Demonstraties VS #5: Een jaar na de 1ste tweet.

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Did the NYPD Break International Law in Suppressing Protest?

A report by a group of civil and human rights attorneys released Wednesday morning paints the clearest picture yet of the New York City police department's aggressive tactics and over-policing, all of which resulted in the systemic suppression of the basic rights of Occupy protesters.

The report, which chronicles events from late September 2011 up to July of 2012, extensively documents numerous ways in which the NYPD acted with excessive force, attempted to intimidate and harass members of the press, expelled activists from public space due to the content of their speech, and ultimately concludes that authorities broke international law in their handling of Occupy Wall Street.

The executive summary states, in plain language:

"The abusive practices documented in this report violate international law and suppress and chill protest rights, not only by undermining individual liberty, but also by causing both minor and serious physical injuries, inhibiting collective debate and the capacity to effectively press for social and economic change, and making people afraid to attend otherwise peaceful assemblies."

The authors of the report make several recommendations. First, they call for the city to enact a new, public protest policy, to be created in coordination with civil rights groups like the ACLU. Second, that Mayor Bloomberg establish an independent review of the policing of Occupy Wall Street since September 2011. Third, that New York State create an independent inspector-general to oversee the NYPD, and, if the state fails to do that, the report calls for the U.S. Department of Justice to step in to investigate the NYPD.

"The report calls for investigations and prosecutions of officials, and for new protest policing guidelines that ensure the NYPD respects core civil liberties and human rights," said Sarah Knuckey, Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law and Research Director of Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University School of Law, one of the report's main authors. "If these things are not done, the U.S. Department of Justice needs to step in and investigate official misconduct, and bring charges where appropriate."

The authors have filed the report – which focuses primarily on New York City, though subsequent reports will focus on other cities – with the DOJ, as well as with the United Nations as a formal complaint. They have also submitted it to the mayor's office, the NYPD, and the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB).

Many involved with Occupy will be familiar with much that's in the report, but its sheer scope makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And for international authorities who may be less well-acquainted with the less covered – though equally important – aspects of police repression, the report will likely prove a valuable tool.

"[This report] should serve as a wake-up call to the sleepwalkers who have not yet realized that the serious problems with the way New York City has been exercising its police powers are a real public health emergency that we have to deal with head-on and collectively, in a comprehensive and sustained way," Gideon Oliver, president of the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, told AlterNet.

Most shocking is the section titled "use of force", and the accompanying 36-page table that documents 130 incidents of violence police committed against Occupy activists. The list of incidents by its very nature couldn't be exhaustive, but is intended to show the wide range of force police used against activists. Some of the incidents are quite serious; punching, over-hand swinging of batons, and "intentionally applying very hard force to the broken clavicle of a handcuffed and compliant individual." Reading through the table leaves one with a dizzying sense of brutality, as ten months of condensed violence flash before one's eyes.

On October 14, the report states, an officer approached a protester, and punched him, knocking him to the ground. In an interview, the protester said, "I was walking away from him, I was not walking toward him . . . I was going away. I didn't say anything [to the officer]." On December 17, an ordained priest was punched in the temple by an officer, causing him to seek emergency treatment. There were several injuries on March 17 and 18, when Occupy activists attempted to reestablish an encampment in Zuccotti Park. The report lists many other serious uses of force, as well as scores of instances of shoving, pushing, and physically intimidating Occupy protesters.

The report documents seven known incidents of police using pepper spray, including the infamous Anthony Bologna fiasco. I can personally confirm that police used pepper spray on November 15, the night of the paramilitary style raid on the encampment.

Police used batons to attack protesters, but the weapons list doesn't stop there. The research team writes of instances in which barricades, or parts of barricades, have been used as weapons against protesters. On several occasions – November 17, January 1, March 17 and 21 – police picked up barricades and used them to shove crowds backward. A legal observer said the NYPD were using the barricades as a "weapon," while another observer said in an interview, "It wasn't just 'defending' or keeping the barricades in place – it was aggressive and using the barricades against people."

The report concludes, "the evidence strongly suggests that police use of force was unnecessary and disproportionate, in violation of international law."

The authors also document many instances of the police violating the freedom of the press. Again, this isn't news to journalists who have covered Occupy Wall Street, but to see all of the incidents together paints a grim picture of press freedoms in New York City. The most explicit example of press repression happened on November 15, the night of the eviction from Zuccotti Park. The report states there are at least ten confirmed cases of journalists being arrested either at the eviction or at protests the following day. That is a staggering number.

Citing the remarkable work of Josh Stearns of Free Press, who has kept a tally of journalists arrested covering Occupy actions around the country, the report claims that there have been "at least 85 instances of police arrests of journalists in 12 cities across the country, including at least 44 in New York City on 15 different dates." The chilling effect these arrests can have is clear. As a photographer said in an interview to the research team, "You never know what is going to happen. You might get hurt. You might get arrested. Just trying to get pictures."

I was one of those reporters, arrested while documenting an Occupy action on December 12. The officer turned to me and asked if I had official NYPD-issued press credentials, and when I said I didn't, he threw me to the ground and arrested me. (Official NYPD credentials are obtained by submitting examples of recent spot news reporting to the police's Deputy Commissioner, Public Information for review, a process that in some cases can take years to successfully navigate--and notably, requires reporters to do their work without credentials before they can be obtained. Credentials are only required to cross police lines, not to confirm that a reporter is "legitimate".)

This report is, significantly, not the first time lawyers have called for an independent position to be created to oversee the NYPD. As I reported for AlterNet, a federal lawsuit (in which I am a co-plaintiff) filed by civil rights attorneys claims that the NYPD is so out of control that they are incapable of policing themselves. Though Occupy isn't in the news as much as it once was, this report does the important work of reminding the public about the clear, potentially illegal, suppression the NYPD engaged in when dealing with Occupy Wall Street. And, just as importantly, it serves as a preview of what could happen in the future if the police aren't brought under control.

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NYPD will not back cop in Occupy pepper-spray lawsuit

The New York Police Department will not defend a 29-year veteran of the force being sued by Occupy Wall Street protesters, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The department’s rare move means Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna could be personally liable for damages that are awarded to Chelsea Elliott of Brooklyn and Jeanne Mansfield of Massachusetts, who sued him and the NYPD in February, as well as the city and other unidentified officers.

The suit accuses the city of not training its officers correctly, following an incident in September where Bologna was caught on video pepper-spraying several protesters who had seemingly already been contained behind orange plastic netting. The run-in became an early flashpoint in the Occupy movement.

In October, Bologna was stripped of 10 vacation days for “using pepper spray outside of department guidelines.” The women’s attorney, Aymen Aboushi, said the visibility it gained after being posted online was reflected in the NYPD’s distancing itself from Bologna.

“If it wasn’t on video, I think it would be another he said-she said case,” Aboushi said.

The NYPD Captains Endowment Association, of which Bologna is a member, will now cover the costs of his defense, but he is also asking the department to reverse its decision, according to his lawyer, Louis La Pietra.

“He wasn’t doing this as Anthony Bologna, mister,” La Pietra said. “He was doing this as Anthony Bologna, deputy inspector, NYPD.”

A New York University report last month blasted the NYPD for escalating tensions and harassing protesters, lawyers and journalists during the early Occupy protests in Zuccotti Park last November.

