Files About UK's Role In CIA Renditions 'Accidentally' Destroyed

from the yeah,-right dept

Remember how the tapes of the CIA's torture campaign were "destroyed" under suspicious circumstances, despite orders not to destroy them? It appears something similar has happened in the UK, where files on the UK's role in CIA rendition efforts have been "accidentally destroyed." I'm wondering if anyone can read that claim without rolling their eyes.

When Tyrie asked the Foreign Office (FCO) to explain which government department keeps a list of flights which passed through Diego Garcia from January 2002 to January 2009, FCO minister Mark Simmonds replied: "Records on flight departures and arrivals on Diego Garcia are held by the British Indian Ocean Territory immigration authorities. Daily occurrence logs, which record the flights landing and taking off, cover the period since 2003. Though there are some limited records from 2002, I understand they are incomplete due to water damage."

The Foreign Office would not say whether the damaged files were UK or US records, or say where they were located. An FO spokesperson maintained that because the damage "was only recently discovered" it did not know how or when it occurred.

Convenient story. As the report notes, this follows earlier vehement denials from the UK government that Diego Garcia was used for rendition... only to later have to admit that they were lying.

Ministers of successive governments have repeatedly given misleading or incomplete information about the CIA's use of Diego Garcia. In February 2008, the then foreign secretary, David Miliband, was forced to apologise to MPs and explain that Tony Blair's "earlier explicit assurances that Diego Garcia had not been used for rendition flights" had not been correct. Miliband said at this point that two rendition flights had landed, but that the detainees on board had not disembarked.

Once again, it appears that the intelligence community is more focused on covering its tracks than on making sure it's not violating everyone's rights.

Filed Under: cia, destroyed, diego garcia, evidence, rendition, uk

IRS Now Says It Has Lost Emails From Six More Accounts Tied To The Investigation Of Its Targeting Of Tax-Exempt Groups

from the evil-or-just-stupid? dept

The IRS recently blamed a "computer crash" for the disappearance of two years of email correspondence involving Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the controversy surrounding the agency's apparent targeting of certain non-profit groups (Tea Party, Occupy, open source).

Apparently, this computer crash also destroyed any backups of the email between Lerner's office and outside government agencies, along with the hard copy backups IRS employees are required to maintain as part of its public records obligations. The latter part of that hasn't been specifically denied, but it's assumed no one's rounding up email printouts at the moment. As is the new Standard Operating Procedure for Grandstanding, a Congressman has demanded the NSA hand over the metadata on the missing Lerner emails.

Now, it appears that Lois Lerner's computer crash was only part of a much larger series of well-timed computer crashes.

The Internal Revenue Service says it can't produce e-mails from six more employees involved in the targeting of conservative groups, according to two Republicans investigating the scandal.

The IRS recently informed Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp and subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany that computer crashes resulted in additional lost e-mails, including from Nikole Flax, the chief of staff to former IRS commissioner Steven Miller, who was fired in the wake of the targeting scandal.

The question is still: conspiracy or colossal screwup?

Certainly the fact that emails and accounts directly related to the investigation are missing data from the crucial 2009-2011 period does make it look like the agency's hiding something. But the possibility that this is can be chalked up to regular government ineptitude is never too far away.

As was noted earlier (in the IRS's own documentation no less), the agency uses Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, which would suggest that further backups exist, as does (again) the IRS's own statements. John Hinderaker at Power Line quotes the IRS on its backup processes.

For disaster recovery purposes, the IRS does a daily back-up of its email servers. … Prior to May 2013, these backups were retained on tape for six months, and then for cost efficiency, the back-up tapes were released for re-use. In May of last year, the IRS changed its policy and began storing rather than recycling its backup tapes.

This means that older backups no longer exist, at least anything "taped over" prior to the change of policy. One wonders why the agency was allowed to recycle backups when much of what's being backed up is subject to public records laws. But to make the situation even worse, the IRS greatly restricted the number of emails each employee could retain.

Currently, the average individual employee's email box limit is 500 megabytes, which translates to approximately 6,000 emails. … Prior to July 2011, the limit was lower, 150 megabytes or roughly 1,800 emails.

As Hinderaker points out, someone in Lerner's position could run through that allotment in just a few days, meaning she would most likely begin archiving them to her own computer, something that could actually destroy emails when it crashed.

