More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?

The charge on the police docket was “disrupting class”. But that’s not how 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes saw her arrest for spraying two bursts of perfume on her neck in class because other children were bullying her with taunts of “you smell”.

“I’m weird. Other kids don’t like me,” said Sarah, who has been diagnosed with attention-deficit and bipolar disorders and who is conscious of being overweight. “They were picking on me. So I sprayed myself with perfume. Then the teacher called the police.”

The policeman didn’t have far to come. He patrols the corridors of Sarah’s school, Fulmore Middle in Austin, Texas. Like hundreds of schools in the state, and across large parts of the rest of the US, Fulmore Middle has its own police force with officers in uniform who carry guns to keep order in the canteens, playgrounds and lessons. Sarah was taken from class, charged with a criminal misdemeanour and ordered to appear in court.

Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing “inappropriate” clothes and being late for school.

In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 “Class C misdemeanour” tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later.

“We’ve taken childhood behaviour and made it criminal,” said Kady Simpkins, a lawyer who represented Sarah Bustamantes. “They’re kids. Disruption of class? Every time I look at this law I think: good lord, I never would have made it in school in the US. I grew up in Australia and it’s just rowdy there. I don’t know how these kids do it, how they go to school every day without breaking these laws.”

The emphasis on law and order in the classroom parallels more than two decades of rapid expansion of all areas of policing in Texas in response to misplaced fears across the US in the 1980s of a looming crime wave stoked by the crack epidemic, alarmist academic studies and the media.

“Zero tolerance started out as a term that was used in combating drug trafficking and it became a term that is now used widely when you’re referring to some very punitive school discipline measures. Those two policy worlds became conflated with each other,” said Fowler.

The very young are not spared. According to Appleseed, Texas records show more than 1,000 tickets were issued to primary schoolchildren over the past six years (although these have no legal force at that age). Appleseed said that “several districts ticketed a six-year-old at least once in the last five years”.

Fines run up to $500. For poorer parents, the cost can be crippling. Some parents and students ignore the financial penalty, but that can have consequences years down the road. Schoolchildren with outstanding fines are regularly jailed in an adult prison for non-payment once they turn 17. Stumping up the fine is not an end to the offending student’s problems either. A class-C misdemeanour is a criminal offence.

Abby & Robbie Martin discuss the age of information in the 21st century and philosophize what the ability to instantaneously connect with people worldwide has done to modern society; the subjectivity of “truth” as history becomes re-written with every passing generation; Alan Moore v. Frank Miller on Occupy Wall Street; The passing of the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that allows the indefinite detention of American citizens; the GOP race as a parody of itself with the candidates running and how voting for Ron Paul would be a fun social experiment if nothing else than to spoil the GOP primary.

It seems sadly fitting the USA Patriot Act turned ten years old the day after police in Oakland, California assaulted peaceful demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets. While police violence had been already rampant in New York in Zuccotti Park, Oakland marked one of the first major violent confrontations with Occupy demonstrators. Soon after, police in cities across American began raids on Occupy camps, many of which culminated in the use of pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and sonic weapons. The evidence that such raids were coordinated by city mayors continues to mount, even though they vehemently deny any collusion. Most recently, police at UC Davis in California nonchalantly pepper sprayed peaceful students sitting on a plaza.

For ten years, we’ve watched one of the most draconian laws passed with incredible haste systematically destroy the freedoms that were supposedly under attack by terrorists and the “axis of evil.” In the name of national security, the Patriot Act has allowed our government — one that touts itself as the freeist in the world — the ability to spy on its citizens without justification, search their homes without warrants, and even penalize them for speaking a word of such actions.

Its recent anniversary in October however, also highlights something equally as insidious now embedded in the American national psyche: The Patriot Act has further cemented the normalcy of bloated security culture and the abuse of civil liberties in exchange for a supposed sense of safety. Its passage was the first nail in the coffin we’ve constructed for our constitutional rights, and paved the way for a security state that Orwell’s Big Brother would eventually be envious of. Between the FBI creating and then capturing terrorists, an incredible nexus of national security organizations, the militarization of our civil police forces and a mostly complicit mainstream media all too willing to act as a mouthpiece for whatever administration happens to hold the White House, we have wrapped ourselves in an increasingly fascist looking flag.

Read the full post at Diatribe Media

Where to mate? 1984 please.

“You lookin’ at me?” —Travis Bickle (performed by Robert De Niro), Taxi Driver (1976)

The use of surveillance cameras in taxis that record both sound and images hit the headlines last week, when it emerged that the City Council of the historic English city of Oxford was making them compulsory for all local private hire vehicles [1]. Many commentators were shocked by the depths to which the surveillance society had now stooped but few spotted that this phenomenon has been around for over a decade, and not just in the UK.

CCTV in taxis is a worldwide development. The globalised surveillance industrial complex offers one-solution-fits-all products regardless of regional differences or actual need. Wherever taxi cameras have been introduced the measure has courted controversy and time and time again privacy laws around the world have seemingly been unable to restrain this addition to the surveillance panoply. It is through such incremental steps that societal values have and continue to be eroded.

Driving a taxi undoubtedly has risks, particularly at night with an alcohol fuelled clientèle, but is there actual evidence that cameras can significantly improve driver safety? Even if cameras were effective, are they truly acceptable? Are there not other measures that could be introduced which would have less impact on the freedoms of taxi passengers?