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New York Times complains to police over treatment of photographer

Photographer Robert Stolarik claims officer 'slammed' camera into his face before he was dragged to floor, kicked and arrested

The New York Times has complained to the city's police department after one of its photographers said he was assaulted by officers who arrested him on Saturday.

Robert Stolarik, a freelance photographer, claimed a New York Police Department (NYPD) officer "slammed" his camera into his face before he was dragged to the ground, kicked and arrested.

Stolarik was on assignment with two other reporters in the Bronx when he was stopped by police on Saturday evening.

Police ordered Stolarik to stop taking pictures of a teenage girl being arrested. When he refused, an officer reputedly grabbed Stolarik's camera and dragged him to the ground.

Stolarik claimed he was then kicked in the back and received scrapes and bruises on his face, legs and arms as a result of the arrest. He was charged with obstructing government administration and of resisting arrest.

The New York Times reported that a video of the arrest taken by another journalist showed Stolarik face down on the pavement beneath a huddle of about six police officers.

A spokeswoman for the New York Times told MediaGuardian: "In our view, Robert Stolarik, a freelance photographer working on behalf of The New York Times, was doing nothing more than his job when he was roughed up and arrested.

"This action is not in keeping with the agreement we have had with the NYPD and we plan to notify them of our distress about this today."

The NYPD said that Stolarik "violently resisted being handcuffed" and that an officer was cut on the hand during the arrest.

The police claimed that Stolarik "inadvertently" struck an officer in the face with his camera when he refused to leave the scene and stop taking photographs. A spokesman for the NYPD said the force had no further comment to make on Monday.

It is the third time since December the paper has written to the force about its treatment of Stolarik, who covered the Occupy Wall Street protests for the New York Times.

George Freeman, a lawyer for the New York Times, added: "This is an incident where it seemed the photographer was doing his job taking photographs, and the police overeacted and attempted to intimidate him and block him, leading to his arrest."

Stolarik is scheduled to appear in court in November.

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The Koch Brothers Go After Zach Galifianakis and ‘The Campaign’

In The Campaign, out this weekend, Will Ferrell plays an incumbent Congressman who’s running what’s supposed to be an uncontested race, when a pair of wealth brothers by the name of Motch put up a genial dummy, played by Zach Galifianakis, to run against him. Unsurprisingly, Galifianakis confirmed that the brothers, played in the movie by Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow, are meant to be a stand-in for the real-life industrialists and right-wing political funders Charles and David Koch, and mentioned in a recent interview that he found the pair “creepy.”

Other public figures might consider the movie, and Galifianakis’ uneasiness about their influence to be a tribute to their effectiveness. But the Kochs don’t seem to be taking it that way. Phillip Ellender, Koch Industries’ president for government affairs, issued a statement on the brothers’ behalf, saying:

. Last we checked, the movie is a comedy. Maybe more to the point is that it’s laughable to take political guidance or moral instruction from a guy who makes obscene gestures with a monkey on a bus in Bangkok…We disagree with his uninformed characterization of Koch and our beliefs. His comments, which appear to be based on false attacks made by our political opponents, demonstrate a lack of understanding of our longstanding support of individual freedom, freedom of expression, and constitutional rights.

While the Koch brothers have become a staple of political coverage, it’s taken longer for them to become fixtures in popular culture, and Ellender’s response suggests they’re not enjoying the attention. This summer, they’ve made an appearance by name in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama The Newsroom, when anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) attacked guests on his show who were members of Tea Party groups for not being aware of who their funders were. His coverage earned a rebuke from network owner Leona Lansing (a scenery-munching Jane Fonda), who cautioned Will’s producer against further coverage of the Kochs less they pull their brands’ advertisements from the company. declared “I got where I am by knowing who to fear,” she said. “They drop Brinks trucks on people they disagree with.” It was a weirdly sinister portrayal, in contrast to the lighter satire The Campaign is expected to offer up.

But as long as the Koch brothers are making heavy investments in political campaigns and grass-roots organizing, they’re probably going to keep popping up in movies and television, at least until someone gets the idea of painting casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as a malevolent power behind the throne, which will probably take Adelson deciding to support someone more credible than Newt Gingrich. Until then, Charles and David Koch might as well enjoy the spectacle of liberals fearing them, and the debate over which one of them Aykroyd and Lithgow are each meant to be.

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Brookfield Allegedly Urges Cops To Have "Zero Tolerance" For OWS At Zuccotti Park

Since Zuccotti Park was raided and cleared last November, a seemingly arbitrary set of rules enforced by Brookfield Properties and the NYPD have made entering and enjoying the public park akin to being subjected to a TSA screening. This document, allegedly distributed by Brookfield to the phalanx of security guards it employs to mind the park, specifically identifies those rules and acknowledges the "fluid situation" that exists in balancing the rights of park patrons with the interests of a multibillion dollar corporation, and seemingly suggests that security personnel "remind" any "resistant" police officers that their Chief of Department is expecting their cooperation.

The alleged memo instructs the "tour supervisor" to "identify and make introduction to the highest ranking member of the NYPD" stationed at the park. Here is the passage that suggests that security employees "remind" NYPD officers of their duty to obey the highest-ranking uniformed officer in their department:

. NYPD supervisors that prove to be resistant to enforcing the rules of the park should be reminded that Chief Esposito has agreed to this set of rules and wanted them to be enforced with zero tolerance.

In this video, Chief Esposito can be seen shoving Occupy Wall Street protesters onto the sidewalk during a demonstration in Lower Manhattan.

The rules stated in the alleged memo (which aren't much of a surprise to anyone who has visited the park since the raid) go beyond the set of regulations upheld by a Manhattan Supreme Court Justice last fall and stipulate that patron may only bring "ONE BLANKET…(or "Snuggie")" into the park, and that "the establishment of a "Library," "Kitchen," etc, is prohibited." Musical instruments, except drums, are permitted, and if they are in a carrying case "the case must be open and visual inspection to confirm it is an instrument (rules regarding instruments are in flux)."

According to a livestreamer who witnessed NYPD personnel reading the document, the paper was allegedly given in error to a patron of the park by a Brookfield employee. We've reached out to Brookfield and the NYPD for comment, and will update when we receive any additional information. The entire document is below.

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Open Letter from Anonymous regarding #opAnaheim

Subject: Flash mob this Saturday, August 18, 2012

Dear Citizens of Anaheim,

This is Anonymous from Operation Anaheim.

As you were chanting outside city hall, “THE WORLD IS WATCHING” to the police, we watched youtube videos of citizens being shot in Anaheim, and then saw a mother with child being attacked by a police canine.

When we saw that, we were outraged. We started working as a collective to help you fight these racist cops. In solidarity with Anaheim, we have been working online, trying to bring awareness to this issue. We have also sent food to protesters on the ground, and will continue to support you during future protests.

When we saw the paramilitary police force respond to peaceful protesters, we were shocked.

When we saw youtube videos of children describing being shot by police, we were disgusted. ( http://gg.gg/fp0)

In complete solidarity with you all, we understand that your community has been terrorized by the police and paramilitary forces that have been called in to suppress your protests. Because of the past few stressful weeks, in a planned meeting with our on-the-ground informants, we would like to help the community unwind.

