Corruption Corner – Page 23

The United States is, Like, Totally Not a Police State

I’m constantly reminded by self-proclaimed patriots that the United States is the freest goddamn country on Earth. While they admit things have gone downhill since Ronald Reagan blessed this fine country with more freedom than 1776, they point out that we don’t have thuggish police killing people at random or secret facilities where citizens are held without charge or access to a lawyer. In other words they are totally divorced from reality (which should have been obvious when they started claiming Reagan was some kind of paragon of freedom). Police officers killing people at random is nothing new in this country but now we know that one department does run an actual black site:

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

This wonderful black site allows the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to keep detainees off of the books, beat detainees, and deny detainees their privilege to legal council. It also provides the CPD a place to cut off people from their friends and family members.

The article is lengthy and contains numerous accounts of abuse and even one death. But the more worrisome thing about this story is that if the CPD have one of these black sites you can be assured other domestic police departments are operating similar black sites.

Living in “a nation of law” is supposed to provide comfort to us. Unfortunately the laws on the books grant law enforcers a great deal of leeway in how they act and the system is designed to shield law enforcement officers form liability when they perform misdeeds. When the laws of a nation are stacked against the people the phrase “a nation of laws” is entirely meaningless. And since statism grants a monopoly on creating laws to a handful of individuals you can ensure that anywhere a state exists the legal system will be stacked against the people.

Minnesota Man Imprisoned for Months for Possession Vitamins

As the famous saying goes, you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride. The war on unpatentable drugs has given law enforcement almost completely unchecked powers when it comes to stealing your shit and holding you in a cage. Civil forfeiture laws, for example, grant law enforcement the power to literally take your stuff and they only have to return it if you can prove that it wasn’t tied to a drug crime in any way (and proving a negative is very difficult). Likewise law enforcement officers can put you in a cage if you are in possession of anything that looks like it could be a verboten drug. While you may eventually beat the charge after lab analysis has been performed on whatever you were carrying you will have still wasted months of your life in a cage:

MANKATO, Minn. — A Mankato man was jailed for months while he waited for the state crime lab to process suspected drugs that turned out to be vitamins.

Joseph Burrell was arrested in November and charged with two felony counts of drug possession. His bail was set at $250,000. The 31-year-old Burrell says he’s not happy it took so long for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to process the evidence.

In all likelihood Mr. Burrell will receive no compensation for being unlawfully detained for months. This is because the state doesn’t have to compensate you when it makes a mistake, you only have to compensate it when you make a mistake.

Court Rules State Secrets Trump Justice

I really do appreciate living in the United States. In what other country could you be subjected to constant surveillance by your own government and enjoy a court system that declares the practice legal? OK, that’s actually a lot of countries. But what makes the United States so special is its propaganda about being the land of the free. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been working on a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) for violating our supposed Constitutional rights against unlawful search and seizure. Today a district court in California ruled that the NSA’s was above the law because prosecuting it would require revealing state secrets:

A district court in California has issued a ruling in favor of the National Security Agency in a long-running case over the spy agency’s collection of Internet records.

The challenge against the controversial Upstream program was tossed out because additional defense from the government would have required “impermissible disclosure of state secret information,” Judge Jeffrey White wrote in his decision.

That really shows how much protection the Constitution provides. The amendments in the Bill of Rights can be rendered null and void the second state secrets exist. If the Soviet Union were around today it would likely be envious of the American system.

Court Rules FBI Can’t Cut Your Cable and Show Up Pretending to Be The Repair Crew

In October of last year the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) pulled off the mother of all warrantless searches. The agency cut the cable service for suspects they wanted to surveil, showed up pretended to be the repair crew, and collected evidence while pretending to fix the lost service in order to get a warrant to search the property. Well a federal magistrate decided that that little stunt crossed the line and tossed the search warrant:

A federal magistrate is tossing a Las Vegas search warrant that led to the arrest of as many as eight people accused of running an illegal, online bookmaking operation last year from posh villas at Caesar’s Palace. The court found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s warrant application was “fatally flawed” and was “supplemented with material omissions.”

To obtain a search warrant, the authorities cut DSL access and posed as the cable guy, gathering evidence along the way that made up the basis for the bulk of a search warrant that resulted in the arrest of high-stakes gambler Paul Phua, his son Darren, and others.

Magistrate Judge Peggy Leen ruled that the failure to mention that the original case was born from the “ruse” meant the judge who signed a search warrant this summer didn’t have all of the facts. Nowhere in the search warrant request, however, did the authorities mention that they allegedly saw illegal wagering on computers after posing as technicians who in reality briefly disconnected the DSL.

It seems like the magistrate was more unhappy about the FBI lying to the original judge than she was about the stunt being a complete violation of due process. Fortunately for the FBI they can appeal this up the chain. Eventually it should find a court more sympathetic to its needs and rule the warrant as good.

Make no mistake, the fact that the FBI agents involved in this stunt weren’t arrested themselves demonstrates just how much of a police state we live in. When law enforcement can do things like this without consequence then there is no hope of curtailing their abuses of power.

