Tag: United Police States of America

Surviving Encounters with the Police

Tony Cornish gains a lot of favor with Minnesota gun owners for being pro-gun rights. However, he’s also a ruthless statist and apologist for rampant abuses of power by police. Two days ago he submitted a letter to the editor to the Star Tribune that offers tips on how us lowly peasant can survive police encounters. Let’s take a look at his tips and translate them into laymen’s terms:

Lately, some advocacy groups have been asking what we can do to “reduce the use of force by police.” Well …

1) Don’t be a thug and lead a life of crime so that you come into frequent contact with police.

So… don’t be a cop?

2) Don’t rob people, don’t use or sell drugs, and don’t beat up your significant other.

Again, don’t be a cop?

3) Don’t hang out on the street after 2 a.m. Go home.

Don’t work night shifts.

4) Don’t make furtive movements or keep your hands in your pockets if told to take them out.

Shut up, slave, and do what the aggressive man who is showing intent to cause you harm demands you to do!

5) Don’t flap your jaws when the police arrive. Don’t disobey the requests of the police at the time. If you think you are wrongfully treated, make the complaint later.

Again, shut up, slave. If you think you’re being abused you should take it! You can file a complaint later, if you survive.

6) Don’t use the excuse of a lack of a job or education for why you assault, rob or kill.

Instead become a cop so you have the excuse of having a job to assault, rob, and kill!

Tips one and two seem to disagree with tip six. The first two advise you to not live a light of thuggery, theft, and violence, which means you should avoid becoming a law enforcer. But then tip six advises you to have a job that allows you to commit assault, robbery, and murder, which is what law enforcers do. Tip three is bizarre since it’s basically a variation of blaming a woman’s clothing choice for her being raped. The only difference is he’s blaming a person’s work shift for being harassed or assault by the police. I also find the other two tips alarming because they advise you to submit to and cooperate with your abuser.

It probably won’t surprise any of you that Tony Cornish is a former police officer. It also shouldn’t surprise anybody that a man who sought a career choice that gave him power over others sought another career choice that gave him power over others. As you can probably tell from his letter he really enjoys being in a position of power. I wonder how he would feel if he was on the receiving end of the State’s truncheon instead of the giving end.

You Have No Right To Privacy In Minnesota If You Live In A Multiple Unit Dwelling

Are you a Minnesotan who lives in an apartment or condominium? If so, a local court of appeals has ruled that you have no expectation of privacy:

Stuart Luhm of Minnetonka had challenged his conviction on drug and weapons offenses because police did not have a warrant to enter his building in the August 2014 raid that was based on a tip from an informant.

The front door of the building is normally locked, but police used a key in a locked box to which police have access, and Brio the drug-sniffing dog confirmed that drugs were probably in the condo unit Luhm shared with a girlfriend.

That was the point when police got a search warrant and found large quantities of marijuana, 93 oxycodone tablets, 7 firearms, and two bullet-resistant vests.

Two members of the Court of Appeals ruled today that there is no expectation of privacy in the common areas of a condominium building. It also said the fact the building owners make access available to police negated the need for a warrant to enter the building.

What makes this case interesting is that the drug dog alerted in the common area and that gave the law enforcers the justification they needed to pull a warrant. Drug dogs are of questionable effectiveness, so the idea that a warrant can be issued because one alerted is a bit absurd in my book. But this ruling effectively opens the doors for law enforcers to enter multiple unit dwellings with drug dogs but without warrants, allow the dog to sniff around, and pull a warrant for any dwelling that the dog raises an alert on. That sounds like a wonderful revenue raising scam if I’ve ever seen one.

It also raises questions about medical cannabis users. What happens when a dog raises an alert on an apartment because it caught the sent of cannabis? The law enforcer can obtain a warrant, kick in the door, shoot the family pet, and basically force the medical cannabis user to divulge their medical history to somebody who isn’t a medical professional to avoid being kidnapped for the crime of not having purchased a single family house.

