Dallas PD Asks Attorney General For Permission To Withhold 'Embarrassing' Documents About Its Bomb Robot

from the or-are-the-records-'highly-intimate?' dept

The unprecedented deployment of a bomb-defusing robot by Dallas police to kill an armed suspect raised several questions. While these robots have sometimes acted as part of a negotiation team in the past, no police department had previously rigged one up with an explosive device to take a suspect out.

One question that remains unanswered is whether this use of the Dallas PD's robot violated its own policies. Gawker's Andy Cush filed a public records request for PD policies on using robots to kill and discovered Dallas law enforcement was basically making things up as it went along.

Gawker filed a request with the department under the Texas Public Information Act seeking any departmental doctrine for using a bomb-carrying robot against a suspect, including but not limited to the use of the Remotec model. Last week, the department responded via email that “A search was made within the Dallas Police Department by the respective Divisions(s) for this information and no records were found.” (Emphasis theirs.)

Debra Webb, a public information officer with the DPD, told Gawker that based on the verbiage of the response, it is safe to assume that no records outlining departmental doctrine for the use of bomb-carrying robots against suspects exist. The apparent lack of any written plans would seem to confirm that officers on the ground came up with the killer robot strategy on the fly, as several experts suggested to the Intercept several days after the shootings.

Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox of Motherboard are seeking more answers about this incident -- one that could be used as a blueprint (albeit one without its own policy blueprint) for similar situations faced by other law enforcement agencies.

The Dallas PD does have several records pertaining to the incident but it's not interested in releasing them.

I formally asked the Dallas police department for body camera footage taken by police and onboard footage taken by the robot of the operation. Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox asked for communications that took place in the aftermath of the event, as well as documents about the purchase of the robot.

The police admitted in a response to me that it does have these videos, but told me in a letter that “all or part of the requested information may not be disclosed at this time.” The Dallas Police Department sent a separate letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asking him to exempt large parts of my request and the requests of 16 other journalists from “mandatory disclosure.”

Whether Paxton will grant this blanket exception remains to be seen. But past events show he's amenable to covering up records that might be embarrassing or show local law enforcement agencies operating at less than peak efficiency. At least in this case, he won't be put in the position of representing the public and the agency suing him when the public records litigation begins.

The problem with this request for a blanket exception covering these records is that the Dallas Police has, rather disingenuously, lumped public records from 17 different journalists into one big ball of presumptive nondisclosure.

Each of these journalists has requested different things, and each of them should require a separate legal review.

For example, one journalist asked for information about the network security of the link between the police’s robot control center and the robot itself—an interesting request, but one that has both future safety implications and nothing at all to do with Motherboard’s requests.

Furthermore, as Jason Koebler points out, the Dallas PD thinks it should be allowed to withhold documents simply because it might look bad if anyone else but law enforcement officials viewed them.

The Dallas Police Department tells the attorney general that some of the information requested could be “embarrassing” and subject to redaction under a “common law privacy” act, but does not state (at least in the part of the letter it released) which part of which request it believes could result in embarrassing records being released.

Sorry, public officials, but potential embarrassment is not a legitimate reason to withhold public records. The "common law privacy" cited by the PD suggests the info would also have to be "highly intimate" and, more importantly, "of no public interest" to justify withholding under this exemption.

This preemptive move by the Dallas PD -- one that treats multiple requests seeking different documents as an indivisible whole -- appears to be its way of throwing several wrenches into the public records machinery. Koebler reports the PD is asking as many questions as it can in hopes of creating a confusing mess out of multiple straightforward information requests -- even stupid things like whether or not it can redact credit card numbers.

What it's really asking of attorney general Ken Paxton is how long it can get away with not complying with requests. Should Paxton fail to grant it the secrecy it seeks, the next move will likely be a blend of over-redaction and increased fulfillment fees.

