UK Drug Dogs Finding Way More Sausage And Cheese Than Actual Drugs

from the anyone-who-owns-a-dog-completely-unsurprised dept

Drug dogs here in the US are mainly one-trick ponies, to clumsily mix a metaphor. Domesticated canines aim to please. Training of drug dogs involves giving them treats or toys upon alerting. You don't have to be Pavlov to see how this plays out in the real world. Dogs will alert in hopes of a reward or be nudged in that direction by conscious or unconscious "nudges" by their handlers. Hence, we have drug dogs in use with horrendous track records. (But, notably, not horrendous enough to result in judicial smackdowns, for the most part.)

The UK deploys its own drug dogs as well. Turns out they have the same problems… sort of. For one, they're not all that great at detecting drugs or other contraband, according to a report by the UK's Independent Inspector of Borders and Immigration. (via Mashable)

The report finds the human staff at the Manchester Airport to be mostly capable. The dogs, however, not so much.

The deterrent effect of the detection dogs was difficult to measure, but seizures alone represented a low return on investment, given £1.25m spent on new kennels and the costs of operating the unit.

Apparently, one of the key forms of contraband the drug dogs were supposed to detect went completely undetected during an eight-month period.

Heroin and cocaine were assessed as 'very high' priority within both air passengers and freight. Yet, according to the data provided by Border Force, the dogs had made no Class A drugs detections in the period November 2014 to June 2015.

It's not that the dogs weren't detecting anything at all. There were "alerts," but they weren't for illegal drugs, cash, etc. and they weren't false alerts triggered by handlers. Instead, the dogs appeared to be operating on empty stomachs.

When deployed, the POAO dog made multiple accurate detections, but most were of small amounts of cheese or sausages, wrongly brought back by returning British holidaymakers and posing minimal risk to UK public health.

The only motivation more powerful than the innate desire to please: the desire to consume sausage and cheese.

To be fair, the dogs did detect some illegal drugs…

In our own sample from 1 November to 30 April (Figure 16), the six detections were three small amounts of Class B drugs and three lots of tablets – Human Growth Hormone, Viagra and Bromazepam.

Which is why the Inspector is understandably unimpressed that six dogs have cost the agency £1.25m plus whatever yearly maintenance costs. The report cuts the underperforming dogs a lot of slack by suggesting "routine" use has altered drug smugglers' strategies to route around the drug sniffers. On the other hand, the multiple "detections" of foodstuffs dogs naturally find delicious suggests £1.25m isn't enough money to feed the dogs properly.

The agency agrees with the Inspector, leading to this very weird sentence.

A senior manager agreed that there was a lack of innovation in the use of the dogs.

Perhaps we've reached peak drug dog. There may be no further innovation possible. The reality is that, while the animals enjoy the use of heightened senses, they're still just animals and will default to instinctual behavior faster than (most) humans will. It really wouldn't be a problem if law enforcement and security officials recognized this inherent drawback, but they rarely do. Instead, trained dogs are presented to citizens and courts as miracles of nature and instrumental contributors to various Wars on Things -- even as evidence continues to mount indicating they're no better at detecting contraband than their handlers, who don't possess heightened olfactory capabilities.

Filed Under: drug dogs, food, investigations, uk

No, The FBI Does Not 'Need' The Info On Farook's iPhone; This Is Entirely About The Precedent

from the stop-saying-that dept

Over and over again as people keep talking about the Apple / FBI encryption stuff, I keep seeing the same line pop up. It's something along the lines of "but the FBI needs to know what's on that phone, so if Apple can help, why shouldn't it." Let's debunk that myth. The FBI absolutely does not need to know what's on that phone. It might not even care very much about what's on that phone. As the Grugq ably explained last week, there's almost certainly nothing of interest on the phone. As he notes, Farook destroyed his and his wife's personal phones, indicating that if there were anything truly important, he would have destroyed the last phone too. Also:

FBI already has a massive amounts of data, all of which indicates that Farook and Malik were not in contact with a foreign terrorist organisation, nor were they in contact with any other unknown terrorists.

Even if, despite all evidence to the contrary, Farook and Malik were somehow in invisible traceless contact with an ISIS handler, that handler would not have revealed information about other cells, because that would violate the most basic tenet of security — need to know.

Other information, including things like who they were in contact with could be obtained from other sources -- either service providers for metadata or from the phones of those they were in contact with.

