DailyDirt: Charity 2.0

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There seems to be an increasing number of discussions on how to end poverty using evidence-based methods. Obviously, no one has found the cure for poverty just yet, but applying some rigorous analysis for charitable performance might result in better outcomes (rather than relying on gut instincts and good intentions). Here are just a few approaches for reducing poverty that hopefully work out someday.

• Could we really reduce poverty by giving everyone a minimum monthly income? This concept isn't exactly a new idea, but it's making the rounds -- but will any country (or town?) really try to implement a social welfare program that gives away money to everyone? [url]
• Bill Gates has been promoting his concept of "catalytic philanthropy" as a way to amplify charitable investments. Seed funding a lot of projects that could have a significant impact on global poverty might make more progress than putting a huge lump sum behind a handful of projects. [url]
• GiveDirectly is a charity that is experimenting with different ways to give money directly to the poor most effectively. They've found evidence that their stipends are not being wasted on drugs/gambling, but it's still a bit unclear if there are real long-term economic benefits. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: bill gates, catalytic philanthropy, charity, evidence, givedirectly, income, money, poverty, welfare

Dallas Police Rule Change Gives Officers 72 Hours To Get Their Stories Straight After Shooting Citizens

from the accountability-is-for-bullet-riddled-civilians dept

The Dallas Police Department can't seem to get its officers' statements on shootings to agree with recordings of the incidents. So, it's doing what any forward thinking law enforcement agency would do -- changing the rules.

Any Dallas officer involved in a police shooting — whether the officer fired a weapon or witnessed the gunfire — will now have the right to remain silent for 72 hours under a new department policy.

And even before they give a statement about the shooting, the officers can watch any available video before they give a statement.

Very convenient. This policy change, which was ushered in under the cover of the Thanksgiving holiday, will help ensure that DPD officers don't find their statements directly contradicted by the inconveniently unblinking eye of the camera, as happened just recently.

On October 14th, Dallas police officer Cardan Spencer shot a mentally ill man four times in the stomach. According to Spencer's partner, Christopher Watson (who wrote the report), the man (Bobby Gerald Bennett) moved "in a threatening manner" towards him and the other officer. Watson's statement even went so far as to say Bennett "lunged" at them. A statement released by the DPD a few hours after the shooting claimed the situation "escalated."

A surveillance camera caught the entire confrontation on tape. Less than 20 seconds pass before Spencer opens fire. See if you can catch a glimpse of the "lunge" or the "escalation."

Bennett never lunges. He doesn't do anything more threatening than stand up from the chair he was sitting in. Four bullets later, Bennett is on the ground. Somehow, being shot four times by a DPD officer is "aggravated assault," a charge the DPD pressed (it was later dropped) while Bennett was still in critical condition.

As a result of this, Spencer was fired and Watson suspended for making false statements. But this was only after Bennett's mother took the video to the media. Before she did this, DPD Chief David Brown watched the video and claimed his own officer's statement trumped his lying eyes.

"The unfortunate thing here is that Officer Watson's statement really overrode what the video showed," Brown said. "We had not at that point determined if the video captured the entire incident, or if the video had not been altered in any way. We put a lot of credibility on officer's statements until we have other evidence to prove otherwise."

Not so much anymore. Former DPD officer Cardan Spencer may be facing assault charges for shooting Bennett. Perhaps the saddest aspect of this whole debacle is the fact that Bennett's mother called the police because she was afraid her son (who has mental issues and was off his medication) might hurt himself.

As this has caused the DPD considerable embarrassment (not the least of which is the chief claiming a recording of the shooting is less trustworthy than statements given by an officer later suspended for making false statements), the only solution was (apparently) to buy time for officers to fix their narratives should inconvenient recordings surface.

Supposedly, this 72-hour waiting period is better for memory. Chief Brown refers to research by Alexis Artwohl which indicates recall of traumatic events increases over time. Immediate statements may be less accurate. That may be, but this report has been available since 2002 and there hasn't been a large shift in policies regarding police shootings across the nation. This looks like nothing more than someone finding the justification they need to install an insular policy that will allow bad cops to be even worse. This gives shelter to liars by allowing them to craft a plausible narrative that can't be undone by a single surveillance video.

