Verizon Gets A Wrist Slap For Years Of Neglecting Its Broadband Networks In New Jersey And Pennsylvania

from the I-get-200-kbps-when-it-rains dept

For much of the last decade we've noted that Verizon received billions in tax breaks and subsidies for fiber optic networks that were only partially deployed. From New Jersey to Pennsylvania, from New York City to Philadelphia, newswires the last few years have been filled with complaints from consumers and governments who say the company didn't finish the job it was handsomely paid to complete, leaving a patchwork of spotty next-gen broadband availability, and entire cities filled with customers still paying an arm and a leg for circa 2002 DSL speeds.

And the problem isn't just that Verizon didn't upgrade its networks, it's that the company has been neglecting the aging DSL network equipment already in place. In 2015, for example, frustrated Verizon union employees submitted a complaint to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission highlighting just what Verizon's network hardware currently looks like in many parts of a state that was supposed to have been upgraded to fiber years ago:

The same can be said for a wide variety of instances where Verizon couldn't really be bothered to work particularly hard at utility pole repair:

Given Verizon's political stranglehold over federal and local regulators and legislators, efforts to hold the company accountable on this front have been decidedly mixed. The company has often added insult to injury by insisting these complaints are either "pure nonsense," or at times by trying to claim that people who would like their phone and DSL lines to be upgraded (or hey, to simply work) are just being archaic Luddites because they refuse to sign up for significantly more expensive wireless service that in many areas may not be available anyway:

"This is a classic example of how some people fear new technology so they reactively reject it instead of accepting it, no matter how irrational that fear may be," Gierczynski said. Verizon opponents believe it plans to offer non-FiOS neighborhoods what they said is inferior wireless or Voice Link services once the firm's aging, deteriorating copper wire lines stop working altogether.

"I think people are going to look back and laugh (at copper landline proponents) ... just like (those) who were part of the Anti-Digit Dialing League," he added, referring to people who resisted the seven-digit phone numbers that began in the late 1950s.

Yes, hilarious. The goal for both AT&T and Verizon over the last few years has been to effectively let these unwanted DSL customers rot on the vine, until company lobbyists can convince state regulators to purge regulations requiring they continue to serve these users, many of which are elderly. This has been done (as evident above) by suggesting that killing off fixed-line DSL networks and shoving these users to wireless is all part of a miraculous "IP transition" that will deliver untold, amazing technological advancements to local communities.

Complications arise from the fact that wireless (especially in rural areas) isn't yet a viable alternative to fixed lines. Many of these lines were also taxpayer subsidized, and are still very much in use. Not to mention the fact that Verizon took billions more from these communities to deliver fiber upgrades never delivered. That said, there has been some modest traction in recent weeks after Verizon was forced by Pennsylvania regulators to at least repair some of the worst parts of its neglected network:

"The telecom giant will repair the worst of its legacy copper network in areas without FiOS and replace 15,000 unsightly and dangerous “double poles” on Pennsylvania roadsides, according to the deal between the company and the company’s Pennsylvania unionized workers who are part of the Communications Workers of America."

The agreement falls well short of requiring Verizon to admit fault of any kind, or forcing Verizon to upgrade these networks to fiber as per a 1993 agreement with the state -- that critics say was supposed to result in uniform fiber coverage statewide. But Verizon has also been forced to strike a similar deal by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, who found that, again, Verizon neglected its fixed-line networks to an almost comical degree. It won't, however, be forced to upgrade the state to fiber:

"But the telecom giant won’t be wiring a wide swath of Cumberland, Burlington, Salem, and Atlantic Counties with the high-speed Fios service that has been extended to millions of residents in other parts of New Jersey, according to a settlement among state officials, Verizon, and 17 towns that complained about substandard phone service. Fios is Verizon’s branded service for internet, television, and voice services, delivered over fiber lines.

In late 2015, the 17 towns, mostly in Cumberland County, complained to the state Board of Public Utilities about downed phones and bad or no internet. Service has been particularly unreliable on rainy or damp days, which result in buzzing water-soaked copper phone lines because of their age and rundown condition, local residents and officials say."

These are important wins, but in full context they're a drop in the bucket. Time, and time, and time again communities have tried to hold the telco accountable for taking taxpayer funds, then failing to upgrade essential infrastructure. Verizon's attentions meanwhile are elsewhere. The company recently acquired AOL and Yahoo in the hope of pivoting from neglecting running fixed-line networks to becoming a major media and advertising competitor to Google and Facebook (success on that front has been decidedly mixed).

It's abundantly clear that Verizon executives are done with these communities, but these communities also have made it abundantly clear (as New York City's recent lawsuit against the telco will attest) -- they're not quite yet done with Verizon.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fiber, new jersey, pennsylvania, promises

Chris Christie Says Asset Forfeiture Transparency Is Bad For Law Enforcement, Vetoes Unanimously-Supported Bill

from the christ,-what-an-asshole dept

Part of the reason asset forfeiture is such a problem is the lack of transparency. The funds obtained through this process are frequently hidden from the public and used to purchase everything from margarita makers to Stingray devices. The procedure through which the government takes control of citizens' assets is also shrouded in secrecy. Cases are filed against property, not the persons formerly in possession of them. The process for retrieval is purposely impenetrable, designed to make it almost impossible for petitioners to reclaim their assets.