Granted, officers on the scene were less concerned with the generation of "embarrassing " public records than they were with neutralizing a hostile threat, but once the decision had been made to repurpose a bomb disposal robot into a killing machine, those up top knew the records requests would come rolling in. Dallas PD officials may not have had any policies in place for wiring up robots to kill, but they already have plenty of strategies on hand for fending off journalists and their records requests.

Filed Under: bomb robot, dallas, dallas police, embarrassment, foia

Secret Service Agents Dug Through Personal Info To Discredit Legislator Investigating Agency Wrongdoing

from the Secret(s)-Service dept

They get to wear nice suits, wield guns and hang around the President. They're entrusted with protecting perhaps the most important person in the world. The US Secret Service should only be staffed with the best the nation has to offer. Instead, its recent protective efforts can be generously described as "almost adequate" and it's apparently staffed with an assortment of vindictive children who can't stand the thought of having their shortcomings questioned.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz heads up the House Oversight Committee, which is tasked with investigating allegations that Secret Service agents had spent several hours drinking before (literally) crashing a "suspicious package" party being thrown in their absence on a street near the White House. Almost as soon as the hearings began, Secret Service agents began looking for some way to tear Chaffetz down.

Employees accessed Chaffetz's 2003 application for a Secret Service job starting 18 minutes after the start of a congressional hearing in March about the latest scandal involving drunken behavior by senior agents. Some forwarded the information to others. At least 45 employees viewed the file.

If this internal sharing of personal info were the extent of the wrongdoing, it would still be illegal. The US Privacy Act forbids the disclosure of these records, absent the written permission of the record's subject. Obviously, Chaffetz was never approached by the Secret Service to get his OK for using his job application against him. But this isn't the end of the agency's misconduct.

One week later, Assistant Director Ed Lowery suggested leaking embarrassing information about Chaffetz in retaliation for aggressive investigations by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into a series of agency missteps and scandals, the report said. Days later, on April 2, the information about Chaffetz unsuccessfully applying for a job at the Secret Service was published by The Daily Beast, an Internet publication.

"Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out. Just to be fair," Lowery wrote March 31 in an email to fellow Assistant Director Faron Paramore.

"Just to be fair." Let's take a look at that statement. Lowery's employees embarrassed themselves, both in terms of protecting the White House and showing up for work sober. And yet, the "fair" thing to do was to discredit a politician actually performing his job: the oversight of government agencies.

Lowery says he never ordered anyone to release any information the agency had on Chaffetz. (He just heavily suggested it...) He told the Inspector General that saying the "embarrassing" information "need[ed] to get out" was only a reflection of his anger and frustration. It's not as though anger hasn't been known to push people towards regrettable actions. Obviously, Lowery regrets this now that he's been caught, but claiming "the anger made me do it" doesn't excuse his support of illegal activity being performed by his agency.

DHS head Jeh Johnson officially apologized to Rep. Chaffetz, following it with this consolation prize:

"I am confident that U.S. Secret Service Director Joe Clancy will take appropriate action to hold accountable those who violated any laws or the policies of this department," Johnson said.

This may be true. Clancy was called out of retirement to take over the agency after the previous Secret Service head was booted following the White House security breaches. But it's still the sort of "promise" no one should accept at face value. The government is routinely terrible at holding its own employees accountable for their actions, and -- recent high-profile disgraces aside -- the Secret Service is no exception.

The attempted use of personal information by agency employees to discredit someone engaged in investigating their wrongdoing is a gross abuse of power. Many government agencies have access to a wealth of personal information, especially for those who have been entrusted with security clearances or have applied for certain federal positions. Just think of what one could do with access to even greater amounts of personal information.

Oh but this would never happen with an #NSA database, don't be ridiculous. http://t.co/UDwVOnvQXq

— Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) October 1, 2015

Oh but this would never happen with an #NSA database, don't be ridiculous.

Very little stands in the way of agencies abusing their access and power. This just happens to be one of the times when someone got caught.

