Congress Still Fighting SEC's Investigation Of Alleged Insider Trading By Its Members

from the 'pretty-sure-we're-above-the-law,-judge' dept

Congress is once again declaring its willingness to hold everyone in the nation accountable for their actions, present party excepted.

Back in 2011, it was revealed that members of Congress were participating in insider trading. Spending a great deal of time conversing with lobbyists tends to result in the discussion of information that has yet to be made public. Legislators, being the opportunists they are, chose to buy and sell stock based on this insider info. Lobbyists -- also opportunists -- sometimes did the same thing. And it was all perfectly legal... at least for Congress.

This revelation did nothing to increase the public's goodwill towards its so-called "representatives." With its approval percentage (15%) sliding below that of Bernie Madoff's personal loan applications, Congress swiftly acted to close this loophole in the law.

Two years later, with everyone safely re-elected, Congress quietly excised the disclosure requirement in the new law, making it virtually impossible to verify whether or not it was actually playing by the rules it had made for itself. Predictably, it called the disclosure of such information a "national security risk."

Meanwhile, the SEC opened an investigation into Congressional insider trading related to health insurance companies. Congress refused to answer subpoenas or provide documents to the Commission. When ordered to by a federal judge, the House Ways and Means Committee gently explained that it could do whatever the fuck it wanted to.

The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee and a top staff member say the panel and its employees are "absolutely immune" from having to comply with subpoenas from a federal regulator in an insider-trading probe.

Two years later, Congress is still arguing that rules and laws are for people who can't write their own rules and laws. Judge Paul Gardephe didn't buy Congress' arguments that its conversations with lobbyists were so "privileged" they couldn't be examined by another federal agency. He also pointed out that the "immunity" it relied on was carved out by the very law they had passed to address insider trading a steep drop in approval ratings.

On November 13, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe agreed with most of the SEC’s claims and ordered Congress to comply with the subpoena within 10 days. “Members of Congress and congressional employees are not exempt from the insider trading prohibitions arising under the securities laws,” he wrote. Gardephe reminded the attorneys that “Congress barred such claims of immunity when it adopted” the STOCK Act.

Congress' top lawyer fought back, claiming certain, very specific words were missing from the STOCK Act and that legislators' immunity was still intact.

Kerry W. Kircher, the House general counsel, requested more time. Then, shortly before Thanksgiving, on November 25, he filed a motion to appeal the subpoena to the 2nd Circuit. Kircher argued that the STOCK Act did not explicitly authorize the SEC to issue subpoenas to Congress, even to investigate insider trading.

This may not result in the investigation being scuttled or the lawsuit being tossed, but it does buy Congress more time to figure out its next accountability-dodging move. Meanwhile, Congress members are doing what they can to ensure the battle the SEC is waging to at least hold them as accountable as their own STOCK Act promised they would, will be long, expensive and hopefully, ultimately fruitless. These efforts are also shady as hell.

Away from the spotlight, however, congressional leaders continue to fight enforcement and to shore up the target of the SEC inquiry. Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, and Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., two lawmakers who served on the same committee as Sutter, have used PAC money to donate to the legal defense fund set up to defend him.

Campaign funding -- itself a toxic wasteland where morality and ideals go to die -- is being rerouted to keep Bruce Sutter, a former Ways and Means Committee member who allegedly passed on non-public Medicare reimbursement information to a lobbyist for law firm Greenberg Taurig. Not only will Congress members let nothing stand in the way of personally profiting from their time in office, they'll also apparently ensure those who previously got away with it will continue to elude being held accountable.

Filed Under: bruce sutter, congress, insider trading, investigation, sec, stock act, subpoena

Latest FBI Terrorist Bust Shows A Future So 'Dark' Some Eye Protection Might Be Warranted

from the I-study-bitcoin-and-violence,-I-love-my-hashes... dept

So much for "going dark." The FBI's narrative of a terrorist-filled world enshrouded in encryption continues to be disproven. For one, it appears the NSA has made tremendous strides towards cracking commonly-used encryption, thanks to its computing power and a multitude of shared Diffie-Hellman primes. For another, the super secret world of terrorism doesn't seem to be all that secret. FBI director James Comey has repeatedly pointed out that terrorism suspects are vanishing behind encrypted communication platforms, but when pointedly asked about how often this is actually happening, he could only claim "dozens of times."