But this doesn't excuse the missing email, although it does help explain it. As the IRS's own policies note, archiving email to local storage is not an adequate solution and does not comply with public records regulations. So, Lerner and the six others affected should have had hard copy printouts of every email that could possibly be considered a relevant public record. Apparently, they don't and it's highly unlikely that many IRS officials take this Luddic requirement seriously.

Even with this additional information, the coverup theory isn't completely dispelled. One computer crash nuking vital emails is unfortunate. Six computers all taking out relevant email from a specific time period goes far past coincidental. The fact that the IRS hid this from the investigatory committee for months before finally "revealing" it on page 15 of a 27-page letter lends more credence to those who feel there's been a concerted effort to keep information buried. It also should be noted that the IRS itself has not stepped up and explained how something like this could happen (other than saying "computer crash"). Anything pertaining to the IRS's regrettable backup "solutions" and absurdly tiny email storage has been uncovered by the research of others. So, until the agency has anything further to add, the scale remains perfectly balanced between "malice" and "stupidity."

Filed Under: congress, dave camp, destruction, emails, evidence, irs, lois lerner, records

Court Rejects Request That Secret NSA Evidence Used Against Terrorism Suspect Be Shared With Suspect's Lawyers

from the secret-courts dept

We've been following the case of Adel Daoud, an American citizen charged with terrorism. He's one of the many, many folks that was arrested following one of the FBI's infamous home grown plots (i.e. he was never actually involved in any terrorism, as all of his "co-conspirators" were actually FBI agents or informants, and there was never any actual threat or chance that he'd pull off an actual terrorist attack). Back during the (pre-Snowden) debates on renewing Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, Senator Dianne Feinstein used Daoud's case as a specific example of when the program had been useful in stopping terrorism.

That caught the attention of Daoud's lawyers, who noted that this was the first they'd heard of this, and it seemed pretty clear that the government had withheld the evidence that was used to bring Daoud to trial in the first place (which is, as you know, not really allowed). After asking for the evidence, the district court first said no, but then ordered that some of the documents being filed actually be shared with Daoud's attorneys (who have the necessary security clearances). The DOJ, of course, flipped out at this idea that the lawyers for someone they're trying to lock up forever should actually be able to see the evidence used against him and how it was collected.

This resulted in an appeals court hearing, which bizarrely had to happen twice after the FBI so scared court staff that they failed to record the public portion of the oral hearings. The hearings were also odd in that, at one point, everybody but DOJ folks and the judges were kicked out of the courtroom, raising serious questions about basic due process.

Unfortunately, Judge Richard Posner's ruling (right after coming out with his good ruling on the public domain) has found that the evidence does not need to be shared with Daoud's lawyers. He slams the district court judge for overreacting and over-valuing the concept of the "adversarial process" in the court room. Seriously.

The judge appears to have believed that adversary procedure is always essential to resolve contested issues of fact. That is an incomplete description of the American judicial system in general and the federal judicial system in particular. There are ex parte or in camera hearings in the federal courts as well as hearings that are neither or both. And there are federal judicial proceedings that though entirely public are nonadversarial, either partly or entirely.

Posner basically says that the district court judge herself should have looked over the materials first, to determine if it makes sense to pass them on, rather than defaulting to saying that they should be shared with the lawyers. As such, he basically reveals that the "secret hearing" that was held was to go over the material with the appeals court judges, and they're satisfied that nothing needs to be revealed to Daoud's attorneys.

...our study of the materials convinces us that the investigation did not violate FISA. We shall issue a classified opinion explaining (as we are forbidden to do in a public document) these conclusions, and why therefore a remand to the district court is neither necessary nor appropriate.

Posner also, not surprisingly, rejects the objection by Daoud's lawyers to that secret hearing, noting that it was necessary to determine if the DOJ lawyers were being fully honeset with the court:

Their objecting to the classified hearing was ironic. The purpose of the hearing was to explore, by questioning the government’s lawyer on the basis of the classified materials, the need for defense access to those materials (which the judges and their cleared staffs had read). In effect this was cross-examination of the government, and could only help the defendant.