Filed Under: ed lowery, embarrassment, foia, house oversight, jason chaffetz, jeh johnson, joe clancy, secret service, us privacy act, vendetta

Court To Frat Boys: Openness Of Courts More Compelling Than Your Potential Embarrassment

from the can't-have-your-pot-and-smoke-it-too dept

Via Eric Goldman, we learn of a case in Pennsylvania where a group of six Bucknell students were trying to sue some officials at the University for unlawaful search relating to a drug bust and subsequent disciplinary action at their frat house (and some other residences). The interesting tidbit here is that the plaintiffs asked the court to keep their names a secret throughout the case. Their argument was not that they needed to be kept secret from the defendants -- who already knew exactly who they were -- but rather that since the discipline was done confidentially, to sue publicly would out these students as being disciplined over drug possession -- and that might harm their reputations.

The court however, completely rejects this request, noting the importance of open and public court procedures. While it does admit that there are cases where plaintiffs are allowed to proceed under pseudonyms, that tends to be in cases where to come forward would put them in direct danger -- not direct danger of being publicly associated with things they actually did. Basically, the court notes that while it may be embarrassing for this information to end up on the web, these guys are adults who made their own choices, and keeping the fact that you were busted with drugs secret is quite different from keeping information secret to avoid being thrown in an Iranian prison:

There is no potential for serious harm to Plaintiffs in the case at bar. There are also no special circumstances that would justify an exception to one of the hallmarks of the American democracy, the openness of our courts. This is not a case involving "abortion, birth control, transexuality, mental illness, welfare rights of illegitimate children, AIDS, and homosexuality." ... The only harm to Plaintiffs is that which they identified — the embarrassment of possession of contraband and that news media outlets may discuss the story, which will then live in perpetuity through web searches on the internet.

The Megless/Provident Life/Citizens for a Strong Ohio factors certainly mitigate against Plaintiffs arguments in favor of anonymity. Plaintiffs here are not children, but adults who have left the nest to explore the world; albiet, the semi-sheltered world of college life at a private, small, expensive liberal arts college in rural Pennsylvania.

Bucknell kept the students disciplinary record confidential; Plaintiffs have therefore been protected from public disclosure up to this point. However, the Bucknell's desire to protect its students has no bearing on the instant proceedings. The public has no compelling need to protect the identities of adults alleging Fourth Amendment violations (to be contrasted with the use of pseudonyms for sexual assault victims, the public has a compelling need to protect identities to promote disclosure by these victims). Moreover, this case does not involve private medical information; a risk to Plaintiffs of future imprisonment in the Peoples Republic of China, the Islamic Republic of Iran, or even in the United States; nor does it involve the threat of loss of the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

Basically, the 4th Amendment issues may be worth exploring, but there's no compelling argument for keeping their names out of the case. Just because their names -- and the associated actions -- may "live in perpetuity through web searches on the internet," that's no reason to allow them to stay anonymous.

Filed Under: anonymity, courts, embarrassment, privacy

State Department Official Freaks Out That Declassifying CIA Torture Report Might Make The World Angry

from the it's-not-the-declassification... dept

While the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify its $40 million, 6,300 page report detailing the CIA's torture regime -- including the facts that it went beyond what was authorized, produced no useful intelligence and then the CIA lied about it all -- three members of the Committee voted against it. Senators James Risch, Dan Coats (though, who knows if he had any idea what he was voting on) and Marco Rubio all voted against declassifying, with Risch and Rubio putting out a statement claiming that the State Department didn't want the report declassified.

The Senate Intelligence Committee today voted to send a one-sided, partisan report to the CIA and White House for declassification despite warnings from the State Department and our allies indicating that declassification of this report could endanger the lives of American diplomats and citizens overseas and jeopardize U.S. relations with other countries. Therefore, we could not support declassification of this product at this time.