We’re now calling on the citizens of Anaheim, and outlying areas to assemble for a flash mob on their streets, away from the police. We’re calling for the citizens of Anaheim and their supporters to take a night off and relax, please. On Saturday, August 18, 2012 at 5pm, please leave your home and head into the streets and try to find others. March down your sidewalks looking for for other people in your community. Start to gather in a decentralized fashion using Twitter, texting and phones to gather everyone to a single spot decided by the rule of mass mob.

Please bring drums, boomboxes, drinks, and share your stories over a peaceful evening where there is no other call to action against the police. Take the night off and build your community.

We encourage all supporters in the area surrounding Anaheim to join in solidarity with the residents of Anaheim.

We continue to stand with you, Anaheim. We will be posting news on our Twitter @opAnaheim or email us at opanaheim@yandex.com .

Local 99% groups to alert:
@OccupySD / http://www.sandiegooccupy.org/forum
web@Occupylosangeles.org / http://occupylosangeles.org/?q=forum
email to mexicamovement@sbcglobal.net
http://nationalbrownberets.com/contactus.html

In solidarity,

We are Anonymous Operation Anaheim and the 99%.
Together we are legion,
We do not forgive,
We do not forget,
Anaheim,
Expect to party with us.

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Occupier charged with terroristic felony for protesting in front of bank

A protester belonging to an Occupy Wall Street group in rural Pennsylvania is being charged with felony attempted bank robbery and a terrorism-related charge for holding signs up during a demonstration at a local Wells Fargo branch.

David C. Gorczynski, 22, was charged on Tuesday with attempted bank robbery and terroristic threatening, both felonies, as well as one misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. Police detained him after he walked into an Easton, PA Wells Fargo branch with a sign that read “You’re being robbed” and another that said “Give a man a gun, he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob a country.”

Gorczynski was at the Wells Fargo bank as part of a demonstration led by Occupy Easton, the small Pennsylvania town’s OWS offshoot.

Easton is located around 60 miles outside of Philadelphia and has a population of only 26,800 according to the 2010 census.

The Express-Times reports that police were alerted to the branch after a bank teller hit an alarm that alerted the authorities.

"I think our guys did what they had to do in this instance," Easton police Chief Carl Scalzo tells the paper. "At the end of the day, if we get a report of a panic alarm at a bank, we're going to respond accordingly."

Chief Scalzo adds that Gorczynski’s First Amendment right to protest freely can’t trump any allegations that he may have been behind something more sinister.

"We can't allow the perceived idea of protesting to be a defense to criminality," Scalzo says in response to reports that the suspect was simply demonstrating Wall Street corruption. "People have to understand if they want to protest, there's a line."

Mary Catherine Roper of the American Civil Liberties Union tells the paper that the charges seem “overzealous . . . especially given the clear political nature of the statements.”

Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli tells The Express-Times, “I'm very on top of this" and claims he is investigating whether or not the charges were justified.

“He is not the criminal. If the police were truly there to protect and serve the taxpayers, the banksters would be arrested and this man would be called a hero,” the Occupy Easton group responds on Facebook.

Gorczynski was released on $10,000 bond after a defense and bail fund established online helped bring in enough money to buy his freedom after his arrest.

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WIKILEAKS: Surveillance Cameras Around The Country Are Being Used In A Huge Spy Network

The U.S. cable networks won't be covering this one tonight (not accurately, anyway), but Trapwire is making the rounds on social media today—it reportedly became a Trending hashtag on Twitter earlier in the day.

Trapwire is the name of a program revealed in the latest Wikileaks bonanza—it is the mother of all leaks, by the way. Trapwire would make something like disclosure of UFO contact or imminent failure of a major U.S. bank fairly boring news by comparison.

And the ambitious techno-fascists behind Trapwire seem to be quite disappointed that word is getting out so swiftly; the Wikileaks web site is reportedly sustaining 10GB worth of DDoS attacks each second, which is massive.

Anyway, here's what Trapwire is, according to Russian-state owned media network RT (apologies for citing "foreign media"... if we had a free press, I'd be citing something published here by an American media conglomerate): "Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology—and have installed it across the U.S. under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community.

The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented. The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing."

So: those spooky new "circular" dark globe cameras installed in your neighborhood park, town, or city—they aren't just passively monitoring. They're plugged into Trapwire and they are potentially monitoring every single person via facial recognition.

In related news, the Obama administration is fighting in federal court this week for the ability to imprison American citizens under NDAA's indefinite detention provisions—and anyone else—without charge or trial, on suspicion alone.

So we have a widespread network of surveillance cameras across America monitoring us and reporting suspicious activity back to a centralized analysis center, mixed in with the ability to imprison people via military force on the basis of suspicious activity alone. I don't see how that could possibly go wrong. Nope, not at all. We all know the government, and algorithmic computer programs, never make mistakes.

Here's what is also so disturbing about this whole NDAA business: "This past week's hearing was even more terrifying. Government attorneys again, in this hearing, presented no evidence to support their position and brought forth no witnesses. Most incredibly, Obama's attorneys refused to assure the court, when questioned, that the NDAA's section 1021 – the provision that permits reporters and others who have not committed crimes to be detained without trial – has not been applied by the U.S. government anywhere in the world after Judge Forrest's injunction. In other words, they were telling a U.S. federal judge that they could not, or would not, state whether Obama's government had complied with the legal injunction that she had laid down before them. To this, Judge Forrest responded that if the provision had indeed been applied, the United States government would be in contempt of court."

If none of this bothers you, please don't follow me on Twitter, because nothing I report on will be of interest to you. Go back to watching the television news network of your choice, where you will hear about Romney's latest campaign ads, and whether Obamacare will increase the cost of delivery pizza by 14 to 16 cents.

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TrapWire: International Surveillance Coordination Network

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I. The Bottom Line: TrapWire's Role In International Intelligence Too Important To Stay Cloaked
II. Introduction
III. What Does TrapWire Do?
IV. Who Uses TrapWire?
V. Who/What Is TrapWire?
VI. Stratfor and TrapWire's Troubling Revolving Doors

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Bloomberg unveils new crime-fighting system for New York

NEW YORK (CNN) — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Wednesday, August 8th a new crime monitoring system — developed with Microsoft — designed to allow law enforcement to better collect data and review the city in real time, using a collection of cameras, license-plate readers and other resources.

“This new system capitalizes on new powerful policing software that allows police officers and other personnel to more quickly access relevant information gathered from existing cameras, 911 calls, previous crime reports and other existing tools and technology,” Bloomberg said Wednesday.

The Domain Awareness System is said to allow authorities to review live video feeds and quickly check suspect arrest records, while expanding New York City’s radiation detection equipment and enlarging its existing database.

The project also has raised questions among civil rights activists concerned over the extending reach of law enforcement in New York.

But Bloomberg touted both its ability to increase public safety as well as its possible financial returns.

“Because the NYPD built the system in partnership with Microsoft, the sale of the product will generate revenue for the cty that will fund more new crime-prevention and counter-terrorism programs,” he said.