There's another post by forensic scientist Jonathan Zdziarski that provides even more reasons why there's almost certainly nothing of use on the phone -- noting that Farook left the "track my phone" feature on, even though it's on the same settings page as turning off the iCloud backup, which the FBI claims he turned off.

But let's get beyond even that. Assume that there actually is something interesting or useful on the phone. That still doesn't mean the FBI "needs" the information. In basically any situation where crime has occurred, there is a ton of information that might be useful, but that is far from mandatory. Hell, in this case alone, there were the destroyed phones. It's much more likely that there would have been useful information on those phones. But no one's talking about how the FBI "needs" that information, because everyone knows the FBI can't get it. And, since much of the planning for this attack must have happened between Farook and Malik in their home, the FBI is never going to know what they said to each other as they sat around the kitchen table, or on the sofa, or in bed. And, again, no one is upset about this information that is "not accessible" because there's always information that's not accessible.

In some cases, it's because it was destroyed. In some cases, it's because it was verbal communications that were never stored anywhere. In some cases, it's because people communicated in a code that only they know. In some cases, it's because information wasn't found. There are dozens of reasons why information that might be useful isn't accessible to the government during criminal investigations.

And you know what: it's not the end of the world.

Hell, in almost every criminal case, there's a ton of missing information. The cases are about taking all the evidence that they do have and making inferences on the rest. And no one whines about that.

So why are so many people insisting that the FBI "needs" the information on this particular phone?

There are a few possible reasons, but none of them are very convincing or compelling. There's just the simple fact that the information is there and, it appears, if Apple is forced to create this special operating system (creatively called FBiOS by some), it will remove the security features that otherwise block the FBI from brute forcing Farook's passcode. Of course, no one seems to be mentioning that if he has a really long passcode, brute forcing it might not work either (perhaps because that's unlikely). But, again, that's another situation under which the information wouldn't actually be available.

Honestly, the only reason that the FBI wants to force Apple to create the special operating system for this particular phone is the precedent that it can go to court and force a company to build special hacking tools to remove security features from customers. That's a big deal. The information on the phone is almost certainly not a big deal at all.

Filed Under: encryption, evidence, fbi, going dark, information, investigations, leads, syed farook
Companies: apple

No, Strong Crypto Is Not Making The World 'Go Dark' For Intelligence Agencies: Here's Why

from the don't-be-afraid-of-the-dark dept

Last year, Techdirt noted that there was something of a concerted campaign to paint strong encryption as a real threat to intelligence agencies. That's continuing, except that for a number of recent attacks "encryption" has become a generic excuse for intelligence failures. To the extent that there was any real logic behind the attacks on crypto, the main one was that it was making things "go dark" by preventing the authorities from accessing vital information that could have stopped the attack/saved lives/led to arrests etc. if only it had been available. You can see why this phrase is such a favorite: it cleverly reminds us that once things have gone dark, all kinds of scary stuff could start happening, just like in our childhood nightmares. The only problem with this metaphor is that it is exactly wrong, as Phillip Rogaway points out in a recent interview in The Atlantic:

law enforcement has an extraordinary set of tools available to them now. An unprecedented set of capabilities, both for law enforcement and intelligence services. These aren't somehow the dark times for either law enforcement or intelligence. These are the times of extraordinary information. Nowhere in history has it been so easy to learn so much about everybody.

Critics might counter that it's easy to say that, but how are the authorities supposed to gather vital information when strong encryption has been used? An excellent column in The Washington Post by Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the International Computer Science Institute, provides step-by-step instructions that the intelligence services can follow if they are afraid of the gathering dark:

Let's examine a hypothetical investigation into Johnny Badguy. To plan and execute his crimes, Johnny uses an iPhone with encrypted features -- such as disk encryption that prevents anyone without the pass code from accessing the data and iMessage which encrypts messages in transit -- that have drawn the ire of FBI Director James Comey.

As Weaver points out, the communications metadata is actually much more useful than any encrypted content that has "gone dark":

If the investigator knows everything Johnny does, everyone he talks to and everywhere he goes, how much does it matter that the investigator doesn't know what Johnny says?

And it's not just about metadata: unless switched off, Johnny's iCloud backup will include a copy of all undeleted messages, all his contacts, his email accounts and his photographs. Moreover, Weaver notes, Google provides even more useful info:

Every IP address used to log into the Google account can recreate Johnny's movements -- the same information used by the FBI to unmask former CIA head David Petraeus's affair. If Johnny stays logged into Google through his browser, investigators have access to Johnny's search history and, thanks to how the Google+ button operates, a large number of the pages Johnny has viewed.