Background

Amazingly the first city to introduce compulsory taxi cameras was not in the UK. That dubious accolade goes to Perth in Australia, where a licensing condition was introduced from mid December 1997, after an 18 month decision making, testing and development process. Other countries with cities that have compulsory taxi cameras include Canada, Norway, China, the United States, Holland and New Zealand.

Bolton’s brave experiment

In the UK cameras were trialled in Bolton in 2001 [2] – cameras, recording images and sound, were fitted to ten taxis for six weeks. The trial was hailed a success because no incidents occurred. No control group was used. No independent study was produced. It was simply hailed a success by Bolton Council, the taxi drivers and the security industry firms behind the trial [3]. One of the reasons given for driver support was the hope that it would lead to cheaper insurance premiums [4].

In 2002 the then MP for Bolton South East, Dr Brian Iddon raised the trial in the House of Commons [5], calling it a “brave experiment” and and asking Home Office Minister John Denham whether he agreed it should be spread throughout the country. And so Bolton became the poster city for taxi CCTV in the UK.

On the back of the Bolton success myth, Chubb, the company whose CabWatch system had been used, touted their wares to Leicester and Cambridge City Councils who ran their own trials. As with Bolton, Chubb’s system relayed sound and images to a remote video response centre. Over the next few years a string of UK councils began considering cameras as a condition of license for taxis and private hire vehicles.

It is now commonplace for taxis to be equipped with CCTV cameras throughout the UK.

Southampton Court Challenge

In the UK Parliament in July 2007 [6] it was reported that the Southampton Safe City Partnership were sponsoring CCTV in taxi cabs.

In November 2010 a driver, Keith May, who runs taxi firm K & K Hire, began legal action in the Southampton Magistrates’ Court against the City Council’s imposition of a condition requiring the installation of a taxi camera in one of his licensed hackney carriages. In April 2011 the court found in May’s favour [7]. Southampton City Council are now appealing that decision [8].

A month after the court decision, taxi drivers held a demo in Southampton [9] to protest against the council’s compulsory camera requirement. But before defenders of passengers’ freedoms get too excited about the Southampton taxi drivers’ stand, it is worth listening to a recent edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘You and Yours’ [10], on which May clarified his position. May said:

I’m not against CCTV, I’m not against CCTV at all. I’m against the conditions that this council, Southampton Council Licensing Office has imposed on us.
[...]
The problem we’ve got in Southampton is that the CCTV operates in a way that it is on 24/7, you can never turn it off, the driver’s got not control of it whatsoever, so every single passenger that gets in a licensed vehicle in Southampton – their conversation’s being recorded no matter whether they’ve done anything wrong or not.
[...]
What about, the taxi drivers in Southampton, private hires and taxis, majority of those vehicles gets used privately as well. The drivers own those vehicles, [?], what happens when they’re taking their children down to the beach with their wife on a weekend. Why should that conversation be getting recorded?

In other words May is saying that in his view surveilling passengers is okay as long as the driver has control over it, but surveilling a taxi driver’s family is wrong. And it is worth mentioning that the court case challenged the cameras as a licensing requirement, not the right or wrong of the cameras themselves. At time of writing the judgment is not publicly available.

It’s all right we won’t look at the footage, honest

The response from Southampton City Council is similar to the response from licensing authorities throughout the UK and across the globe – passengers have nothing to worry about because the sound and images are encrypted and no-one’s going to access them unless there’s an incident. The kit being used is an example of what is often called privacy by design (PbD) or a privacy enhancing technology (PET). Aside from the fact that encryption is not as secure as many would have us believe, surely there is more at stake here? We shall return to privacy by design below.

To understand how we got to this point let’s travel back to the 1990s and look at how the taxi CCTV craze first began.

Perth goes on camera

As stated above it was in Australia that taxi compulsory CCTV was first introduced. In Perth, following a number of attacks on taxi drivers, a safety summit was held in February 1996. According to a report by Dr. Ian Radbone of the University of South Australia [11] a number of solutions were discussed and: “While the installation of a camera was not necessarily considered the most effective option, it was broadly supported because of its immediate feasibility and non-intrusiveness.”

In the 1990s the Perth cameras did not record sound.

Radbone’s February 1998 report states:

The cameras have been compulsory for two months. What’s the evidence of effectiveness so far? The TIB [Taxi Industry Board] data base has recorded a drop in reported incidents but the numbers are too small to be statistically significant at this stage.

A November 2000 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology, entitled ‘Preventing Assaults on Taxi Drivers in Australia’ [12] states:

Solid state digital technology was chosen for Perth taxis where cameras have been mandatory since December 1997; these resulted in a 60 per cent reduction in attacks on drivers within a year after introduction (Pflaum 1999).

Note that the 60 percent reduction figure is cited as coming from one “Pflaum” in 1999. Upon closer investigation it transpires that Pflaum is a taxi driver in Germany who, in 1999, wrote an article [13] for a German Taxi Journal. In this article he gave no source or background to the 60 percent figure. Pflaum wrote:

In Perth, Australia, where camera surveillance was made mandatory for taxicabs, attacks against cab drivers and other major troubles were reduced by 60% one year after the introduction.

If the cameras in Perth really were such a magic bullet one has to wonder why earlier this year it was announced that the Western Australian government is set to upgrade these cameras.

The Upgrade cycle

In January 2011 it was announced that $8 million (Australian dollars) would be spent to upgrade the cameras in Perth’s taxi fleet and for the first time record sound as well as images. In addition four cameras will now be fitted to each taxi, two inside and two outside. The new cameras will record continuously.