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Trapwire surveillance system exposed in document leak

Papers released by WikiLeaks show US department of homeland security paid $832,000 to deploy system in two cities

It sounds like something from the film Minority Report: a CCTV surveillance system that recognises people from their face or walk and analyses whether they might be about to commit a terrorist or criminal act. But Trapwire is real and, according to documents released online by WikiLeaks last week, is being used in a number of countries to try to monitor people and threats.

Founded by former CIA agents, Trapwire uses data from a network of CCTV systems and numberplate readers to figure out the threat level in huge numbers of locations. That means security officials can "focus on the highest priorities first, taking a proactive and collaborative approach to defence against attacks," say its creators.

The documents outlining Trapwire's existence and its deployment in the US were apparently obtained in a hack of computer systems belonging to the intelligence company Stratfor at the end of last year.

Documents from the US department of homeland security show that it paid $832,000 to deploy Trapwire in Washington DC and Seattle.

Stratfor describes Trapwire as "a unique, predictive software system designed to detect patterns of pre-attack surveillance and logistical planning", and cites the Washington DC police chief mentioning it during a Senate committee hearing. It serves "a wide range of law enforcement personnel and public and private security officials domestically and internationally", Stratfor says.

Some have expressed doubts that Trapwire could really forecast terrorist acts based on data from cameras, but Rik Ferguson, security consultant at Trend Micro, said the software for such systems had existed for some time.

"There's a lot of crossover between CCTV and facial recognition," he said. "It's feasible to have a camera looking for suspicious behaviour – for example, in a computer server room it could recognise someone via facial recognition or your gait, then can identify them from the card they swipe to get in, and then know whether it's suspicious if they're meant to be a cleaner and they sit down at a computer terminal."

The claims might seem overblown, but then the idea that the US could have an international monitoring system seemed absurd until the discovery of the Echelon system, used by the US to eavesdrop on electronic communications internationally.

Trapwire has not yet commented on the leak.

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Wall Street Tightens Grip on Public Water as Local Residents Suffer

Investment bankers and other major financial players are increasingly swooping in on public water utilities and other municipal services in cash strapped towns to the detriment of local residents, according to a new report released today by advocacy group Food & Water Watch. Vulture capitalists are increasingly facilitating the privatization of public infrastructure, taking control of public utilities while skimping on services and causing steep price hikes -- all the while making massive profits.

According to the report, private equity firms show up to hurting municipalities as hired financial advisers and subsequently push through privatization deals. Massive profits are made in the process, as such advisers stand to make great financial gains through these deals. Following privatization, local residents are continually denied sufficient services and face steep consumer price hikes in the under-regulated process.

“Like Wall Street’s manipulation of the housing market in the previous decade, private equity firms and investment bankers are increasingly looking to cash in on one of our most essential resources—water,” said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “These deals are ultimately a bum deal for consumers, who will end up paying the price through increased water bills and degraded service.”

The report titled, Private Equity, Public Inequity: The Public Cost of Private Equity Takeovers of U.S. Water Infrastructure reveals that as of January 2012, private equity players had raised $186 billion through 276 infrastructure funds. And private equity firms are armed with more than $100 billion for infrastructure worldwide.

Key findings also include:

. Major financial firms are promoting large, complex and risky privatization deals, which essentially act as high-interest credit cards to finance budget shortfalls and infrastructure projects. Cash-strapped governments lack the bargaining power and know-how to properly negotiate these deals.
. Private equity takeovers tend to be highly leveraged and risky.
. Private equity players are notorious tax avoiders and evaders. In the last five years, for example, the Carlyle Group made more than $4 billion in profit but paid an effective income tax rate of only 2 percent.
. Private equity takeovers restrict transparency and accountability.

"When municipalities privatize their drinking and wastewater systems to fill budget shortfalls, private equity firms have greater bargaining power to negotiate more lucrative deals. Many local governments, especially cash-strapped ones, are ill-equipped to evaluate proposals from multinational finance firms or to negotiate a fair contract, making them vulnerable to expensive, unnecessary deals," Food and Water Watch writes today.

“Private equity players aren’t investing in water out of a sense of civic responsibility. Their first and foremost motivation is profits, which has already proven incompatible with delivering an essential resource to consumers,” added Hauter.

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Twitter argues fourth amendment defence over judge's Occupy order

Site appeals against court request to hand over details of tweets relating to Occupy activist charged with disorderly conduct

Twitter has lodged an appeal against a New York judge's decision that it must hand over detailed information related to an Occupy Wall Street protester charged with disorderly conduct.

In July, Twitter was ordered to hand over almost three months' worth of messages and other details related to the account of activist Malcolm Harris. Harris was among the hundreds of protesters accused of disorderly conduct during a protest on Brooklyn bridge last October.

Prosecutors have argued that Harris's tweets show he knew he should not have been on the bridge. He has filed his own appeal, arguing that the judge's ruling would hand over details of where he was and who he spoke to, as well as his tweets, and falls "so far outside the realm of a legitimate ruling that we are entitled to a pre-trial appeal".

Twitter has argued that the posts belonged to Harris and, as such, it would be violating his fourth amendment right against unreasonable searches if it were to disclose the communications without first receiving a search warrant.

The case has evolved into a closely watched legal scrap over the extent of the US authorities' right to access information from social networks. Twitter has previously resisted attempts by the US authorities to access the account of Icelandic MP and former WikiLeaks associate Birgitta Jónsdóttir.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a motion with the court in support of Twitter. ACLU attorney Aden Fine said: "Under the first and fourth amendments, we have the right to speak freely on the internet, safe in the knowledge that the government can't get information about our speech without a warrant and without satisfying first amendment scrutiny.

"We're hopeful that Twitter's appeal will overturn the criminal court's dangerous decision, and reaffirm that we retain our constitutional rights to speech and privacy online, as well as offline."

The New York district attorney's office issued a subpoena to Twitter in January calling on the firm to hand over "any and all user information, including email address, as well as any and all tweets" for the period in question.

Last month Manhattan criminal court judge Matthew Sciarrino rejected most of Twitter arguments that the authorities were infringing Harris's constitutional rights, and said that Twitter owned his messages.

Sciarrino said he would review all the material that he ordered turned over and would pass on "relevant portions" to prosecutors.

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We Don’t Need No Stinking Warrant: The Disturbing, Unchecked Rise of the Administrative Subpoena

When Golden Valley Electric Association of rural Alaska got an administrative subpoena from the Drug Enforcement Administration in December 2010 seeking electricity bill information on three customers, the company did what it usually does with subpoenas — it ignored them.

That’s the association’s customer privacy policy, because administrative subpoenas aren’t approved by a judge.

But by law, utilities must hand over customer records — which include any billing and payment information, phone numbers and power consumption data — to the DEA without court warrants if drug agents believe the data is “relevant” to an investigation. So the utility eventually complied, after losing a legal fight earlier this month.

Meet the administrative subpoena (.pdf): With a federal official’s signature, banks, hospitals, bookstores, telecommunications companies and even utilities and internet service providers — virtually all businesses — are required to hand over sensitive data on individuals or corporations, as long as a government agent declares the information is relevant to an investigation. Via a wide range of laws, Congress has authorized the government to bypass the Fourth Amendment — the constitutional guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that requires a probable-cause warrant signed by a judge.