This raised some eyebrows, since the Obama administration has consistently said it supported declassification, even as the CIA was fighting it. Still, it's rare that the State Department would actively contradict the White House. However, the Daily Beast now has more details on the State Department's desire to block the declassification:

A senior Senate aide told The Daily Beast that the Rubio-Risch statement referred to a June 2013 classified letter to senators signed by Philip Goldberg, who at the time served as the State Department’s top intelligence official. The warning was in reference to the fact that the report contains information about cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies and the existence of still-undisclosed CIA “black site” prisons in foreign countries where abuses may have occurred.

CIA facilities implicated in the report have allegedly been located in Thailand, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania, sparking public debate and resentment against the U.S. government in those countries. But officials and senate aides said the report contains information on several more locations.

Diplomats representing those countries, aware of their vulnerability to exposure, have been quietly meeting with administration officials and lawmakers urging them to protect the secrecy of those intelligence relationships. Many foreign governments are still angry about the disclosures of NSA spying by leaker Edward Snowden.

To be fair, the article notes that the letter from Goldberg was not cleared nor reviewed by State Department leadership. Thus, it may be seen less as "the State Department" making these comments, and more as the dude who has to deal with foreign spy agencies for the State Department. But, even so, the letter is ridiculous.

There is a semi-legitimate point that the eventual disclosure of what countries helped the CIA torture people will certainly create some troubling diplomatic situations for those countries. But that's not the fault of the disclosure process. It's because (1) the CIA tortured people and (2) those other countries went along with it. Don't like that that will be disclosed? Then maybe they shouldn't have done it in the first place.

The CIA's torture program was a dark moment in American history and we don't get past it by burying it -- and the story of those who helped -- under the rug. It needs to be out in the open. Even Vice President Joe Biden has said exactly that:

“I think the only way you excise the demons is you acknowledge, you acknowledge exactly what happened straightforward,” Biden said. “The single best thing that ever happened to Germany were the war crimes tribunals, because it forced Germany to come to its milk about what in fact has happened.”

To argue that the embarrassment of admitting that we partnered up with other countries in conducting illegal torture means we shouldn't reveal the details at all goes against everything that we're supposed to stand for, in being willing and able to admit our mistakes. It's shameful that anyone at the State Department -- with or without approval from leadership -- would send such a letter, giving cowardly Senators extra cover for not approving the declassification of the report.

Filed Under: cia, dan coats, embarrassment, james risch, marco rubio, philip goldberg, senate, state department, torture, torture report

NSA Spied On Porn Habits Of 'Radicalizers,' Planned To Use Details To Embarrass Them

from the j-edgar-alexander dept

The latest report on leaked Snowden docs from Glenn Greenwald (along with Ryan Gallagher and Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post) shows how the NSA had a plan to use the porn surfing habits of certain people they didn't like to discredit them. If this brings back memories of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, effectively blackmailing politicians, you've connected the dots. This is why we've said that even people who think they've done nothing wrong, should be wary of the NSA spying on everyone. It's easy to turn even legal behavior, like surfing porn, into a personal embarrassment. It's important to note here that the "targets" in this case are not US persons, and they all do appear to dislike the US, and some appear to have advocated for jihad against the US. However, as the report notes, most of them are not terrorists or even connected to any terrorist organization. They're just activists and advocates who have spoken out criticizing the US. In one case, a guy was targeted for claiming that "the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself" -- an argument that plenty of respectable people have made. The lack of any terrorist connection is actually, stunningly, used against these individuals, as one NSA document notes that since they don't communicate with terrorists it's worse because it suggests "that the target audience includes individuals who do not yet hold extremist views but who are susceptible to the extremist message." One can argue, as former NSA and DHS official Stewart Baker does in the article, that this kind of prying through someone's private life to embarrass them in public is "fairer and maybe more humane" than dropping bombs on them but that assumes an either/or sort of situation, which I'd like to believe that even someone like Baker doesn't actually believe.