The Western Australian Taxi Camera Surveillance Unit (TCSU) standard 2011 [14] states:

The TCSU shall include at least two internally mounted cameras and two externally mounted cameras.

The reason given by the Government of Western Australia Department of Transport [15] for the camera upgrades is that the cameras are “generally technologically outdated” and they state:

As a result, when a crime occurs inside or outside a taxi, these existing models often do not provide the evidence necessary to prosecute the offender. A new standard is urgently needed to help make the taxi industry a safe working environment for taxi drivers and a safe transport service for passengers.

When it is time to upgrade suddenly no mention is made of magical decreases in crime, instead action must be taken, we are told, to make taxis a safe place.

Alternatives to cameras – partitions

One alternative to cameras is the use of a partition between the driver and the passengers. Such partitions have long been a feature of the iconic London black taxi or Hackney Carriage.

One female driver told Taxi Today Monthly in 2009 [16]:

I have always driven a London Taxi because I value the security and safety it provides. The central partition is crucial to the job as it provides both added peace of mind and protection.

(’Safety first for female drivers’, Taxi Today Monthly, January 2009)

Partitions can also be fitted to other vehicle types and are sometimes known as safety screens or safety shields.

A 1999 report ‘The Effectiveness of Taxi Partitions: The Baltimore Case’ [17], prepared for The Southeastern Transportation Center University of Tennessee Knoxville found:

Thus far it has been determined that shields in Baltimore taxis significantly reduce assaults on taxi drivers. Furthermore, shields are the primary reason for reduced assaults compared to other explanations such as reduced crime, drug arrests, and population.

The shield study looked at shield implementation in Baltimore from 1991 to 1997 and included a control study. Compare this study protocol to that of the Bolton camera study mentioned above.

Many studies report that in the United States and other countries there is a perception amongst drivers that safety partitions reduce tips by isolating the driver from the passenger and presenting a physical barrier to communication. In the UK however the partition has been viewed as a welcome addition by drivers and passengers alike. A 1970 Home Office report of the ‘Departmental Committee on the London taxicab trade’ [18] found:

A large proportion of fares appreciate the privacy from the driver and the fact that they cannot be inflicted with his unwanted conversation.

(p197, ‘Report of the Departmental Committee on the London taxicab trade’, Home Office, 1970)

More alternatives to cameras

A January 2007 report of the Taxicab Advisory Group Committee on Driver Safety to the
Mayor of the City of Atlanta, Georgia [19] looked at the various alternatives to cameras. It references the comments of one of the authors of the Baltimore partition study, Dr John R. Stone who gave a speech to a ‘Taxi Driver Security’ conference in Montreal in 1996 [20].

Stone explained that in 1990 following the murder of a taxi driver, the Montreal Taxi Bureau formed a Round Table group which implemented a number of safety measures including: flashing rear emergency lights and priority for 911 taxi calls, driver training and driver reports of community emergencies, media coverage and rewards for identifying taxi driver assailants, spot police inspections of taxis and passengers, a training video on tips for taxi driver safety.

Stone told the conference that:

Between 1990 and 1995 as a result of Round Table efforts, the number of MUC [Montreal Urban Community] taxi robberies fell dramatically by 60% from 187 annual armed robberies to 76. Furthermore, relations between taxi drivers, the police, and the community improved.

Driving force

So why, despite the alternatives that have less impact on the freedoms of passengers and drivers, have so many cities opted for cameras?

A 2009 report of the Canadian ‘Surveillance Camera Awareness Network (SCAN)’ [21] looked at the introduction of cameras in taxis in Ottawa, Canada. The report states:

Cab camera companies are entrepreneurial and in addition to cameras must sell the very idea of surveillance. This may require making claims regarding the deterrent effect of cab cameras, as well as the value of the footage in prosecuting crimes.

(p7 ‘Camera Surveillance in Ottawa Taxicab’, ‘A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada Part Two’, 2009)

The SCAN report points out that independent studies that support camera companies claims are scarce, and that:

Our two reports for the Surveillance Camera Awareness Network demonstrate that cameras and other new surveillance measures tend to be implemented without appropriate consultation or adequate independent evaluation, which is demonstrated by the case of cab camera implementation in Ottawa.

(p93 ‘Conclusion’, ‘A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada Part Two’, 2009)

Surely in the face of the shortage of independent studies supporting the camera companies’ claims and the multitude of alternatives that have less impact on the freedoms of drivers and passengers this is an easy win for privacy and data protection commissioners around the world? Maybe, but only to a point.

Weakness of privacy laws

In New Zealand earlier this year the Transport Agency (NZTA) sought guidance [22] from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) following the introduction of compulsory camera Rule [23] for all taxis in major population areas. The NZTA published a letter which states:

The OPC says it has serious concerns about the privacy implications of audio recording in taxis and plans to keep a watching brief on any moves by taxi organisations to introduce it. In addition the OPC asks that any taxi organisation planning to introduce audio recordings notify the Office of the plans so that it can monitor its use by the industry.

(Audio recording of passengers in taxis (Letter from the NZTA) – 30/6/2011)

In Canada the 2003/4 Annual Report [24] of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) under “issues the OIPC has provided advice or comments on over the past year” states:

The Motor Carrier Commission’s proposal to place digital videocameras in taxi cabs in the Lower Mainland (the Information and Privacy Commissioner stated that he did not support the proposal for privacy reasons)

On 16th November 2011 a statement from the Data Commissioner of Ireland was read on a talk radio show [25] which said they had concerns “about the proportionality and justification for installing CCTV cameras in taxis, taking account of the legitimate privacy expectations of vehicle users”.