In fact, there are roughly 335 federal statutes on the books (.pdf) passed by Congress giving dozens upon dozens of federal agencies the power of the administrative subpoena, according to interviews and government reports. (.pdf)

“I think this is out of control. What has happened is, unfortunately, these statutes have been on the books for many, many years and the courts have acquiesced,” said Joe Evans, the utility’s attorney.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that federal officials from a broad spectrum of government agencies issue them hundreds of thousands of times annually. But none of the agencies are required to disclose fully how often they utilize them — meaning there is little, if any, oversight of this tactic that’s increasingly used in the war on drugs, the war on terror and, seemingly, the war on Americans’ constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable government trespass into their lives.

That’s despite proof that FBI agents given such powers under the Patriot Act quickly began to abuse them and illegally collected Americans’ communications records, including those of reporters. Two scathing reports from the Justice Department’s Inspector General uncovered routine and pervasive illegal use of administrative subpoenas by FBI anti-terrorism agents given nearly carte blanche authority to demand records about Americans’ communications with no supervision.

When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, perhaps the nation’s most liberal appeals court based in San Francisco, ordered Golden Valley to fork over the data earlier this month, the court said the case was “easily” decided because the records were “relevant” to a government drug investigation.

With the data the Alaska utility handed over, the DEA may then use further administrative subpoenas to acquire the suspected indoor-dope growers’ phone records, stored e-mails, and perhaps credit-card purchasing histories — all to build a case to acquire a probable-cause warrant to physically search their homes and businesses.

But the administrative subpoena doesn’t just apply to utility records and drug cases. Congress has spread the authority across a huge swath of the U.S. government, for investigating everything from hazardous waste disposal, the environment, atomic energy, child exploitation, food stamp fraud, medical insurance fraud, terrorism, securities violations, satellites, seals, student loans, and for breaches of dozens of laws pertaining to fruits, vegetables, livestock and crops.

Not one of the government agencies with some of the broadest administrative subpoena powers Wired contacted, including the departments of Commerce, Energy, Agriculture, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, would voluntarily hand over data detailing how often they issued administrative subpoenas.

The Drug Enforcement Administration obtained the power under the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and is believed to be among the biggest issuers of administrative subpoenas.

“It’s a tool in the toolbox we have to build a drug investigation. Obviously, a much, much lower threshold than a search warrant,” said Lawrence Payne, a DEA spokesman, referring to the administrative subpoena generically. Payne declined to discuss individual cases.

Payne said in a telephone interview that no database was kept on the number of administrative subpoenas the DEA issued.

But in 2006, Ava Cooper Davis, the DEA’s deputy assistant administrator, told a congressional hearing, “The administrative subpoena must have a DEA case file number, be signed by the investigator’s supervisor, and be given a sequential number for recording in a log book or computer database so that a particular field office can track and account for any administrative subpoenas issued by that office.”

After being shown Davis’ statement, Payne then told Wired to send in a Freedom of Information Act request, as did some of the local DEA offices we contacted, if they got back to us at all. “Would suggest a FOIA request to see whether you can get a number of administrative subpoenas. Our databases have changed over the years as far as how things are tracked and we don’t have access to those in public affairs unfortunately,” Payne said in an e-mail.

He said the agency has “never” been asked how many times it issued administrative subpoenas.

Amy Baggio, a Portland, Oregon federal public defender representing drug defendants for a decade, said DEA agents “use these like a doctor’s prescription pad on their desk.” Sometimes, she said, they issue “hundreds upon hundreds of them” for a single prosecution — often targeting mobile phone records.

“They are using them exponentially more in all types of federal criminal investigations. I’m seeing them in every drug case now,” Baggio said. “Nobody is watching what they are doing. I perceive a complete lack of oversight because there isn’t any required.”

A typical DEA investigation might start with an informant or an arrested dealer suspected of drug trafficking, she said. The authorities will use an administrative subpoena to get that target’s phone records — logs of the incoming and outgoing calls — and text-message logs of the numbers of incoming and outgoing texts. Then the DEA will administratively subpoena that same information for the phone numbers disclosed from the original subpoena, and so on, she said.

Often, Baggio said, the records not only show incoming and outgoing communications, they also highlight the mobile towers a phone pinged when performing that communication.

“Then they try to make a connection for drug activity and they do that again and again,” Baggio said. “They used a subpoena to know that my client used a phone up in Canada, but he said he was playing soccer with his kids in Salem.” That client is doing 11 years on drug trafficking charges, thanks to an investigation, Baggio said, that commenced with the use of administrative subpoenas.

The FBI was as tight-lipped as the DEA about the number of administrative subpoenas it issues.

Susan McKee, an FBI spokeswoman, suggested that some of the bureau’s figures for how many administrative subpoenas it has issued, for as many years back as possible, “may be classified.”

In a follow-up e-mail, McKee offered the same advice as the DEA.

“I am sorry the statistics you are looking for are not readily available. I would suggest that you explore the FOIA process,” she said.

If all of those statistics are classified, that would be very odd. The FBI is required to report annually how often they use the terrorism and espionage-specific administrative subpoenas known as National Security Letters to target Americans.

In all, the bureau has reported issuing 290,000 National Security Letters directed at Americans in the past decade.

But those aimed at foreigners are not required to be accounted for publicly. Likewise, FBI anti-terrorism requests for subscriber information — the name and phone numbers associated with phone, e-mail or Twitter accounts for example, aren’t included in that tally either, regardless if the account holder is an American or foreigner.

All of which means that, even in the one instance where public reporting is required of administrative subpoenas, the numbers are massively under-reported, according to Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I think it’s ridiculous they won’t release the real numbers,” she said. Richardson speculated that the government has “something to hide.”

Some of the stranger statutes authorizing administrative subpoenas involve the Agriculture Department’s power to investigate breaches of the Floral Research and Consumer Information Act and the Fresh Cut Flowers and Fresh Cut Greens Promotion and Information Act. The Commerce Department has administrative subpoena power for enforcing laws relating to the Atlantic tuna and the Northern Pacific halibut. It also has those powers when it comes to enforcing the National Weather Modification Act of 1976, requiring “any person to submit a report before, during, or after that person may engage in any weather modification attempt or activity.”

In a 2002 government report, the Commerce Department said it had not used its administrative subpoena powers to enforce the National Weather Modification Act “in the recent past.” (.pdf) Susan Horowitz, a Commerce Department spokeswoman, urged Wired to send in a FOIA in a bid to obtain data surrounding how often it issues administrative subpoenas.

Lacking in all of these administrative subpoenas is Fourth Amendment scrutiny — in other words, judicial oversight. That’s because probable cause — the warrant standard — does not apply to the administrative subpoena. Often, the receiving party is gagged from disclosing them to the actual targets, who could, if notified, ask a judge to quash it.

And even when they are challenged in court, judges defer to Congress — the Fourth Amendment notwithstanding.

In one seminal case on the power of the administrative subpoena, the Supreme Court in 1950 instructed the lower courts that the subpoenas should not be quashed if “the inquiry is within the authority of the agency, the demand is not too indefinite and the information sought is reasonably relevant.”

In the mobile age, one of the biggest targets of the administrative subpoena appears to be the cellphone. AT&T, the nation’s second-largest mobile carrier, replied to a congressional inquiry in May that it had received 63,100 subpoenas for customer information in 2007. That more than doubled to 131,400 last year. (AT&T did not say whether any of the subpoenas were issued by a grand jury. AT&T declined to elaborate on the figures.)