Since drug dogs are of questionable in their effectiveness, this ruling also opens the door for legal harassment of non-drug users. If a law enforcer wants to harass somebody living in an apartment all they have to do is bring a drug dog into the common area, claim the dog raised an alert on the apartment, pull a warrant, and legally enter and harass the person for however long they so choose (and maybe find evidence of another crime while they’re tossing the joint).

Of course, privacy has been dead for a long time in this country. This ruling doesn’t change much. But it’s worth noting because it’s a great example of how the courts and law enforcers often work together (as opposed to act as checks and balances against one another) to expand the State’s ability to expropriate wealth from the populace.

The Bill Of Rights Won’t Save You

You really need to use full disk encryption on all of your electronic devices. Modern versions of OS X and Linux make it easy. Windows is a bit hit or miss as BitLocker tries its damnedest to share your key with Microsoft’s servers. iOS has included full disk encryption by default — so long as you set a password — since version 8 and Android also includes support for full disk encryption. Use these tools because the Bill of Rights won’t protect your data from government snoops:

The government can prosecute and imprison people for crimes based on evidence obtained from their computers—even evidence retained for years that was outside the scope of an original probable-cause search warrant, a US federal appeals court has said in a 100-page opinion paired with a blistering dissent.

The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there was no constitutional violation because the authorities acted in good faith when they initially obtained a search warrant, held on to the files for years, and built a case unrelated to the original search.

The case posed a vexing question—how long may the authorities keep somebody’s computer files that were obtained during a search but were not germane to that search? The convicted accountant said that only the computer files pertaining to his client—who was being investigated as part of an Army overbilling scandal—should have been retained by the government during a 2003 search. All of his personal files, which eventually led to his own tax-evasion conviction, should have been purged, he argued.

From my layman’s understanding of the Fourth Amendment, it’s supposed to protect against government shenanigans such as snooping through your data that was obtained under a valid warrant but was unrelated to the case the warrant was issued for to build another case against you. Although the quote is most likely false, Mr. Bush supposedly said, “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!” in regards to the Constitution. While the quote is probably false the statement is not.

The Constitution cannot protect you. It is literally a piece of paper with words written on it. If you want some semblance of protection against the State you have to implement it yourself. Encrypting your devices’ storage would guard against this kind of nonsense assuming you weren’t foolish enough to decrypt the data for the State at any point. This is where features such as VeraCrypt’s (a fork of TrueCrypt that is being actively developed) hidden partition feature are nice because you can have a sanitized encrypted partition that you can decrypt and a hidden partition with your sensitive data. Since the hidden partition isn’t detectable the State’s agents cannot know whether or not it exists and therefore cannot compel you to decrypt it.

Utilize the tools available to you to protect yourself. Anybody who has been paying attention to recent American history knows that the supposed legal protections we all enjoy are little more than fiction at this point.

FBI Director Concerned That Videos Of Police Beating People May Dissuade Police From Beating People

James Comey, the current director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), has a lot of concerns on his plate. One of his biggest concerns is the propagation of effective cryptography, which is making it harder for his agents to snoop through any random schmuck’s data. Another concern of his is the propagation of high quality cameras:

WASHINGTON — The director of the F.B.I. reignited the factious debate over a so-called “Ferguson effect” on Wednesday, saying that he believed less aggressive policing was driving an alarming spike in murders in many cities.

James Comey, the director, said that while he could offer no statistical proof, he believed after speaking with a number of police officials that a “viral video effect” — with officers wary of confronting suspects for fear of ending up on a video — “could well be at the heart” of a spike in violent crime in some cities.

“There’s a perception that police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime — the getting out of your car at 2 in the morning and saying to a group of guys, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’” he told reporters.

“Marginal additional policing” is a fancy way of saying harassment. Consider the example he gave. Why should a police officer pull over a car at two in the morning just to ask what the occupants are doing? If the officer didn’t catch them actually doing something illegal he shouldn’t have pulled them over. Period.