On top of that, a warrant to the phone company will provide:

the movements of the phone itself, as every call, text or push notification records at least the cell tower and sector, which says Johnny was in a particular wedge-shaped location occupying a few square miles.

As Weaver concludes:

Taken together, and further combined with other sources (such as the near-ubiquitous license plate readers and toll-tags), investigators have a nearly complete picture of Johnny's behavior, movements and associates without having to ever worry about the effects of cryptography.

As well as confirming that metadata is in general far more revealing than content -- despite what the UK government likes to insist -- Weaver's tale of Johnny Badguy brings out something that is insufficiently appreciated: the fact that today's mobile devices provide an amazing treasure-trove of information about their owner that is without precedent historically. In fact, Weaver's helpful analysis shows that the real threat to the intelligence agencies is not that the bad people might start using strong encryption, but that they might stop using smartphones.

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

Filed Under: detective work, encryption, going dark, information, investigations, law enforcement

DEA Impersonating Medical Board Investigators To Gain Access To Personal Health Records

from the the-constant-hassle-of-minimal-paperwork-thwarted-yet-again! dept

Medical records have long been given an increased expectation of privacy, something that dates back to before the passage of HIPAA. (See also: Hippocratic Oath.) Consultations with doctors -- and the written records resulting from them -- have generally been treated as confidential, seeing as they contain potentially embarrassing/damaging information. Personal health information can be reported to law enforcement for many reasons: suspicion of criminal activity on the health entity's property, suspicion of criminal activity related to an off-site emergency, reporting a death, patients with stabbing/gunshot wounds, or in the case of a serious/immediate threat. Otherwise, HIPAA's rules for law enforcement say personal information can only be released under the following conditions:

To comply with a court order or court-ordered warrant, a subpoena or summons issued by a judicial officer, or an administrative request from a law enforcement official (the administrative request must include a written statement that the information requested is relevant and material, specific and limited in scope, and de-identified information cannot be used).

The bar is set pretty low and the DEA has been taking advantage of it. Jon Cassidy of Watchdog.org is reporting that the agency is rooting around in medical records in hopes of finding patients or health care providers who might be abusing drugs.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has been sifting through hundreds of supposedly private medical files, looking for Texas doctors and patients to prosecute without the use of warrants.

What the DEA is using instead is a blend of impersonation and administrative permission slips sporting the agency's own signature.

Instead, the agents are tricking doctors and nurses into thinking they’re with the Texas Medical Board. When that doesn’t work, they’re sending doctors subpoenas demanding medical records without court approval.

How often is this happening? Apparently it's so close to "all the time" that the DEA doesn't even have an approximate guess. This is what a DEA spokesperson told the Daily Caller.

“It’s not like there’s ten of them. There’s probably thousands — I know there are thousands,” Matt Barden, spokesman for the DEA, told the Daily Caller News Foundation about the DEA’s use of administrative subpoenas.

Early last year, a federal court in Oregon ruled the DEA could not access the state's prescription database without a warrant. Unfortunately, this was due to Oregon's state laws being more restrictive than federal law. A federal judge in Texas reached the opposite conclusion, finding that the DEA's use of administrative subpoenas complied with both HIPAA and state law. This decision is now headed for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where it is hoped a finding similar to the decision in Oregon will be the end result. But judging from the laws in place, that outcome is doubtful.

While the DEA's use of administrative subpoenas appears to comply with HIPAA's restrictions, its repeated attempts (many of them successful) to access medical records with no paperwork whatsoever seem less likely to stand up to legal scrutiny.

The Dallas-area doctors bringing the lawsuit against the DEA have uncovered plenty of DEA subterfuge. In their case, three DEA agents showed up at their offices with a state medical board investigator. Only the investigator identified herself. The agents remained silent, allowing the nurse to believe they, too, were with the state medical board.

The state medical board may have every right to view medical records without any accompanying paperwork, but that's because this information falls directly under its purview. The DEA, however, is looking to build criminal cases. This brings with it additional Fourth Amendment considerations and, at the very least, should bind it to the minimal restrictions of HIPAA. Apparently, issuing its own permission slips is still too much work and the delivered paperwork might accidentally restrict it to only certain medical records pertaining to certain people. By impersonating medical board members, agents have unrestricted access to whatever they ask for.