Law enforcement officials claim that all parts of this opaque process are there to prevent drug dealing and/or terrorism, hence their reluctance to divulge the inner details of this particular mean/method. Legislators in New Jersey were hoping to end this unofficial tradition with a bill that would have demanded far more transparency from agencies involved in asset forfeiture.

S2267 passed with unanimous support in both houses of the State legislature and would have instituted the following information be submitted to the state Attorney General's office every year.

[I]nformation on the seizure of the property, including a description of the seized property; the date of seizure ; the market value of the seized property; the alleged criminal offense associated with the seizure; a description of the location at which the property was seized, including whether the property was seized from a private residence or business or during a traffic stop; if the property was seized during a traffic stop, the name of the highway, street, or road on which the property was seized and whether the vehicle was traveling northbound, southbound, eastbound or westbound;

   (2)   the disposition of any criminal action related to the seizure;

   (3)   information on forfeiture of the seized property, including:

   (a)   whether the forfeiture involved prima facie contraband or was enforced by civil action pursuant to N.J.S.2C:64-1 et seq., the forfeiture was a result of racketeering activity pursuant to N.J.S.2C:41-1 et seq., or the forfeited funds or property were obtained from an action involving financial facilitation of a crime pursuant to P.L.1994, c.121 (C.2C:21-23 et seq.); and

   (b)   whether a person with a property interest in the seized property was represented by counsel at the forfeiture proceeding, if applicable;

   (4)   information on the final disposition of the seized property, including whether the property was returned to the owner, destroyed, sold after forfeiture, or retained after forfeiture; and the date of disposition;

   (5)   information on the value of 1the1 forfeited property, including the gross amount received from 1the1 forfeiture, the total expenses deducted as part of the forfeiture action, and the net amount received from the forfeiture;

   (6)   whether the forfeiture resulted from an adoptive seizure; and

   (7)   any other information the Attorney General requires.

This information would have provided the public with valuable insight into state law enforcement's use of asset forfeiture. And there are several reasons law enforcement wouldn't want to have to turn over these details. The dirty secret of asset forfeiture is that it's not being used to take down the biggest and baddest criminals. It's far more frequently used to nickle-and-dime average citizens, with a majority of an agency's take being made up of seizures valued at well below $10,000. Vehicles are seized from grandmothers because their grandchildren drove drunk. Any cash on anyone who smells like marijuana to a police officer usually ends up being forfeited even if the person is free to go.

These details would have made the state's asset forfeiture programs looks exactly as bad as they are. New Jersey holds a D rating from the Institute for Justice, which performs annual reviews of states' forfeiture programs, rating them for damage done to citizens' rights and property. One of the aspects of forfeiture that aided in the state's D rating is the lack of transparency and almost-nonexistent reporting requirements.

County prosecutors across the state collected $72 million in forfeiture proceeds from 2009 to 2013, including more than $57 million in cash and vehicles worth $9 million, according to the report.

In addition, the report found county agencies received an average of $7 million a year from federal "equitable sharing" programs that give state and local agencies a cut when they serve on federal task forces.

But the millions tallied by the institute "are a vast undercount for what's going on in New Jersey," according to Dick Carpenter, the group's director of strategic research and one of the authors of the report.

Carpenter said it's difficult to get the whole picture in New Jersey because while the state does collect some data, it was not able to provide the group with comprehensive figures for local and state law enforcement agencies.

"The transparency in New Jersey is pretty poor," he said. "The ability for average folks -- or even elected officials -- to know what's going on in their state or municipality just isn't there."

None of this matters now, at least not for the foreseeable future. Governor Chris Christie has decided the public isn't on the "need to know" list as far as asset forfeiture is concerned.

Gov. Chris Christie on Monday vetoed a bill that would have required county and state prosecutors to publish information about how they use civil courts to seize property from criminal investigations.

In order to fend off any attempts at a veto override, Christie has proposed his own law enforcement-friendly "fixes" to the rejected legislation.

Christie instead recommended a quarterly report in which prosecutors identify seized assets and detail the legal proceedings by which they were seized.

Under Christie's proposal, prosecutors also would not have to disclose why they seized an asset or for what purpose it would be used.

Christie's "compromise" does nothing. Quarterly reports are already filed with the attorney general, but they're withheld from the public. The details included are minimal and provide no useful insight into law enforcement's forfeiture activities. And it's not as though the AG's office goes after agencies for incomplete or nonexistent reporting. There appears to be no consequences for agencies that fail to comply with these minimal reporting requirements.

Of course, Christie's "compromise" is predicated on a ridiculous pretense.

The governor said his proposed changes would "strike a balance between government transparency and protecting law enforcement operations and personnel."

Protect law enforcement from what exactly? Transparency? Accountability? Criticism? There's nothing in the information the bill demanded that would make it anything more dangerous for law enforcement. It might inform the public where law enforcement likes to go diving for dollars, but the only negative thing likely to happen to law enforcement is an increase in informed criticism.

In Christie's mouth, the words "government transparency" are meaningless -- as meaningless in his buzzword jumbling, bootlicking excuse for kicking the legislature's unanimously-supported bill to the curb.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, chris christie, new jersey, transparency

Winery Seeks Declaratory Judgement After Garden State Parkway Threatens It With Trademark Suit Over Logo

from the exit-stage-trademark dept

Last year, we discussed a really dumb trademark lawsuit against two guys running a pizza company brought by the Garden State Parkway, of all things, because the pizza company's logo was a clear homage to the GSP logo. You see, the two pizza-making guys were originally from New Jersey, and so thought that fashioning their company logo as a tribute to their shared roots was a good idea. The GSP seemed to think that this amounted to trademark infringement, despite the fact that managing the New Jersey Turnpike and slinging delicious pizza pies are fairly distinct marketplaces. A federal judge disagreed with them, however, and dismissed the lawsuit.