This also doesn't explain why police insist on questioning suspects and eyewitnesses immediately after a criminal incident. But Artwohl has an explanation.

Artwohl, the memory expert, said officers treat civilian witnesses differently because officers won’t always be able to find the person again. That usually isn’t true of officers, she said.

Unsurprisingly, attorneys for the Dallas Police Association "applauded" Chief Brown's application of an additional layer of paint to the thin blue line. Anything that makes it easier to defend cops who are threatened by people standing motionless is a win for the PD's lawyers.

Defense attorney Mark Bennett flips the scenario to show just how outrageous this policy would be if it was applied to anyone else.

As a result of this incident, the Dallas Police Department changed its policy regarding gang-related shootings. Instead of pressing gang members for statements immediately after shootings, police officers will advise them that they have seventy-two hours to get together and make up a story, and will provide them, during that time, with any video the police can find, so that they can conform their stories to the video.

It makes no sense, does it, that police policy should not just permit but encourage members of a criminal street gang who witness a gang-related shooting to take three days to talk to each other and their lawyers and review the facts that are beyond dispute before making a statement?

It makes sense only if the police want the perpetrators of such shootings to walk free. The idea would be farcical if the criminal street gang were anything other than the police.

It's a farce, alright. The DPD has just ensured no one will trust the narratives constructed by its officers. And every citizen who's been paying attention will know to hang onto their recordings for at least 72 hours, rather than see it twisted into "evidence" that keeps bad cops employed.

Filed Under: 72 hours, dallas, evidence, police

MPAA Evidence In IsoHunt Case Doesn't Show What It Claims

from the nice-work-guys dept

The MPAA's lawsuit against IsoHunt is still going on, and the latest shenanigans from the movie studios (yet again) raise significant questions about the (lack of) care with which they handle these cases. They often seem to act as if it's so self-evident that any torrent search engine or cyberlocker is evil that they don't really have to be that careful in actually proving their case. The latest, found via TorrentFreak, is that the evidence the MPAA is using to try to prove direct infringement doesn't seem to show any infringement, because the evidence isn't what they claim it is. Beyond failing to provide the necessary documents in a timely manner for discovery, now that the MPAA has finally produced the evidence, it appears completely screwed up. IsoHunt wanted to look through the details of the claims of direct infringement to see whether or not the movie studios had uploaded the works themselves, or if any of the downloads were also from the studios. The MPAA delayed handing over such information and when it finally sent a hard drive along with a corresponding explanation, the details didn't match up.

Plaintiffs' BT_ID List identifies dot-torrent file 2224 as corresponding to Plaintiffs' work "Legends of the Fall."

Plaintiffs produced a copy of a dot-torrent file named "2224.torrent" on September 19, 2013. But opening the dot-torrent file "2224.torrent" in a BitTorrent client causes it to begin attempting to download a copy of a work entitled "Buddha Bar - Vol 4."

The target file of the 2224.torrent file could not be downloaded.

Plaintiffs' BT_ID List identifies dot-torrent file 3630 as corresponding to Plaintiffs' work "Seven Years in Tibet."

Plaintiffs produced a copy of a dot-torrent file named "3630.torrent" on September 19, 2013. But opening that dot-torrent file in a BitTorrent client causes it to begin attempting to download a copy of a work entitled "Transformers."

The target file of the 3630.torrent file could not be downloaded.

Plaintiffs' BT_ID List identifies dot-torrent file 16170 as corresponding to Plaintiffs' work "Lords of Dogtown."

On September 28, 2013, I launched the dot-torrent file "16170.torrent" using the BitTorrent client uTorrent, which downloaded eighteen files from the Internet. I reviewed each of the files and determined that none of them is the movie "Lords of Dogtown." Indeed, none of the files is a video file. Rather, the downloaded files comprise sixteen mp3 audio files, an m3u file (which when opened plays each of the sixteen audio files in sequence), a .sfv file (which I understand contains information to verify that files are uncorrupted), and a .nfo file that contains textual information about the audio files. Launching the 16170.torrent file using a BitTorrent client results in a download of audio files identical to the content files Plaintiffs actually produced on their hard drive on September 19, 2013.