As Watchdog's Jon Cassidy points out, patients who'd like their privacy respected may want to seek their prescriptions and refills… elsewhere.

The DEA’s practice of avoiding warrant requirements has produced this absurdity: If you have a prescription for Adderall or OxyContin, you might be safer getting your drugs on the street than through your own doctor.

Street dealers, after all, don’t keep patient records, and they’re afforded more constitutional protections than medical practitioners. That is, cops still need a warrant to search them.

While the latter isn't strictly true in all cases, it's true enough to show how limited the protections of HIPAA actually are. The more disturbing aspect is that the DEA isn't even satisfied with near-instant access to a wealth of medical records provided by administrative subpoenas. It apparently only uses the correct paperwork as Plan B, preferring to mislead medical practitioners by allowing them to believe its agents are investigators working for the state medical board.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, dea, health records, hipaa, impersonation, investigations, medical boards, privacy, warrant

Philly PD Declares All Drivers To Be 'Under Investigation' While Denying Request For License Plate Reader Data

from the the-REAL-wretched-hive-of-scum-and-villainy dept

We've all heard nasty things about the citizens of the apparently ironically-named "City of Brotherly Love." They'll boo Santa Claus. They throw batteries at opposing baseball players... and their own. And that's just the sports fans.

More bad news has just arrived on the "We're all not that terrible" PR front: according to Philly's police department, each and every car owner whose vehicle's license plate has had the misfortune of being scanned by the PD's license plate readers is some sort of criminal. Charges TBD.

The City of Philadelphia does not want you to know in which neighborhoods the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) is focusing their use of powerful automatic license plate readers (ALPR), nor do they want disclosed the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of this technology, as they continue to fight a Declaration public records request filed in January with MuckRock News.

City officials argue in their response that every metro driver is under investigation, in an effort to exempt so-called criminal investigatory records from release under PA’s Right-to-Know Act:

Moreover, records “relating to or resulting in a criminal investigation” are exempt from disclosure under the Act, in particular “[i]nvestigative materials, notes, correspondence, videos and reports.” 65 P.S. § 67.708(b)(16)(ii). Such individual license plate readings and accompanying information are investigative materials that relate to individual criminal investigations, and, as your request indicates, these investigations may result in vehicle stops, arrests, or other police actions. Therefore, the individual license plate reading data is exempt from disclosure under the Act.

Investigative reporter Dustin Slaughter and The Philly Declaration have been battling the city for access to two weeks of raw ALPR output and, after multiple appeals, have been told every scan is exempt because every scan is part of a criminal investigation. This bizarre claim echoes the Los Angeles Police Department's public records request-thwarting declaration: all scans are, and always will be, tied to investigations.

The Declaration is seeking this data to see if deployment patterns signal any sort of bias or prejudicial treatment. What it has managed to pry free from law enforcement are the following facts: At least 10 ALPRs are in steady use. Non-hit data is retained for a year. Data actually related to investigations is held indefinitely. (Which would mean -- if the PD's stated logic holds -- that all scans are held indefinitely...)

The PD did hand over some summary data "pertaining to the time period requested," but it must have grabbed the wrong figures or misread Dustin Slaughter's request. He asked for data for a two-week period (Jan. 1-14, 2015). These are the numbers the PD handed over.

Number of Tags Read: 22,810,687
Terror Watch Reads: 77
Stolen Autos Recovered: 420
Stolen Plates Recovered: 23
Felony Arrests Made: 19
Misdemeanor Arrests Made: 9
Total Read Hours ALPR Fleet: 81,197

While it's theoretically possible 22 million plates could be scanned in two weeks, there's no way the Philly PD racked up 81,197 read hours during that time period, even if distributed across multiple vehicles. If this is a two-week period summary, the PD would need 241 units running 24 hours a day to hit the quoted "read hours."

But even if these numbers are a lifetime summary of the the ALPR program, they're still pretty impressive… at least in terms of scanning efficiency.

The department launched its ALPR program in or around 2011, according to Newsworks’ reporter Tom MacDonald.

This means the department is raking in around 7 million scans per year. On the other hand, if 22 million scans have only generated 19 felony arrests, you have to start wondering about the return-on-investment -- something that doesn't exactly back up Commissioner Charles Ramsey's claim that the ALPRs are "highly effective crime fighting tools." While it's nice to see the department is recovering around 140 stolen vehicles every year, it's a bit more disheartening to hear that it's only led to 28 total arrests -- especially when it considers every single one of these 22 million scans to be part of criminal investigations.

