Massachusetts SWAT Teams Claim They’re Private Corporations, Immune from Open Records Laws
June 26th, 2014Via: Washington Post:
As part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response.
As it turns out, a number of SWAT teams in the Bay State are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. These LECs are funded by several police agencies in a given geographic area and overseen by an executive board, which is usually made up of police chiefs from member police departments. In 2012, for example, the Tewksbury Police Department paid about $4,600 in annual membership dues to the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC. (See page 36 of linked PDF.) That LEC has about 50 member agencies. In addition to operating a regional SWAT team, the LECs also facilitate technology and information sharing and oversee other specialized units, such as crime scene investigators and computer crime specialists.
Some of these LECs have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests. Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.
Related: The Rise of Militarized NGOs
Jimmy Savile NHS Abuse Victims Aged Five to 75
June 26th, 2014Via: BBC:
Ex-BBC DJ Jimmy Savile sexually assaulted victims aged five to 75 in NHS hospitals over decades of unrestricted access, investigators say.
He abused patients in their beds, in corridors and offices, reviews into his conduct on NHS premises found.
The reports cover 28 hospitals including Leeds General Infirmary and Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt apologised on behalf of the government and NHS, saying victims were “let down badly”.
Mr Hunt told the Commons there was a “deep sense of revulsion” over the findings, which “shake our country to the core”.
He described Savile as a “sickening and prolific” abuser who carried out attacks over five decades.
Victims of the “opportunistic sexual predator” included patients, visitors and staff, the reports say.
Savile, a Radio 1 DJ who also presented the BBC’s Top Of The Pops and Jim’ll Fix It, died aged 84 in October 2011 – a year before allegations that he had sexually abused children were broadcast in an ITV documentary.
The reports on Leeds General Infirmary and Broadmoor are the most detailed. They explain how he was allowed unsupervised access to vulnerable patients, with a failure to question the risks of his unconventional and promiscuous lifestyle.
The Leeds investigation found:
Sixty people came forward to say they had been abused between the ages of five and 75, including staff
The offences ranged from lewd remarks to sexual assault and three cases of rape and took place between 1962 and 2009
Only nine victims told members of staff. There were a further eight female victims who met Savile at the hospital, but were not patients
Savile had a well-known fixation with the dead and the report contains allegations he posed for photographs and performed sex acts on corpses in the hospital mortuary
While there is no way to verify the claim, Dr Sue Proctor – who led the Leeds inquiry – said there is no doubt controls on access to the mortuary were “lax”
A number of organisational failures over the years enabled Savile to continue unchallenged
These included weak systems to protect patients, poor complaints systems and leadership that lacked curiosity
There is no evidence reports of abuse were communicated to senior managers
There is evidence the head porter, Charles Hullighan, played a central role in the introduction of a staff volunteer at the radio station to Savile – who the DJ then raped.
The situation allowed someone “as manipulative as Savile to thrive and continue his abusive behaviour unchecked for years”, it said.
Predictive Policing
June 25th, 2014Via: Guardian:
The algorithm at play is performing what’s commonly referred to as predictive policing. Using years – and sometimes decades – worth of crime reports, the algorithm analyses the data to identify areas with high probabilities for certain types of crime, placing little red boxes on maps of the city that are streamed into patrol cars. “Burglars tend to be territorial, so once they find a neighbourhood where they get good stuff, they come back again and again,” Romero says. “And that assists the algorithm in placing the boxes.”
Romero likens the process to an amateur fisherman using a fish finder device to help identify where fish are in a lake. An experienced fisherman would probably know where to look simply by the fish species, time of day, and so on. “Similarly, a really good officer would be able to go out and find these boxes. This kind of makes the average guys’ ability to find the crime a little bit better.”
Predictive policing is just one tool in this new, tech-enhanced and data-fortified era of fighting and preventing crime. As the ability to collect, store and analyse data becomes cheaper and easier, law enforcement agencies all over the world are adopting techniques that harness the potential of technology to provide more and better information. But while these new tools have been welcomed by law enforcement agencies, they’re raising concerns about privacy, surveillance and how much power should be given over to computer algorithms.