That hasn't stopped the Turnpike Authority from threatening others, it seems. A winery, one that also uses labels that are a clear homage to the GSP logo, is seeking a declaratory judgement that it too is not committing trademark infringement after it had received a cease-and-desist letter.

Old York Cellars of Ringoes filed a declaratory judgment action against the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which operates the Parkway, after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the agency over the look-alike logos. The dispute highlights a spate of cases where government entities have acted to trademark intellectual property.

The Garden State Parkway logo was registered with the U.S. Patent and Trade Office, but the lawyers for Old York Cellars argue that the statute creating the highway agency does not permit licensing of its intellectual property because it is not an activity related to transportation. Old York also says federal regulations prohibit intellectual property protection for traffic control devices. The public is unlikely to be confused between a highway agency and a business that makes wine, even if the state's trademark is valid, Old York said in its complaint.

And, just to add to all of that, the logos in question are far less similar in this case than they were in that of the pizza company. Here are both, side-by-side so that you can judge for yourself.

I get that the colors are the same, but much of the rest is rather distinct. Not to mention that the names of both organizations are featured prominently and in large font on both logos. Does the Turnpike Authority really want to argue that there is a likelihood of public confusion here? As though the public in New Jersey would walk into a liquor store and somehow think that the same group running the Turnpike is also selling wine? Really?

I would expect that the court would find in favor of the winery for declaratory judgement. Certainly any actual trademark suit brought by the Turnpike Authority would likely be similar enough to the one it brought against the pizza company to end with the same result.

Filed Under: garden state, new jersey, new jersey turnpike authority, njta, trademark
Companies: old york cellars

Cop Abuses Bad Cyberbullying Law To Arrest Man For Calling Him A Pedophile To His Face

from the wrap-your-mind-around-that-for-a-bit dept

Legislators like pushing cyberbullying/cyberharassment bills, but seldom seem to consider how their badly/broadly-written laws will be abused. Like many legislators pushing cyber legislation, New Jersey politician David Norcross just wanted to help the children.

State Sen. Donald Norcross (D-Camden) said the bill is tailored specifically to protect children, closing a loophole in state law that prevents people from being criminally prosecuted for online harassment of minors.

"There have been cases of cyber harassment across the country that have taken a tragic turn, and ended in the loss of life," Norcross, who co-sponsored the bill with state Sen. Nicholas Sacco (D-Hudson), said. "We have to make sure that our state laws reflect the reality that children are being harassed and bullied every day on the Internet. That means making sure those who engage in this conduct can be held accountable under the law."

The bill would ban people from using electronic devices and social media to threaten to injure or commit any crime against a person or his property, or send obscene material to or about someone.

So much for the "specific tailoring." Norcross wanted to protect kids from bullies, but instead it's "protecting" a cop from a local man with a long history of colorful speech and law enforcement interactions.

They’ve busted him for smoking pot, running a business past curfew, and not keeping his restaurant’s kitchen clean enough.

On Friday, however, it was Ed Forchion’s mouth that got him slapped in handcuffs, freedom of speech notwithstanding.

Days after Forchion stood outside his eatery and pot temple shouting “f— the police!” and calling one of the police officers a “pedophile,” NJ Weedman was charged with cyber-harassment and disorderly conduct.

The cyber-harassment charge, according to a copy of the complaint filed by Officer Herbert Flowers, was based on a Facebook and YouTube video of the confrontation in which Forchion is heard telling Flowers he’s a pedophile, while the disorderly conduct was for Forchion’s F-bombs against police “in public and social media forum.”

F-bombs are protected speech, so even the "disorderly conduct" charge is largely baseless. But the use of the cyberharassment law -- which carries a possible penalty of 18 months in jail and a $10,000 fine -- is completely ridiculous. If Forchion committed no crime by calling Officer Flowers a pedophile in person, no crime was committed simply because this confrontation was recorded (by a third party) and posted to YouTube (also, apparently by a third party).

This is simply a bad law being abused because that's what bad laws -- no matter how well-intentioned -- allow people like Officer Flowers to do.

Officer Herbert Flowers has a history of subjectively interpreting Constitutional rights. He may have been upset by Forchion's F-bombs, but that doesn't explain his decision to punish Forchion for using his First Amendment rights. But Flowers has been down this road before.

Here's the conclusion reached by the New Jersey Appeals Court, at the tail end of a six-year legal battle.

[W]e conclude that a reasonable police officer in 2006 could not have believed he had the absolute right to preclude Ramos from videotaping any gang activities or any interaction of the police with gang members for the purposes of making a documentary film on that topic.

The unreasonable police officer was none other than Herbert Flowers.

Ramos is a documentary filmmaker. In 2006, he was working on a project about the emergence of gangs in Trenton. Flowers is a police officer employed by the Trenton Police Department. Ramos contends that he had five encounters with the Trenton Police during the time he was filming the activities of various members of the “Sex Money Murder” Bloods sect, one of the largest Bloods gang units in Trenton. Three of the encounters involved Flowers. He alleges that Flowers’ actions during those three encounters interfered with his constitutional rights to free speech and assembly, as well as his right to be free from unlawful police search and seizure.