Operational security may be improving over time, but as of this point, suspected terrorists are still leaving themselves exposed through easily-accessed channels. Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel took a look at the latest terrorism suspect busted by the FBI and sees nothing in the criminal complaint that suggests the agency had much trouble hunting him down.

Given Jim Comey’s repeated warnings of how the FBI is going dark on ISIS organizing, I thought I’d look at how FBI found this guy.

Ardit Ferizi, the suspect’s real name, was connected to the @Th3Dir3ctorY account on Twitter. On that account Ferizi linked to an article about the Kosova Hacker’s Security group (KHS) for which he had been interviewed. He also identified himself as the owner of KHS.

Ferizi registered the Twitter identity to a hotmail account tied to an IP address in Kosovo.

@Th3Dir3ctorY subsequently logged into Twitter from various ISPs in Malaysia, including 210.186.111.14.

The hacker who first broke into “Victim Company” on June 13, 2015 and ultimately stole the data of 100,000 people created an account with the identity KHS. On August 19, 2015 — after the company had removed the malware used to exfiltrate the data — someone identifying himself as “Albanian Hacker” and using the email “khs-crew@live.com” contacted the company and asked them to stop taking down their files (which the FBI interpreted to mean the malware left on the server). The IP address tied to the SQL injection used by the hacker was 210.186.111.14.

A Facebook account tied to the name “ardit.ferizi01” also used that IP address. Ferizi sent himself a spreadsheet via that facebook account with the stolen PII.

Facebook, Hotmail, Twitter… these aren't exactly the tools of the "going dark" trade. It could be that Ferizi is an anomaly -- a terrorist who thinks OPSEC is for losers who want to stay out of prison. But it also suggests commonly-used communications continue to be commonly used, even by people performing unlawful actions.

As Wheeler points out, the FBI calls Ferizi a hacker… and yet, for all of his alleged skills, he deployed less secretive measures than many people who have no connection to illicit deeds or today's Public Enemy No. 1: ISIS/ISIL.

Even if Ferizi had been more careful, it's likely the FBI would not have run into an encrypted dead end. While apps like WhatsApp may offer encrypted communications, their creators are often willing to hand over whatever identifying information they do have on suspected criminals. This can then be tied to more open communications platforms. It's highly unlikely that every single bit of communication between terrorism suspects happens on secured channels. And once a suspect is in custody, work can begin on forcing the person to cough up login info.

Nothing about this suggests backdoored encryption is the only way to successfully fight terrorism (and the drug war, etc.). What Comey's complaints suggest is that the FBI would definitely prefer an easier way to do this, one that doesn't involve approaching the NSA for anything it has collected or seeking court orders/ warrants to collect information from third parties. What it would like is as many communication platforms as possible to be open books, where all investigators have to do is a small amount of Googling -- or simply have full access to any account where it suspects discussions of illegal acts might be taking place.

Filed Under: ardit ferizi, doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, investigation, terror

Russia 'Investigating' Apple Over The Diabolical Menace That Is LGBT-Friendly Emojis

from the sanctioned-bigotry dept

Russia's been nothing but busy since passing its 2013 LGBT propaganda law, designed to protect minors from the terrifying menace of "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships" while upholding "family values" through government-encouraged discrimination and hatred. The law has had two major benefits for the Russian government; allowing Putin and friends to use homophobia to encourage distrust of heathens in the West (at the cost of increased violence against the LGBT community), while providing feeble justification for the country's heavy-handed censorship efforts.

Most attempted enforcement of the law is comical in nature, like the government's apparent decision recently to "investigate" Apple for violating the law with a several-year-old set of LGBT-friendly....emojis (which Apple included back in iOS update 8.3). The "investigation" was apparently prompted by a Russian lawyer by the name of Yaroslav Mikhailov, who has previously had political opposition journalists investigated for their comical posts to Instagram:

"The case, brought by police in Russia's Kirov region 600 miles northeast of Moscow, follows a complaint by a local attorney named Yaroslav Mikhailov, Russian newspaper Gazeta reported. Mikhailov argued that that Apple is violating Russia's ban on so-called "gay propaganda" in the presence of minors by including the emojis in the iOs 8.3 package. The case, opened last month, is awaiting expert analysis of the cartoon motifs to determine whether they count as "gay propaganda," the newspaper reported.