Perhaps the strongest response to taxi cameras has come from Nevada in the United States, where in 2004 the Nevada Taxi Cab Authority introduced a regulation requiring cameras in taxis. The Taxi Cab Authority were also considering the activation of the recording systems in the event of a G-force event (a G-force event is that which alters the vehicle’s inertia to such a degree that a trigger is activated) .

When the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the regulation it was not adopted pending review. In October 2005 the Attorney General of Nevada issued an opinion [26] on the constitutional implications of recording images and sound using taxi cameras. The twelve page opinion explores whether taxi cameras that record sound and images are a breach of United States Fourth Amendment. The Attorney General concludes:

The adoption of revised regulations which limit any video and audio recording of the camera to (1) the entry and exit of the passenger, (2) activation, when the equipment is activated by a panic button, and (3) minimal recording in the event of a G-force event, would be a limited governmental intrusion which would likely be found by a court to not violate the passengers Fourth Amendment privacy rights.

In September 2006 a revised regulation [27] was adopted [28] that took into account the Attorney General’s recommendations. The regulation still requires the compulsory introduction of taxi cameras but the camera is only activated as passengers get in or out of the taxi and when a panic button is activated by the driver. When the camera is activated, it can record still images or video and may record sound but not as a compulsory requirement.

In the UK campaign group Big Brother Watch has launched a complaint [29] with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) with regard to the Oxford taxi CCTV scheme. To date the ICO has not taken a strong stand on surveillance issues as the Data Protection Act that supposedly governs camera surveillance in the UK is riddled with exemptions when freedoms are removed for the stated purpose of “crime prevention”, regardless of whether any evidence exists to prove the surveillance works.

The campaign group Justice in their recent report ‘Freedom from Suspicion’ [30] point out that it was an English Common Law principle, laid out in Lord Camden’s speech in the 1705 judgment in Entick v Carrington, upholding the rights of property owners against unlawful searches by the executive that became the basis for the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. The English Common Law still exists but alas no-one seems to remember it.

One confusion for privacy commissioners has been the fact that recordings from taxi cameras are encrypted and only accessed by law enforcement or council officials when an incident occurs. This is the so-called “principle” of privacy by design which some commissioners have positively encouraged.

Privacy by design

In her book ‘Privacy by Design ? take the challenge’ [31] the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada, Dr Ann Cavoukian writes:

The use of this type of privacy-enhancing technology would thus allow for video surveillance to be conducted without the usual concerns associated with this type of surveillance. For the great majority of the surveillance footage, there would be absolutely no access or viewing of any personally identifiable information, and no unauthorized activities, such as viewing out of curiosity or “leering,” would be possible. Therefore, this privacy-enhancing technology would enable both the use of video surveillance cameras and privacy to co-exist, side by side – without forfeiting one for the other: positive-sum, not zero-sum.

Data Protection expert Chris Pounder of Amberhawk Training [32] sums up privacy by design as follows:

Even though the process is protective of privacy one has arrived at a position that can be rewritten in a more familiar guise: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.

Societal values beyond privacy

Taxi cameras are part of a growing “just in case” mentality that treats everyone as suspects. This issue goes beyond privacy laws or the lack thereof. The principle of innocent until proven guilty is an important cornerstone of our society and a healthy society depends on the law-abiding majority being respected and trusted as they go about their daily lives.

All around us the surveillance state is growing almost invisibly – unchecked by politicians and lawmakers who either want control or believe surveillance is universally loved, and driven by a surveillance industrial complex, ready to turn every social ill into a money making scheme. Almost every part of our society is tainted by an obsessive focus on crime and the security industry is all too willing to encourage the development of a crime-based economy.

Those that still cherish freedom must speak out. Just be careful what you say if you’re in the back of a taxi.

Endnotes:

• [ 1] – http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/9361537.Taxi_CCTV_breaks__rights_to_privacy_/
• [ 2] – http://www.securitypark.co.uk/security_article1846.html
• [ 3] – http://web.archive.org/web/20030421022405/http://www.chubb.co.uk/chserver/request/setTemplate:singlecontent/contentTypeA/webdoc/contentId/659/navId/00000200s007
• [ 4] – http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/archive/2001/07/14/Lancashire+Archive/6019509.Taxi_driver_hails_spy_in_cab_launch/
• [ 5] – http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2002-02-04.587.3#g588.0
• [ 6] – http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2007-07-24b.151058.h
• [ 7] – http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/8990482.Judge_backs_taxi_boss_in_dispute_over____spy____cameras/
• [ 8] – http://www.southampton.gov.uk/Images/Taxi_Cameras_Appeal_SCC_statement_tcm46-291410.pdf
• [ 9] – http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/politics/9005853.Drivers____demo_over_cab_cameras/?action=complain&cid=9340182
• [10] – http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b016ljx9
• [11] – http://www.taxi-library.org/ianb01.htm
• [12] – http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/5/B/%7B05B1599A-2511-4D07-9B29-73CD3E8D9FB2%7Dti179.pdf
• [13] – http://web.archive.org/web/20010210040244/http://www.ventiltaximagazin.com/Magazin/Beitrag/mag1699_0020799b.htm
• [14] – http://www.transport.wa.gov.au/mediaFiles/taxis_TCSU_standard2011.pdf
• [15] – http://www.transport.wa.gov.au/taxis_FAQ_TCSU_standard2011.pdf
• [16] – http://www.taxi-today.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=7TKQjc5Fwos%3D
• [17] – http://www.taxi-library.org/stone99.pdf
• [18] – Cmnd. 4483, Report of the Departmental Committee on the London taxicab trade, Home Office, 1970
• [19] – http://citycouncil.atlantaga.gov/2008/images/proposed/08O0398.pdf
• [20] – http://www.taxi-library.org/stone.htm
• [21] – http://www.sscqueens.org/sites/default/files/SCAN_Report_Phase2_Dec_18_2009.pdf
• [22] – http://nzta.govt.nz/commercial/passenger/docs/audio-recording-passengers-taxis-letter.pdf
• [23] – http://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/rules/docs/operator-licensing-amendment-2010-2.pdf
• [24] – http://www.oipc.bc.ca/publications/annual_reports/Annualreport03-04(FINAL)%20(2).pdf
• [25] – http://media.newstalk.ie/listenback/221/wednesday/1/popup
• [26] – http://milestonesforlife.com/thetaxistand/CameraRegsAGO.pdf
• [27] – http://taxi.state.nv.us/CameraRegulation032405.pdf
• [28] – http://taxi.state.nv.us/Meetings/2006/Taxi-Minutes-2006-09-07.pdf
• [29] – http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2011/11/big-brother-watching-listening.html
• [30] – http://www.justice.org.uk/resources.php/305/freedom-from-suspicion
• [31] – http://privacybydesign.ca/publications/pbd-the-book/
• [32] – http://amberhawk.typepad.com/amberhawk/2010/01/privacy-by-design-can-accelerate-the-decline-of-privacy.html

For more info see www.no-cctv.org.uk

The footage shows the intensity in the air leading up to the raid and the insane amount of police presence that showed up to destroy the encampment. Mayor Jean Quan’s legal adviser resigned at 2 a.m. in protest to the heavy police response.

The use of so-called “Trojan horse” software by authorities in a number of German states came to light after the Computer Chaos Club, a hacker group, published details of their examination of spyware planted on a laptop in Bavaria.

It found that the software — developed by a private company called DigiTask for the Bavarian police — was capable of much more than just monitoring internet phone calls. It could take screenshots, remotely add files and control a computer’s microphone or webcam to monitor the person’s home. However, the authorities insist that they did not deploy these functions. Investigations are ongoing.

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with British computer security firm Sophos, which also analyzed the software, said that the spyware could “automatically update itself over the internet, so new functionality can be added. It can be used to install new software onto the computer, so people could actually alter the contents of a suspect’s hard drive.”

The scandal has led politicians and security experts to look at whether the country’s already stringent privacy laws need firming up.

More on GlobalPost

Contact the Mayor Jean Quan here: www.oaklandnet.com/contactmayor.asp

OPD gave us 5 minutes to disperse, and then attacked the crowd with tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets. I was there until that point, and I can testify that it was a peaceful march until the police attacked it.

Moreover, they just happened to begin firing tear gas into the crowd right after the two major media outlets that were covering it with live feeds turned off their cameras. That coincidence was quite a coincidence. ABC and CBS later claimed their helicopters had to refuel, and they did show footage from later. But what a coincidence that they turned off their cameras just before the police attacked? And that their helicopters ran out of gas at precisely the same time, that time?

Yeah that captures the scene just right! Faced with endless photographic documentation of the insane violence of 500 riot cops against a group of protesters in Oakland, the Washington Post editors proved they are good Kaplan 1% corporate lackeys and choose this picture of…a riot cop petting a kitten.

Providing some historical perspective on the use of gas canisters against dissidents, the news blog adds:

Chicano journalist Rubén Salazar was assassinated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department with a tear gas canister shot through his skull, back in 1970. He had been told by the cops that his coverage of the anti-war Chicano movement was too sympathetic, and he was killed at point blank range by a sheriff’s deputy who was never prosecuted.

Open government

A proposed rule to the Freedom of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist — even when they do.

Under current FOIA practice, the government may withhold information and issue what’s known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.

The new proposal — part of a lengthy rule revision by the Department of Justice — would direct government agencies to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist.”

Open-government groups object. “We don’t believe the statute allows the government to lie to FOIA requesters,” said Mike German, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the provision.

More on ProPublica

The Paid Detail Unit allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye. The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest.

New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.

The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.

When the program was first rolled out, one insightful member of the NYPD posted the following on a forum: “… regarding the officer working for, and being paid by, some of the richest people and organizations in the City, if not the world, enforcing the mandates of the private employer, and in effect, allowing the officer to become the Praetorian Guard of the elite of the City. And now corruption is no longer a problem. Who are they kidding?”

Wall Street firms that are known to have used the Paid Detail include Goldman Sachs, the World Financial Center complex which houses financial firms, and the New York Stock Exchange.

Read the rest at Counterpunch.

“I’m sick of people thinking politics is some sort of hobby, like we can just choose to decide it doesn’t have to do with our life, death, happiness and freedom. Looking at the mechanics that underlie our world is not something I do out of boredom. To me, it seems self-evident that we’re on this earth to learn. Learning and gaining experience seems to be what being human is all about. I don’t like reading words on a page/screen. I’d much rather create music or learn to paint but unfortunately, sometimes missing a week’s worth of news is like missing a month. Missing a month is often missing a year.