By contrast, AT&T reported 36,900 court orders for subscriber data in 2007. That number grew to 49,700 court orders last year, a growth rate that’s anemic compared to the doubling of subpoenas in the same period.

In all, the nation’s mobile carriers reported that they responded to 1.3 million requests last year for subscriber information. Other than AT&T, most of the figures that the nine mobile carriers reported did not directly break down the numbers between warrants and subpoenas.

In a letter to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts), AT&T said it usually always positively responds to subpoenas except when “law enforcement may attempt to obtain information using a subpoena when a court order is required.” While there is much confusion as to when a court order is needed, they are generally required for wiretapping and sometimes for ongoing locational data.

Markey’s office did not respond for comment.

Many, including Baggio, charge that the government’s use of administrative subpoenas is often nothing less than a “fishing expedition.” And the courts don’t seem to mind.

In the Golden Valley case, the San Francisco federal appeals court said the outcome was a no-brainer, that Congress had spoken.

“We easily conclude that power consumption records at the three customer residences satisfy the relevance standard for the issuance of an administrative subpoena in a drug investigation,” the court ruled.

The decision seemingly trumps a Supreme Court ruling in 2001 that the authorities must obtain search warrants to employ thermal-imaging devices to detect indoor marijuana growing operations. Ironically, the justices ruled that the imaging devices, used outside a house, carry the potential to “shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy.”

Rewind to 1996, when the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the drug-trafficking conviction of a man arrested aboard an Amtrak train in December 1993. A DEA agent issued an administrative subpoena demanding Amtrak hand over passenger lists and reservations for trains stopping in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the agent was based.

The agent reviewed the reservation information looking for passengers who paid cash, booked sleeping cars, and purchased tickets on the day of departure, “all of which in his experience suggested possible drug trafficking,” the appeals court said, in upholding the challenged subpoena.

Hilman Moffett was found to be carrying 162 pounds of baled marijuana in his luggage.

In one high-profile case, the Securities and Exchange Commission used the administrative subpoena power to help unwind the Enron financial scandal in 2003.

And a decade ago, the Justice Department used administrative subpoenas to investigate a Cleveland, Ohio, podiatrist for an alleged kickback scheme with two medical testing labs. The subpoenas sought the doctor’s professional journals, copies of his and his children’s bank and financial records, files of patients who were referred to the labs in question, and his tax returns.

In another example, a judge sided with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in 2007, ordering publisher McGraw-Hill to turn over documents concerning data used in one of its publications to calculate the price of natural gas as part of the government’s probe into a price-manipulation scandal.

Records obtained by a federal agency don’t have to stay with that agency or be destroyed, either. Some of them may be transferred to other agencies if “there is reason to believe that the records are relevant to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry of the receiving agency,” according to a Justice Department Criminal Resource Manual.

The records can be transferred to state agencies, too.

But the states may not need the federal government’s assistance. They have an undetermined number of statutes authorizing the issuance of their own administrative subpoenas. For instance, most every state has that authority when it comes to investigating child-support cases. (.pdf)

Consider the Boston case in which Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley issued an administrative subpoena in December demanding “subscriber information” for several alleged members of Anonymous as part of an investigation into who sabotaged Boston police’s website and released officers’ e-mails.

A Suffolk County judge in February sided with Conley’s administrative subpoena that ordered Twitter to hand over IP addresses of accounts identified as “Guido Fawkes,” “@p0isAn0N,” and “@OccupyBoston.”

Christopher Slobogin, a Vanderbilt Law School scholar who has written extensively on administrative subpoenas, said the power of the administrative subpoena was born at the turn of the 20th century, when the U.S. began developing the regulatory state.

Administrative subpoenas initially passed court muster since they were used by agencies to get records from companies to prosecute unlawful business practices, he said. Corporations weren’t thought to have the same privacy rights as individuals, and administrative subpoenas weren’t supposed to be used to get at private papers.

When the Supreme Court upheld that the Federal Trade Commission’s administrative subpoena of internal tobacco company records in 1924, Justice Wendell Holmes limited the power to companies, writing that anyone “who respects the spirit as well as the letter of the Fourth Amendment would be loath to believe that Congress intended to authorize one of its subordinate agencies to sweep all our traditions into the fire and to direct fishing expeditions into private papers.”

But times have changed.

“In some ways, they were a good thing if you were liberal,” Slobogin said of the administrative subpoena. “But they have migrated from corrupt businesses to people suspected of crime. They are fishing expeditions when there is no probable cause for a warrant.”

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The 99% Take on the Republican National Convention

Despite mixed feelings about Obama, protesters fight Mitt Romney, the 'King of the 1%'

Politics is an elaborate chess match, and in St, Petersburg one small strike was staged against the Republican National convention on Aug. 26 that revealed the thrust of President Obama’s 2012 re-election strategy.

As panicky Republicans cancelled the first day of the convention on Monday because of Tropical Storm Isaac, the focus on Sunday was the “RNC Welcome Event” at Tropicana Field. These days no major convention event is complete without a counter-protest, and in downtown St. Petersburg nearly 500 people gathered Sunday to march to the sports stadium and voice their displeasure at what they derided as “the world’s largest cocktail party .”

Given the spitting rain and gusts, the turnout was better than expected. And given the months of police and press hype that a mob of mayhem-wreaking anarchists would crash the RNC, the protest rally around Mirror Lake seemed more like a festive Sunday in the park.

A couple of hundred people milled about as Dave Rovics belted out crowd pleasers like “ I’m a Better Anarchist than You .” A handful of buses pulled up and disgorged more protesters who came from far away as Miami, New York city and Wisconsin. The rally and protest was organized by the Florida Consumer Action Network , a local grassroots organization focused on public policy issues.

Few anarchists were in evidence, apart from a scrum of fidgety black-clad youth who melted into the rally after drawing stares. It felt like an Occupy-related event with a giant puppet of Romney tagged with a “King of the 1%,” and chants of “We are the 99%.”

Grabbing attention with his preacher’s cadence, Rev. Manuel Sykes, president of the St. Petersburg NAACP, announced, “I’m here to stop the corporate takeover of America.” Sykes castigated “our leaders [who] want to privatize Social Security, Healthcare, Education and Prisons.” He blasted Mitt Romney for wanting “to enrich the 1%.” And he described the November presidential ballot in epic terms: “We’re not just fighting for the 2012 election. We’re fighting for the future of America as we know it.”

On the fringes off the rally, next to a pack of camouflage-clad sheriff’s deputies, a pungent, hippie-looking gentleman with a Ron Paul 2012 sign dangling around his neck and a video camera taped to his helmeted head, taunted the crowd. “Do any of these hippies here supporting Obama know that Obama has dropped two times as many bombs as Bush?”

His words stung one observer who yelled back that “Obama has to do the bidding of Washington.”

The exchange captured the conflicting mindset of the Democratic base. Romney, Ryan and the right are painted, not unfairly, as extremists who will hurtle America back to the dark ages. But Obama, despite sitting in the Oval Office, is seen as powerless.