Defense counsel’s written motion cites no authority for forbidding classified hearings, including classified oral arguments in courts of appeals, when classified materials are to be discussed. We don’t think there’s any authority it could cite.

And, voila, the secret law and secret courts and secret evidence continue unabated...

For a very good analysis of this ruling, I recommend Steve Vladeck's take, in which he notes that Posner seems to (somewhat bizarrely) confuse sharing details with Daoud's lawyers in secret, with "openness" to the public. As Vladeck notes, the district court judge recognized that not everything had to happen publicly, but was (reasonably) concerned that just having a judge look over the secret FISA court ruling would not be sufficient, since the judge would not have the same view as the defense attorneys. Posner seems to ignore or misinterpret all of that.

The problem, from Judge Coleman’s perspective, is that it may not always be possible for a district judge to determine whether disclosure is necessary (as opposed to whether it “may be necessary”) without the benefit of adversarial presentation. That is to say, § 1806(f) conditions the disclosure of classified FISA materials to a defendant (or, at least, his security-cleared counsel) upon a finding by the district judge that may, in some cases, only be possible with defense counsel’s participation. This is why, in her order mandating disclosure, Judge Coleman devoted so much of her energy to the importance of adversarial proceedings, especially in criminal cases—not because all proceedings in U.S. courts are adversarial (they’re not), but because, in this context specifically, adverse-ness makes it easier for a judge to have faith that she is comporting with her statutory and constitutional obligations.

But rather than accept—or at least sympathize with—Judge Coleman’s efforts to square a circle, Judge Posner derided them by suggesting that the government has a right to keep these materials secret, repeatedly criticizing calls (one is left to wonder from where) for “openness.” “Not only is federal judicial procedure not always adversarial,” Posner wrote; “it is not always fully public.” This is true, but entirely beside the point; Judge Coleman wasn’t seeking to open the proceedings; she was seeking to provide security-cleared defense counsel (who, just like everyone else, are subject to the Espionage Act) with access to classified information.

Filed Under: adel daoud, doj, evidence, fbi, fisa, franks hearing, richard posner, secrecy, terrorism

USTR's Special 301 List Of 'Naughty' Countries Without Strong Enough Patent And Copyright Laws Is A Complete Joke

from the as-if-we-didn't-know-that dept

We've talked plenty of times about what a complete joke the USTR's Special 301 report is. It's supposedly a "listing" of "naughty" countries who don't protect intellectual property enough for the US's tastes. However, as we've noted, there is no methodology behind it: a bunch of industry lobbyists submit lists of what countries they don't like to the USTR, the USTR talks to various diplomats, basically rewrites the list to "shame" certain countries, and releases the list. Canada, which has been put on the list for years despite having stricter copyright laws than the US, has officially stated that it simply does not accept the Special 301 findings as legitimate. Chile did the same thing a year ago. As I've mentioned before, at a conference a few years ago, I even saw the then head of the US Copyright Office mock the Special 301 report as a widely recognized joke.

Unfortunately, however, for countries who are heavily reliant on good relations with the United States, being on "the naughty" list is often an effective way to force them to jump through hoops to make Big Pharma or Hollywood happy. As we've discussed, Spain has been pressured into changing its copyright laws via the 301 list multiple times.

George Washington PhD student Gabriel Michael has decided to dig deep into the Special 301 Report and its history to determine if there's any point to it at all, and his initial results suggest that the process is even more of a joke than initially suspected. He notes that there's no real "enforcement" mechanism (at least not one that the US seems willing to use). He also notes that the US is incredibly hypocritical about it. While the Special 301 report mostly complains that other countries don't have enough intellectual property protection, at other times it goes the other way, like when it's the kind of IP that the US government doesn't like (geographical indicators or GI).

...by any reasonably objective standard, the European Union offers very high levels of IP protection. Yet as recently as 2006, Special 301 listed the European Union on its watch list, citing “concerns” about the EU’s geographical indication (GI) regime. Given that GIs are a form of intellectual property, USTR essentially placed the EU on its watch list for offering too much IP—or, if you prefer, the wrong kind of IP. Interestingly, this is a tacit admission by the U.S. that at least some kinds of IP can act as trade barriers.