Filed Under: alpr, investigations, license plate readers, license plates, philadelphia, philadelphia pd, philadelphia police, privacy

Eric Holder Says Putting Reporter James Risen Through Hell Is A Good 'Example' Of DOJ Process For Leak Investigations

from the that's-one-way-to-put-it... dept

Attorney General Holder raised some eyebrows earlier this week when answering a question about his Justice Department's notorious crackdown on leaks, and by extension the press, most notably saying this about its notorious pursuit of New York Times reporter James Risen, while claiming the DOJ did nothing wrong:

If you look at the last case involving Mr. Risen, the way in which that case was handled after the new policies were put in place [is] an example of how the Justice Department can proceed.

The District Sentinel aptly took apart most of Holder's comments, and they also provoked a stinging rebuke from Risen himself last night on Twitter. However, I think the facts of Risen's case deserve a closer look to see just how unbelievable Holder's statement is.

Let's recap: since the very start of the Obama administration (read: for SIX years), the Justice Department was trying to subpoena James Risen. It fought for him to testify at a grand jury of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, which he refused to do, and when they were rejected by the court, it fought to have him testify in Sterling's trial. They fought Risen on this all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Also, keep in mind, while the "new" media/leak guidelines that Holder bragged about are certainly a step forward, the old guidelines that applied to Risen's case should have protected him just the same from the start—if they were actually enforced. He doesn't get to pretend the preceding five and a half years didn't happen just because he stregthened the Justice Department's rules after public protest.

The case cost Risen and his publisher an untold fortune in legal fees, dominated his life, took away from time he could've spent reporting, and likely cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.

Along the way, we found out that the government had spied on virtually every aspect of James Risen's digital life from phone calls, to emails, to credit card statements, bank records and more. (By the way, we still have no idea how they got this information. That's secret.)

The Justice Department argued in court that not only was there no reporter's privilege whatsoever -- either embedded in the First Amendment or in Fourth Circuit common law -- but also that journalists protecting sources was analogous to protecting drug dealers from prosecution.

As a result, the Justice Department got an appeals court to destroy the previously established reporter's privilege in the Fourth Circuit. So now all journalists in the Fourth Circuit -- which covers Virginia and Maryland where the vast majority of national security sources live and work -- will have no protection if the government comes after them in future cases.

After all this (along with a large public outcry), the government decided to drop its pursuit of James Risen. And of course were able to easily convict Jeffrey Sterling anyways, using evidence gleaned from digital surveillance.

Now the Justice Department wants a pat on the back. While it is unequivocally excellent news that Risen will not be forced into jail, the DOJ's behavior in this case was and still is deplorable. It has done damage to long-term press freedom rights that will be very hard to undo, and the idea that this should be looked at as a "model" for future leak investigations is troubling to say the least.

Reposted from the Freedom of the Press Foundation

Filed Under: doj, eric holder, investigations, james risen, journalism, leaks, reporters

FBI Says All Public Records Requests For Stingray Documents Must Be Routed Through It

from the the-first-rule-of-Stingray-Club... dept

The FBI definitely does not want the nation's law enforcement agencies to talk about their Stingray devices. Manufacturer Harris Corporation has aided and abetted this secrecy -- first by misleading the FCC on the intended use of the devices (emergencies only) and then by claiming the FCC required law enforcement to sign non-disclosure agreements with the FBI, something the FCC has denied.

Other federal law enforcement agencies have also helped keep documentation on Stingray usage out of the public's hands. Last year, the US Marshals stepped in to physically remove documents from the Sarasota (FL) police department to prevent them from being turned over to the ACLU in response to a FOIA request. The US Marshals Service has also ordered local law enforcement agencies to lie about their use of Stingray devices -- not just in terms of FOIA requests but while presenting evidence in court.

Ars Technica has come across another document involving the FBI, Harris Corp. and lying. Originally obtained and published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the memo (written by the FBI) states that any open records requests for Stingray-related documents must be routed through the FBI first [pdf link]:

In the event that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension receives a request pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (5 USC 552) or an equivalent state or local law, the civil or criminal discovery process, or other judicial, legislative, or administrative process, to disclose information concerning the Harris Corporation [REDACTED] the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension will immediately notify the FBI of any such request telephonically and in writing in order to allow sufficient time for the FBI to seek to prevent disclosure through appropriate channels.