Fellow Minnesotans, Please Take a Moment to Thank Your Representatives for Protecting Bad Officers from Accountability

I have some glorious news comrades! As you know there has been a conspiracy by the proles to hold bad police officers accountable for their actions. Part of this conspiracy involves making officers wear body cameras. They want to use evidence recorded by these cameras to review the actions of our brave enforcers. Thankfully our enforcers have loyal allies willing to stand up against the proles. Tony Cornish, Brian Johnson, and Dan Schoen presented a bill yesterday that would classify and quickly destroy all evidence collected by body cameras that isn’t being used to prosecute a prole in court:

A proposal by a trio of cops-turned-legislators would shield almost all footage shot by police body cameras from public eyes, in what they say is an effort to protect citizens’ privacy.

But advocates of open government say keeping the footage under lock and key undermines attempts to keep police accountable.

The measure filed Thursday is the first legislative effort to regulate the use of the video recording devices worn by police. Footage shot by body cameras would not be available to the public, although individuals captured in the videos would be allowed access. Agencies would be required to keep meticulous records and to destroy any video that is not part of an investigation.

As loyal citizens of this great state of Minnesota we should thanks these three brave representatives. As former police officers themselves Tony Cornish and Brian Johnson have demonstrated that they are still loyal to their fellow enforcers. Dan Schoen is showing he has the right stuff to continue his career in law enforcement. If you would like to read their wonderful work it can be found here.

We can only hope that this bill passes because these traitorous attempts by the proles to hold enforcers accountable cannot be allowed to stand. Our society would collapse overnight if enforcers were no longer allowed to steal, assault, murder, and rape proles without consequence. Tony Cornish, Brian Johnson, and Dan Schoen know this and we can only pray that they are able to convince their fellows of this truth before the proles have a chance to organize a counteroffensive.

The Justice Department is Building National Database to Track Motorists Throughout the Country

Just when you think you’re paranoid enough the state goes and pulls a stunt like this:

(Reuters) – The Justice Department has been secretly gathering and storing hundreds of millions of records about motorists in an effort to build a national database that tracks the movement of vehicles across the country, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Not surprisingly the national automobile tracking initiative is being operated by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The DEA, thanks to civil forfeiture laws, enjoys the ability to raise a fuckton of money if it can makeup any evidence whatsoever of a possible drug crime. Somebody driving from Colorado to anywhere could very well be enough evidence to seize their property because buying cannabis there is legal but it’s illegal almost everywhere else.

One question that arises from this story is where the DEA is getting its data. Either local governments are either feeding their data to the federal government or the federal government has its own license plate scanners operating throughout the country. My money is on the latter.

Some states have started regulating how long their police departments can hold on to license plat data. Here in Minnesota there are no such laws so police departments pretty much makeup whatever policy that amuses them. The State Patrol only keeps their data 48 hours, St. Paul’s police department keeps their data for 14 days, but Minneapolis’ police department keeps it for a year. There’s talk about implementing state regulations here but that talk doesn’t include whether or not local law enforcement agencies can feed their data to the federal government. In fact, from what I can find, most state regulations don’t touch that subject. That being the case it would be fairly easy for the DEA to setup deals with local agencies to get the data it needs to populate its national database.

As Orwell said, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” So long as states exist our privacy will continue to be violated.

America the Hypocrite

Remember those videos that circulated of the Islamic State (IS) beheading reporters? Boy did that get people upset. Suddenly the entire world was ready to bomb the living shit out of the Middle East. Demands were made for the head of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the IS’s leader. And Obama himself took to television to remind people that he had no issue dropping bombs on the Middle East.

So how does America react when one of the IS’s biggest funding sources and perpetrator of beheadings loses its king? With sorrow and a bunch of nice words about how great of a man he was:

US President Barack Obama expressed his personal sympathies and those of the American people, on the death of King Abdullah.

“As a leader, he was always candid and had the courage of his convictions. One of those convictions was his steadfast and passionate belief in the importance of the US-Saudi relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond,” he said.

Isn’t it funny how American politicians beat the war drum against radical Islam because of the IS but claim that one of the most destabilizing elements in the Middle East, one that shares many of the IS’s beliefs, is a force for stability? How can anybody take anything these clowns in marble buildings say seriously?

HealthCare.gov Sending Personal Information to Tracking Sites

The war over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is still be waged. Democrats are pointing out that the number of people with health insurance coverage is higher than ever, which isn’t surprising since you’re not required to purchase it by law. Republicans are upset because the ACA is still called ObamaCare and they wanted everybody to call it RomneyCare. Libertarians, rightly so, are asking how a government can force you to buy a product. But there’s a problem with the ACA that has received relatively little coverage. From a privacy standpoint HealthCare.gov is a total fucking nightmare:

EFF researchers have independently confirmed that healthcare.gov is sending personal health information to at least 14 third party domains, even if the user has enabled Do Not Track. The information is sent via the referrer header which contains the URL of the page requesting a third party resource. The referrer header is an essential part of the HTTP protocol, it is sent for every request that is made on the web. The referrer header lets the requested resource know what URL the request came from, this would for example let a website know who else was linking to their pages. In this case however the referrer URL contains personal health information.