According to an older report by Russia's Izvestia newspaper, the investigation was also prompted by a complaint from Mikhail Marchenko, a Russian senator who apparently believes the more racially diverse and LGBT-inclusive emojis somehow "disrespect" traditional families:

"Mr Marchenko claims the symbols - which depict smiley-faced same-sex couples - violate a controversial 2013 law which prohibits promotion of non-traditional sexual relationships. The law allows Russian authorities to block access to websites deemed to promote homosexuality. Mr Marchenko said in his complaint that the emojis "promoted non-traditional sexual relationships", "denied family values" ​​and showed "disrespect for parents and other family members."

These are, apparently, the moral-fabric-eroding cartoon representations that have some so deeply, deeply offended: Diabolical indeed. Should Apple be found "guilty" of the offense, the company could be fined the Russian equivalent of roughly $15,000 in Tim Cook couch change, and sales of its products could be suspended in the country for three months. Again, this kind of blisteringly-idiotic behavior would be funny were it not for the fact that the Russian-government-sanctioned bigotry has resulted in a dramatic spike in violence against the LGBT community.

Filed Under: emoji, investigation, lgbt, propaganda, russia
Companies: apple

DOJ Drops All Charges Against Professor After Realizing No One Checked To See If What He Sent To China Was Actually A Secret

from the total-failure dept

There's been a bit of hysteria in the US lately about "the Chinese stealing our secrets." Now, there's plenty of evidence of corporate espionage going on from China, but the actual impact of it appears to be quite overblown. But as we're in a giant moral panic about everything China related, the White House launched a big "crackdown" on such things recently -- and so far it seems to have resulted in the DOJ destroying innocent people's lives, while getting a lot of egg on its face. The latest: late on Friday the DOJ announced that it was completely dropping all charges against Xi Xiaoxing, the head of Temple University's physics department, who had been arrested earlier this year for apparently sharing the schematics of a special device known as a pocket heater with Chinese scientists. The only problem? It turns out he didn't actually share the schematics of a pocket heater with the Chinese -- the FBI just assumed what he shared must be a pocket heater. But it wasn't.

The schematics, prosecutors said, revealed the design of a device known as a pocket heater. The equipment is used in semiconductor research, and Dr. Xi had signed an agreement promising to keep its design a secret.

But months later, long after federal agents had led Dr. Xi away in handcuffs, independent experts discovered something wrong with the evidence at the heart of the Justice Department’s case: The blueprints were not for a pocket heater.

Faced with sworn statements from leading scientists, including an inventor of the pocket heater, the Justice Department on Friday afternoon dropped all charges against Dr. Xi, an American citizen.

You would think that this is the sort of thing that the DOJ would check before arresting the guy and destroying his life.

“I don’t expect them to understand everything I do,” Dr. Xi, 57, said in a telephone interview. “But the fact that they don’t consult with experts and then charge me? Put my family through all this? Damage my reputation? They shouldn’t do this. This is not a joke. This is not a game.”

And he's not kidding about putting his family through a terrible situation. A dozen FBI agents "with guns drawn" stormed his home when he was arrested back in May. His whole family was there at the time.

Meanwhile, as the NY Times report notes, this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. Just a few months ago, the DOJ similarly dropped all charges against Sherry Chen, who worked for the National Weather Service. The story here is perhaps even more ridiculous. Chen, in a visit back to China to see her parents, had also visited with a former classmate, who was a senior official in the Ministry of Water. In passing he asked her some questions about how certain projects concerning US reservoirs were funded. Chen later emailed him some links to public websites that contained some basic info (not even that relevant to the original question). She also put him in touch with a colleague she had worked with at the Army Corps of Engineers who might be able to answer more questions. That person reported the emails to officials saying she was "concerned" about what was happening.