As Cyrus Farivar points out, similar memos have very likely been sent out to other local law enforcement agencies. There's a lot more in the very restrictive agreement, most of it blacked out. The letter from the FBI opens by making the dubious claim that releasing this information would render the agency unable to "protect the public from terrorism and other criminal activities." This is the normal language of secrecy and it has very little to do with the public's protection and everything to do with withholding responsive documents. The capabilities and technology behind Stingray devices are already public knowledge. Criminals and terrorists are already aware that cell phones, while useful, are also little pocket narcs that generate tons of data easily obtained with little more than a subpoena -- or actively obtained with these devices. The "method and means" can't be further compromised. All the FBI is doing is burying information about legally-dubious devices in common usage.

The FBI has dropped several restrictions on this particular law enforcement agency, including:

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehensions will not distribute, disseminate, or otherwise disclose any information concerning the [redacted] to the public, including to any non-law enforcement individuals or agencies.

[...]

The MBCA will not distribute, disseminate, or otherwise disclose any information concerning [redacted] provided to it to any other law enforcement or government agency without the prior written approval of the FBI.

The FBI also states that it will intervene in court proceedings to keep this information secret.

A copy of any court order in any proceeding in which the MBCA is a party directing disclosure of information concerning the Harris Corporation [redacted] will immediately be provided to the FBI in order to allow sufficient time for the FBI to intervene to protect the equipment/technology and information from disclosure and potential compromise.

And who knows what the FBI is preventing here, but it would seem to be pretty expansive.


Not only is there very limited value in withholding this information, considering how much has been exposed despite these entities' efforts, but there's every indication that law enforcement agencies (with the FBI's help) are sabotaging both accountability and the discovery process with these demands. Both are ethically unsound, and the latter borders on unconstitutional.

Filed Under: fbi, investigations, privacy, stingrays

Police Detective Botches 82 Special Victims Cases, Walks Away With Career Mostly Intact

from the how-not-to-fix-the-problem dept

When it comes to criminals, most people agree that those who sexually victimize children are the worst of the worst. What happens when you turn over sensitive cases to a detective who apparently doesn't feel like doing the job? Well, cases fall into the cracks, along with the victims. Sure, even the best detectives and Special Victims Units are going to have a few that "get away." But in the case of Detective Tammy Kilgore Alois, it wasn't just a few that "got away." It was dozens. (via Crooks and Liars)

The Coconut Creek police botched dozens of criminal cases involving disturbing reports about children who were raped or abused and seniors who were neglected or exploited.

The 82 “special victims” cases from 2010-2012 were the focus of a trio of internal police investigations and part of another, more wide-ranging investigation by the Broward State Attorney’s Office of Coconut Creek Police Chief Michael Mann.

The 82 cases investigated were all linked to the same detective: Tammy Alois. Alois failed to interview witnesses and victims and mishandled evidence. She skipped out on writing reports or presenting cases to prosecutors. Some cases were closed by Alois without any apparent investigation occurring. As a result, accused persons walked, if they were ever picked up in the first place.

Worse, her neglect of these cases meant victims and their families were approached again in a belated effort to pursue Alois' neglected caseload. This reopened closed wounds. Many of those approached turned down the chance at delayed justice in order to protect the exploited from having to relive the experiences.

Alois' actions not only screwed over the victims of abuse, but it did serious damage to the Coconut Creek PD's reputation, as one example pulled from the files obtained by the Florida Bulldog makes perfectly clear.

March 15, 2011 – City patrol officers respond to an allegation that an adult male, a former neighbor, had sexually battered a 10-year-old boy on three separate occasions. Alois interviewed the victim on video, but the DVD was not entered into evidence. She filed no report to indicate she’d obtained the statement, nor did she send the case for further review. After Alois’ reassignment, another Coconut Creek detective contacted the boy’s father who became “extremely upset and has refused to answer any more calls.”

Now, the PD has a reputation to repair, but its actions following the exposure of Alois' misconduct aren't going to win it any new fans, much less change the opinion of people like the unnamed victim's father. Alois has been fired from the Coconut Creek police department, but not because of her actions as an SVU detective.

Rather, she was dismissed for violating a “Last Chance Agreement” the city gave her five months earlier in lieu of termination after she admitted to mishandling “numerous” investigations, and to prescription drug abuse. The violation was for failing to write a report about a burglary after she’d been transferred to road patrol.