One of those encounters:

On July 6, 2006, the Trenton police responded to a call from the Trenton Public Library to investigate a meeting being held by known gang members on its premises. One of Ramos’s sources gave him a tip that he should go to the library to film the events as they unfolded. Once Ramos arrived at the library, Flowers told him he was interfering with a police investigation, adding: “I am sick of you already, I am sick of seeing you, I do not want to hear you anymore, you are not allowed here anymore.” Ramos asserts that Flowers grabbed his video camera and put it in his car. Flowers then told Ramos: “If I see you again … I am locking you up and I don’t care what for … you better not let me see you again … watch what happens.”

The filmmaker was charged with multiple violations after his arrest by Flowers. Only one charge stuck (obstructing a sidewalk), which was downgraded to a mere city ordinance violation.

Flowers is using a badly-written law meant to close statutory loopholes that prevented adults from being charged for harassing minors via social media to punish an adult for saying mean things to him to his face. Because Flowers didn't arrest Forchion on the spot, this means he had to go looking for "evidence" of Forchion's supposed "cyberharassment," which the officer somehow feels is a better statutory match for verbal abuse he experienced in person. Sure, Flowers could try to sue Forchion for defamation, but that takes time and Flowers' own cash. Flowers would rather have taxpayers finance his vendetta and see Flowers face a possible $10,000 fine and a stretch in jail than walk away from the disorderly conduct charge he likely won't be able to make stick.

This is why we warn against the unintended consequences of laws like these. It's not because we don't care about bullied kids. It's because adults -- especially those in positions of power -- will abuse them to stifle speech. Rather than simply ignore the personal attack, Flowers chose to treat it as a criminal offense. The end result is that Forchion, a.k.a. "NJ Weedman" -- a person who runs a "pot temple" he apparently feels is beyond the reach of state regulation -- is now the least ridiculous participant in this confrontation.

Filed Under: cyberbullying, donald norcross, ed forchion, herbert flowers, insults, new jersey, police

Over 7,800 Prosecutions Questioned After NJ Lab Tech Caught Faking Drug Test Results

from the so-fast-the-tests-can't-even-keep-up-with-him dept

Hey, it's only someone's freedom at stake. Why try harder? (via Fusion.net)

A lab technician for the State Police allegedly faked results in a drug case, and has drawn into question 7,827 criminal cases on which he worked, according to state officials.

Kamalkant Shah worked as a laboratory technician for the State Police laboratory in Little Falls and was found to have "dry labbed" suspected marijuana, according to a Feb. 29 memo to Public Defender Joseph Krakora from Deputy Public Defender Judy Fallon. Shah's essentially accused of making up data.

"Basically, he was observed writing 'test results' for suspected marijuana that was never tested," Fallon said in the memo.

If Shah wasn't concerned about putting a possibly innocent person behind bars, it's unlikely his yearly salary of $101,039 would have been much of a motivating factor for better work either. It could be that this was an isolated incident -- the one time Shah cut corners to increase throughput. (Which, truth be told, is kind of how our entire criminal justice system operates: throughput is preferable to diligent effort.)

But odds are that if Shah got caught, it's something that happened eventually, rather than immediately. Bad habits are easy to develop and tend to spiral out of control until the inevitable happens. There's no way to tell if this was a one-off. Conversely, there's no way to positively state this didn't happen all the time. Hence the thousands of criminal cases now being viewed as questionable.

Now comes the hard part of setting things right -- which is actually an impossibility, as the public defender's memo points out.

Mr. Shah was employed with the lab from 2005 to 2015; obviously all his “results” have been called into question. In Passaic County alone, the universe of cases possibly implicated in this conduct is 2,100. The Prosecutor’s Office is still in the process of identifying them. Their plan is to submit for retesting specimens from open cases. The larger, and unanswered, question is how this impacts already resolved cases, especially those where the specimens may have been destroyed.

Closed cases with no surviving evidence are still questionable, but there's no way to get answers. No one's going to start reversing convictions en masse just because the results might have been faked. The hundreds or thousands of cases where the tested samples may still be available aren't suddenly going to become a priority for the State Police either. It's more than just a question of will. It's also a question of resources. And when resources are scarce, possibly falsely imprisoned citizens will remain imprisoned.

In a case we discussed last year, a drug lab chemist was discovered to have been faking test results for years, resulting in nearly 40,000 criminal prosecutions being called into question. An examination by David Colarusso, a public defender turned data scientist, pointed to several issues that would put thousands of manhours between the suspect test results and any exonerations. It's not just that results were deliberately faked, but that the paperwork associated with them could have any number of flaws.

This gave us a rough list of clients on The List, and we used these names to create a list of their co-defendants. We then checked The List for the co-defendant names. Unfortunately, a lot of these were missing. If we assumed the same rate of missing names across all cases, it seemed The List was missing somewhere between 0 and 9,600 names. Wait, what? That’s right, thousands of potentially missing names. The uncertainty came from the fact that we had to match names. The List did not come with dates of birth, addresses, or Social Security Numbers—just names. So occasionally, we could not find a name we were looking for because the Commonwealth and CPCS disagreed on the spelling of a name or someone made a transcription error.

This particular effort has its own roadblocks. For one, the reopening of cases has been tossed to the prosecutor's office. While this is definitely the department that should handle it -- what with the misconduct occurring under their supervision and the office being better staffed and funded than their defense counterparts -- there's very little in it to motivate prosecutors to move quickly. No one likes having to erase wins from the board.