And, from there, the DOJ flipped out. It got a warrant, searched her emails and work computers and discovered a very weak link. In searching around, Chen had accessed another database, just for US government workers, using a colleague's password, since she didn't have a password to that particular database (but was allowed to access it). She had downloaded some info that was useful to a project she was working on, and had told her former classmate back in China that if he wanted info from the database, he would need to go through more official channels, suggesting the colleague at the Army Corps. of Engineers... who had just turned her in as a possible spy.

She was later arrested and her name was all over the press -- and then eventually dropped months later when the DOJ finally took the time to realize that she hadn't actually done anything wrong, and it had jumped to all sorts of crazy conclusions because of her one 15 minute meeting and her sending a few emails with public information.

A week before trial was to begin, Mr. Zeidenberg requested a meeting with Carter M. Stewart and Mark T. D’Alessandro, two United States attorneys for the Southern District of Ohio.

“Why,” Mr. Zeidenberg said he asked, “if she’s a spy, is she coming back from China and telling her colleagues that ‘I met this guy in China and this is what he wants to know’? Why is she telling the guy in China, ‘Here’s my boss’s phone number’? Why is she asking for a password over email? Why would you do that?”

Mr. Zeidenberg says the prosecutors listened. On March 10, the day after their meeting, they dismissed the charges.

“Thank God,” Mr. Zeidenberg added.

You'll notice, of course, that both of the individuals arrested are American citizens, but were born in China, leading to reasonable accusations that the DOJ is overreacting to Chinese-Americans and assuming that anything they do with people back in China may be espionage.

Again, it's likely that there is real espionage going on. No one denies that. But when we scare ourselves so much that we're looking for ghosts, we're taking down innocent people because the DOJ is just too amped up looking for "bad guys" and either unable or unwilling to actually look at the evidence first. That's really, really messed up.

Filed Under: china, doj, espionage, failures, fbi, investigation, pocket heater, sherry chen, xi xiaoxing

Germany Officially Drops Ridiculous 'Treason' Investigation Into Netzpolitik

from the took-long-enough dept

Last month, we wrote about how German officials were investigating the German news site Netzpolitik (which covers a lot of the same things that Techdirt covers) for treason. That was because of a few stories on Netzpolitik that published whistleblowing documents on plans to expand Germany's internet surveillance powers. The investigation resulted in widespread protests by people concerned about the chilling effects created by investigating reporters for possible treason for merely reporting on the news.

There was also plenty of disagreement within the government itself, with the German Justice Minister expressing his disapproval of the investigation and eventually firing the prosecutor after that prosecutor accused the Justice Minister of "encroaching" on his independence.

Now, a week later, German prosecutors have officially dropped the investigation, though it still raises questions about why it was started in the first place.

On Monday the federal prosecutor’s office said it was closing the case because it believed the leaked documents on which the website’s reports were based were not a “state secret”, and that other conditions for treason charges had not been met.

Thankfully, Markus Beckedahl, the editor-in-chief of Netzpolitik, does not want the matter to end there either. He wants to know why the investigation began in the first place:

Beckedahl suggested the decision to drop the inquiry was not enough. “We want to know precisely whether we were subject to surveillance measures during the almost three-month investigation,” he said. Beckedahl said he hoped the case would motivate authorities to improve protection for whistleblowers in Germany.

Hopefully, this does lead to much better protection for both journalists and whistleblowers.

Filed Under: germany, investigation, journalism, treason, whistleblowers
Companies: netzpolitik

Possibly Cracked TrueCrypt Account At The Center Of Stolen Military Documents Case

from the Federal-Backdoor-Installation dept

A little over a month ago, we covered a FOIA response (if you could call it that...) from the FBI concerning TrueCrypt, in which it withheld all 69 pages of responsive documents. In addition to the ridiculousness of much of the withheld information being easily-accessible online, there was the question about what this denial meant for TrueCrypt.

