Published on Mar 19, 2017
Views: 14,376
The first of three special reports for Comic Relief.
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Saturday, March 18, 2017
NOW OPEN: Nominations 2017 Historic Preservation Awards
| Nominations requested for Historic Preservation Awards 03-14-2017 at 3:19:46 PM Source: City of Mesa Newsroom The City's Historic Preservation Board continues to seek nominations for Mesa's Historic Preservation Awards for Outstanding Achievement.
Nominations must be submitted by Monday, April 24 at 6 p.m.
The awards, which can be presented to an individual, group or organization, are in the categories of
Archaeology,
Adaptive Reuse,
Education and Outreach,
Landscape Preservation,
Local Preservationist,
Rehabilitation and Restoration,
Individual Lifetime Achievement and Stewardship.
The 2017 recipients will be honored at a City Council meeting in June.Any individual is welcome to submit a nomination.
If you have questions about completing a nomination, contact Mesa Planning Director John Wesley at (480) 644-2181 or john.wesley@mesaaz.gov.
Nomination forms are available online at www.mesaaz.gov/about-us/historic-preservation. Since 1998, the City has recognized more than 50 citizens for their contributions to historic preservation in Mesa.
Public Information and Communications
Contact: Kevin Christopher Tel. 480-644-4699kevin.christopher@mesaaz.gov One outstanding potential nominee 
Historic Preservation and Adaptive Re-Use:
A Delicate Balance
“When you strip away the rhetoric, preservation is simply having the good sense to hold on to things that are well designed, that link us with our past in a meaningful way, and that have plenty of good use left in them.”~ Richard Moe, National Trust for Historic Preservation
Preservation and/or rehabilitation of our significant historic buildings is incredibly important. In their glory days, these buildings were symbolic of progression towards a bright future; today they are windows to the past and a lasting connection to city legacies.
One such building in Mesa, Arizona is the Historic Post Office, also known as the “Federal Building”.
As indicated in Mesa’s Historic Property List: “The Federal Building was built in 1937 by the Federal Government Department of Treasury to become Mesa’s first 1st-class post office, and was one of the finest buildings in the City at its completion.”
Through the years,the post office experienced a series of modifications and functions. The federal government’s most recent use of the building was to house the local U.S. Forest Service offices before the building was transferred to City of Mesa ownership and was subsequently recorded on Mesa’s Historic Property Register in 2004.
An adaptive reuse of this historically significant building has been planned by the City along with the architectural team of Saemisch Di Bella Architects and Historic Streetscapes, led by Ron Peters AIA, who is a preservation architect. Current plans are in flux . . .
One of the projects in their extensive portfolio is the Mesa Center for Higher Education with a project date of 2012-2013
SDA’s Mesa Downtown Adaptive Reuse Project.
Saemisch Di Bella Architects built our business on producing sensitive adaptive-reuse projects, and we’re proud to have completed a number of these in our own historic downtown including the building we own and occupy at 48 W. Main Street. Built in 1895 and originally known as the Barnett Building, it’s one of the oldest in the area. Other projects completed include the Arizona Museum of Natural History, the C.W. Berge Building, the Nile Theater, and the offices at 101 W. Main, as well as tenant improvements for Sweet Cakes Café and Nunthaporn’s Thai Cuisine restaurant. For those interested in the history of Mesa’s downtown, please check out the Mesa Historical Museum website,
Source: http://www.adaptivearchitectsinc.com/understanding-the-background-of-architecture-industry/ |
Friday, March 17, 2017
KEEPING YOU INFORMED > Threats To Privacy
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
PHOENIX, Ariz. (March 16, 2017) – Yesterday, an Arizona House Committee unanimously passed a bill that would ban the use of “stingrays” to track the location of phones and sweep up electronic communications without a warrant in most situations.
The legislation would help block the use of cell site simulators, known as “stingrays.” These devices essentially spoof cell phone towers, tricking any device within range into connecting to the stingray instead of the tower, allowing law enforcement to sweep up communications content, as well as locate and track the person in possession of a specific phone or other electronic device.
As you can see in the map to the right Arizona is one of the states identified where Stingray and ICSMI is used by local police in Phoenix, here in Mesa and Tucson.
[read more below]
The federal government funds the vast majority of state and local stingray programs, attaching one important condition: The feds require agencies acquiring the technology to sign non-disclosure agreements.
This throws a giant shroud over the program, even preventing judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys from getting information about the use of stingrays in court.
The feds actually instruct prosecutors to withdraw evidence if judges or legislators press for information. As the Baltimore Sun reported in April 2015, a Baltimore detective refused to answer questions on the stand during a trial, citing a federal non-disclosure agreement.
Defense attorney Joshua Insley asked Cabreja about the agreement.
“Does this document instruct you to withhold evidence from the state’s attorney and Circuit Court, even upon court order to produce?” he asked.
“Yes,” Cabreja said.
As privacysos.org put it, “The FBI would rather police officers and prosecutors let ‘criminals’ go than face a possible scenario where a defendant brings a Fourth Amendment challenge to warrantless stingray spying.”
The feds sell the technology in the name of “anti-terrorism” efforts. With non-disclosure agreements in place, most police departments refuse to release any information on the use of stingrays. But information obtained from the Tacoma Police Department revealed that it uses the technology primarily for routine criminal investigations.