On top of that, this will require actual effort -- and lots of it.

Kevin Walker, an assistant public defender, issued a statement on behalf of the Public Defender's Office Wednesday saying the office does not have "a practical mechanism for identifying all the cases involving" Shah.

"The prosecuting attorneys are going to have to do that, by reviewing the records from the Little Falls lab and cross-referencing them with their files," he said. "We assume the prosecutors will do that promptly. Pending that review, we are going to keep all our options on the table, including filing motions to vacate convictions in appropriate cases."

The public defenders are playing their cards right. Filing motions to vacate convictions will motivate prosecutors who want to keep wins on the board to track down the tests and verify their accuracy. But that still does nothing for those whose supposedly culpatory test results have already been destroyed. And there will be many who simply fall through the cracks thanks to clerical errors, incomplete documentation or just because tangling with bureaucratic filing systems tends to wear people down quickly.

Prosecutors place a lot of faith in forensic lab results. So does almost every law enforcement agency, including the FBI. But over the years, investigations have found some forensic testing to be mostly junk science. In others, the science holds up but the test results are only as solid as the people performing them. Even the best scientists are susceptible to confirmation bias and the most knowledgeable expert witnesses can unconsciously act on a desire to please, rather than offer unbiased testimony.

Some mistakes are human error. Some are more malicious. When human lives and freedom are at stake, standards should never be allowed to slip. This means increasing the level of personal accountability -- by hiring the right people and by deterring future misconduct with harsh penalties for those who play fast and loose with criminal evidence. The latter hasn't happened here, which does not bode well for future criminal defendants.

Shah has not been charged with any crime, and is believed to have retired.

Filed Under: drug tests, faked results, kamalkant shah, new jersey

Inspector General Says FBI Not Doing Enough To Prevent Abuse Of Cell Phone Forensic Equipment By Law Enforcement Officers

from the but-we-maintain-strict-control-of-the-cables! dept

The FBI's Inspector General has released a report on the New Jersey FBI branch's Computer Forensics Laboratory. For the most part, the report is positive and shows this branch tends to handle its forensics work competently. The problem comes when it opens up its tools up to local law enforcement.

The FBI lab has a phone/media forensics kiosk located in the lobby of its building.

The Cell Phone Investigative Kiosk (Kiosk) allows users to quickly and easily view data stored on a cell phone, extract the data to use as evidence, put the data into a report, and copy the report to an electronic storage device such as a compact disk.8 In addition to the Kiosk, there is also a Loose Media Kiosk, which processes digital evidence stored on loose media, such as a DVD or memory card.

Because it's outside of the actual lab, the FBI apparently feels it's ok if it doesn't track who's using the kiosk.

To use the Kiosk, law enforcement personnel are required to schedule an appointment. However, the NJRCFL does not require Kiosk users to sign its Visitors Log since users do not go beyond the reception area or enter the NJRCFL’s laboratory space.

That leads to this sort of thing.

According to the Director, sometimes one investigator will schedule a Kiosk appointment and another investigator will show up in his or her place, or more than one investigator may accompany the scheduled investigator to use the Kiosk. According to the Director, NJRCFL personnel assume that all of the personnel who arrive for a scheduled appointment are part of the same case. However, he said that the NJRCFL does not verify that everyone arriving for a scheduled appointment is working on the same investigative matter.

This is a problem because there are rules in place for use of the forensics kiosk, which include law enforcement officers having the proper authority to perform the search, the training to do so and the permission of the local AUSA (Assistant US Attorney). The FBI's decision to skip this verification step by not requiring signatures on the visitor's log means anyone could show up and use the kiosk without having secured the permission to do so.

The FBI does have this control in place, which couldn't possibly be circumvented.

While the Kiosk is housed in the reception area, the cables necessary to connect the Kiosk to a cell phone are not stored with the Kiosk. Instead, the NJRCFL examiner responsible for supervising the Kiosk provides the cables to a visiting user. Without the cables, cell phones cannot be connected to the Kiosk, ensuring that the examiner on duty would have to know that a person was attempting to use the Kiosk because the examiner would have to supply the appropriate cable.

These "cables" sound a lot like your standard USB cables. There may be a proprietary connection on the FBI kiosk which prevents the use of off-the-shelf cables, but it's not as though no one in law enforcement could secure this sort of cable through other means. Even if these are cables that are only found at FBI offices, there's nothing stopping law enforcement officers from searching removable media without checking in with the reception desk first.

On top of that, there's nothing preventing law enforcement officers from asking for a cable and then performing illegal searches or using the forensics software for non-law enforcement reasons.

As a result of the procedures and practices described above, we found that the NJRCFL did not have adequate controls over the access to and use of its Kiosk. FBI policy requires Kiosk users to confirm they possess the proper legal authority for the search of data on cell phones or loose media. During our fieldwork, neither the FBI nor the NJRCFL provided any confirmation to show that NJRCFL Kiosk users possessed the proper legal authority to search for evidence on the devices examined. In addition, the FBI did not provide us with any information regarding controls in place at the NJRCFL to ensure that users do not use the Kiosk for nonlaw enforcement matters, an inherent risk of Kiosks without adequate controls.

While the form officers are required to fill out to use the kiosk contain statements about having the legal authority to perform the search, the documents do not ask for any specifics about these authorities. It's just boilerplate text that anyone can sign, knowing that the lack of a visitor's log means no one can cross-reference possibly bogus affirmations with kiosk use.

