Documents Show No One In The Defense Department Is Doing Much Vetting Of Law Enforcement Requests For Military Gear
from the capitalizing-on-perpetual,-manufactured-fear dept
We've covered the Defense Department's 1033 program several times here at Techdirt. The program allows law enforcement agencies to acquire surplus military gear at low, low prices in exchange for little more than their claim to need anything from filing cabinets to grenade launches to mine-resistant armored personnel carriers (MRAPs).
Thanks to the never-ending "War on Terror" and "War on Drugs," the DoD has allowed law enforcement agencies to blur the line between serving the public and invading a war zone. Officers regularly don camouflage when rolling out of armored personnel carriers, turning warrant service into a paramilitary invasion. MRAPs tend to make appearances at protests targeting police violence, giving responding officers the appearance of an occupying force, rather than the domestic peacekeepers they're supposed to be.
Multiple efforts have been made to curtail the acquisition of gear clearly designed for war zones, rather than domestic policing. None of those efforts have been permanent . . .This shouldn't come as a surprise. This is the expected result of the government waging concurrent, never-ending wars. Whatever isn't consumed by one war (Terror) can be repurposed for another (Drugs). Since we're in no danger of winning either of these "wars" (and, indeed, seem to be losing both), the federal government's 1033 program has become a perpetual motion machine that converts failure to funding, ensuring neither of these resources will ever be fully expended. Very few people in power dare to ask the military what it's spending trillions of dollars on, even when there appears to be little return on investment. And since no one's asking them tough questions, those in charge of dispensing military gear to local law enforcement agencies feel no compunction to call bullshit on ridiculous justifications for war machines that will be used to carry out standard warrant service when not being used to intimidate people exercising their First Amendment rights.
Filed Under: 1033 program, defense department, law enforcement, military gear, police militarization, surplus military equipment
Louisiana & Alabama Attorneys General Set Up Silly Hotline To Report 'Social Media Censorship' They Can't Do Anything About
from the stop-wasting-everyone's-time dept
While various states are pushing unconstitutional laws to try to compel social media websites to host content they don't want to host, it appears that some state Attorneys General are seeing what kinds of questionable things they can do even without a law. Florida's law was already declared unconstitutional, but other states are still trying to pass these laws. One feature seen in a bunch of them is the ability for residents in a state to complain to the Attorney General and to ask the AG to investigate.
It appears that Louisiana and Alabama aren't waiting around for a law on that front. The Attorneys General from both states, Jeff Landry from Louisiana and Steve Marshall from Alabama, have announced plans to set up a special hotline for ignorant people who are sure they've been "censored by big tech." . . All of this is nonsense, of course. As noted above, websites have every right to manage the content on their sites how they see fit. And these forms are just useless grandstanding from two Attorneys General who must know better and simply don't care. They're misleading the public and pretending to do be able to do something they cannot. And, if they actually did try to do something, that would be completely unconstitutional. The chief legal officer in a state shouldn't be setting out to (1) mislead the public with nonsense, and (2) set up to do something unconstitutional. Alabama and Louisiana: elect better people.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, alabama, censorship, complaint line, content moderation, jawboning, jeff landry, louisiana, steve marshall
Companies: facebook, twitter, youtube
Laura Loomer Owes $124k In Legal Fees After Losing Lawsuit Over Having Her Twitter Account Reported And Banned
from the $124,000-more-expensive-than-just-letting-the-ban-ride dept
Alt-right "personality" (I guess?) Laura Loomer keeps filing lawsuits and losing them. Loomer seems to believe it's legally actionable to be moderated by social media services. No court has agreed with her. Between Section 230 and the First Amendment, Loomer doesn't have a case. Oblique approaches -- like claiming getting kicked off Twitter is tortious interference in a (nonexistent) business relationship (Loomer and Twitter, according to Loomer, but definitely not according to Twitter) -- haven't been any more successful.
Grasping at straws and switching attorneys in midstream hasn't helped matters. This case involved Loomer trying to sue CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relationships) and Twitter in Florida, claiming CAIR's reporting of her Twitter account tortiously interfered with Loomer's get-rich-quick plan of being extremely extremist online. It only took six pages for a federal judge to dismiss Loomer's baseless claims. . .Monetary it is! But not the way Loomer hoped. After doing some back-of-the-filing-envelope math bringing hourly rates down from their DC levels (where CAIR is HQed) to Florida levels (where the lawsuit was originally filed), the court has some bad news for a plaintiff who arguably doesn't have enough cash on hand to buy new tires.