There's more like that. IsoHunt's legal team points out that the MPAA has yet to actually produce any documents that are "sufficient to accurately identify their works," and that it will take a fair bit of time to actually look through all 2,000 torrent files and check whether the they actually lead to the works claimed -- an impossible task in the amount of time IsoHunt has to respond to all of this.

I know that the MPAA likes to assume these sites are clearly guilty with no chance of being proven innocent, but you'd think the least they could do is not muck up the actual evidence.

Filed Under: copyright, evidence
Companies: columbia, isohunt, mpaa

Does The 'Three Strikes' Approach Work, In Any Sense? Here's The Evidence

from the just-the-facts dept

Last week we reported on the suspension of Hadopi's one and only suspension, as France moved away from using Internet disconnection as a punishment. That manifest failure of the scheme that pioneered the three strikes approach makes a new paper from the Australian scholar Rebecca Giblin, called "Evaluating graduated response", particularly timely. As its title suggests, this is a review of the three strikes approach in the light of the experiences in the five countries that have adopted it: France, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea and the UK -- even though the latter has still not put it into practice.

The paper begins with a review of those schemes, as well as of the two "voluntary" approaches adopted by the US and Ireland. This makes it probably the best single source for details of how all those implementations of the idea work, and is worth reading for that alone. But the real focus of this research lies elsewhere. As Giblin explains, her paper is not looking at important aspects of the three strikes approach such as lack of due process, privacy, transparency, accuracy and proportionality, because these have been addressed elsewhere. Instead, she says:

its focus is on identifying, synthesizing and evaluating the evidence of the effects of the various graduated response schemes in order to determine the extent to which they are achieving any of the copyright law's aims.

Or, to put it more simply: does three strikes work, in any sense?

The first issue she looks at is to what extent graduated response reduces copyright infringement. Most of her analysis concerns Hadopi, simply because we have far more information about it than about the other schemes around the world. Here's what Giblin found on this score:

every figure it cited in support of the claim that the French law reduces infringement was supplied by one or more organizations that is closely allied to the interests of major rightholders, and which, in several cases, has a strong and obvious vested interest in promoting graduated response. None of them appear to have been subjected to peer review or have made their full reports or methodologies available for public scrutiny.

It's the old story: research "proving" the efficacy of harsh enforcement measures turns out to be have been commissioned by the copyright companies, and usually comes without any methodology that can be examined in order to establish its trustworthiness. But Giblin has been able to bring together what few facts have been released about Hadopi, and comes up with some interesting results:

working from the information that has been made publicly available, this analysis demonstrates that, if you're going to take anything from the [Hadopi warning] notice volume data, it's that the amount of infringement committed between the issue of first and second notices might actually have increased.

In other words, far from decreasing illegal downloads, Hadopi seems to have led to an increase. As she summarizes:

France has been described as "very much the gold standard for graduated response public law". However, when the data is carefully considered, there is scant evidence that the law actually reduces infringement. Since the dearth of infringement actions in its first three years of operation cannot be explained by a reduction in infringement, the most likely remaining explanation is simply that it is not very well equipped to identify and process the most egregious repeat offenders.

Giblin then goes on to consider to what extent graduated response maximizes authorized uses. The point is that supporters of the three strikes approach often claim that it will push people to legal channels. In this section we meet the Danaher study, which purported to show Hadopi had a positive impact on iTunes sales in France. But as we noted last year, an alternative explanation is that the introduction of new iPhone models produced the observed peaks in iTunes sales -- something with which Giblin concurs:

the resulting graph demonstrates a far more powerful correlation between the iTunes sales and French users' Google searches for "iPhone" than for searches for "HADOPI".

And adds:

Even if there was some "Hadopi effect" as suggested by the Danaher study, there is no evidence of its replication or sustainment in the recorded music or audio-visual environments.

Giblin summarizes:

As this analysis has demonstrated, there’s little persuasive evidence showing a causal link between graduated response and increased legitimate usage.

The final question she addresses is to what extent graduated response promotes learning and culture by encouraging the creation and dissemination of creative materials. That's an issue, because you would hope that three strikes approaches would lead to more creativity, not just fewer unauthorized downloads. But as Giblin points out:

An under-recognized feature of many existing graduated responses is that their design ensures that not all content (or content owners) are treated equally.