And, really, the real issue here is the clear slippery slope. It's reasonable to argue that the US should be spying on terrorists who want to attack us. That's a mission that makes sense. But there's a pretty big gap between spying on terrorists who are trying to kill us, and snooping through the private activities of those with an audience who just don't like us. And, from there, of course, it's not a very far leap over to arguing that activists within the US who are critical of the government should be subject to the same treatment.

While Baker and others support using surveillance to tarnish the reputation of people the NSA considers "radicalizers," U.S. officials have in the past used similar tactics against civil rights leaders, labor movement activists and others.

Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI harassed activists and compiled secret files on political leaders, most notably Martin Luther King, Jr. The extent of the FBI's surveillance of political figures is still being revealed to this day, as the bureau releases the long dossiers it compiled on certain people in response to Freedom of Information Act requests following their deaths. The information collected by the FBI often centered on sex -- homosexuality was an ongoing obsession on Hoover's watch -- and information about extramarital affairs was reportedly used to blackmail politicians into fulfilling the bureau's needs.

[....] James Bamford, a journalist who has been covering the NSA since the early 1980s, said the use of surveillance to exploit embarrassing private behavior is precisely what led to past U.S. surveillance scandals. "The NSA's operation is eerily similar to the FBI's operations under J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s where the bureau used wiretapping to discover vulnerabilities, such as sexual activity, to 'neutralize' their targets," he said. "Back then, the idea was developed by the longest serving FBI chief in U.S. history, today it was suggested by the longest serving NSA chief in U.S. history."

Baker -- the same guy who blamed civil libertarians for 9/11 and blamed privacy advocates for an over-aggressive TSA -- brushes off the idea that the NSA might ever abuse this stated program of spying on people's personal lives and habits to discredit them publicly.

Baker said that until there is evidence the tactic is being abused, the NSA should be trusted to use its discretion. "The abuses that involved Martin Luther King occurred before Edward Snowden was born," he said. "I think we can describe them as historical rather than current scandals. Before I say, 'Yeah, we've gotta worry about that,' I'd like to see evidence of that happening, or is even contemplated today, and I don't see it."

We're not exactly talking ancient history here. The abuses happened within Baker's own lifetime, even if they didn't happen within Snowden's. But the idea that within a single generation we've suddenly created more virtuous humans who won't abuse power is kind of laughable, and I'm curious as to what Baker's basis for believing that is. For someone who has spent so much of his career trying to help the hunt for bad guys, he sure has an optimistic view of the intentions of human beings. Oh, I forget, he's only talking about people on "our side" who I guess are naturally virtuous -- whereas folks on the other side are naturally morally destitute. Because that makes no sense at all, which seems to be the kind of arguments that Baker gravitates to.

Either way, it's exactly this kind of activity that has so many people concerned about the NSA. They're clearly not just spying on terrorist communications for the sake of preventing an attack. Now they're directly talking about using private information, like the fact that someone surfs porn or is "attracted to fame" to do character assassinations of people they dislike. The ability to abuse such a power is vast, and it's laughable to think that the NSA is so full of perfectly virtuous people that it would never make use of such powers.

Filed Under: embarrassment, keith alexander, nsa, porn habits, stewart baker

Court Says That Outing Closeted Gays Through Mass Infringement Lawsuits Not A Big Deal

from the disagree dept

We already, briefly, touched on the recent district court ruling in Massachussetts, in one of Liberty Media's mass infringement cases, covering the tangential legal question of whether or not porn can even be covered by copyright, but the actual legal issues raised in the case are pretty interesting as well.

Marc Randazza, Liberty Media's lawyer on these cases, and I disagree over whether lumping together a bunch of unrelated individuals is proper "joinder." Randazza has argued that many other mass infringement lawyers do this wrong, but his decision to focus on those in a single swarm makes it a more effective argument. In this case, the court certainly bought Marc's argument, and became one of a small number of courts not to throw out most of the Does sued. Though I find it a little disingenuous in that the judge notes a few other cases that have allowed the joinder to stand... but leaves out the many, many cases where all but one of the Does was dismissed from the suit.