Accordingly, Defendants’ Motion is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. Plaintiffs shall reimburse Defendants:
Attorneys’ Fees: $123,761.65 allocated as follows:
CAIR Foundation, Inc. $117,297.90
CAIR Florida, Inc. $6,463.75
Costs: $661.72
That's how much being this wrong costs someone who's so sure they're right they blow off a cheaper offer made months before the attorneys' fees really started racking up. I don't know how many people are still interested in Loomers' windmill tilts, but I have to imagine an eighth of a million puts a pretty good dent in her legal warchest.
Filed Under: content moderation, fees, florida, laura loomer, legal fees
Companies: cair, twitter
Hacked Facebook Users Forced To Buy $300 Oculus VR Headset Just To Talk To Customer Support
from the too-big-to-function dept
Back in 2014 when Facebook bought Oculus, there were the usual pre-merger promises that nothing would really change. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, who has since moved on to selling border surveillance tech to the Trump administration, made oodles of promises to that effect before taking his money and running toward the sunset. Among those promises was the promise that users would never be forced to use a Facebook login account just to use your VR headset and its games, and that the company wouldn't track your behavior for advertising.
Like every major merger, those promises didn't mean much. Just about a year ago, Facebook and Oculus announced that users will soon be forced to... use a Facebook account if they want to be able to keep using Oculus hardware, so the company can track its users for advertising purposes.
Fast forward a year and things have been flipped a bit on their heads. . .Granted this probably won't work for long. And Facebook recently announced it was halting sales of the Oculus Quest 2 for now because the device's foam face plate was causing skin irritation for some people. Still, it shows that at the scale Facebook operates at, semi-consistent content moderation isn't the only thing the company finds impossible. Basic customer support for people locked out of their accounts at no fault of their own is also too much to ask. Which then again raises the question: if you can't function as a business at the scale Facebook operates, maybe you shouldn't exist at that scale.
Filed Under: customer service, oculus, vr
Companies: facebook
Brooklyn DA Releases 10,000 Police Misconduct Records To Gothamist, Exposing Cops Prosecutors Don't Want In Their Courtrooms
from the copious-cop-shop-docs-copped dept
Nearly two years ago -- prior to the 2020 repeal of 50-a, the statute that codified law enforcement opacity in the state of New York -- the Brooklyn DA's office released part of its "Brady list" to Gothamist. The "Brady" (or "Giglio," depending on who's naming it) list tells prosecutors (and [supposedly] defense attorneys) which cops aren't to be trusted, thanks to previous perjury/severe misconduct/evidence-planting/etc. This keeps prosecutors from calling witnesses who can be easily impeached. And it helps defense lawyers know which government witnesses are ripe for undermining.
It's the latter reason that often keeps these lists shrouded in secrecy. While some law enforcement agencies are more than willing to share with prosecutors in order to keep convictions intact, they're far less willing to give the defense anything to work with. But some of this information can be obtained through public records requests. And some of it can be obtained through new transparency laws or court orders. . .If police departments are really serious about ridding themselves of the low-value employees holding them down, they'll be more like the Brooklyn DA and less like the NYPD. A bad cop helps no one. Outing and eliminating cops who jeopardize prosecutions will do more for public safety than all the spy tech, sentence enhancements, and "proactive" policing combined.
Filed Under: 50-a, brady list, brooklyn, police, police misconduct
It Happened Again: Antipiracy Outfit Asks Google To Delist 127.0.0.1 On Behalf Of Ukrainian TV Station
from the where-the-piracy-is dept
We've made this point before, but the moment you attempt to scale up copyright enforcement, you run into problems. Collateral damage from automated systems mistaking non-infringing content for infringing, the possibility of fraud and abuse, the blind eye towards Fair Use all become problems. But sometimes those problems are so silly that they expose what a pure fiasco this has become. Several years back, we discussed Universal Pictures asking Google to delist a bunch of supposedly infringing sites, listing one of them as 127.0.0.1. Depending on how computer savvy you are, you may recognize that this IP address is how a computer or system refers to itself. In other words, it essentially means "home."
And, yet, despite how silly this all is, it just keeps happening. . .
7
Tenth Circuit Says Pretextual Inventory Searches Need To Be A Whole Lot Less Pretextual
from the mic-is-hot,-boys dept
One of the great warrant exceptions is the "inventory search." Stop a car in a high-traffic or "high crime" area, and officers will feel compelled to tow it away. But before it's towed, they'll make a list of everything in the car to ensure the vehicle's owner gets all of their possessions back when they retrieve it from the impound lot. If there happens to be contraband in the car, it's a win for the cops. The "discovery" (even if derived from a mostly-pretextual search) will be called "inevitable" and can be used against the person to deprive them of their freedom along with their car.