The weather and fear mongering no doubt cut down on the turnout, but one community organizer clued me in to another factor. The organizer, who wished to remain anonymous, said “A lot of people I work with don’t have hope in national politics. There was an element of fear about the RNC, ‘Can I even go outside with all the street closures and restrictions?’ There is definitely animosity toward Republicans, a lot of ‘Fuck these guys,” but my members also questioned what was going to be accomplished by going out in front of the barricades. I heard a lot of ‘It’s not going to change nothing.’”

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TrapWire tied to anti-Occupy Internet-spy program

How do you make matters worse for an elusive intelligence company that has been forced to scramble for explanations about their ownership of an intricate, widespread surveillance program? Just ask Cubic, whose troubles only begin with TrapWire.

Days after the international intelligence gathering surveillance system called TrapWire was unraveled by RT, an ongoing investigation into any and all entities with ties to the technology has unturned an ever-increasing toll of creepy truths. In only the latest installment of the quickly snowballing TrapWire saga, a company that shares several of the same board members as the secret spy system has been linked to a program called Tartan, which aims to track down alleged anarchists by specifically singling out Occupy Wall Street protesters and the publically funded media — all with the aid of federal agents.

Tartan, a product of the Ntrepid Corporation, “exposes and quantifies key influencers and hidden connections in social networks using mathematical algorithms for objective, un-biased output,” its website claims. “Our analysts, mathematicians and computer scientists are continually exploring new quantification, mining and visualization techniques in order to better analyze social networks.” In order to prove as such, their official website links to the executive summary of a case study dated this year that examines social network connections among so-called anarchists, supposedly locating hidden ties within an underground movement that was anchored on political activists and even the Public Broadcasting Station [.pdf].

“Tartan was used to reveal a hidden network of relationships among anarchist leaders of seemingly unrelated movements,” the website claims. “The study exposed the affiliations within this network that facilitate the viral spread of violent and illegal tactics to the broader protest movement in the United States.”

Tartan is advertised on their site as a must-have application for the national security sector, politicians and federal law enforcement, and makes a case by claiming that “an amorphous network of anarchist and protest groups,” made up of Occupy Oakland, PBS, Citizen Radio, Crimethinc and others, relies on “influential leaders,” “modern technology” and “illegal tactics” to spread a message of anarchy across America.

“The organizers of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy DC have built Occupy networks through online communication with anarchists actively participating in the movements’ founding,” the executive summary reads. On the chart that accompanies their claim, the group lists several political activism groups and broadcast networks within a ring of alleged anarchy, which also includes an unnamed FBI informant.

Although emails uncovered in a hack last year waged at Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, suggested that Occupy groups had been under private surveillance, the latest discovery of publically available information implies that the extent to which the monitoring of political activists on American soil occurred may have extended what was previously imagined.

Things don’t end there, though. While the TrapWire tale is still only just beginning, the Ntrepid Corporation made headlines last year after it was discovered by the Guardian that the company was orchestrating an “online persona management” program, a clever propaganda mill that was touted as a means “to influence regional and international audiences to achieve U.S. Central Command strategic objectives,” according, at least, to the Inspector General of the US Defense Department [.pdf]. The investigation eventually revealed that the US Central Command awarded Ntrepid $2.76 million worth of taxpayer dollars to create phony Internet “sock puppets” to propagate US support.

One year later, the merits of Tartan’s analytics are now being brought into question, but so are the rest of the company’s ties. A trove of research accumulated by RT, Project PM founder Barrett Brown, PrivacySOS.org and independent researchers Justin Ferguson and Asher Wolf, among others, has linked Tartan with an even more unsettling operation.

Margaret A. Lee of Northern Virginia is listed on several websites as serving on the Ntrepid board of directors as secretary, a position she held alongside Director Richard Helms, CFO Wesley R Husted and President Michael Martinka. And although several parties are going to great lengths to deny the ties, a paper trail directly links Lee and company to Abraxas — and thus Cubic — and, of course, TrapWire, the very surveillance system that is believed to be blanketing the United States.

According to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s State Corporation Commission, TrapWire Inc. was registered to Margaret A Lee on March 7, 2009. Other publically available information reveals that, at least at one point, Wesley Husted served as chief financial officer for TrapWire, Inc., where Richard H Helms held the title of CEO.

Various sources have since claimed that Helms, a former CIA agent that once ran the agency’s European division, has severed ties with TrapWire, yet the other connections remain intact.

In RT’s earlier research in the TrapWire case, it was revealed that TrapWire’s parent company, Cubic Corporation, acquired an online identity masking tool called Anonymzer in a 2010 merger, and also controls the fare card system at some of the biggest public transportation systems in the world. According to the latest findings, Cubic’s control extends beyond just that, though. Under their Ntrepid branch, Cubic controlled an operation that spied on political activists with FBI informants and attempted to link them to crimes across America.

Whether or not the TrapWire system was implemented in such operations is unclear, and Cubic continues to maintain that they are not involved with the surveillance network.

Last week, Cubic Corporation issued a press release claiming, “Abraxas Corporation then and now has no affiliation with Abraxas Applications now known as Trapwire, Inc.”

“Abraxas Corp., a risk-mitigation technology company, has spun out a software business to focus on selling a new product,” the article reads. “The spinoff – called Abraxas Applications – will sell TrapWire, which predicts attacks on critical infrastructure by analyzing security reports and video surveillance.”

Not only does a 2007 report in the Washington Business Journal insist that the companies are practically one in the same, though, but a 2006 article in the same paper reveals that Abraxas had just acquired software maker Dauntless. Researchers at Darkernet have since linked Lee, Husted and Helms to the Abraxas Dauntless Board of Directors as well.

Justin Ferguson, the researcher who first exposed TrapWire two weeks ago, has noted that Lee, Helms and Husted were listed on Abraxas Dauntless’ filings with Virginia as recently as December 2011. They also are all present on the TrapWire filings dated September 2011 and the latest annual filing made with the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations on behalf of Ntrepid.

Nevertheless, in a conversation this week with Project PM’s Barrett Brown, Cubic Corp. Communication Director Tim Hall dismisses this ties again.

“There is no connection at all with Abraxas Applications and Trapwire and or Ntrepid,” Hall allegedly insists, according to audio uploaded to YouTube.

Brown, on his part, says he has obtained Cubic’s 2010 tax filings that show that Ntrepd, like Abraxas, is “wholly owned” by Cubic.

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Apple granted a patent to wirelessly disable cameras on iphones in certain locations

Apple was granted a patent last week that will enable it to wirelessly disable the camera on iphones in certain locations, sparking fears that such techniques could be used to prevent citizens from communicating with each other or taking video during protests or events such as political conventions and gatherings.

The camera phone has revolutionized the flow of information in the digital age. Any time a major event takes place, news networks and video websites are immediately inundated with footage and photographs from the scene.

That could all change in the future however, with a flick of a switch, according to U.S. Patent No. 8,254,902, published on Tuesday, titled, “Apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device.”.

In other words, an encoded signal could be transmitted to all wireless devices, commanding them to disable recording functions.

Obviously, the way this will be applied will depend on what is determined to be a sensitive area by the relevant authorities.

To put it bluntly, the powers that be could control what you can and cannot document on your wireless devices according to their own whims.