In researching the effectiveness of the Special 301, Michael notes that supporters of the effort point to a study done in the International Trade Journal called "Special 301 and Royalty Receipts from U.S. Trade Partners" by David Riker, which argued that the Special 301 is effective, because there's a pretty big increase ($5.4 billion annually) in US royalty receipts from countries after being placed on the list. Michael sets out to replicate Riker's results and discovers very, very different results, in part because Riker made some notable errors (claiming Hong Kong was on the priority list, when it wasn't). Riker also only looked at some of the countries in the Special 301 Report. Michael looked at what happened when you viewed all of them, and he also had two more years of data to research. In the end, Michael finds that Riker's conclusions are simply not supported by the data.

To summarize, while I was able to replicate Riker’s results, simply including additional years of data causes his findings of significance to disappear. Likewise, even in his original dataset and models, if Watch List designations are included, the findings of significance disappear.

Ultimately, these results lead me to conclude that Riker’s 2012 article is both theoretically and empirically flawed. It cannot support the conclusion that Special 301 designations are correlated with increased IP royalties from designated countries in subsequent years.

In another post, Michael points out the obvious: the Special 301 list is never actually about intellectual property protections, but about political considerations. He notes that countries that are considered to have stronger IP protection (using the Park-Ginarte Index) are often listed on the Special 301 Report, while others with less protection are not. He even looks at the average of countries on the list and off, and finds that those on the list have higher protection than those off the list: Given that, Michael looked at the leaked Wikileaks State Department cables, where there are a bunch discussing the Special 301, and quickly notes that it's pretty clear that political considerations were much more important than actual concerns about intellectual property conditions. In short, the Special 301 is just a way to diplomatically slap a country with whom we're having other political issues, in order to give the US leverage on some political point. He quotes State Department cables concerning Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Bolivia and Norway showing how it's much more about politics.

At some point, it needs to be asked why we have the Special 301 setup at all. It seems designed mainly to piss off other countries, while making Hollywood and Big Pharma feel good. It doesn't seem to do anything beneficial at all.

Filed Under: copyright, diplomacy, evidence, impact, intellectual property, patents, politics, special 301, ustr

DOJ Admits It's Still Destroying Evidence In NSA Case; Judge Orders Them (Again) To Stop; DOJ Flips Out

from the hey-you-guys dept

So, remember how we wrote about the big EFF filing in the Jewel v. NSA case, about how the NSA and DOJ had been knowingly destroying key evidence by pretending that they thought the preservation orders only applied to one kind of spying, and not the kind that was approved by the FISA Court (despite at other times admitting that the surveillance at issue in the case was approved by the FISA Court)? Yeah, so, yesterday, the EFF realized that despite the big kerfuffle this whole thing had caused, the NSA and DOJ were still destroying that evidence, and sprinted over to the court to file for an emergency temporary restraining order on the government.

In its TRO, the Court ordered the government to refrain from any further destruction of evidence pending final resolution of the parties’ dispute over the government’s evidence preservation obligations: “Accordingly, it is HEREBY ORDERED that Defendants, their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and all those in active concert or participation with them are prohibited, enjoined, and restrained from destroying any potential evidence relevant to the claims at issue in this action, including but not limited to prohibiting the destruction of any telephone metadata or ‘call detail’ records, pending further order of the Court.” ECF No. 189 at 2 (emphasis added). In its Amended Minute Order, the Court reiterated that the TRO’s prohibition on any evidence destruction remains in effect until the Court has finally decided the evidence preservation dispute: “The Court extends the temporary restraining order issued on March 10, 2014 until a final order resolving the matter is issued.” ECF No. 206 at 1.

In communications with the government this week, plaintiffs learned to their surprise that the government is continuing to destroy evidence relating to the mass interception of Internet communications it is conducting under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This would include evidence relating to its use of “splitters” to conduct bulk interceptions of the content of Internet communications from the Internet “backbone” network of AT&T, as described in multiple FISC opinions and in the evidence of Mark Klein and J. Scott Marcus....

Ridiculously, the DOJ claimed that it did not believe the original TRO covered internet content interceptions, and thus was still destroying such evidence. It just said it believed the court was still determining if the TRO applied to such evidence. It took very little time for the court to respond, telling the DOJ to file an immediate response and in the meantime to stop destroying the freaking evidence.