When the FBI withholds documents, it often does so because the subject of the FOIA involves an ongoing investigation. In this case, the FBI cited an FOIA exemption related to "trade secrets and commercial information," which none of this was. So, why all the secrecy? Perhaps it was just the agency's default mode taking over. Or maybe it had something to do with TrueCrypt's sudden decision to halt development and declare the software "insecure." Had the FBI managed to "break" TrueCrypt or was its lack of a reponse to this request a signal that it was talking to the people behind it?

What is certain is that the FBI has been able to gain access to a TrueCrypt user's account.

Scott Glenn, a 35-year-old Harris Corp. employee working at a US military base in Honduras, apparently made off with documents considered to be "military secrets."

In January, he admitted he hacked into the base commander's classified email account and copied thousands of messages and more than 350 attached documents, much of which dealt with U.S. military plans and information regarding the Middle East.

The judge who sentenced Glenn to 10 years in prison asserted Glenn grabbed these documents out of a desire to "damage" the "security" of the United States. His lawyer had argued that Glenn was nothing more than a "technological hoarder" -- someone who collects this sort of stuff just to be collecting it. He pointed to Glenn's retention of a secretary's hard drive that had no discernible value to anyone as evidence of Glenn's "hoarding" habit. He also pointed out Glenn never tried to distribute the documents or attempted to use them for financial gain.

Glenn, however, has both a troubled legal past and a hazy legal future. He has previously been expelled from a military base for committing benefits fraud and hacking into US databases for Iraqi businesses. He's also being investigated for "sexually exploiting" Honduran minors.

But the nexus point for this stash of military documents was TrueCrypt.

Glenn read up on the art of espionage and used an elaborate encryption system, TrueCrypt, with a decoy computer drive to distract investigators from another hidden drive that he protected with a complex 30-character password, army counterintelligence expert Gerald Parsons testified.

The FBI's counterintelligence squad in South Florida was able to crack Glenn's code, Parsons said.

Parsons said he didn't know how the FBI agents did it but he estimated it would have taken "billions" of years to crack the code using traditional methods.

This should be a bit concerning for TrueCrypt users. Either Glenn's password was cracked (rather than TrueCrypt's encryption) or the questions raised about the predictability of the random-number generator behind the encryption method have some validity. Because "traditional methods" would still be underway -- at least according to the expert presented by the prosecutors -- something else had to give. The most likely explanation is that Glenn gave up his password or had it trapped by a keylogger or other government surveillance software. The FBI has tried to crack TrueCrypt's encryption before and had no luck.

With many documents related to the case still sealed, it's unclear what the government's expert meant by "cracked." It likely means TrueCrypt is as secure as it has been, but its appearance in a case centering on a decrypted hard drive doesn't exactly encourage the throwing of caution to the wind.

Filed Under: encryption, fbi, investigation, scott glenn, truecrypt

German Justice Minister Fires Top Prosecutor Over 'Treason' Probe Into Journalists After War Of Words

from the escalation-issue dept

We've written a couple stories already about the ridiculous (and chilling) decision by German prosecutors to investigate the news site Netzpolitik for treason in publishing a couple of stories about plans to expand German surveillance capabilities and powers, with whistleblowers as sources. Things have become fairly heated over the past few days and appear to have just resulted in the country's Justice Minister firing the top prosecutor behind the investigation.

On Friday, Justice Minister Heiko Maas said publicly that he didn't think the investigation was appropriate and that he had told the chief federal prosecutor Harald Range exactly that. Following this, Range announced that he was pausing the investigation "for the good of press and media freedom," but then lashed out angrily at Maas, saying that his statements were "an intolerable encroachment on the independence of the judiciary." Details of internal discussions quickly slipped out into the public, after Range had told Maas he was intending to continue the investigation after an "independent" expert he had brought on determined that the documents revealed by Netzpolitik did contain state secrets.

[Range] said the independent expert had agreed that the documents appeared to be state secrets, as asserted by domestic security agency chief Hans-Georg Maassen.

Range said he had informed the justice minister of this but was told "to immediately stop" the process of commissioning outside advice.

The chief prosecutor said he had complied, but he added angrily that "to exert influence on an investigation because its possible outcome may not be politically opportune represents an intolerable encroachment on the independence of the judiciary".

"I saw myself obliged to inform the public about this," he added in a statement.