This same problem is likely found at most other FBI offices with forensics kiosks. The report notes the same issues were discovered during its audit of the Philadelphia field office. The form -- and the "best practices" -- provide only the most minimal of safeguards against abuse. And the fact that the changes made in Philadelphia in response to the OIG's investigation never trickled down to the New Jersey office suggests this problem will be corrected on a case-by-case basis following an Inspector General's audit, rather than adopted across all offices.

A new form has been put into use -- at least at the New Jersey office -- that will capture more information about the legal authorities used to perform kiosk searches. However, there's nothing in the report that indicates this office -- or any others -- have stepped up to require kiosk users to sign a visitor's log. In addition, more than a quarter of kiosk users reported they did not have the training in place to use the equipment, yet are accessing it anyway. Until more improvements are put in place, FBI offices can't say they're doing everything they can to ensure lawful use of its forensic equipment.

Filed Under: abuse, fbi, forensic kiosks, forensic lab, law enforcement, new jersey

NJ Legislator Wants State's Cops To Be The New Beneficiaries Of Hate Crime/Bias Laws

from the #copslivesmatterMORE dept

You know what group of the public just hasn't been given enough protections? Law enforcement officers.

To date, all they have is:

• The power to enforce laws as they interpret them, even when said law doesn't actually exist
• Qualified immunity
• "Exigent circumstances" justifications for acts of violence, civil rights violations
• A multitude of weaponry, both lethal and sometimes-lethal
• Strong union representation
• Law enforcement-only bills of (extra) rights
• The constant benefit of a doubt
• Mine-resistant work vehicles
• "Shoot first, be questioned 48-72 hours later after viewing all available evidence" policies
• Massive political clout

It's not enough. It's dangerous out there for cops these days.* So, in the interest of making things even safer for our underprotected boys/girls in blue, a New Jersey politician is introducing legislation that would fold cops in to the state's "hate speech/bias" laws.

* It isn't.

In New Jersey it is a bias intimidation crime when one person threatens another based on race, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation, disability or gender identity. Police officers are not currently protected under the statute, but one Garden State lawmaker said they should be.

He said that threats against a cop should be taken as seriously as the crime that often follows that threat.

“Legislation that I am proposing would expand the bias intimidation/hate speech statute to include law enforcement officers. There needs to be consequences for threatening to target and kill a law enforcement officer,” said Assemblyman Ron Dancer (R-Jackson).

There are consequences, which Dancer seems to have forgotten. True threats and killing law enforcement officers is already illegal under current New Jersey laws. What Dancer wants to do is give a historically well-protected group additional protections meant for historically less-protected citizens.

This sort of cop-favoring legislation is nothing new for Dancer.

Dancer already introduced another bill (A-3611) that would expand the definition of a terroristic threat to include threatening to kill a police officer.

Once again, issuing terroristic threats is already a crime. There's no need to specifically add police officers to the statute… unless you're like Dancer and believe the copacalypse is upon us, powered by hashtags and the general feeling that people just don't love cops the way they used to.

“The recent ambushes and assassinations of our law enforcement officers simply because they wear a blue uniform, that demands action. I recognize and respect that freedom of speech is a constitutional right, but when someone is threatening to kill our law enforcement officers there needs to be strict penalties,” Dancer said.

And there are strict penalties! Uttering terroristic threats is punishable by 3-5 years in prison and a $15,000 fine. Dancer wants threatening cops to be a more severe criminal act than threatening any other citizen. His proposal would make threatening cops a second degree crime, with penalties increasing to 5-10 years/$150,000 fine, along with the presumption of incarceration. (Third degree crimes often result in non-custodial sentences like probation.)

Dancer has also proposed an automatic death penalty for killing law enforcement officers, again citing the (nonexistent) War on Cops.

“While irresponsible groups promote rhetoric that threatens police officers, it is crucial we support our peace keepers,” Dancer said. “We need a strong deterrent for targeting our men and women behind the badge.”

Worse than Dancer's fear-based, fact-free bloviating is the additional commentary of Kevin McArdle, who wrote the story for NJ101.

Cops could use all the protection they can get. According the Officer Down Memorial Page 26 police officers have been shot and killed in the line of duty in 2015...

Statistics show that the current pace for killed cops will put the number at 35 by year's end, the second-lowest total in almost six decades. Cops don't need more protection. The perception has changed, but the number of deaths is historically low. Cops are safer than they've been since the mid-1950's, back in the good old days of Sheriff Andy Griffith and the possible peak of the public's worship of law enforcement officers. The only thing taking a beating these days (other than tons of "civilians") is law enforcement's public image. And despite high-profile police-involved shootings being swiftly followed by high-profile protests, cops are still being "targeted" and killed at an incredibly low rate.

Adding prison time and fines to existing penalties solely because of the target's profession is just more favoritism that places cops further above the people they serve. It's stupid and it does nothing to address the so-called "war on cops," which at this point, is still 99% misperception and 100% misinformation.

Filed Under: bias, free speech, hate speech, new jersey, ron dancer

New Jersey Supreme Court OKs Warrantless Searches Of Vehicles

from the more-exception,-less-rule dept

We've written before about how limited the Fourth Amendment is when applied to drivers and their vehicles. A number of court decisions -- along with continually-reinforced exceptions -- have allowed police to pull over motorists for any reason imaginable. Once they have someone pulled over, it's just a matter of obtaining consent from the driver or, failing that, coming up with a reasonable approximation of probable cause. (Drug dogs are a favorite.) After that, no warrant is needed to search the vehicle, along with the contents of any container found within it.