That's hugely important for smaller countries that have brought in or are contemplating bringing in three strikes approaches, since it means that it may not do their local music industry much good. Here's what she observed happening in New Zealand, for example:

Every case has involved infringements of music performed by international artists such Beyoncé, Coldplay and Elton John. Not a single local New Zealand artist has featured. This can be at least partly explained by the fact that the biggest international artists are most likely to attract the most interest from illegal downloaders, and thus have a greater chance of detection. However, the clear message is that infringers are only at risk if they step on the toes of powerful international rightholders. Other content owners and creators, who may also be facing serious challenges from widespread infringement, effectively receive less protection than the majors.

But overall, Giblin finds that the three strikes approach has been so ineffectual that these structural biases probably don't matter much:

given the lack of evidence that graduated response does anything to reduce infringement or increase legitimate markets, these structural biases in favor of Big Content may have little or no effect in practice.

She concludes with some key points:

International regulators considering implementation of new graduated responses must be surer than ever to carefully consider the policy aims they wish to achieve, and to evaluate whether the proposals on the table would actually help to do so. And regulators who have already enacted graduated response laws should take a close look at the evidence and consider whether it is desirable to maintain them in their current forms. If not, perhaps they should follow the French lead and rollback or repeal. Much can be done to design copyright law in ways that will help achieve desired aims. But the graduated responses in place right now overwhelmingly fail to do so.

This is an important piece of work, because for the first time it gathers a wide range of evidence on whether three strikes actually achieves any of its possible aims. As such, it should be indispensable reading for policy-makers contemplating taking this route, not least because the well-documented failure of the costly French Hadopi scheme must call into question whether it is even worth considering at all.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: evidence, france, hadopi, new zealand, rebecca giblin, research, south korea, taiwan, three strikes, uk

Court Says Feds Don't Have To Reveal Secret Evidence It Gathered Against 'Terror' Suspect Using FISA

from the due-process-what? dept

Adel Daoud is an American teen who was arrested last year in one of the FBI's many infamous home grown plots, in which FBI agents entice people into claiming they want to take part in a terror plot, plan the whole thing, give the person a fake bomb, and then arrest them. In this case, the "plot" which only involved Daoud and a bunch of FBI agents, was supposedly to bomb a Chicago bar. Daoud had no actual way of doing this until the FBI showed up and "helped." And then arrested him and celebrated, while admitting the public was "never at risk." Well, duh.

However, the case has been taking some interesting turns. Late last year, when the Senate was "debating" the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act (a key part of the NSA's surveillance program), Senator (and Senate Intelligence Commission boss) Dianne Feinstein pointed to the Daoud case as evidence for why the FAA needed to be renewed, claiming directly that the FISA Amendments Act was used to stop "a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar."

Given that, Daoud's lawyers sought access to the evidence that was obtained via the FISA Amendments Act. This is basic due process. Someone who is accused of a crime is supposed to have access to all of the evidence that was used against him. That was back in May, before the Snowden leaks, and before the revelations that the NSA and other agencies have used questionable surveillance methods to tip off other agencies of people to target, and then had them "launder" the evidence by trying to recreate evidence obtained in a more legal fashion to use against them -- also known as "parallel construction."

Back on August 9th, Daoud's lawyers made a much more thorough request for the evidence obtained via the FAA. As they note, there may be significant problems with the FISA information, including, but not limited to the FISA application for electronic surveillance may fail to establish probable cause that Dauoud was "an agent of a foreign power." As they note, he was an American citizen and high school student in suburban Chicago. They also suggest the FISA application may have contained material falsehoods or omissions and might violate the 4th Amendment. The surveillance also may have violated the FISA law. There are many other reasons they bring up as well.

The Justice Department (of course) argued that it shouldn't have to hand over any of this info, in part because it's classified and in part because they're not going to use that evidence against Daoud.

Unfortunately, the court wasted little time in agreeing with the feds that they don't need to turn over the evidence collected under FISA.