Some privacy advocates argue that stingray use can never happen within the parameters of the Fourth Amendment because the technology necessarily connects to every electronic device within range, not just the one held by the target. And the information collected by these devices undoubtedly ends up in federal data bases.
In other words, stingrays create the potential for the federal government to track the movement of millions of Americans with no warrant, no probable cause, and without the people even knowing it.
According to its website, the ISE “provides analysts, operators, and investigators with information needed to enhance national security. These analysts, operators, and investigators…have mission needs to collaborate and share information with each other and with private sector partners and our foreign allies.” In other words, ISE serves as a conduit for the sharing of information gathered without a warrant.
The federal government encourages and funds stingrays at the state and local level across the U.S., thereby undoubtedly gaining access to a massive data pool on Americans without having to expend the resources to collect the information itself. By placing restrictions on stingray use, state and local governments limit the data available that the feds can access.
In a nutshell, without state and local cooperation, the feds have a much more difficult time gathering information.
Passage of SB1342 would represent a major blow to the surveillance state and a win for privacy.
WHAT’S NEXT
SB1342 now moves to the House Rules Committee where it must pass by a majority vote before moving to the full House.
Some background information
Although manufactured by a Germany and Britain-based firm, the StingRay devices are sold in the US by the Harris Corporation, an international telecommunications equipment company. It gets between $60,000 and $175,000 for each Stingray it sells to US law enforcement agencies.
Critics say the technology wrongfully invades technology and that its uncontrolled use by law enforcement raised constitutional questions. “It is the biggest threat to cell phone privacy you don’t know about,” EFF said in a statement.
“The government is hiding information about new surveillance technology not only from the public, but even from the courts,” ACLU staff attorney Linda Lye wrote in a legal brief in the first pending federal StingRay case (see below). “By keeping courts in the dark about new technologies, the government is essentially seeking to write its own search warrants, and that’s not how the Constitution works.”
“If the government shows up in your neighborhood, essentially every phone is going to check in with the government,” said the ACLU’s Soghoian. “The government is sending signals through people’s walls and clothes and capturing information about innocent people. That’s not much different than using invasive technology to search every house on a block,” Soghoian said during interviews with reporters covering the StingRay story.
Advocates also raised alarms over another troubling issue: Using the StingRay allows investigators to bypass the routine process of obtaining fee-based location data from cell service providers like Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Comcast. Unlike buying location data fro service providers, using StingRay leaves no paper trail for defense attorneys.A federal judge in Arizona is now set to render a decision in the nation’s first StingRay case. After a hearing last week, the court in US v. Rigmaiden is expected to issue a ruling that could set privacy limits on how law enforcement uses the new technology. Just as the issue of GPS tracking technology eventually ended up before the Supreme Court, this latest iteration of the ongoing balancing act between enabling law enforcement to do its job and protecting the privacy and Fourth Amendment rights of citizens could well be headed there, too.
Source: Global Research
The original source of this article is Drug War Chronicle and Global Research
Copyright © Clarence Walker, Drug War Chronicle and Global Research, 2015
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Seymour Hersh Blasts Media for Uncritically ... - Global Research
www.globalresearch.ca/seymour-hersh-blasts-media.../5571125
Jan 28, 2017
Hersh also said he is concerned about Trump and his administration assuming power over the vast ...Stingray Tracking Devices: Who's Got Them, Where Are They Using It?
Published on Apr 23, 2015
Views: 15,165
www.undergroundworldnews.com
The map below tracks what we know, based on press reports and publicly available documents, about the use of stingray tracking devices by state and local police departments. Following the map is a list of the federal law enforcement agencies known to use the technology throughout the United States.
The ACLU has identified 50 agencies in 21 states and the District of Columbia that own stingrays, but because many agencies continue to shroud their purchase and use of stingrays in secrecy, this map dramatically underrepresents the actual use of stingrays by law enforcement agencies nationwide.
Stingrays, also known as "cell site simulators" or "IMSI catchers," are invasive cell phone surveillance devices that mimic cell phone towers and send out signals to trick cell phones in the area into transmitting their locations and identifying information.
When used to track a suspect's cell phone, they also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby.
https://www.aclu.org/map/stingray-tra...
The map below tracks what we know, based on press reports and publicly available documents, about the use of stingray tracking devices by state and local police departments. Following the map is a list of the federal law enforcement agencies known to use the technology throughout the United States.
The ACLU has identified 50 agencies in 21 states and the District of Columbia that own stingrays, but because many agencies continue to shroud their purchase and use of stingrays in secrecy, this map dramatically underrepresents the actual use of stingrays by law enforcement agencies nationwide.
Stingrays, also known as "cell site simulators" or "IMSI catchers," are invasive cell phone surveillance devices that mimic cell phone towers and send out signals to trick cell phones in the area into transmitting their locations and identifying information.
When used to track a suspect's cell phone, they also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby.
https://www.aclu.org/map/stingray-tra...
Ex-Mesa City Council Member Dave Richins Gets A New Gig
United Food Bank
Published on Mar 15, 2017
Views: 12
Duration: 07:31
Published on Mar 15, 2017
Views: 12
Duration: 07:31
Council Study Session - 3/16/2017
Hike in utility rates gets a 90-day notice ...no details until April 13th
Interim Mesa PD Chief Mike Dvorak talks about A PRIVATE JAIL PROJECT
Published on Mar 16, 2017
Views: 3
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