On June 5, 2014, the Court received an emergency filing from Plaintiffs in which they contend that the government may be in violation of the Court’s restraining order. Defendants shall file a response to Plaintiffs’ emergency filing by no later than 12:00 noon PST on Friday, June 6, 2014. At that time, the Court shall decide whether and when to have a hearing on this matter. In the interim, the restraining order remains in effect: Defendants are ordered not to destroy any documents that may be relevant to the claims at issue in this action, including the Section 702 materials

This is pretty damn egregious. There is simply no way that the DOJ could properly read the original TRO to mean that it can continue to destroy this evidence. To pretend that's a possible reading, especially given all the clear notifications of both EFF's and the court's concerns, is clearly the DOJ and NSA just playing dumb for the sake of being able to destroy more evidence.

And while the DOJ had until today to file its response, late yesterday it filed a very short response, demanding the judge issue an emergency stay on the TRO it had just issued, saying that complying with it would "cause severe operational consequences."

Undersigned counsel have been advised by the National Security Agency that compliance with the June 5, 2014 Order would cause severe operational consequences for the National Security Agency (NSA’s) national security mission, including the possible suspension of the Section 702 program and potential loss of access to lawfully collected signals intelligence information on foreign intelligence targets that is vital to NSA’s foreign intelligence mission.

It also promises to file a more complete response today, which we'll try to add here once it's out. This response seems bizarre. It's unclear why an order to not destroy evidence would mean that the Section 702 program would need to be suspended entirely. Either way, EFF lawyers had to stay up late last night, rushing out their own reply to the DOJ's frantic freakout.

It is not credible that, as the government contends, simply refusing to destroy during the next 18 hours the communications it has intercepted will cause “the possible suspension of the Section 702 program.”... How can the preservation of these intercepted communications cause a “loss of access to lawfully collected signals intelligence information”? ... That information will remain accessible even though it is being preserved.

More fundamentally, the unspoken but unmistakable foundation of the government’s position is a contention that it never understood before this afternoon that the Court’s TRO required it to preserve evidence relating to its interception of Internet communications. This, too, lacks any credibility, especially in light of the extensive discussions between Court and counsel at the March 19, 2014 hearing on the evidence preservation dispute. The government’s disregard for the past three months of its obligations under the Court’s TRO should not be retroactively blessed by granting a stay that permits the government to continue destroying evidence.

I imagine there will be more very soon.

Filed Under: destruction of evidence, doj, evidence, jewel v. nsa, nsa, section 702, surveillance, tro
Companies: eff

EFF Tells Court That The NSA Knowingly And Illegally Destroyed Evidence In Key Case Over Bulk Surveillance

from the because-of-course-they-did dept

We followed the back and forth situation earlier this year, in which there were some legal questions over whether or not the NSA needed to hang onto surveillance data at issue in various lawsuits, or destroy it as per the laws concerning retention of data. Unfortunately, in the process, it became clear that the DOJ misled FISA court Judge Reggie Walton, withholding key information. In response, the DOJ apologized, insisting that it didn't think the data was relevant -- but also very strongly hinting that it used that opportunity to destroy a ton of evidence. However, this appeared to be just the latest in a long history of the NSA/DOJ willfully destroying evidence that was under a preservation order.

The key case where this evidence was destroyed was the EFF's long running Jewel v. NSA case, and the EFF has now told the court about the destruction of evidence, and asked the court to thus assume that the evidence proves, in fact, that EFF's clients were victims of unlawful surveillance. The DOJ/NSA have insisted that they thought that the EFF's lawsuit only covered programs issued under executive authority, rather than programs approved by the FISA Court, but the record in the case shows that the DOJ seems to be making this claim up.

EFF filed its first lawsuit challenging illegal government spying in 2006. The current dispute arises from Jewel v. NSA, EFF's 2008 case that challenges the government's mass seizure of three kinds of information: Internet and telephone content, telephone records, and Internet records, all going back to 2001. EFF's brief notes that the government's own declarations make clear that the government has destroyed five years of the content it collected between 2007 and 2012, three years worth of the telephone records it seized between 2006 and 2009, and seven years of the Internet records it seized between 2004 and 2011, when it claims to have ended the Internet records seizures.