One of my issues with this kind of joinder is that the defendants are all unique and may have very different arguments and defenses. It seems inappropriate to lump them all together. The court rejects that, saying that defendants can raise their separate defense later in the case, but that the basic questions of law are identical across the cases.

The bigger issue to me is a different point raised by the defendants in this and many other cases involving gay pornography. For better or worse, one of the fears of many (including myself) is that such cases work even better as a "shakedown" game, because defendants who either are in the closet or are not gay and fear being sued for downloading gay porn are more likely to just pay up to avoid the embarrassment. I raised this issue with Randazza directly, who argues that my argument is actually homophobic, suggesting that there is something wrong with being gay. To be clear: I don't think there's anything at all wrong with being gay, and, in fact, think that those who are gay should be proud and comfortable with that fact. But, I also think one's sexual orientation and preferences are a personal and private matter -- and that bringing them out through a legal process, as part of an effort to put pressure on someone to pay up, is highly questionable (and morally dubious). If someone has made the decision not to "out" themselves, that's their decision.

Unfortunately, the court doesn't buy this argument, and says that the names of defendants should be made public, rather than allowing them to remain anonymous. In fact, the court suggests there's no evidence that Liberty Media intends to use this info to pressure people into paying up:

Unnumbered Doe suggests that Liberty Media sought the public identities of Does 1-38 to coerce pretrial settlements. Unnumbered Doe’s Mot. 7 (“While we cannot know for certain how the Plaintiff intends to proceed . . . the likely course of action is to contact each of the individuals and demand a monetary payment for settlement of the claims in question.”). This allegation is not supported in the motion papers or by Liberty Media’s actions to date. It is purely speculative and not grounds for allowing the moving defendants to proceed anonymously.

I find this part to be the most questionable, seeing as Liberty Media, in the past, has actually been quite active in trying to get people to "settle" to avoid lawsuits -- including its infamous pay us before we even accuse you plan.

Still, the most troubling idea is that the court seems to think that outing someone who does not want to be outed is "mere embarrassment."

Unnumbered Doe further argues that the anonymity of Does 1-38 should be protected because the disclosure of their identities in conjunction with this lawsuit, which involves homosexual pornography, may cause reputational harm and intrusion upon their privacy. Id. Unnumbered Doe asserts that being named as a party to this action amounts to “a public accusation” that the defendants downloaded and viewed homosexual pornography. Id. Doe 15 similarly argues that their public identification in the lawsuit will expose the defendants to “intrusive public scorn.” Doe 15’s Mot. 3.

The potential embarrassment to Does 1-38 of being associated with allegations of infringing hardcore pornography does not constitute an exceptional circumstance that would warrant allowing the defendants to proceed anonymously. As the Superior Court of Massachusetts stated, “mere embarrassment [is] not sufficient to override the strong public interest in disclosure.” Roe, 2011 WL 2342737, at *1. Thus, the potential embarrassment or social stigma that Does 1-38 may face once their identities are released in connection with this lawsuit is not grounds for allowing them to proceed anonymously.

Now, personally, I don't think such a revelation should even be considered "embarrassing," at all. But, I'm not in a position to talk. And, from what we've seen of folks -- especially younger people -- who have had such info exposed against their will to family and friends who might not be accepting, the idea that this is a "mere embarrassment" doesn't seem accurate at all. Such revelations have resulted in suicides. That's not mere embarrassment. Even if we all agree that no one should be embarrassed about their sexual orientation, or even their interest in pornography, to make that decision on those individuals' behalf just seems questionable to me, and fraught with potential trouble.

Filed Under: copyright, embarrassment, gay porn, joinder, outing, porn, shakedown
Companies: liberty media