Few Canadians are aware of the true scope of the horrific G-20 event in Toronto last year. This event got very little coverage during the recent elections despite many calling it “Torontonamo”. There were agent provocateurs (cops dressed up as anarchists), $5 million spent on a fence, $1.2 billion spent on paying 2 or 3 thousand cops overtime so they could arrest and brutalize 1000 innocent people, many of whom were not even taking part in the protest. I even hesitate to say $1.2 billion. Who knows how much of our tax money was actually spent for security. If memory serves me well, it was originally stated it would only be around $170 million, then $300 something million, then $600 million-ish, then $900 million-ish, then finally $1.2 billion. For all we know, it could have been $10 billion.

It’s worthwhile to note that back when the H1N1 scare was happening the government gave dozens of body bags to some native communities. Why body bags? Equally disturbing and strange, it was found that the H1N1 shot caused a 300% increase in narcolepsy in children and this prompted some countries to ban it. Canada went a different route and introduced this mercury-laced H1N1-vaccine into the trivalent seasonal flu shot…”

More on Mostly Water.

Apparently the police in Long Beach, California, have a policy that says if a police officer determines that a photographer is taking photos of something with “no apparent esthetic value,” they can detain them. This revelation came after photographer Sander Roscoe Wolff was taking the photo.

The police officer somehow determined that there couldn’t be esthetic value there, and thus, the photographer had to be detained and checked out. The police are defending this policy, saying that while officers don’t have any specific training in what qualifies as “apparent esthetic value,” they will stop anyone photographing things they don’t consider to be something a “regular tourist” would photograph. I actually have to go down to Long Beach next month for a speaking engagement, and I’m now tempted to take a bunch of photographs that have “no apparent esthetic value.”

In the case of Glik v. Cunniffe, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has issued a unanimous opinion in support of the First Amendment right to record the actions of police in public.

For those of you not familiar with Simon Glik’s case, Glik was arrested on October 1, 2007, after openly using his cell phone to record three police officers arresting a suspect on Boston Common. In return for his efforts to record what he suspected might be police brutality — in a pattern that is now all too familiar — Glik was charged with criminal violation of the Massachusetts wiretap act, aiding the escape of a prisoner and disturbing the peace.

Unlike most arrestees, Glik, with the assistance of the ACLU, fought back against this treatment. Undeterred, in February 2010, Glik filed suit in federal court against the officers and the City of Boston under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act. Glik alleged that the police officers violated his First Amendment right to record police activity in public and that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights by arresting him without probable cause to believe a crime had occurred.

The First Circuit ruled that “Glik was exercising clearly-established First Amendment rights in filiming the officers in a public space, and that his clearly-established Fourth Amendment rights were violated by his arrest without probable cause.”

Let’s see if we can find some more excellent quotations.

“[I]s there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.”

“Glik filmed the defendant police officers in the Boston Common, the oldest city park in the United States and the apotheosis of a public forum. In such traditional public spaces, the rights of the state to limit the exercise of First Amendment activity are ’sharply circumscribed.’”

“[A] citizen’s right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.”

“Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’”

The Prophet by Emil Nolde (1912)

Greggory Moore writes in the Long Beach Post:

Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures “with no apparent esthetic value” is within Long Beach Police Department policy.

McDonnell spoke for a follow-up story on a June 30 incident in which Sander Roscoe Wolff, a Long Beach resident and regular contributor to Long Beach Post, was detained by Officer Asif Kahn for taking pictures of a North Long Beach refinery.

“If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery,” says McDonnell, “it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual.” McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.

McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer’s subject has “apparent esthetic value,” officers make such judgments “based on their overall training and experience” and will generally approach photographers not engaging in “regular tourist behavior.”

This policy apparently falls under the rubric of compiling Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as outlined in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Order No. 11, a March 2008 statement of the LAPD’s “policy …  to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism.”

Among the non-criminal behaviors “which shall be reported on a SAR” are the usage of binoculars and cameras (presumably when observing a building, although this is not specified), asking about an establishment’s hours of operation, taking pictures or video footage “with no apparent esthetic value,” and taking notes.

Also listed as behaviors to be documented are “Attempts to acquire illegal or illicit biological agent (anthrax, ricin, Eboli, smallpox, etc.),” “In possession, or utilizes, explosives (for illegal purposes),” and “Acquires or attempts to acquire uniforms without a legitimate cause (service personnel, government uniforms, etc.).” Special Order No. 11 does not distinguish between how these behaviors should be handled and how (e.g.) photography should be handled.

Read more here.

With the Obama administration considering federal civil-rights investigations into police brutality, some local police departments have reacted not by cleaning up their act, but instead by intensifying their ongoing efforts to stop citizens from even documenting police misconduct in the first place.

Earlier this summer, Rochester authorities arrested Emily Good for videotaping police while on her own property — and then later used parking tickets to try to punish and intimidate those protesting Good’s arrest. In Las Vegas, it was even worse — the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday reported that a police not only arrested Mitchell Crooks but then beat him to a pulp — all for the “crime” of innocently videotaping them from his own driveway. Importantly, Crooks may have been specifically marked for police revenge after he had made headlines in 2002 by documenting Inglewood, California police beating a 16-year-old boy.