This is troublesome on a variety of levels. First of all, it seems like a clear due process violation, in which you're supposed to be able to see the evidence used against you. Second, it's a victory for "parallel construction," effectively giving the feds a green light to launder illegally obtained evidence, using it to "construct" legitimately obtained evidence. But, more directly, this issue was raised a few months ago, because the US Solicitor General had told the Supreme Court that any defendant who had FISA-collected evidence used in their arrest would have standing to challenge FISA because the government would have to disclose it. And, after it came out that the government wasn't disclosing it, the DOJ promised that, going forward it would provide such information.

Except that it's not doing so here. This is tremendously sketchy. As others are noting, if the evidence was legally obtained and really showed potential threats, why would they hide it?

The government’s successful attempt to keep the surveillance secret in the Daoud trial suggests that it either lacks confidence in the constitutionality of the spying or the Justice Department is still struggling to embrace the greater transparency on surveillance recently promised by the Obama administration—or both.

And, on top of that, the court has now sanctified this whole practice of abusing surveillance to spy on people, and then laundering the evidence so no one can challenge it. This is terrible, and hopefully an appeal on this particular issue is forthcoming.

Filed Under: adel daoud, doj, evidence, fbi, fisa, nsa, nsa surveillance, terrorism

Comcast Confirms That Steele-Hansmeier Controlled IP Address Used To Seed Content

from the but-of-course dept

We already covered the filing from Blair Chintella highlighting the audio evidence that John Steele had impersonated both Alan Cooper and Mark Lutz, but there was a second bit of evidence in there that's just as damning. It appears that a subpoena sent to Comcast has more or less totally confirmed that it was John Steele or an associate who uploaded the films. Delvan Neville's evidence on this point was pretty convincing, with the one piece lacking being who actually had control over the key IP address that was involved in the activities.

Even though there was clear evidence that John Steele controlled that IP, one of the exhibits is Comcast confirming that 75.72.88.156 was in fact assigned to Steele Hansmeier PLLC, the former law firm of John Steele and Paul Hansmeier. Now, the few remaining defenders of Steele and Hansmeier may try to claim that we have noted that an IP address alone proves little, but this is not the IP address alone. There is so much more evidence around that, and the concerns about an "IP address alone" tend to be with it identifying the wrong random person. The chance that someone uploaded these films before anyone else had and somehow magically known to spoof the very IP address of the law firm that would then begin the copyright trolling process around those films is so close to zero that it's zero. The evidence at this point is indisputable: John Steele or someone working with him uploaded the films. And, now there's evidence that he flat out pretended to be Alan Cooper and Mark Lutz. People who know John Steele's voice have confirmed that it is him. Steele, Hansmeier and Duffy's angry denials about all of this keep looking worse and worse.

Meanwhile, Nazaire has wasted little time in responding to all of this by... well... ignoring nearly all of the evidence above. At least this time he, or someone else, figured out how to change the metadata on the PDF to actually say "Jacques Nazaire" instead of "Paul Duffy" (which suggested the filings were actually written by Duffy, who is not admitted on this particular case -- and whom Nazaire has pretended to distance himself from). However, they haven't quite figured out the metadata stuff completely. Andrew Norton points out that the metadata still points to the same weird Chinese language PDF producer that Duffy has used, rather than the iT3XT that Nazaire had been using. Oops.

The rest of Nazaire's response is pretty funny as well. The crux of Chintella's argument against Nazaire was that he violated the rules with his request to stop the discovery by failing to have the required "meet and confer." Nazaire argues that his brief emails with demands should suffice because an actual phone call would be taped and played on the internet, where he might be further embarrassed:

It has been alleged that a good faith effort has not been made to meet and confer. The facts however demonstrate that, on August 3 and August 4, a good faith effort was made to have the excess discovery demands in this case withdrawn. Because of the unnecessary publicity garnished by press releases in this case (See Exhibit A), it is difficult for plaintiff's attorney to call to discuss confidential and privileged matters regarding this case. The telephone and live conversations will more than likely be taped and played on the internet. The confidential matters discussed via email will more than likely be posted as a publicity campaign on the internet. Given the environment that has been created, the plaintiff has made the best effort possible to confer regarding discovery. Plaintiff has not issued any press releases or tweets regarding this matter

I'll leave it to the lawyers out there to discuss what an absolutely, stupendously ridiculous claim that is to make. Either way, we'll see what the judge makes of all of this, but the evidence is piling up against Team Prenda, and the hilarious attempts to tap dance out of it keep getting more and more ridiculous.