The "automobile exception" is the federal standard. Not every state has adopted it but a majority of them have. Until recently, New Jersey hadn't. Under its former standard, the motor vehicle exception did not exist. Police officers looking to search a vehicle without a warrant needed to make use of the "exigent circumstances" exception.

To no one's surprise, obtaining warrants was the least popular option. When "exigent circumstances" failed to present themselves, cops would instead try to obtain consent. It sounds like New Jersey's stricter reading of constitutional rights meant officers were less inclined to perform warrantless searches, but this is only an illusion. In striking down this requirement, the New Jersey high court presented a clearer picture of what was actually happening in the absence of a motor vehicle exception.

The New Jersey high court concluded that imposing the added condition of an emergency was impractically strict and led to an unintended surge of highway stops in which police induced drivers to allow them to look through their cars.

Inducement was the primary tactic. The state also offered an expedited warrant request system, but it failed to speed up the process.

[Justice Barry T. Albin] said the state experimented with “telephonic” search warrants in which officers connected with the court remotely through phone conferencing. But the system, he said, failed to live up to its promises and resulted in “unacceptably prolonged roadway stops.”

The state court system tested out the technology in 2012 with a pilot program. In one county where it was tried out, it took an average of 59 minutes for police to get a roadside warrant approved. In another part of the state, it often took as long as two hours.

So, this didn't work. A footnote from the dissenting opinion indicates why. It's not that the system wasn't fast enough. It's that it was only used when other options had failed.

According to the State, the pilot program “by its very design, reveals why telephonic warrants are not likely to emerge as a viable replacement for the automobile exception.” The State contends that “[a]ll of the participants in the pilot program understood that police officers would continue their post-Pena-Flores practice of requesting motorists to consent to a search” prior to trying to obtain a telephonic warrant.

This "consent first" approach to vehicle searches is what stretched out these stops to nearly an hour, not the telephonic warrant system. But with the Supreme Court's Rodriguez decision making prolonged traffic stops Constitutionally-unfeasible, this two-step process for effecting a search of a vehicle is no longer an option.

Not that the consent route was any better. The court's decision notes that induced-consent searches have been problematic in the past:

Not long ago, the State Police subjected minority motorists to consent searches on a grossly disproportionate basis because of racial profiling. As a result of the abuse of consent searches, the State Police were placed under the supervision of federal monitors pursuant to a consent decree.

[...]

Given the widespread abuse of consent searches, this Court in Carty forbade police officers from making consent-search requests unless they had reasonable and articulable suspicion to believe a vehicle contained contraband or evidence of an offense. Still, that standard does not remove the coercive effect of a search request made to a motorist stopped on the side of a road. We recognized in Carty “the inherently coercive predicament of the driver who is stopped on the highway and faced with the perceived choice of either refusing consent to search and therefore increasing the likelihood of receiving a traffic summons, or giving consent to search in the hope of escaping with only a warning.” Under those and other like circumstances, “it is not a stretch of the imagination to assume that the individual feels compelled to consent.”

Despite these concerns, the court finds the requirement of a warrant to search a stopped motorist's vehicle is too constrictive. It weighs law enforcement's interests against the Fourth Amendment and -- surprise -- finds in favor of law enforcement.

The current approach to roadside searches premised on probable cause -- “get a warrant” -- places significant burdens on law enforcement. On the other side of the ledger, we do not perceive any real benefit to our citizenry by the warrant requirement in such cases -- no discernible advancement of their liberty or privacy interests. When a police officer has probable cause to search a car, is a motorist better off being detained on the side of the road for an hour (with all the accompanying dangers) or having his car towed and impounded at headquarters while the police secure a warrant? Is not the seizure of the car and the motorist’s detention “more intrusive than the actual search itself”?

It's always disheartening to hear a court conclude that, after weighing all factors, there's not enough of a net gain to civil liberties to prevent further diminishment of Fourth Amendment protections. The court apparently feels motorists would be happier having their rights violated than their car impounded or their traffic stop extended. If this is true, there's no reason for this ruling. Citizens are perfectly capable of weighing these factors and making these decisions themselves. That's exactly what consent is.

Rather than stay ahead of the curve in terms of Constitutional protections, New Jersey's court has opted to let law enforcement needs take priority over the privacy of its residents.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, fourth amendment, new jersey, vehicles, warrantless search

Verizon's Screwing New Jersey Even Harder Than Previously Believed

from the regulatory-capture dept

We've previously discussed how in 1993 Verizon conned the state of New Jersey into giving the telco all manner of subsidies and tax breaks in exchange for a promise to wire the majority of the state with symmetrical fiber. Fast forward to 2015, most of New Jersey remains on aging DSL, and the state decided it would be a wonderful idea to simply let Verizon walk away from its obligations. Of course this isn't new: Verizon's regulatory capture allowed it to do the exact same thing in Pennsylvania, and it's currently busy trying to dodge New York City FiOS build out requirements as well.