The hypocrisy of police trying to stop citizens from videotaping their public actions should be obvious in this, the Patriot Act Age. From warrantless wiretapping to data mining to the proliferation of red-light cameras, the Surveillance State is clearly on the march. And yet, when citizens occasionally exercise their constitutional rights and turn the camera on the Surveillance State itself, they increasingly face the threat of police retribution.

More: Salon.com

In more than 500 cities and towns in 25 states, silent sentries keep watch over intersections, snapping photos and shooting video of drivers who run red lights. The cameras are on the job in metropolises like Houston and Chicago and in small towns like Selmer, Tenn., population 4,700, where a single camera setup monitors traffic at the intersection of U.S. Highway 64 and Mulberry Avenue.

One of the places is Los Angeles, where, if the Police Commission gets its way, the red light cameras will have to come down in a few weeks. That puts the nation’s second-largest city at the leading edge of an anti-camera movement that appears to have been gaining traction across the country in recent weeks.

A City Council committee is considering whether to continue the city’s camera contract over the objections of the commission, which voted unanimously to remove the camera system, which shoots video of cars running red lights at 32 of the city’s thousands of intersections. The private Arizona company that installed the cameras and runs the program mails off $446 tickets to their registered owners.

The company’s contract will expire at the end of July if the council can’t reach a final agreement to renew it..

Article continues at MSNBC.

See original video which led to the protests here. (On May 12th, A Rochester woman was arrested for taping a traffic stop in front of her 19th Ward Home. She was standing in front of her house with a hand held recording device when the arrest happened. Officer Mario Masic, Rochester Police Department, executed the illegal arrest).

© Darin Seaman

It took nearly 24 hours of unbroken sleep to recover from my Bonnaroocleosis. Like other workers, performers, and festicle-goers in attendance, I’ve been hacking up silty brown lung-dumplings and blowing whole coal fields of black boogers into rolls of tissue.

The annual Bonnaroo dust storm could be a preview of the world after a nuclear cataclysm, where those so privileged will wring their desperate satisfaction from tingling chemicals, sun-seared flesh on display, and the pulsating rhythm of pleasure machines, leaving pathetic Plebeians to pick through the scraps.

Once again, I had a blast under the mushroom cloud.

Monday, June 6: Say “Moo” motherfucker

I’m late as usual to pick up Glen the Red, a fellow rigger who packed his camping gear and work tools hours ago. We hurtle down the highway to pick up our credentials at Manchester’s high school.

I ask the hipster behind the counter about the RFID tags that are now implanted in festicle-goers’ wristbands. He tells me the electronic chips are to weed out ticket fraud, but also to assist in the identification and removal of evil-doers.

I ask him if the information will be used for marketing demographics. With RFID readers carefully placed around the site, promoters should be able to see who goes to what shows, and for how long. This would render the profit pyramid with unprecedented accuracy. (How fitting that RFID technology got its start in cow-herding, warehouse management, and Apocalyptic propaganda.)

Clerky McClipboard tells me that demographic studies are under development, and that hopefully people will be able to purchase overpriced consumer goods via microchip next year. This is vaguely depressing—in an End Times kind of way—but not as depressing as the crummy Staff Pass he hands me. What happened to the premium passes?

On site, Gator is waiting to welcome us into The Grove, where we pitch our tents beneath gently swaying oaks surrounded by barbed wire. This is sacred space backstage, set apart from the turmoil and communicable diseases of the circus tent ghettos which house most festicle workers—the riggers, steel dogs, stagehands, security guards, and volunteer trash-scrappers. If you happen by The Grove, just assume that you are not invited.

Tuesday, June 7: What’s the difference between a rigger and God?
God doesn’t think he’s a rigger!

I love climbing the massive main stage in the morning. Seventy feet from the peak to the deck—a jungle gym for grown-ups. The steel truss sizzles your palms under the proscenium, the air is suffocating, the smell somewhere between a dusty old book and a bloody nose.

The up-rigger gig is the best job I’ve ever had. It has taken years—and plenty of patient teachers—to hone my craft. I’ve been dragged through the muck as a stagehand and I’ve lapped up the luxuries as a touring tech—nothing beats climbing the steel with the boys. We race to the top of the wire-rope ladder to drop in our ropes. We pull up the motor chains hand-over-hand, sweat pouring, muscles taut, until every motor that hoists the lights, sound, and video is ready to fly.

This art is pure. Bullshit has no place here.

The camaraderie is akin to that among pilots or soldiers, only scuzzier. Riggers literally depend on each other for survival every day. Success means you climb down, smoke a cigarette, and count up your cash. Failure means you fall to your death, or worse, you drop something and kill somebody below. I’ve heard people say they want to learn to rig for the money or glory, but that is absurd. There is only one reason to become a high-steel rigger—because you love it…

Read the rest at RockStarMartyr.net

A harassment charge has been dropped in the case of a Colorado man who gave a state trooper the finger in April. Saying it’s free speech to give officers the finger, the Colorado State Patrol said in a statement late Friday that it asked the case to be dropped. The State Patrol described the incident as “protected free speech.”

Shane Boor, 35, was charged with misdemeanor harassment after acknowledging “flipping the bird” to an officer making a traffic stop near Denver April 19. The American Civil Liberties Union offered Boor free legal defense in the case that made headlines. Boor said he told the officer he gave him the finger “because you’re thieves and you harass people.”

Who will watch the watchers? In a world of ubiquitous, hand-held digital cameras, that’s not an abstract philosophical question. Police everywhere are cracking down on citizens using cameras to capture breaking news and law enforcement in action.