But the viral videos that Comey is referring to are videos of police using force. I’m an advocate of recording all police interactions. If you are a party to a police interaction you should record it, even if it’s something as minor as getting pulled over for speeding. You should also record any police interactions you come across. Police are almost never held accountable for wrongdoing in this country but the few times they are usually only happen because there was a video of the misconduct.

If the threat of being recorded on video dissuades police officers from harassing innocent people I would consider that an added bonus. Apparently Comey feels differently.

Fear Is The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel

Stingray is a product name for an IMSI-catcher popular amongst law enforcers. Despite the devices being trivial enough that anybody can build one for $1,500, law enforcers have been desperate to keep the devices a secret. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), for example, would rather throw out cases than disclose its Stingray usage.

Here in Minnesota law enforcers are also busy keeping tight wraps on Stingray usage:

A Fox 9 Investigation has revealed that tracking warrants for a surveillance device called StingRay have routinely been kept sealed, despite a law requiring them to become public with 90 days.

The StingRay device is used by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension about 60 times a year, said BCA Superintendent Drew Evans. Hennepin County Sheriff also had a StingRay, but a spokesperson said they discontinued it after using it only four times.

Why the secrecy? If you were expecting a detailed legal defense you’re going to be left wanting. The only defense law enforcers can muster is fear. Whenever a law enforcement department is pressed about the secrecy of Stingray devices they respond with the scariest case they can think of that involved the device

“This technology has been absolutely critical in locating some of Minnesota’s most violent criminals, more quickly than we ever were before,” Evans said.

Photo State of surveillance: StingRay warrants sealed despite changes in Minnesota law
Law enforcement used the technology last month when a disgruntled client allegedly gunned down a clerk at a St. Paul law firm and then went on the run. Police had the suspect’s cell phone and tracked him down.

[…]

“Just this week we were able to locate a level 3 sexual offender that was non-compliant, a suspect in a series of serial rapes, and a homicide suspect, this week alone,” he explained.

This usually satisfies journalists and the general public but shouldn’t. Whenever a law enforcer brings up a scary case where they used a Stingray device the immediate response should be, “So what?”

So what if the devices were used in secrecy to find a suspected murderer or a level three sex offender? Will these devices suddenly cease working if they’re subjected to the same oversight as any other law enforcement technology? Will they power off forever the minute a warrant is unsealed? No.

Law enforcers have no legal justification for keeping these devices secret, which is why they’re resorting to fear tactics. The question everybody should be asking is why they’re so desperate to keep these devices in the shadows. I theorize that there is a known weakness in the technology that would make them potentially inadmissible in court. What other reason could there be to go so far as to throw out individual cases rather than unseal warrants and release technical details about the devices? It’s not like the devices are a novel technology that nobody knows how to make or defend against.

Government Oversight

Every time the government initiates another secret program some boot licking apologist excuses it as necessary to fight the enemies of America. After all, our wise benefactors put safety measure in place so these secret programs aren’t abused!

Except those safety measures don’t stop anything:

The secretive U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court did not deny a single government request in 2015 for electronic surveillance orders granted for foreign intelligence purposes, continuing a longstanding trend, a Justice Department document showed.

The court received 1,457 requests last year on behalf of the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for authority to intercept communications, including email and phone calls, according to a Justice Department memo sent to leaders of relevant congressional committees on Friday and seen by Reuters. The court did not reject any of the applications in whole or in part, the memo showed.

1,457 requests and not a single denial? Either the National Security Agency (NSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) are exceedingly cautious in with their requests or the court serves as a rubber stamp, not a check against abuse. Considering the history of both agencies I think it’s pretty safe to say the court is just a rubber stamp.

This is when some boot licker will tell me, “You don’t know that for sure, Chris!” And they’re right, which is the problem with secret programs. Everything takes place behind an iron curtain so the public has no way to verify if the program is being abused. What we do know is the lack of transparency creates an environment for abuse so even if a secret program isn’t currently being abused it will attract people who wish to abuse it.