In some cases the information is also sent embedded in the request string itself, like so:

https://4037109.fls.doubleclick.net/activityi;src=4037109; type=20142003;cat=201420;ord=7917385912018;~oref=https://www. healthcare.gov/see-plans/85601/results/?county=04019&age=40&smoker=1&parent=&pregnant=1&mec=&zip=85601&state=AZ&income=35000&step=4?

That’s a referrer link from HealthCare.gov to DoubleClick.net that tells the advertiser that the user is 40 years old, that the user (assuming a value of 1 indicates true) smokes, that the user is not a parent, that the user is pregnant, the user’s zip code, the user’s state, and the user’s income.

You might be curious why a website paid for with taxes is sending health information about its users to an online advertiser. Usually websites only send user data to advertisers if they’re selling it. I wouldn’t be surprised if HealthCare.gov is double dipping by taking tax dollars and selling data to online advertisers. It wouldn’t be a bad money making strategy. First you force everybody to buy your product and then you sell their data.

DoubleClick.net isn’t the only site that HealthCare.gov is sending user health information to. Akamai.net, Chartbeat.net, Clicktale.net, and many more are receiving this data.

Interestingly enough both the Democrats and the Republicans seem entirely unconcerned about this. The only thing they care about is the political dick measuring contest that has been going on between then since forever. But this violation of privacy has real world ramifications, especially since the advertisers receiving this data already have a great deal of data on many Internet users.

CIA Investigates CIA, Finds CIA Did Nothing Wrong

One of the fascinating things about government agencies is their ability to investigate themselves when they’re accused of wrongdoing. When a police officer kills it’s usually somebody from their department that investigates the incident and, not surprisingly, usually finds the officer innocent. Some time ago the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was caught spying on the congressional subcommittee tasked with overseeing it. In response the CIA put together a board to investigate the matter. Can you guess what the board’s findings were?

A CIA accountability board has cleared the spy agency of wrongdoing after CIA officials were found to have searched the files of congressional investigators tasked with reviewing the possible use of torture tactics during the Bush presidency. The board, set up by the CIA itself, published a report today that said that five agency officials made a “mistake” by searching for files used by the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating the CIA, but said that their actions “did not reflect malfeasance, bad faith, or the intention to gain improper access to SSCI [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] confidential, deliberative material.”

The accountability board stressed that there were no clear rules for using the “unprecedented” RDINet, the secure network set up to allow congressional investigators to review the CIA’s files on rendition, detention, and interrogation techniques, and said that the five individuals had “acted reasonably to investigate a potential security breach.” The accountability board report overturns the conclusions of the current inspector general of the CIA, David Buckley, who said in a report last July that the five CIA officials had acted improperly by accessing the network. Buckley also found at the time that the CIA had inaccurately filed criminal referrals against congressional investigators that accused them of mishandling classified information.

That’s right, the CIA’s investigation of itself found the CIA innocent of any wrongdoing. This is why the concept of an accountable government is laughable. Since government maintains a monopoly on creating and enforcing law it can, and always does, put itself in charge of overseeing itself. Once that happens it finds itself innocent of any accusations. The only remarkable part about this is that so many people are stupid enough to agree that it’s how things should be handled.

Ignorance of the Law is Not an Excuse, Unless You’re a Cop

How many times have you heard petty authoritarians and cops (but I repeat myself) say “Ignorance of the law is not an excuse”? What they really mean is that ignorance of the law is not an excuse unless you’re a cop. Cops periodically enforce nonexistent laws. A popular phrase relating to this issue is that “You can be the rap but you can’t beat the ride.” Even if a cop is enforcing a fictitious law you as an individual have little recourse. But what happens when a cop enforcing a nonexistent law finds evidence that you’re breaking an existing law? According to the Nazgûl, err, the Supreme Court it means you’re going to be a UNICOR slave for a few years:

At issue in Heien v. North Carolina was a 2009 traffic stop for a single busted brake light that led to the discovery of illegal drugs inside the vehicle. According to state law at the time, however, motor vehicles were required only to have “a stop lamp,” meaning that the officer did not have a lawful reason for the initial traffic stop because it was not a crime to drive around with a single busted brake light. Did that stop therefore violate the 4th Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure? Writing today for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts held that it did not. “Because the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable,” Roberts declared, “the stop in this case was lawful under the Fourth Amendment.”

Roberts’ opinion was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, and Elena Kagan. Writing alone in dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her colleagues for giving the police far too much leeway.

Since the Constitution gives the Supreme Court a monopoly on interpreting the Constitution this decision means that charges stemming from cops enforcing nonexistent laws is constitutional. The Fourth Amendment, once again, proves to be ineffective at protecting our supposed right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure. But that’s just par for the statist course.