Given that the major technology companies are set to make wireless connectivity a major feature of the latest cameras, this development does not bode well for photographers and citizen journalists who are already experiencing a major crackdown on their first and fourth amendment rights.

Michael Zhang at Tech site Peta Pixel notes:

If this type of technology became widely adopted and baked into cameras, photography could be prevented by simply setting a geofence around a particular location, whether its a movie theater, celebrity hangout spot, protest site, or the top secret rooms at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California.

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Feds Say Mobile-Phone Location Data Not ‘Constitutionally Protected’

The Obama administration told a federal court Tuesday that the public has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in cellphone location data, and hence the authorities may obtain documents detailing a person’s movements from wireless carriers without a probable-cause warrant.

The administration, citing a 1976 Supreme Court precedent, said such data, like banking records, are “third-party records,” meaning customers have no right to keep it private. The government made the argument as it prepares for a re-trial of a previously convicted drug dealer whose conviction was reversed in January by the Supreme Court, which found that the government’s use of a GPS tracker on his vehicle was an illegal search.

With the 28 days of vehicle tracking data thrown out of court, the feds now want to argue in a re-trial that it was legally in the clear to use Antoine Jones’ phone location records without a warrant. The government wants to use the records to chronicle where Jones was when he made and received mobile phone calls in 2005.

“A customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records that were never in the possession of the customer,” the administration said in a court filing Tuesday (.pdf). ”When a cell phone user transmits a signal to a cell tower for his call to be connected, he thereby assumes the risk that the cell phone provider will create its own internal record of which of the company’s towers handles the call. Thus, it makes no difference if some users have never thought about how their cell phones work; a cell phone user can have no expectation of privacy in cell-site information.”

The government’s position comes as prosecutors are shifting their focus to warrantless cell-tower locational tracking of suspects in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling (.pdf) in Jones’ case that law enforcement should acquire probable-cause warrants from judges to affix GPS devices to vehicles.

Just after the Jones decision, the FBI pulled the plug on 3,000 GPS-tracking devices.

Jones, as one might suspect, wants the court to find that the feds should get a probable cause warrant for phone records, too.

“In this case, the government seeks to do with cell site data what it cannot do with the suppressed GPS data,” Jones’ attorney Eduardo Balarezo wrote (.pdf) U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle.

The government does not agree.

“Defendant’s motion to suppress cell-site location records cannot succeed under any theory. To begin with, no reasonable expectation of privacy exists in the routine business records obtained from the wireless carrier in this case, both because they are third-party records and because in any event the cell-site location information obtained here is too imprecise to place a wireless phone inside a constitutionally protected space,” the administration wrote the federal judge presiding over the Jones re-trial.

Just as the lower courts were mixed on whether the police could secretly affix a GPS device on a suspect’s car without a warrant, the same is now true about whether a probable-cause warrant is required to obtain so-called cell-site data. During the investigation, a lower court judge in the Jones case authorized the five months of the cell-site data without probable cause, based on government assertions that the data was “relevant and material” to an investigation.

“Knowing the location of the trafficker when such telephone calls are made will assist law enforcement in discovering the location of the premises in which the trafficker maintains his supply narcotics, paraphernalia used in narcotics trafficking such as cutting and packaging materials, and other evident of illegal narcotics trafficking, including records and financial information,” the government wrote in 2005, when requesting Jones’ cell-site data.

That cell-site information was not introduced at trial, as the authorities used the GPS data instead.

The Supreme Court tossed that GPS data, along with Jones’ conviction and life term on Jan. 23 in one of the biggest cases in recent years combining technology and the Fourth Amendment.

“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search,’” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the five-justice majority.

That decision, the Obama administration claimed, is “wholly inapplicable” when it comes to cell-site data.

The administration noted that the high court said the physical act of affixing a GPS device to a vehicle amounts to a search and generally requires a warrant. “But when the government merely compels a third-party service provider to produce routine business records in its custody,” the government wrote, “no physical intrusion occurs, and the rule in Jones is therefore wholly inapplicable.”

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Chicago braces for 30,000-teacher walkout as contract talks dissolve

Union and mayor Rahm Emanuel at an impasse as strike threatened for Monday an awkward situation for Obama

A bitter dispute between Chicago public school teachers and mayor Rahm Emanuel may escalate into a strike on Monday in a showdown over education reform that has national implications.

Nearly 30,000 public school teachers and support staff represented by the Chicago Teachers Union have vowed to walk off the job starting at 12.01am on Monday if an impasse in contract talks with the city is not broken.

Emanuel, former White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama and a speaker at this week's Democratic national convention, has made reform of Chicago's troubled public schools a top priority. Emanuel cut short his trip to the convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, to deal with the teacher crisis.

Earlier this year, he pushed through a longer school day, but the union is opposed to other proposed reforms, including tougher teacher evaluations tied to student test scores and giving principals wide latitude in hiring.

The union also wants more than the 8% pay raise over four years that Chicago is offering. The school district says it cannot afford concessions as it is running a large budget deficit and major credit rating agencies have downgraded its debt rating.

The threatened walkout, the first in Chicago in 25 years and one of the largest labor actions nationwide in recent years, comes at an awkward time for Emanuel's former boss, President Barack Obama, who spent much of his adult life in Chicago and owns a house in the city.

Obama and his fellow Democrats facing voters on November 6 are counting on unions such as teachers to get out the vote around the country in a close election.

Chicago's public school system, the third-largest in the country behind New York and Los Angeles, has more than 400,000 students enrolled.

Both sides in Chicago agree the city's public schools need fixing. The city's fourth-grade and eighth-grade students lag national averages in a key test of reading ability, according to the US department of education.

Until Emanuel forced through a longer school day, which began last week, Chicago elementary and middle school students received instruction for fewer hours a year than any of 30 major cities studied by the National Center on Time and Learning, an education reform group.

Emanuel, a tough negotiator called a bully by the teachers union, wants to close schools, expand non-union charter schools, and let corporations and philanthropies run some schools. He also wants principals to be able to hire whom they want, and he wants to use standardized test results to evaluate teachers.

The union wants to shrink class sizes and increase education funding. It is suspicious of efforts to erode job protections such as tenure, teacher autonomy and seniority. It believes charter schools – which are taxpayer-funded but not subject to all public school regulations – undermine public education.

"What Emanuel represents is a new breed of urban mayors, pushing for a whole system of school improvements … responding to public demand," said Kenneth Wong, director of the Urban Education Policy Program at Brown University.

As the strike deadline approached, union president Karen Lewis told local radio on Friday she was heartened that a top school board official attended the talks on Thursday for the first time and seemed to understand the teachers' concerns.

"Both sides remain far apart on core issues such as job security, compensation and how to give our students a better day," union spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin said in a statement.

The two sides met on Friday and the union said it was ready to continue the talks through the weekend.

The city of Chicago has allocated $25m for a strike contingency fund. It would be used to provide breakfast and lunch to students in the district – 84% of whom qualify for free and reduced-price meals at school – and to pay for four hours of supervision at some schools, other public facilities and churches.

The plan has prompted concern from some parents and the union about the well being of the children and how low-income kids would be supervised in neighborhoods which have seen a sharp rise in gang-related murders in recent months.

"It [the contingency plan] sounds like a train wreck," the union statement said, adding that those supervising children had received little training.