Filed Under: alan cooper, blair chintella, evidence, ip address, jacques nazaire, john steele, mark lutz, paul duffy, paul hansmeier
Companies: af holdings, prenda, prenda law

IRS Also Secretly Got Intelligence Info And Was Told To Launder It

from the this-isn't-going-to-end-well dept

Reuters continues to reveal incredible details of how the intelligence community (NSA, FBI, CIA, etc.) has been sharing information with other government agencies -- mainly via the DEA's Special Operations Division (SOD) and then telling those who use that info to do law enforcement work to "launder" their own investigation to hide where they got the information from. The example given was that, perhaps, the FBI or the NSA might provide the SOD with information about a truck likely to have drugs. SOD then tells other DEA agents to look for "this kind of truck in this truck stop," and then the DEA has local police stop the truck on a traffic violation, leading to a "random" search and voila, drug trafficker arrested.

The latest is that apparently, the DEA's SOD isn't just giving this info to DEA agents... but also to other agencies, including the IRS, who is again instructed to "launder" where the evidence came from in order to hide that it was the result of intelligence gathering.

A 350-word entry in the Internal Revenue Manual instructed agents of the U.S. tax agency to omit any reference to tips supplied by the DEA's Special Operations Division, especially from affidavits, court proceedings or investigative files. The entry was published and posted online in 2005 and 2006, and was removed in early 2007. The IRS is among two dozen arms of the government working with the Special Operations Division, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency.

An IRS spokesman had no comment on the entry or on why it was removed from the manual. Reuters recovered the previous editions from the archives of the Westlaw legal database, which is owned by Thomson Reuters Corp, the parent of this news agency.

This is almost certainly unconstitutional, as a due process violation, by hiding the evidence used to arrest someone. Furthermore, even if you think that it's reasonable that if the FBI or NSA comes across some details of, say, a tax cheat or a drug deal, that they should pass that info along to a relevant agency, at best you could make an argument that this made sense when those investigations were narrow and targeted at wrongdoing. Yet, as we've seen, surveillance capabilities for both the NSA and FBI have been expanding rapidly, such that nowadays they're collecting information on absolutely everyone. When you have information on everyone, it's not hard to construct "patterns" that can be passed along to various agencies for the purpose of directly targeting individuals. The risk of abuse of this kind of information gathering and information sharing is tremendous.

Filed Under: constitution, dea, due process, evidence, irs, sod, surveillance

Speed Cam Contractor Responds To Challenged Tickets By Cropping Photos, Moving Cameras

from the if-you-can't-fix-the-system,-just-'fix'-the-output dept

While the discussion over whether red light and speed cameras are helping or hurting continues, there's no denying they're very profitable. In most communities, the beneficiaries of the additional income are extremely reluctant to unplug the cash cow (if you will...). The beneficiary least likely to welcome any dip in income are the companies supplying the camera systems.

American Traffic Solutions is one of two major traffic cam contractors. Its DC-Maryland camera system has recently run into a few snags in the money-making department due to challenged tickets. In one documented case, a driver had his ticket thrown out because the photographic "evidence" showed two vehicles in frame -- and in radar range. (This leads one to speculate whether ATS simply decided to issue two tickets...)

Rather than simply toss out any questionable photos, ATS has decided it would be simpler (read: more profitable) to do a little creative work to alter the output.

The firms operating red light cameras and speed cameras in the District of Columbia and Maryland are working to suppress evidence that could be used to prove the innocence of a photo enforcement ticket recipient. In Washington, the Arizona-based vendor American Traffic Solutions has repositioned cameras and cropped photos so that it is impossible to determine whether another object or vehicle happens to be within the radar unit's field of view.

The change is important since DC hearing adjudicators have been throwing out citations whenever another vehicle was visible, creating the possibility of a spurious radar reading (view ruling). The cropping also makes it extremely difficult to use pavement lines to perform a secondary check of the speed estimate provided by the radar. Lines painted on the road for this purpose are visible in one photo, but not the other (view first photo, view second photo).