The FBI Heroically Saves Us Yet Again From A Criminal It Created

Just one week after heroically saving us from a terrorist it created, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has saved us from yet another criminal it created:

US authorities depict Franey as an unstable anti-government militant who deserved a closer look to see how far he might go. One of his neighbors told FBI agents that Franey said he hated the US military for not allowing him “to leave the Army” after he enlisted, and that he railed at the system for “taking away his kids.” As US Attorney Hayes put it, the Justice Department was obligated to “pursue all available leads to ensure the public was protected from any possible harm.”

But while it seems Franey talked often and enthusiastically about plotting a terrorist attack, there’s little indication he ever had any intention of following through with his threats until the FBI’s undercover agent came along. After befriending Franey, the agent took him on an eight-month ride — sometimes literally, including a road trip along the West Coast — while recording their conversations, doling out cash, furnishing him with guns, and then busting him for illegal possession of the weapons.

I once heard that the FBI used to arrest criminals it didn’t create. Does it still do that once in a while? Is that still a thing?

What happened here is the same thing that always happens. The FBI identified somebody, likely of lukewarm intelligence, who it thought was capable of being radicalized into a threat. It then assigned an agent to befriend the individual and slowly radicalize him. After radicalizing him the agent then provided him a means to perpetuate an attack. The operation then closed with the agent arresting the guy for basically being a radicalized individual in possession of a means to commit an attack.

In this case the FBI’s prey was arrested for illegally possessing weapons. Weapons which were given to him by the FBI.

These operations rely on taking a hypothetical scenario and making it a reality. The individuals they target are those the agency deems capable of being radicalized. If left to their own devices the individuals would almost certainly remain harmless. Most of these individuals are socially isolated, aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box, and are seldom go-getters. Since they’re socially isolated they’re usually desperate for friendship, which makes them vulnerable to FBI agents. Their lukewarm intelligence also makes them more susceptible to being influenced. When you combine social isolation with lukewarm intelligence you have a recipe for an individual who can be easily manipulated to do bad things. But even if they’re manipulated into doing something bad they seldom have the motivation or means. So the FBI prods these individuals into performing an attack and provides them a means with which to pull it off. Finally, with all the pieces in place the FBI arrests its creation.

What the FBI is doing is preying on vulnerable individuals, convincing them to do something bad, and then providing the means to do that bad thing. If the FBI didn’t involve itself these people would normally just fade into the annals of history. The FBI isn’t protecting us from anything with these operations. It’s creating a bad situation and then claiming to save everybody from it.

FBI Heroically Saves Us From Yet Another Person It Radicalized

Without the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) who would protect us from the people radicalized by the FBI? Without the heroics of the agency a lot of people might be dead today — killed by a terrorist radicalized by the FBI:

KHALIL ABU RAYYAN was a lonely young man in Detroit, eager to find a wife. Jannah Bride claimed she was a 19-year-old Sunni Muslim whose husband was killed in an airstrike in Syria. The two struck up a romantic connection through online communications.

Now, Rayyan, a 21-year-old Michigan man, is accused by federal prosecutors of supporting the Islamic State.

Documents released Tuesday show, however, that Rayyan was motivated not by religious radicalism but by the desire to impress Bride, who said she wanted to be a martyr.

Jannah Bride, not a real name, was in fact an FBI informant hired to communicate with Rayyan, who first came to the FBI’s attention when he retweeted a video from the Islamic State of people being thrown from buildings. He wrote later on Twitter: “Thanks, brother, that made my day.”

According to the FBI, the agency discovered a radicalized supporter of the Islamic State that was going to perpetrate a terrorist attack. But the attack never happened because the FBI was able to discover the individual ahead of time and intervene.

Put into normal people lingo, the FBI found somebody with neither the motivation or means to perform a terrorist attack. The agency then provided the motivation and eventually the means. If the FBI hadn’t inserted itself into this individual’s life they still wouldn’t have perpetrated a terrorist attack.

I like to say, if it weren’t for the people radicalized by FBI agents there wouldn’t be any terrorists for the FBI to capture. When I first started saying that it was done with a modicum of sarcasm because I assumed the agency did manage to fight some actual crime once in a while. But so many of these FBI created cases exist that they literally fill a book. It’s getting to the point where seems the agency’s only job is dealing with the “terrorists” it creates.