On the broader Netzpolitik case, he said: "The freedom of the press and of expression is a valuable asset.

"But this freedom, including on the Internet, is not limitless. It does not absolve journalists of the duty to comply with the law."

And... in response to that, it appears that Maas has fired Range:

"I have told federal prosecutor Range that my trust in his ability to fulfill the office has suffered lasting damage and therefore in agreement with the Chancellery I will request his retirement today," Maas told reporters in Berlin.

Maas also claims that Range's statement about Maas telling him to stop commissioning outside advice was "false."

The whole thing appears to have turned into quite the soap opera. Over the weekend, I had a long discussion about this case with someone quite knowledgeable about German law and legal process, who noted that the situation may not be quite as troubling as some are making it out to be, because all of this needs to happen in public under German law (including the notification of the investigation) unlike the American system, under which a grand jury can proceed with an investigation for years in total secrecy. And while the publicity around this investigation appears to be having an impact on (hopefully) curtailing and ending this investigation, it does not change the fact that the investigation happened in the first place, or the kind of chilling effects that it is clearly creating for journalists and whistleblowers alike.

Filed Under: constitutional crisis, free press, free speech, germany, harald range, heiko maas, investigation, treason
Companies: netzpolitik

Cop To Vet On Receiving End Of Bogus Raid: Investigating Things Beforehand Just Slows Us Down

from the the-innocent-will-just-have-to-live-with-the-reality-of-maximum-efficiency-polic dept

The "shoot first, ask for immunity later" mentality of today's law enforcement officers is perfectly highlighted in this story about a US military veteran finding himself on the receiving end of a military-style raid… all because a "helpful" neighbor reported him for being in the "wrong" apartment. (via Amy Alkon)

Alex Horton, an Iraq war veteran, was having some work done on his apartment. During the repairs, his landlord put him up in a "model unit." He fell asleep in an apartment otherwise known to be unoccupied. A passing neighbor apparently saw him in the apartment through the cracked door and reported this to the police. What happened next was standard operating procedure -- both for the US military and US law enforcement.

I got home from the bar and fell into bed soon after Saturday night bled into Sunday morning. I didn’t wake up until three police officers barged into my apartment, barking their presence at my door. They sped down the hallway to my bedroom, their service pistols drawn and leveled at me.

It was just past 9 a.m., and I was still under the covers. The only visible target was my head.

In the shouting and commotion, I felt an instant familiarity. I’d been here before. This was a raid.

I had done this a few dozen times myself, 6,000 miles away from my Alexandria, Va., apartment. As an Army infantryman in Iraq, I’d always been on the trigger side of the weapon. Now that I was on the barrel side, I recalled basic training’s most important firearm rule: Aim only at something you intend to kill.

The militarization of police goes far beyond simply arming them with the military's leftover vehicles and weapons. It also informs their tactics. But law enforcement only cherry-picks what it likes about the military. Horton's article for the Washington Post points out that law enforcement officers don't handle their weapons like military members do. Soldiers are taught that guns are deadly and should only be pointed at targets the soldier intends to kill. Police officers are taught to use their guns for intimidation, without nearly as much attention paid to drilling home the point that guns are deadly and should be respected -- especially by the ones wielding them.

[Erik] Rhoads, the Fairfax County police lieutenant, was upfront about this mind-set. He explained that it was standard procedure to point guns at suspects in many cases to protect the lives of police officers. Their firearm rules were different from mine; they aimed not to kill but to intimidate. According to reporting by The Washington Post, those rules are established in police training, which often emphasizes a violent response over deescalation. Recruits spend an average of eight hours learning how to neutralize tense situations; they spend more than seven times as many hours at the weapons range.

This is what turns a report of a squatter in an apartment into a fully-armed raid. It didn't have to be this way. This "situation" could have been defused at any point before the officers rushed into the apartment with weapons drawn. The security guard at the complex could have been asked about the person in the model apartment. The apartment's owner and management could have provided helpful information as well. But no one -- not even Shift Commander Erik Rhoads -- even considered arming police officers with additional information. They had guns and the authority to use them. That was enough.