But apparently, New Jersey is getting screwed harder than state residents even knew. In addition to the sham 1993 agreement, Verizon got New Jersey officials to sign off on a 2006 statewide franchise agreement that also let the company wiggle out of FiOS deployment obligations. Essentially, Newark and Fulop Mayors began noticing that many buildings in their cities were waiving their right to have FiOS installed, something not happening in more affluent areas:

"Mayor Steven Fulop of Jersey City and Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark are expected to call a press conference to discuss whether Verizon is fulfilling its obligations under the act. Public records show that 21,392 different properties in Newark have waived their access rights under the franchise agreement, opting out of any right to FiOS availability. In Jersey City, that number climbed to 25,311, nearly a fifth of the city’s properties. In richer municipalities like Trenton, Weehawken, and Hackensack, that number never climbed above 3,000."

Verizon's 2006 franchise agreement required that the telco make its fiber-based FiOS service available to New Jersey's 70 densest municipalities, including poor areas in Newark and Jersey City that might not otherwise see coverage. But Verizon appears to be abusing a loophole in the franchise agreement that allows it to add buildings to an acceptable "waiver" list of exemptions should Verizon run into trouble during installs. But Verizon appears to be making it intentionally difficult for landlords in poorer cities to successfully contact and schedule installs with Verizon:

"What we understand the practice to be is that, if you're in a wealthy high-rise next to the water in Jersey City, they will bend over backwards trying to get into that building," says Seth Hahn of the Communication Workers of America union, which has supported the mayors in their efforts to get more cable laid. "But if you live on the other end of the tracks, they'll send you a letter saying, 'We'd like access to your building.’" After a labyrinth of phone calls and offerings, the landlord will often end up on a waiver list without realizing it, Hahn says."

None of this is to say landlords can't be difficult. In a 2013 PSC filing with the state of New York (pdf), Verizon claims many landlords refused the telco access to building infrastructure, and some even tried to charge the telco for building access. But looking at the data, it seems somewhat obvious that there's a big discrepancy among waiver totals in poorer cities:Now this could be coincidental, but given Verizon's history on this front, claims that Verizon's using landlords as a bogeyman to justify failure to adhere to obligations seem very likely. You'd need to investigate to be sure, but since New Jersey is already pretty lax on holding Verizon accountable, it's painfully unlikely that the state will ever bother. And letting Verizon get away with this kind of stuff isn't unique; this same story plays out in dozens of states nationwide. Repeatedly.

But the core of this problem is again regulatory capture and these statewide TV franchise agreements. The new laws were pushed by AT&T and Verizon in dozens of states around ten years ago, and were quickly rammed through by campaign-cash soaked state legislatures under the promise of new jobs and lower TV prices thanks to increased competition. But most if not all of the agreements were written by telco lobbyists and lawyers. As such, most of them are basically phone company wishlists, and in some places like Wisconsin, went so far as to gut all consumer protections and even some eminent domain rights.

So yeah, if you didn't realize it already companies like AT&T and Verizon all but own many state legislatures, as evident by the fact they literally write the laws governing their behavior. The end result of that may not be surprising, but the fact that we never seem to learn from decades of this kind of behavior should be.

Filed Under: fiber, fios, fulsop, loopholes, new jersey, newark, poor, waivers
Companies: verizon

Verizon Thinks It's A Good Idea To Mock New Jersey Taxpayers After Ripping Them Off For Years

from the so-long-suckers dept

We've noted a few times how Verizon has a rich history of taking taxpayer money, subsidies and tax breaks, then promising fiber deployment that never occurs. When it then comes time for local municipalities to hold the telco's feet to the fire, campaign contributions ensure any investigation is short lived. It happened in Pennsylvania, it happened in New York City, and it recently happened in New Jersey, when state officials let Verizon off the hook for a 1993 promise to evenly deploy fiber across the state in exchange for billions in benefits.

Shortly after state officials let Verizon walk away from its obligations, they also granted Verizon exemption from regulations requiring it continue servicing DSL customers whose lines were paid for in large part thanks to billions in subsidies. As we've noted, companies like AT&T and Verizon are hanging up on customers they don't want to upgrade, and forcing them instead to notably more expensive and capped wireless services. Many customers would prefer Verizon maintain or upgrade their fixed-line broadband connections, since they've paid an arm and a leg for them.

About fifty annoyed municipalities have now formed an alliance aimed at holding Verizon's feet to the fire. Collectively, they're trying to explore ways to hold Verizon accountable, require it to deliver promised upgrades, or at the very least maintain existing DSL lines until something better comes along. Verizon's response? To mock these people as Luddites:

"But Verizon New Jersey spokesman Lee Gierczynski has called this "misplaced fear" resulting from "misinformation and misunderstanding about copper networks, fiber networks and the reliability of those networks." "This is a classic example of how some people fear new technology so they reactively reject it instead of accepting it, no matter how irrational that fear may be," Gierczynski said.

Except that's not what's happening here at all. People aren't angry because they're afraid of fiber upgrades, because the majority aren't getting those upgrades. They're angry because Verizon's trying to shovel them to "good enough" wireless service with low caps and steep $15 per gigabyte overage fees. Like AT&T, Verizon would have you believe that having your less expensive, unlimited DSL line replaced by a hugely expensive LTE connection (you may not even be able to get) is a step into the Utopian telecom future. Verizon's spokesman shows just how tone deaf the company is by then suggesting these folks should be mocked:

"He added: "I think people are going to look back and laugh at people ... just like who were a part of the Anti-Digit Dialing League."

Of course what people are actually going to look back on and laugh (or cry) at is Verizon's ability to take billions in subsidies, do little to nothing with it, convince regulators to turn the other cheek to outright theft, then mock annoyed consumers when they try to complain.

Filed Under: broadband, innovation, new jersey, subsidies
Companies: verizon