"The court has issued a number of preservation orders over the years, but the government decided – without consent from the judge or even informing EFF – that those orders simply don't apply," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Regular civil litigants would face severe sanctions if they so obviously destroyed relevant evidence. But we are asking for a modest remedy: a ruling that we can assume the destroyed records would show that our plaintiffs were in fact surveilled by the government."

The full filing is worth reading as it highlights how ridiculous the DOJ's "oh we didn't think that stuff mattered to this case" argument really is. As EFF notes, all the way back in 2010, it had filed a brief that explicitly noted that they were challenging the use of exactly this kind of data.

The filing lists out the history of the government repeatedly destroying relevant information, despite the preservation orders from the court, and despite clear language noting that the government had to preserve exactly this kind of data. The DOJ's argument that it thought the data under FISA-approved programs didn't count seems especially weak, given that the DOJ itself was part of trying to hide that those programs even existed. As the EFF filing notes, the argument seems preposterous in context. For example, at one point, the DOJ claims that it thought EFF didn't mean FISC-approved programs because it talked about "warrantless" surveillance. However, as EFF notes, even FISC-approved programs are still warrantless, because a FISC order is not a warrant.

Even more damning for the DOJ, the EFF filing points out that in the DOJ's own attempts to kill this case under state secrets claims, it said that the activity had been approved by FISC. So, for all the talk about how it had no idea that EFF was interested in FISC-approved surveillance, that's clearly untrue or it wouldn't have invoked FISC as having approved the collection! After listing out numerous examples of government officials making official statements in the case talking about FISC approval and how revealing this would reveal FISC-related state secrets, EFF points out:

The Government cannot have it both ways, as it seeks to do here. It cannot present one understanding of the scope of plaintiffs' claims -- a very broad one -- when asserting state secret privilege, but claim a much narrower understanding when it is destroying evidence.

As EFF points out, when evidence like this is destroyed:

the law presumes that the destroyed evidence goes to the merits of the case, and the burden is on the spoliating party to show that no prejudice resulted." .... After having repeatedly and vociferously claimed that the plaintiffs must produce evidence from the government of individual seizure of their communications and records (as opposed to the boxes of their evidence plaintiffs have long presented), the government cannot meet its burden to show no prejudice has occurred here. Unsurprisingly, it has made no attempt to do so.

And now we wait to see how the DOJ tries to tap dance out of this one.

Filed Under: destruction, evidence, jewel v. nsa, nsa, spoliation, surveillance
Companies: eff

Dumb Criminal Posts Video Of Dumb Crime After Leaving Hospital Injured From Dumbness

from the book-'em dept

It's been a couple of months, so maybe you thought that there were no more dumb criminals doing dumb things with technology any longer. Well, that was a very silly thought, silly-thought-thinker. You should know by now that nothing will stop the deluge of dumb. This latest is special, however, due to the impressive dedication to stupid by our criminal mastermind. This case is one in which an 18 year old man videotaped himself driving like an idiot on purpose, injured himself to the point of needing an airlift to a hospital, after which he uploaded the video to YouTube -- accurately titling it "Me Driving Like an Idiot"

Robert Charles Kelley IV, 18, driving west, first struck a Toyota sedan with his 1994 Honda on State Road 44 near Jungle Road, around 3:36 p.m. Monday afternoon, police said. He fled the scene of that crash and later would strike three more vehicles that were stopped at a red light at S.R. 44 and Colony Park Road, police said. Two patients from the first crash and one from the second were taken to Bert Fish Medical Center with injuries not considered life-threatening, police said.

Police also mentioned that they were planning on arresting Kelley, because of course they are. At the conclusion of his vehicular rampage, Kelley needed help getting himself removed from his now-destroyed Honda and was taken by helicopter to a hospital. Police had thought his injuries were serious, but he was released the next day. That's apparently when the mood struck Kelley to finally upload the video to YouTube further implicating himself. It features, you guessed it, him driving like an idiot with a soundtrack of, you probably also guessed it, irritating techno music.

Markert said Kelley's filming and uploading of the video falls under the “What were you thinking?” category, but of because the evidence it provided police, he added, “We certainly appreciate it.”