This one simple trick usually works out for law enforcement. But every so often it doesn't. And when it doesn't work, it's usually because officers were in such a hurry to carry out the warrantless search that they completely forgot about the pretext. . .The conclusion? The Tulsa PD is wrong and so is the lower court for approving these actions.
Because the Tulsa Police Department’s standardized policy did not apply and the stated rationale for impoundment was pretextual, the district court erred in denying the motion to suppress evidence of the drugs, digital scale, gun, and cellphone found in the Tulsa search.
With that evidence gone, so are the text messages taken from the search of the phone. Without those text messages implicating Woodard in drug distribution, the charges in the other stop in Bartlesville are reversed as well, leaving the officers with nothing but a couple of illegal searches.
Filed Under: 10th circuit, evan wodard, excuses, oklahoma, police, pretextual searches, t
8
The End Of Ownership: How Big Companies Are Trying To Turn Everyone Into Renters
from the ok-landlord dept
We've talked a lot on Techdirt about the end of ownership, and how companies have increasingly been reaching deep into products that you thought you bought to modify them... or even destroy them. Much of this originated in the copyright space, in which modern copyright law (somewhat ridiculously) gave the power to copyright holders to break products that people had "bought." Of course, the legacy copyright players like to conveniently change their language on whether or not you're buying something or simply "licensing" it temporarily based on what's most convenient (i.e., what makes them the most money) at the time.
Over at the Nation, Maria Bustillos, recently wrote about how legacy companies -- especially in the publishing world -- are trying to take away the concept of book ownership and only let people rent books. . .This shouldn't be seen as radical. However, as we've noted, the big publishers have more or less gone to war with libraries over ebooks, jacking up the prices, limiting how often they can be lent out, and demanding "renewal" payments after a certain period of time or number of lends.
And this is incredibly important to culture and the preservation of culture. As Bustillos notes:
As writers and artists whose work has often disappeared from the Internet, we Brick House publishers have a keen appreciation of the importance of archives and libraries. Most books are out of print; most of what has been written has also been forgotten. We don’t want that to happen to our work. And we are acutely alive to the threat of corporate encroachment over the right to access information in a free society. We stand with the Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle, who said: “If a publisher maintains control over every reading event, who’s allowed to read it, when are they allowed to read it, if they’re allowed to read it… we are in George Orwell world.”
The big publishers and other large copyright holders always insist that they're "protecting artists." That's almost never the case. They regularly destroy and suppress creativity and art with their abuse of copyright law. Culture shouldn't have to be rented, especially when the landlords don't care one bit about the underlying art or cultural impact.
Filed Under: books, ebooks, end of ownership, licensing, ok landlord, ownership, publishing, renting
9
Not-So-Anonymous Cop Continues To Argue Courts Should Violate The First Amendment To Protect Him From The Consequences Of His Actions
from the update-your-status,-Officer-Asshat dept
I went back to Ohio/but my First Amendment was gone
For those of you just joining us, allow me to catch everyone up. In the wake of protests against police violence and multiple people realizing that online anonymity only extends as far as anyone's personal opsec, an "anonymous" Ohio police officer decided to sue (anonymously!) people for claiming he was some sort of white extremist.
The pseudonymous "M.R." -- who filed a lawsuit in an Ohio court claiming he was "defamed" by people pointing out his questionable posts" -- is a Cincinnati police officer. Thanks to his quotation of social media posts referring to his questionable behavior, it was pretty easy for online, part-time sleuths to link "M.R." ("Michael Ryan") to Officer Ryan Olthaus. . .M.R. is Officer Ryan Olthaus. It doesn't matter what he does now. People already know. But if courts continue to entertain his baseless arguments, the First Amendment is going to suffer collateral damage from this officer's assertion that he should not be subjected to criticism, much less unspecified harassment for his actions. Fuck tha' Police indeed, but especially this guy who thinks the First Amendment should be subservient to his unverified allegations about potential threats to his safety.
When it comes to cases like these, the law shouldn't be impressed when you throw your badge around. In fact, your claim that you're a public servant should work against you. Criticism of government employees -- even when unfair or misguided -- receives the utmost of Constitutional protection. Except in this case where a court decided a cop was more worthy of protection than the people criticizing him and his actions. The lower court is wrong. Hopefully, this will be reversed, no matter how much money the cop (Ryan Olthaus) has to spend to be wrong about First Amendment rights.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, cincinatti, defamation, free speech, m.r., police, prior restraint, protests, ryan olthaus
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