It Was Snowden All Along

In 2013 the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) demanded Ladar Levison hand over the TLS keys to his Lavabit service. He did comply, by providing the key printed out in small text, but also shutdown his service instead of letting the key be used to snoop on his customers. The FBI threw a hissy fit over this and even threatened to kidnap Levison for shutting down his business. But one question that always remained was who the FBI was after. Everybody knew it was Edward Snowden but there was no hard evidence… until now.

Court documents related to the Lavabit case have been released. The documents are naturally heavily redacted but the censors missed a page:

In court papers related to the Lavabit controversy, the target of the investigation was redacted, but it was widely assumed to be Edward Snowden. He was known to have used the service, and the charges against the target were espionage and theft of government property, the same charges Snowden faced.

Now, what was widely assumed has been confirmed. In documents posted to the federal PACER database this month, the government accidentally left his e-mail, “Ed_snowden@lavabit.com,” unredacted for all to see. The error was noted by the website Cryptome earlier this week, and Wired covered it yesterday.

This revelation didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know before but it’s nice to have hard evidence in hand. Now we know with certainty that the FBI completely destroyed a business as retaliation for having Snowden as a customer. I say this was retaliatory because the court documents [PDF] clearly show that Levison was willing to cooperate with the FBI by surveilling the single target of the order. However, the FBI decided it would accept nothing less than the surrender of Lavabit’s TLS key.

Had the FBI been reasonable it would have had its tap. Instead its agents decided to be unreasonable fuckheads, which forced Levison to shutdown his business entirely instead of putting thousands of innocent users at risk. This case is also a lesson in never cooperating with terrorists. Levison offered to cooperate and still had his business destroyed. When the FBI comes to your door you should refuse to cooperate in any way. Cooperating will not save you. The only difference between cooperating and refusing to cooperate is that in the case of the latter your business will be shutdown before innocent users are put at risk.

Terrorist Plots Aren’t The Only Things The FBI Makes Up

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has a long history of creating terrorists. This practice is so prevalent that there’s a book about it. But terrorist plots aren’t the only thing the FBI makes up. The agency also likes to make up sex-trafficking rings:

In the press, it was a “wide-reaching sex-trafficking operation” run by Somali Muslim gangs who forced “girls as young as 12” to sell sex in Minnesota and Tennessee. In reality, the operation—which led to charges against 30 individuals, sex-trafficking convictions for three, and an eight year legal battle—was a fiction crafted by two troubled teenagers, a member of the FBI’s human-trafficking task force, and an array of overzealous officials. An opinion released this week by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals shows that federal prosecuters had no evidence whatsoever to support their “child sex trafficking conspiracy” case outside the seriously flawed testimony of two teenagers, one of whom had “been diagnosed as insane and was off her medication.”

“We conclude from our careful review of the trial transcript and record that, if the prosecution proved any sex trafficking at all (and we have serious doubts that it did), then at best it proved two separate, unrelated, and dissimilar sex-trafficking conspiracies, involving different defendants, albeit with the same alleged victim, namely Jane Doe 2,” states the 6th Circuit opinion, written by judges Alice M. Batchelder, Sean F. Cox, and Helene N. White.

At some point you would think the general public would begin asking why the FBI even exists. An agency has been caught time and again fabricating crimes. So one is forced to question whether any of the crimes it has solved were actually real.

We return again to the fact that the supposed system of checks and balances is more accurately described as a circlejerk. If the legislative and judicial branches were a check and balance against the executive branch there would have been investigations into the FBI itself by now. Judges would be throwing out cases on the grounds that the FBI isn’t a credible agency. Senators would be urging their fellows to vote to dissolve the agency. The heads of the FBI would be facing charges and begging oversight committees for mercy. But none of that is happening. Instead the FBI continues to operate as a law enforcement agency and its transgressions are continuously ignored.