P Jeffrey Brantingham is a professor of anthropology at UCLA who helped develop the predictive policing system that is now licensed to dozens of police departments under the brand name PredPol. “This is not Minority Report,” he’s quick to say, referring to the science-fiction story often associated with PredPol’s technique and proprietary algorithm. “Minority Report is about predicting who will commit a crime before they commit it. This is about predicting where and when crime is most likely to occur, not who will commit it.”
Robot Truck Convoy Tested In Nevada
June 25th, 2014A human steers, but drafting is automated.
Via: Popular Science:
Like Olympic skiers racing in single file to reduce air resistance, two 18-wheeler trucks in Nevada recently proved that uncomfortably close convoys can save drivers fuel and money. The key, instead of bold Olympic athleticism, is robotic assistance. A computer-assisted truck was able to follow closely behind a human-driven truck perfectly, maintaining exactly 33 feet of distance between the vehicles. The promise is a future of safer, more fuel efficient, and more robotic trucking.
While Nevada is a friendly state for driverless cars, the system tested is only partially automated, with a driver in the computer-assisted truck still responsible for steering. In a way, that makes this a very, very advanced cruise control. The technology, developed by Peloton Tech, uses radar and a wireless link so that the following trucks travel at the same speed, braking simultaneously for safety, and doing so on an automated system that doesn’t have the delays of human reaction time. In addition, the drivers of both vehicles also have a video display, expanding both drivers’ vision and reducing blind spots.
Besides safety, the major selling point of this system is that the reduced drag saves fuel costs. Peloton says the “technology saves more than 7% [of fuel] at 65mph – 10% for the rear truck and 4.5% for the lead truck,” which is tremendous because “Long-haul fleets spend 40% of operating expenses on fuel, accounting collectively for over 10% of U.S. oil use and related carbon emissions.” These savings come primarily from reduced aerodynamic drag.
Research Credit: alvinroast
The Rise of Militarized NGOs
June 25th, 2014Via: The Atlantic:
Who invaded Crimea? Civil society. Who has occupied government offices and police headquarters in eastern Ukraine, bringing massive instability to that region? Civil society. Who is fighting the governments of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Nouri al-Malaki in Iraq? Civil society. And who are thecolectivos confronting Venezuelan students who protest against the government? Civil-society activists, of course.
These are the official responses, at any rate, by those who have something to gain from distorting reality. The responses range from blatant lies to subtle untruths, but they are all dishonest.
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The reality is that these groups, “movements,” and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are appendices of their governments and draw their “activists” from the armed forces, security services, and government militias. They carry out their repressive deeds disguised as “civil society,” in an attempt to mask the behavior of governments that want to avoid being recognized by the international community for what they really are: autocracies that violate global norms, trample human rights, and brutalize their critics. They have even earned their own acronym—GONGOs—for “Government-Organized Non-Governmental Organizations.” Their rise is forcing us to rethink our benign definitions of NGOs and civil society to accommodate armed groups of civilians and even, most provocatively, terrorists.
Pennsylvania Ordered Its Health Workers to Never Discuss Fracking
June 25th, 2014Via: Grist:
In the heavily fracked Keystone State, the economic interests of frackers trump the health concerns of residents.
That much is abundantly clear in the wake of an extraordinary story by StateImpact Pennsylvania, which interviewed two retired state health department workers. The former workers say they were ordered to not return the phone calls of residents who complained that nearby fracking was harming their health. Instead, they were told to pass messages on to their superiors, who apparently never returned the calls either. The health workers were also given a list of fracking-related “buzzwords” to watch out for:
“We were absolutely not allowed to talk to [people who called with concerns related to fracking],” said Tammi Stuck, who worked as a community health nurse in Fayette County for nearly 36 years. …
“There was a list of buzzwords we had gotten,” Stuck said. “There were some obvious ones like fracking, gas, soil contamination. There were probably 15 to 20 words and short phrases that were on this list. If anybody from the public called in and that was part of the conversation, we were not allowed to talk to them.” …
Stuck said she has spoken to employees working in other state health centers who received the same list of buzzwords and the same instructions on how to deal with drilling-related calls.
