spying in the wake of disclosures about classified federal surveillance programs.

One well-known type of this surveillance equipment is known as a Stingray, an innovative way for law enforcement to track cellphones used by suspects and gather evidence. The equipment tricks cellphones into identifying their owners’ account information and transmitting data to police as if it were a phone company’s tower. That allows police to obtain cellphone information without having to ask for help from service providers, such as Verizon or AT&T, and can locate a phone without the user even making a call or sending a text message.

But without more details about how the technology works and under what circumstances it’s used, it’s unclear whether the technology might violate a person’s constitution rights or whether it’s a good investment of taxpayer dollars.

Interviews, court records and public-records requests show the Obama administration is asking agencies to withhold common information about the equipment, such as how the technology is used and how to turn it on. That pushback has come in the form of FBI affidavits and consultation in local criminal cases.

Hmm

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Ibragim Todashev's Father Speaks at CAIR-FL Press Conference

I thought the Ibragim Todashev shooting stunk to high heaven, and now I’m really curious:

The Boston FBI agent who fatally shot a Chechen friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Florida last year had a brief and troubled past at the Oakland Police Department in California. In four years, Officer #8313 took the Fifth at a police corruption trial and was the subject of two police brutality lawsuits and four internal affairs investigations. He retired from the department in 2004 at age 31.

Over the past year, FBI and Massachusetts officials have refused to identify the two state troopers and the agent involved in the May 22, 2013, shooting of Ibragim Todashev, 27, in his Orlando apartment, where he agreed to be interviewed. During the session, Todashev, a mixed martial arts fighter with a criminal record, turned violent, flinging a tabletop at the FBI agent and brandishing a metal pole at the trooper, they said. He was stopped by seven bullets from the FBI agent’s gun.

Even Florida, which often identifies such officers, declined to do so in this case, citing concerns for the investigators’ safety.

The Globe obtained their names by removing improperly created redactions from an electronic copy of Florida prosecutor Jeffrey L. Ashton’s report — which in March found the shooting of Todashev justified — and then verifying their identities through interviews and multiple government records. Those records include voting, birth, and pension documents.

That research identifies the FBI agent as Aaron McFarlane, 41.

McFarlane’s full name and birth date on records in Massachusetts and New Hampshire match that of the Oakland police officer who was involved in several controversies during his four years with that police force. He retired with a pension of more than $52,000 annually for the rest of his life.

U.N. human rights investigator accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Protest tent in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinian administrative prisoners, Nablus, West Bank, 28.04.2014

I’m always so surprised when someone comes out and says it. Now wait for the character assassination any minute now:

(Reuters) – A U.N. human rights investigator accused Israel on Friday of “ethnic cleansing” in pushing Palestinians out of East Jerusalem and cast doubt that the Israeli government could accept a Palestinian state in the current climate.

He spoke against a backdrop of deadlocked peace talks and accelerating Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem which Palestinians say is dimming their hope of establishing a viable state on contiguous territory.

Israel says Palestinian refusal to recognise it as a Jewish state is the main obstacle. U.S. President Barack Obama this week pressed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to help break the impasse, saying both sides must take political risks before the April 29 deadline for a framework deal.

Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, told a news conference that Israeli policies bore “unacceptable characteristics of colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing”.

“Every increment of enlarging the settlements or every incident of house demolition is a way of worsening the situation confronting the Palestinian people and reducing what prospects they might have as the outcome of supposed peace negotiations.”

Asked about his accusation of ethnic cleansing, Falk said that more than 11,000 Palestinians had lost their right to live in Jerusalem since 1996 due to Israel imposing residency laws favouring Jews and revoking Palestinian residence permits.

“The 11,000 is just the tip of the iceberg because many more are faced with possible challenges to their residency rights.”

Execution

~ susie

Botched execution details revealed

I am reminded that a lot of the same people who became activists over how chickens and cows are slaughtered are curiously silent about this.

And I can understand their rationale. Animals are innocent, etc. and this guy raped and killed a woman. But it seems to me that a lot of the most vicious killers are a direct result of society not taking an active interest in their upbringing. I forget the exact statistic, but a whopping percentage of violent criminals were sexually assaulted as children. Add to that the number of kids who weren’t fed regularly and parents who had drug or mental health problems, and it’s almost a recipe for pathology.

I imagine a lot of those sexual assaults are a direct result of our mania for “the rule of law.” When minors are sent to juvie to “teach them a lesson,” the conditions are punitive even if the intent is to rehabilitate. As long as prison rape is condoned (by being ignored), we will have this problem. I knew a guy who was assaulted in juvie and you could see the results. Heavy drinking, violence, all-around mess. He never got to the point where he was arrested, but he was famous for his hair-trigger temper and his frequent bar brawls.

So when another human being is executed, I really do see society as complicit. We have failed each other, and while we can’t save everyone, we could save a lot more people than we do.

Prepping

~ susie

'Supporting'

Yes, it does seem that the powers that be, restless after a few months without war, are now methodically prepping us for another one. While I do not pretend to know exactly what’s going on in Ukraine, I know enough about my own country and its craven media establishment to be deeply suspicious. Robert Parry:

Between the anti-Russian propaganda pouring forth from the Obama administration and the deeply biased coverage from the U.S. news media, the American people are being prepared to accept and perhaps even cheer a massacre of eastern Ukrainians who have risen up against the coup regime in Kiev.

The protesters who have seized government buildings in ten towns in eastern Ukraine are being casually dubbed “terrorists” by both the Kiev regime and some American journalists. Meanwhile, it’s become conventional wisdom in Official Washington to assume that the protesters are led by Russian special forces because of some dubious photographs of armed men, accepted as “proof” with few questions asked by the mainstream U.S. news media.

While the U.S. news media is treating these blurry photos as the slam-dunk evidence of direct Russian control of the eastern Ukrainian protests – despite denials by the Russian government and the protesters – the BBC was among the few news agencies that provided a more objective assessment, noting that the photos are open to a variety of interpretations.

However, in Official Washington, the stage is now set for what could be a massacre of Ukrainian civilians who have risen up against the putschists who seized control of Kiev in a Feb. 22 coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych. The violent putsch was spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias, some of which have now been incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard and dispatched to the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

If the slaughter of the eastern Ukrainian protesters does come, you can expect Official Washington to be supportive. Whereas the Kiev protesters who seized government buildings in February were deemed “pro-democracy” activists even as they overthrew a democratically elected leader, the eastern Ukrainian protesters, who still consider Yanukovych their legitimate president, are dismissed as “terrorists.” And, we all know what happens to “terrorists.”