While the original video has since been taken down, you can see clips of it in news reports like the following:

Enjoy those multiple counts of leaving the scene of an accident with injuries, reckless driving, driving without a license, and possibly even intentional battery with a vehicle, son. Here's hoping video of your perp walk ends up on YouTube.

Filed Under: accident, driving, evidence, robert kelley, video

Australia's Attorney General Ignores All Evidence And Experts: Decides To Obey Hollywood's Commands On Copyright

from the politics-in-action dept

We kind of expected this to happen, but after a long process in which the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) carefully reviewed all sorts of proposals and evidence on copyright reform, and released some sensible proposals, Australia's Attorney General (who is also its Arts Minister apparently), George Brandis, has ignored all of it, preferring to only listen to a Hollywood front group, leading him to push for a three strikes plan and censorship in an attempt to "protect" Hollywood. He does this, even though some of the best research on how terribly ineffective three strikes programs have been comes from Australian scholar Rebecca Giblin.

In other words, despite lots of careful research by independent parties, and plenty of scholarly work to inform the debate, Brandis has decided to ignore all of it, and go with what the MPAA is telling him to do -- and yes, the "Australian Screen Association" is actually run by folks in Hollywood (though it changed its name from AFACT to ASA to try to hide that).

For years, our biggest complaint with copyright policies is the fact that so much of it is entirely faith-based. The movie and recording industries go on big emotional pleas about how "piracy" is destroying their industries (despite record output), and insist that the reason is piracy -- ignoring tons of evidence that this is not the case. There is no doubt that these industries are facing serious transitions, but time and time again, we've seen that those who embrace the transition and (here's the key part) provide more of what the public wants in a convenient fashion tend to do better than they did before. At the same time, merely ratcheting up enforcement and censorship creates massive unintended consequences and little actual benefit for the industries who push for those policies.

Australia's decision to cave to Hollywood on this will be cheered as a victory by the MPAA and its various supporters, but it's a massive loss for everyone. Promoting censorship along with anti-innovation and anti-consumer policies are no way to embrace the future.

Filed Under: alrc, australia, copyright, evidence, fair use, george brandis, innovation, isps, secondary liability, three strikes

Indiana Supreme Court Declares An Officer's Testimony Is More Reliable Than Video Evidence

from the apparently,-LISTENING-is-believing dept

Seeing how often official reports by law enforcement are contradicted by video recordings, you'd think judges would have become a bit more skeptical about the supposed "superiority" of officers' recall powers. But that's apparently not the case, at least not in Indiana, where the state's Supreme Court has ruled that officer memory trumps video recordings.

Videotape evidence can be overruled by the testimony and after-the-fact interpretation of a police officer, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled last week. In a 6 to 1 decision, justices overruled the state Court of Appeals which reviewed dashcam footage of Joanna S. Robinson driving her Chrysler PT Cruiser at around 1am on October 15, 2011 in Elkhart County and found no evidence of a crime.

In the case being discussed, the officer following Robinson's car observed it veering over the fog line twice, which gave him the reasonable suspicion he needed to pull her over. Once pulled over, Robinson blew a .09 BAC (.01 over the legal limit) and volunteered to the officer that she was also in possession of a small amount of marijuana. During her trial, she attempted to have the evidence suppressed on the basis that the officer did not have the reasonable suspicion needed to pull her over.

The Supreme Court reviewed the dashboard cam recording, concluding that while it may have not showed exactly what the officer claimed (or indeed, any solid evidence that Robinson's driving was impaired), it was clearly inferior to the officer's observational skills and experience.

Deputy Claeys, as he drove down County Road 4 on that October night, was observing Robinson’s vehicle through the lens of his experience and expertise. And when Deputy Claeys testified at the suppression hearing, the trial judge heard his testimony—along with the other witness testimony and evidence, including the video—through the lens of his experience and expertise. Ultimately, that experience and expertise led the trial judge to weigh Deputy Claeys’s testimony more heavily than the video evidence, and we decline Robinson’s invitation to substitute our own judgment for that of the trial court and rebalance the scales in her favor.

This conclusion was reached despite Claeys' "superior" observational skills observing things that didn't actually happen.

Deputy Claeys testified “both passenger side tires were over the fog line” and “completely off the roadway” “twice.”