“People were saying: Where’s the Department of Health on all this?” Stuck said. “The bottom line was we weren’t allowed to say anything.”
The office of Gov. Tom Corbett (R) declined to comment on the former employees’ claims, and a state health spokesperson basically called them liars.
Research Credit: P7y845W4
And Now… “Americans Have Joined Militant Group ISIS”
June 25th, 2014*wink*
Via: CBS:
The Sunni militant group in Iraq is a force roughly 3,000 strong and includes some Americans, a senior intelligence official told CBS News on Tuesday.
The majority of fighters in the group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, are of Iraqi and Syrian origin.
In all, up to 10,000 are fighting with the group, 3,000 in Iraq and another 7,000 in Syria, the intelligence official said. Between 3,000 and 5,000 are foreigners, though how many of those are in Iraq is difficult to assess.
The fighters view Syria and Iraq as one battlefield and have been able to move swiftly inside Iraq with the help of local Sunnis, ties the intelligence official described as more of a “relationship of convenience” than a formal alliance.
The official said the group, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, was well-positioned to keep the territory that it has captured but would be stretched thin if it tried to push south into Baghdad. It has intentions to target U.S. interests, the official said.
U.S. Army MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System)
June 25th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
One of the most advanced breeds of pint-sized robotic tanks is currently being tested by the U.S. Army. MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System) is a 3-foot tall, remote-controlled ground vehicle that can assist in anything from camera surveillance to launching grenades. MAARS can take on the riskiest of tasks, like disarming IEDs to keep soldiers out of harm’s way.
Federal Judge Rules U.S. No-Fly List Violates Constitution
June 25th, 2014Via: Reuters:
The U.S. government’s no-fly list banning people accused of links to terrorism from commercial flights violates their constitutional rights because it gives them no meaningful way to contest that decision, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Anna Brown, ruling on a lawsuit filed in federal court in Oregon by 13 Muslim Americans who were branded with the no-fly status, ordered the government to come up with new procedures that allow people on the no-fly list to challenge that designation.
“The court concludes international travel is not a mere convenience or luxury in this modern world. Indeed, for many international travel is a necessary aspect of liberties sacred to members of a free society,” Brown wrote in her 65-page ruling.
“Accordingly, on this record the court concludes plaintiffs inclusion on the no-fly list constitutes a significant deprivation of their liberty interests in international travel,” Brown said.
The decision hands a major victory to the 13 plaintiffs – four of them veterans of the U.S. military – who deny they have links to terrorism and say they only learned of their no-fly status when they arrived at an airport and were blocked from boarding a flight.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought suit against the policy in 2010, argues that secrecy surrounding the list and lack of any reasonable opportunity for plaintiffs to fight their placement on it violates their clients’ constitutional rights to due process.
FAA Bans Use of Drones to Deliver Packages
June 24th, 2014Via: Ars Technica:
The Federal Aviation Administration has said that online shopping powerhouse Amazon may not employ drones to deliver packages, at least not anytime soon.
…
In Monday’s announcement, published in the Federal Register, the FAA named Amazon’s December proposal as an example of what is barred under regulations that allow the use of drones for hobby and recreational purposes. The agency did not mention Amazon Prime Air by name, but it didn’t have to.
Under a graphic that says what is barred, the FAA mentioned the “Delivering of packages to people for a fee.” A footnote added, “If an individual offers free shipping in association with a purchase or other offer, FAA would construe the shipping to be in furtherance of a business purpose, and thus, the operation would not fall within the statutory requirement of recreation or hobby purpose.”