Alois’ discipline for bungling 82 “high liability” cases: a four-week suspension without pay – the most allowed under restrictions agreed to by the city in its contract with the Broward County Police Benevolent Association.

Allowing Alois to bargain herself out of more severe punishment isn't going to ensure future accountability. The PD is obviously hamstrung by its agreement with the police union, something that is going to continue to work against its reputation. Further actions -- or lack thereof -- by entities involved in the investigation only further call into question the government's interest in holding its employees responsible for their misdeeds. Alois pretty much walked away clean from multiple years of failing in every aspect of her job. Those charged with policing the police don't appear to be too concerned with this outcome.

The Broward State Attorney’s Office did not investigate Alois for possible criminal misconduct in the matter.

Police records contain no indication that department officials who failed to notice or take action about what was happening during the three years that Alois seriously neglected her cases were disciplined, or even investigated.

Police chief Michael Mann says Alois' boss, Lt. Scott Tabel, was "basically let go" because of this investigation. Tabel -- now employed as a police officer with the Palm Springs School District-- claims he "retired" after 21 years with the Coconut Creek PD, rather than being forced out due to Alois' actions while under his supervision.

In fact, Tabel spins it the other way. He claims Mann was apprised of Alois' lousy work back in 2011, but that the Chief "didn't want to do anything about it." Other statements gathered by The Florida Bulldog back up this assertion.

Biondolillo testified that he ordered a full IA investigation, but said it was “countermanded” by Chief Mann. Instead, Mann asked the city’s Human Resources department to handle it administratively, he said.

Biondolillo testified that wasn’t the first time Mann had countermanded him regarding the need to investigate Alois.

He said that on two previous occasions Drug Enforcement Administration agents had visited him and Mann to inform them of evidence they’d found that Alois was a patient at pain clinics under surveillance as suspected pill mills.

Whatever the truth is, it still looks bad for the police department. Alois, apparently abusing drugs during her years as an SVU detective, has been allowed to walk away with her professional reputation pretty much intact. Her record will only show a dismissal for a single failure to write a report -- a burglary report at that, rather than anything linked to her neglect of children abused by adults, or seniors abused by children and assisted living personnel. If she's so inclined, she'll probably be able to secure another position in the law enforcement field, which has proven willing to launder bad cops.

As for Chief Mann, he's also been cleared of any wrongdoing in this investigation. As the person ultimately responsible for Alois' failure (and her single count of misconduct), he bears some of this burden… or would if anyone was willing to hold him accountable. But it appears he'll also emerge from this unscathed. The only thing left to salvage is the PD's reputation, but those who are trying to do so appear to be stymied by those higher on the food chain: Chief Mann, the state's attorney and the police union. Because of this, future misconduct will be allowed to continue for far too long and the repercussions will be far too mild to encourage better behavior. And those wondering why good cops don't do something about the bad apples in their midst will have their depressing answer: the system protects its own, especially its worst-behaving insiders.

Filed Under: investigations, police, special victims

Sen. Rockefeller Sitting On FOIA Improvement Act, Despite Two Unanimous Votes In Favor Of Passage

from the bipartisan-support-meets-gov't-agency-resistance dept

A FOIA reform bill that sailed through both the House (410-0) and the Senate Judiciary Committee (again with a unanimous vote) is currently stalled, having gone nowhere for the past two weeks thanks to Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

The Freedom of Information Act Improvements Act (hereinafter cited as "FOIAIA") helps put the "freedom" back in the FOIA -- something that has a chance to trim down the number of requests that result in fully-redacted pages or federal lawsuits. Rockefeller has expressed some concerns about the openness of the open records law improvements.

"I have a long record of support for open government and the FOIA process. I am concerned that provisions in this bill will have the unintended consequence of harming our ability to enforce the many important federal laws that protect American consumers from financial fraud and other abuses," Rockefeller said in a statement Friday. "According to experts across the federal government, these provisions would make it harder for federal agency attorneys to prepare their cases, and they would potentially give defendants new ways to obstruct and delay investigations into their conduct. I hope there is a way to address these concerns and pass the bill."

The two agencies offering up the most resistance to the bill appear to be the FTC and the SEC, both of which apparently feel the law creates a playground for targets of its investigations.

[S]ources said the agencies' concerns are that the legislation would allow companies to pierce the attorney-client and attorney work-product privileges, potentially giving targets of enforcement actions a roadmap detailing what kind or level of misconduct will trigger action and what kind is likely to be ignored.