When I later visited the Fairfax County police station to gather details about what went wrong, I met the shift commander, Lt. Erik Rhoads. I asked why his officers hadn’t contacted management before they raided the apartment. Why did they classify the incident as a forced entry, when the information they had suggested something innocuous? Why not evaluate the situation before escalating it?

Rhoads defended the procedure, calling the officers’ actions “on point.” It’s not standard to conduct investigations beforehand because that delays the apprehension of suspects, he told me.

It also delays the apprehension -- the violent apprehension, I might add -- of non-suspects, as was the case with Horton. It instead expedites the sort of stupidity that would be comical if it weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. The willful ignorance of situations, explained away by the "need" to swiftly apprehend criminals, leads to more death and violence. And not just for "suspects." It makes the situation more dangerous for cops as well. It's as if modern law enforcement agencies view the "fog of war" as a tactical advantage, even though nothing about the history of that terms suggests it has ever been viewed that way by actual combatants.

This is an astounding admission. Rhoads, a commanding officer, is willing to purposefully endanger his own officers in the pursuit of a few more busts. His officers, apparently, are more than willing to be abused in this fashion, as long as it means they can dress up in tactical gear and yell a lot while pointing guns at people. Beyond that, though, he's willing to willfully endanger the public by purposefully avoiding any information-gathering that might make these interactions safer for both his officers and those they seek.

Rhoads' statement explains why flashbang grenades get tossed into toddlers' cribs. In the haste to bust someone responsible for $50 worth of drug sales, facts were withheld and investigative reconnaissance of the residence kept to a minimum. It allowed the raiding officers to operate with a minimum of concern for the occupants. All they had to know was "no-knock" and "drug dealer." Everything else was irrelevant.

Deployed troops are put into extremely dangerous situations every day and yet they are expected to maintain relationships with the people in the areas they patrol and not assume every tense situation can only be defused by gunfire. Back in the US where the streets are infinitely safer, the opposite is true. Force and aggression are the favored tactics and an officer's life is valued above all others. This isn't how policing is supposed to work and it betrays the public these officers are supposed to serve.

I understood the risks of war when I enlisted as an infantryman. Police officers should understand the risks in their jobs when they enroll in the academy, as well. That means knowing that personal safety can’t always come first. That is why it’s service. That’s why it’s sacrifice.

Here in the US, it's the public that's expected to make these sacrifices. A "civilian" is expected to die before an officer does and collateral damage is not only to be expected, it's wholly encouraged by those with the same mentality as Lt. Erik Rhoads.

Filed Under: alex horton, investigation, police, raids

Chilling Effects: UK Police Admit To Investigating Journalists For Covering Snowden Leaks

from the freedom-of-the-press? dept

Remember back when UK law enforcement detained David Miranda while he passing through Heathrow airport for nine hours, under an anti-terrorism law, claiming that journalism could be terrorism? Apparently, UK law enforcement is really doubling down on that claim, with the new admission that there is an ongoing and open criminal investigation into the reporters who have published Snowden documents.

As you recall, the first such documents were obtained and published by Glenn Greenwald, an American living in Brazil but working for the UK's Guardian newspaper. There had been a number of bizarre reports about just how far UK law enforcement wanted to go to intimidate journalists from reporting on such leaks in the future -- even forcing the Guardian to physically destroy a laptop that had the Snowden documents for no good reason other than security theater.

But that kind of intimidation has been taken up a notch. Greenwald's new publication, the Intercept, has been engaged in an ongoing Freedom of Information battle with the Metropolitan Police Service in the UK to find out if that organization is investigating journalists, and the police have finally confirmed that they are, in fact, investigating journalists, though it only does so obliquely, but "confirming" that "it continues to conduct an investigation into the events as described above" (with the "above" being the details laid out in the Freedom of Information request).

Of course, it doesn't appear that the reporters actually did anything wrong, and thus it seems fairly clear that the entire reason for the investigation is to create chilling effects for journalists who might publish such stories in the future and to harass those who published them in the past. The current UK government's continued move to use Orwell's 1984 as a guidebook, rather than a warning sign, is really reaching ridiculous levels.