Even though the cameras are also video-capable, no corroborating video evidence is provided to ticketed drivers. The efforts being undertaken to ensure ATS can "write" as many tickets as possible are questionable at best. As The Newspaper notes, they bear every resemblance to suppression of evidence. Cropping a second vehicle out of frame in order to push a ticket through unchallenged is legally dubious. Ethically, it's just plain wrong.

This isn't ATS' only experience in the ethically/legally dubious arena. Its system in Florida now sports one of the shortest yellow lights in the country, just a shade above the absolute minimum. Decreasing a yellow light by a half-second can result in double the amount of tickets issued. Of course, it also increases the number of accidents, but that's hardly of concern to the red light cam contractor. (It would seem to be a problem for the complicit DOTs, but the ultra-cheap source of revenue is apparently too good to pass up -- or even use responsibly.)

And it's not just law enforcement and traffic cam contractors reaping the benefits of cropped photos and shortened yellow lights -- the money goes all the way up. A reform bill aimed at red light/speed camera systems tanked earlier this year in the Maryland legislature, thanks to nearly $100,000 in direct contributions from camera companies (and their subcontractors) to lawmakers in Annapolis.

There's nothing behind these programs that indicate "safety" or "better driving" is the intended outcome, not when a camera contractor needs to resort to cropping photos and moving cameras just to ensure the income continues to roll in. The complicit government entities are only making it worse with their tendency to become swiftly addicted to new "revenue streams" -- ones that often complement campaign contributions from these same contractors.

The losers here are members of the public who are now more likely than ever to be slapped with bogus tickets, often without any reliable form of recourse.

Filed Under: cropping, evidence, photos, speed cameras
Companies: american traffic solutions

Cops And Union Rep Lie About What Video Shows Because Judge Never Allowed Recording As Evidence

from the sometimes-evidence-isn't-evidence dept

The video recording of St. Louis police officer Rory Bruce's unprovoked attack on a handcuffed suspect speaks for itself. Within the first 15 seconds of the video captured by the police van's camera, Officer Bruce slams a forearm across the face of his arrestee. The attack was "unprovoked" in any legal sense of the word. The audio quality is negligible but it appears to be a response to the handcuffed teen's contemptuous (of cop) laughter.

For this action, Officer Bruce lost his job. Not only was Bruce fired by the St. Louis PD, but he was charged with assault, something rather uncommon in the police world. Of course, Bruce was still in his probationary period, something that made his firing much easier.

What's captured on the video doesn't mesh with statements made by Bruce's lawyer.

Bruce's attorney, Joseph Hogan, said his client was squatting down, performing a search, when the "guy makes a move," and Bruce jumped up and hit him with a forearm.

This clearly isn't true. The suspect makes no move and neither officer is squatting at any point before Bruce struck the handcuffed teen. Hogan also suggested police officers shouldn't be held accountable for actions performed under the influence of "adrenaline."

Hogan complained that police and prosecutors didn't take into account the shooting before the teen's arrest, saying that adrenaline must have been pumping for both officers.

This shooting involved Bruce's partner Jacob Fowler (another rookie who was fired for this incident) firing his weapon at the suspect after the teen pointed a gun at him.

While this video clearly shows an attack on a handcuffed suspect, this recording was never viewed by the presiding judge, Theresa Counts, who found Rory Bruce "not guilty" of assault. Plenty of outrage has bubbled up over this fact, but Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice details the events that led to a crucial piece of evidence being ignored.

There was nothing life or death about the decision Rory Bruce made to pound this cuffed teenager in custody. Yet, he was acquitted by Associate Circuit Court Judge Theresa Counts Burke. Not because she found this conduct acceptable, but because she never watched the video.

"Prosecutors had also tried, but failed, to get the teenager on the stand. First they couldn’t find him, then when they did, he asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

But the video never made it into evidence because the law required prosecutors to authenticate it with someone who had personal knowledge of the events. Bruce refused to testify against himself, on the same constitutional grounds as the teen."