There also appears to be a law enforcement contingent pushing for death of this bill as well.

"The bill would statutorily require government law enforcement agencies to withhold documents from a FOIA request only if they first establish that 'the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by' the exemption invoked," said a Rockefeller aide who asked not to be named. "Consequently, the bill could expose law enforcement agencies to needless litigation and drain their already limited resources in defending FOIA decisions that have long been invoked for legitimate law enforcement purposes."

Transparency advocates point out that privileged attorney-client communications will remain privileged even with the passage of the bill and that government agencies will still retain the power to redact information and withhold documents -- they'll just need to start providing better explanations for these actions. As for the concerns about the new "forseeable harm" requirement? That requirement isn't even new.

"Agencies have been required to use this standard since 2009 when Attorney General Holder issued a memo requiring it. Agencies also used this same standard during President Clinton's term. It was only during President George W. Bush's term of secrecy that this standard was rolled back," [Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org] wrote.

So, it appears Rockefeller is hoping the whole thing just goes away. The reform bill had already been watered down post-House passage and additional concerns raised by Tom Coburn had been addressed, resulting in him releasing his hold on the legislation late last week. Now, it's up to Rockefeller to do the same. If he doesn't do it by the end of the day on Monday, the bill dies.

As it stands now, Rockefeller is standing alone among his fellow senators and representatives. Two unanimous votes -- one in the House and one in the Senate -- are being negated by a single Senator. Supporters of FOIA reform are urging people to contact his office and make it clear that Rockefeller alone shouldn't get to decide whether this bill lives or dies, especially considering its path to this point.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller
Phone: 202-224-6472
Fax: 202-224-7665
Email: Sen.Rockefeller@opencongress.org
Twitter: @senrockefeller

Filed Under: foia, ftc, hold, investigations, jay rockefeller, sec, transparency

Eric Holder Says He Regrets Lying To A Judge And Saying A Reporter Was A 'Co-Conspirator' But The Law Made Him Do It

from the uh,-no-it-didn't dept

Giving a talk at the Washington Ideas Forum, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder spoke about two different (though, similarly named) journalists that the DOJ has been absolutely egregious in trying to abuse for the sake of questionable leak investigations. Regarding James Risen, the NY Times reporter who the DOJ has been pursuing and demanding he reveal sources concerning a leak (when it's clear the DOJ already knows the source and is just doing this to destroy Risen's credibility with sources), Holder says that the DOJ expects "a resolution" in the near future. That's not too surprising. Holder and the DOJ seem to realize that actually putting Risen in jail (the next step in the process) probably wouldn't go over very well.

But it's the other journalist where things get a bit dicier. That's Fox News reporter James Rosen (note the different letter from Risen). Rosen, you may recall, had his phone, email and security badge records grabbed by the government, after the DOJ told a court that Rosen wasn't a reporter, but "an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator" in the "crime" of leaking classified information about North Korea from the State Department. It later came out that the DOJ actually pretended Rosen was involved in a bombing in its motions to the court.

Holder was asked if there was a decision during his tenure that he regretted, and he brought up the Rosen story:

Holder: I think that -- I think about the subpoena to the Fox reporter, Rosen. I think that I could have been a little more careful in looking at the language that was contained in the filing that we made with the court. He was labeled as a -- as a co-conspirator. I mean, you had to do that as a result of the statute, but there are ways in which I think that could have been done differently, done better. And that's one of the reasons why I thought the criticism that we received because of that -- and the AP matter as well -- was something that we had to act upon and why we put in place this review of our -- the way in which we interact with the media.

Except, as Julian Sanchez points out, that's completely bogus. Holder claiming they had to do that because of the statute is flat out opposites-ville. They had to do that because the statute doesn't allow them to spy on journalists. The law was designed to stop the DOJ from spying on journalists, and so the only way to break that was to lie to the court. The law in question -- 18 USC 793 is designed to only apply to the people actually committing the crime of leaking defense information -- and not to reporters.

Holder claiming that the statute effectively "forced" him into declaring Rosen a co-conspirator is ridiculous. The statute compels him not to seize Rosen's records. Holder is admitting that the DOJ lied to the court here and trying to blame the statute for that lie. That's astounding.

Filed Under: doj, eric holder, investigations, james risen, james rosen, leaks, reporters, terrorism, whistleblowers