In 2009, police arrested blogger and freelance photographer Antonio Musumeci on the steps of a New York federal courthouse. His alleged crime? Unauthorized photography on federal property.

Police cuffed and arrested Musumeci, ultimately issuing him a citation. With the help of the New York Civil Liberties Union, he forced a settlement in which the federal government agreed to issue a memo acknowledging that it is totally legal to film or photograph on federal property.

Although the legal right to film on federal property now seems to be firmly established, many other questions about public photography still remain and place journalists and citizens in harm’s way. Can you record a police encounter? Can you film on city or state property? What are a photographer’s rights in so-called public spaces?

These questions will remain unanswered until a case reaches the Supreme Court, says UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh, founder of the popular law blog The Volokh Conspiracy. Until then, it’s up to people to know their rights and test the limits of free speech, even at the risk of harassment and arrest.

Who will watch the watchers? All of us, it turns out, but only if we’re willing to fight for our rights.

More on Reason TV

Did you lose yourself?  Did they get to you? If so, then how? You represented some good principles when you ran for president, and you said a lot of good things.

It’s not that you lied, but it’s like you made promises that you couldn’t keep. I don’t blame you, it’s a structural and systemic problem, it’s not your fault.  But, will you be coming back to the side of the citizenry anytime soon? Will you leave the side of multinational corporations and the big bankers and the military industrial complex? Or is is possible that you were never with us in the first place? Sometimes you make me more sad and angry than George W. Bush did when he was president (at least you didn’t steal the elections!).

Regardless, enjoy the G-8. If you get a chance, please tell those protesters I say hi. P.S. What do you think of Ron Paul?

Lisa Mascaro writes in the the LA Times:

Acting with minutes to spare, President Obama approved a four-year extension of expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, after Congress overcame mounting opposition from both parties to narrowly avoid a lapse in the terrorist surveillance law.

Obama, attending an international summit in France, awoke early Friday to review and approve the bill, directing that it be signed in Washington by automatic pen before the provisions expired at midnight Thursday Eastern time.

The administration had warned Congress that any interruption in the surveillance authority would threaten national security.

Passage came late Thursday after a protracted political struggle that played out over several months, a sign of increased unease with powers granted to the federal government to investigate citizens and foreigners in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Conservative Republicans, many of them elected with backing from the “tea party” movement, and liberal Democrats resisted attempts to extend the three expiring provisions of the act.

Read More: LA Times

INDIANAPOLIS — People have no right to resist if police officers illegally enter their home, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in a decision that overturns centuries of common law.

The court issued its 3-2 ruling on Thursday, contending that allowing residents to resist officers who enter their homes without any right would increase the risk of violent confrontation. If police enter a home illegally, the courts are the proper place to protest it, Justice Steven David said.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

Read More: AP via the News and Tribune

More than 570 people, including seven juveniles, were arrested in Queensland as part of a two-day police blitz targeting booze-fuelled violence and anti-social behaviour.

Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett said more than 1000 uniformed and plain-clothed police officers flooded potential trouble spots across the state, including bars, from 6pm on Friday.

Over the two nights, 574 people were charged, including seven juveniles who were apprehended over a combined total of 28 charges.

‘‘We’re disappointed that this level of police enforcement is necessary to ensure community standards of behaviour are being met,’’ Mr Barnett said.

Officers were forced to move 322 people to safety during a sweep of nightclub precincts, and issued 154 move-on directions.

‘‘We will continue to enforce the law to ensure that all members of the community can enjoy a night out in public places without their evening being ruined by a selfish few who have no regard for the rights of others,’’ Mr Barnett said.

For more information, see original article.

On September 19th, 2001, just one week after the 9/11 tragedies, Frothsburg State University economics professor William L. Anderson wrote a piece entitled, “Osama and Goldstein”. He spoke of a parallel between Osama Bin Laden and Emmanuel Goldstein, the contrived enemy of the state in George Orwell’s 1984. Over the past decade Bin Laden has become the face of terror throughout the western world and the focus of its people’s fear, anger, and hatred. Now that he is dead (read “dead” if you prefer), I believe it would be appropriate to revisit this article from William L. Anderson on LewRockwell.com:

In George Orwell’s classic 1984, the government of Oceania — Big Brother — tells the people that they have a common enemy — Goldstein. At their daily “hate” sessions, the picture of Goldstein comes up on the screen, while the people scream in anger and horror at the image. Goldstein, they are told, is everywhere and must be destroyed.

In one way, it is difficult to draw the parallels between Goldstein and America’s latest enemy, Osama bin Laden, who has been accused of masterminding the suicide assaults on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. After all, Goldstein is a fictional character, and probably was a fictional character in Oceania as well. Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, is real — all too real — and has been the financier and “spiritual leader” of numerous terrorist cells around the world.

Thus, to draw comparisons between the two men seems absurd. Goldstein posed no real danger to anyone, while today what is left of the bodies of more than 5,000 innocent people lie beneath the rubble of the once proud WTC, the Pentagon salvage operation continues, and investigators are combing the rubble of the remains of Flight 93 in the Pennsylvania countryside, just 40 miles from my home.

Yet, the similarities are more real than apparent and speak to what has been happening in the United States since World War II. Each decade has seen evil characters who have been hell-bent on destroying “our way of life” paraded before the American public…

Read More from William L. Anderson on LewRockwell.com