The teenager involved was never charged, leaving the prosecution with nothing to trade off for his testimony. As for doing the right thing against Bruce, well, the right thing on the street can sometimes be a bit different than what some of us might hope for.

But what of the other officer present, Bruce's partner, Jacob Fowler?

"That left Fowler, who claimed the same but was forced to testify after prosecutors granted him immunity from charges and obtained a last minute order from another judge.

When Fowler viewed the footage, he testified it differed from his recollection of events."

Maybe he recalled rainbows and unicorns. Who knows? What he clearly didn't recall was anything that could be used against his partner. What a surprise.

"Burke ruled she thus couldn’t authenticate it. That left only the testimony of a few police employees, who couldn’t say much because of hearsay rules."

So, now we know, if we weren't clear before, a recording of an event sometimes just isn't enough evidence. It may be crystal clear in the court of public opinion (and it certainly seemed "authentic" to the St. Louis PD, which fired Bruce and his partner) but can turn absolutely useless when it catches in the gears of the justice system.

But the most troubling (read: repulsive) aspect of this whole debacle isn't the fact that Bruce wasn't charged, or that Judge Theresa Burke didn't watch the video. It's the words of Jeff Roorda, the business manager of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, who not only flat out lies about the events clearly captured by the camera, but claims this sort of footage is being used the wrong way.

Words are exchanged and then; “It’s one forearm blow as he’s trained to do,” said Jeff Roorda with the St. Louis Police Officer’s Association.

Roorda says he can see Bruce crouched down and the suspect moving forward. He says Bruce was only defending himself.

Again, at no point before Bruce hits the suspect are either of the officers "crouched down." Both are completely upright for the entire 15 seconds before Bruce's attack.

Roorda says the judge did right—he told News 4, police videos like these should be used to protect police. "Now, it’s become a “gotcha-head hunter” tool that we’ve seen internal affairs go over-board with."

That's the most disgusting sentiment. Roorda feels video captured by police cameras should only be used when what's recorded justifies police actions. If St. Louis cops can't behave themselves, despite knowing they're on camera and despite believing internal affairs is prone to "going overboard," the problem isn't with the cameras or internal affairs. Roorda wants these two officers reinstated, even though the St. Louis PD itself doesn't want them around. After all, they've been exonerated by the court, so in Roorda's mind, there's no reason to keep two bad cops off the street any longer.

Filed Under: evidence, judge, police, police brutality, videos

Kim Dotcom's Lawyer Says DOJ 'Blessed' Destruction Of Evidence In Megaupload Case

from the that-can't-be-good dept

Last week we wrote about the reports from Kim Dotcom that the main European hosting provider that Megaupload had used, Leaseweb, had deleted all of the data on the over 600 servers Megaupload had leased from the company with no warning. That's kicked off something of a he said / she said between the two sides concerning what communications and business offers were made, and on the timing of everything. It does seem clear that both Dotcom's lawyer and the EFF sent Leaseweb a notice to preserve the data, as it was a part of an ongoing criminal case. Leaseweb argues that it replied to these concerns and that it had no legal obligation to keep the data, but did so anyway for many months, before reprovisioning the servers. It also claims it gave Megaupload notice of these plans.

There's some suggestion that Dotcom may sue Leaseweb over all of this, but a much more interesting point is made all the way at the end of Ars Technica's coverage of the story, in which Dotcom's lawyer, Ira Rothken, is quoted about the DOJ's role in all of this:

"We learned that the [United States Department of Justice] blessed the LeaseWeb data destruction and we will raise these issues at the appropriate time with the Federal Court in the US."

Of course, that's the big issue here. If the DOJ blessed the destruction of evidence in a criminal case, that's going to look very, very bad for the DOJ, and make it a lot more difficult for them to have this case succeed. Of course, as we've discussed, almost from the very beginning, it has appeared that the DOJ wanted evidence destroyed in this case (that's from less than two weeks after the evidence was seized). It seems fairly incredible that this has remained the DOJ's position, since it seems like an issue that is almost certain to be raised in court. If the DOJ is so confident in their case, why would it support the destruction of evidence?

Filed Under: destruction of evidence, doj, evidence, ira rothken, kim dotcom
Companies: leaseweb, megaupload