As the single dissenting opinion notes, the previous court found Claeys' recall of the events suspect.

The trial court summarized the evidence presented, observing that “the officer in this case has testified that defendant drove off the roadway on two occasions.” The court further acknowledged that “[i]t is quite possible that the officer’s actual visual observation of the defendant’s vehicle was superior to the video camera in his car.” But the court recognized that the video did not reflect that the vehicle “actually left the roadway” but only that it “veer[ed] on two occasions onto the white fog line.”

Despite this disparity, the trial court still felt that "veering onto the fog line" was enough reasonable suspicion (for a "well-trained officer") to justify a stop. Judge Rucker points out how ridiculous this assumption is.

The Court of Appeals reviewed numerous cases from other jurisdictions as well as prior Indiana precedent, all of which support the proposition that mere “brief contact with the fog line or swerving within a lane”—without more—is ordinarily insufficient to establish reasonable suspicion of impaired driving [...] I agree and would reiterate the observation that “if failure to follow a perfect vector down the highway or keeping one’s eyes on the road were sufficient reasons to suspect a person of driving while impaired, a substantial portion of the public would be subject each day to an invasion of their privacy.”

Despite the appeals court's conclusions and the deputy's faulty recall, the Indiana Supreme Court agreed with the trial court's finding.

The trial court found, as a matter of fact, that to the extent Deputy Claeys’s testimony conflicted with the video, the former was more reliable than the latter.

While it's certainly true that video itself can be open to the interpretation of its viewers (as is noted in the majority opinion), it's hardly as subjective as a single officer's portrayal of events. What is often depicted as superior instinct and training may actually be nothing more than self-delusion or post facto justification for rights violations. This sets a precedent for Indiana that suggests exculpatory video evidence will be given less weight than the "expert" testimony of law enforcement officers.

Filed Under: evidence, indiana, police

DOJ Continues To Obstruct Efforts For Megaupload Users To Get Their Files Back

from the because-hollywood-once-told-us-someone-was-dr.-evil dept

For a while we had followed the bizarre situation with Megaupload's servers. As you may recall, the Justice Department seized them all, following its criminal indictment against Megaupload and many of its executives. However, soon after seizing all of the company's servers, the DOJ announced that it no longer needed them and told the hosting company that had them that the data on them could be destroyed. We pointed out that this seemed like a clear case of destruction of evidence by the DOJ. First, it seized pretty much all of the assets of a company, prior to any conviction, and then before any actual judicial proceedings, asked for most of those assets -- many of which could include exculpatory evidence -- to be destroyed. It seemed... quite questionable. That resulted in a bit of a legal battle, as the hosting company storing them, Carpathia, asked what it should be doing (since it's suffering from the cost of keeping the servers). Megaupload sought to buy the servers, but the DOJ has blocked that effort. Last we'd heard, the judge had told everyone to work it all out by themselves.

Torrentfreak has an update, noting that everyone's in a stalemate and nothing seems to be happening:

This effort was stopped because the U.S. didn’t want Kim Dotcom to have access to the files. Hoping to get out of this stalemate the Court then suggested that all affected parties should get together and come up with a solution, thus far without success.

“In separate written requests in the past year both Carpathia and Megaupload have asked Magistrate Judge Anderson – who was appointed by Judge O’Grady to mediate the cloud storage server data issue – to preside over follow-up negotiations on data preservation and consumer access,” Rothken tells TF.

“The US DOJ has shown little interest in such negotiations and the Judge has not been inclined to set any additional meetings,” he adds.

The whole situation is bizarre. Individuals who had legitimate content stored on Megaupload are still asking for access to get back their content, but the DOJ doesn't seem to care at all. In fact, it's coming up with increasingly bizarre excuses to justify shutting down an entire business based on the entertainment industry's say so, and seems to have no qualms about how many people this has created massive problems for.

As the Aereo case is about to be heard, and various concerns about its impact on cloud computing are being raised, people should look over at what's happening with Megaupload's servers and be even more concerned. If the broadcasters succeed in redefining what is a "public performance," it's entirely conceivable that the DOJ could choose to do the same to other cloud services you rely on -- and there seems to be no recourse whatsoever.

Filed Under: doj, evidence, servers
Companies: carpathia, megaupload