Filed Under: ed snowden, glenn greenwald, investigation, journalism, metropolitan police, uk

Governor Tells High School Students He'd Like To Shoot A Student's Dad; Arrest/Investigation Fail To Ensue

from the hahaha-but-srsly-i-want-to-kill-ur-dad-jk dept

We've recently discussed at length the subpoena and gag order issued by the Assistant US Attorney over some tasteless, but innocuous, comments made by Reason readers. Anyone who's spent any time in comment sections would have seen these comments as nothing more than the internet being the internet -- a place where hyperbole and stupidity very often outweighs thought and nuance. The comments are being treated as serious threats by the US government, seeing as they were posted below an article about a federal judge. Here are two of the more "violent" comments:

AgammamonI5.31.15 @ lO:47AMltt
Its judges like these that should be taken out back and shot.

AlanI5.31.15 @ 12:09PMltt
It's judges like these that will be taken out back and shot.
FTFY.

croakerI6.1.15 @ 11:06AMltt
Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the message across clearly. Especially if you
feed them in feet first.

Cloudbusterl6.l.15 @ 2:40PMIIt
Why do it out back? Shoot them out front, on the steps of the courthouse.

And yet, when a prominent political figure says roughly the same thing -- TWICE! (possibly) -- it's not followed up by the issuing of subpoenas or government-led investigations.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage's joke about shooting a political cartoonist is falling flat.

The son of Bangor Daily News cartoonist George Danby said LePage made the remark after he asked what the governor thought of his father's cartoons Wednesday during an event at Dirigo Boys State, a youth leadership program.

The governor told a crowd of high school students he would like to "shoot" this cartoonist. This was said directly to the cartoonist's son during a Q&A session with the governor. (Video -- albeit silent -- of the incident located here.) The Bangor Daily News noted the audience of teens laughed and took it as a joke. And it was, albeit a horrifically tasteless one considering cartoonists have very recently been shot for expressing their views. (That the governor's joke about shooting someone, delivered at a school event, wasn't immediately greeted with a swarm of police officers and strongly-worded condemnations by school officials is yet another bit of hypocrisy…)

Cartoonist George Danby -- the one the governor would like to shoot -- doesn't find the joke particularly funny. But as offended as he is, he's only asking for an apology, not an investigation. (And he still hasn't received one.)

But this isn't an isolated experience. It appears Governor LePage would like to kill many, many people.

A day after Gov. Paul LePage told a group of high school students that he would “like to shoot” a Bangor Daily News cartoonist, a top advocate for expanding passenger rail to Lewiston-Auburn said that LePage earlier this month said state lawmakers from Lewiston should be “rounded up and executed in the public square.”

That this alleged statement -- made on government property in a government building -- wasn't greeted with police officers, arrests, etc. is also hypocritical. Given the paranoiac thinking that has passed for "caution" since 2001, someone talking about shooting people while in a government building is usually considered to be something best handled with deployments of force and zealous prosecution. Then there's the fact that this joke Godwins itself by aligning Governor LePage with other political figures who had opponents rounded up and shot.

That LePage ever delivered this second shooting "joke" is still debatable. One person attending this meeting in the governor's office claims to have heard it. Other attendees disagree. But either way, we have at least one confirmed instance of a political figure claiming he'd like to shoot someone he doesn't like.

But there's no investigation underway and no one is calling for an indictment of LePage for issuing a "threat." Because it isn't one. It's simply hyperbolic speech uttered without intent or desire to actually follow through with such an act. It's what people do when expressing displeasure with someone or something. It happens all the time. Except when it happens in a comment section and the subject is a federal judge, it suddenly becomes a threat worthy of investigation and obfuscation by the US Attorney's Office.

When it's a politician "targeting" a little person, no one cares, even with the recent Charlie Hebdo shooting as a backdrop -- a justification for cartoonist George Danby to take this "threat" very personally indeed. But Danby doesn't think LePage truly wants him dead and recognizes it for what it is. The "little people" who aren't afforded the full power of their government are much more rational than those with it at their disposal.

Filed Under: comments, doj, george danby, governor, hyperbole, investigation, maine, paul lepage, true threats