David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization | Video on TED.com

This video is awesome if you have to do data presentation for a case. One can work the data to tell a story, make it relative to our world, present the data in a way that is meaningful to the viewer.
David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization | Video on TED.com

Steve Jobs: How to Live Before You Die

"Innocence claim rejected: Troy Davis Loses Challenge"

From Sentencing Law & Policy:

The title of this post is the title of this terrific synopsis by Lyle Denniston at SCOTUS blog of a big death penalty ruling handed down today. Here is the start of the post along with links to the looong ruling the post discusses:

Carrying out a direct order of the Supreme Court, a federal judge in Georgia made a lengthy new study of a 21-year-old murder case but then ruled Tuesday that a Savannah, Ga., man had not proved that he is innocent of killing a police officer in a fast-food restaurant parking lot. In a 172-page opinion (issued in two parts, found here and here), U.S. District Judge William T. Moore, Jr., ruled that it would be unconstitutional to execute an innocent person, but went on to rule that Troy Anthony Davis “is not innocent.” Treating the case as an unusual one procedurally, Judge Moore said it appeared that he was acting as a fact-gatherer directly for the Supreme Court, so any appeal by Davis may have to go directly to the Justices. He sent a copy of his ruling to the Supreme Court.

(NOTE TO READERS: The judge’s legal and constitutional analysis of the evidence and the issues begins on numbered page 91, which is page 29 of Part II. Up to that point, the opinion is a recitation of the evidence and the history of Davis’s challenges to his conviction.)

A year ago, the Supreme Court sent Davis’s latest challenge — one filed directly with the Justices — to the District Court in Georgia “for hearing and determination.” The order said that the lower court should “receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis's] innocence.” The Justices’ unsigned order, issued over the dissent of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, was apparently approved on a 6-2 vote (Justice Sonia Sotomayor took no part in it.) It was a highly unusual action because the Court does not often order fact-finding by a trial-level court; it more often pronounces the law and then leaves it to lower courts to implement such a ruling. The dissenters called the action an “extraordinary step — one not taken in nearly 50 years.”

Judge Moore closed his opinion by noting that he had carried out the Supreme Court’s mandate by holding a hearing and now ruling on Davis’s habeas challenge. “This Court,” he wrote, “concludes that executing an innocent person would violate the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution” — a point long hinted at but not yet specifically decided by the Supreme Court. However, the judge went on to reject Davis’s claim of innocence, summing up: “The evidence produced at the hearing on the merits of Mr. Davis’s claim of actual innocence and a complete review of the record in this case does not require the reversal of the jury’s judgment that Troy Anthony Davis murdered City of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail on August 19, 1989.”

In a footnote, the judge added that “while the state’s case may not be ironclad, most reasonable jurors would again vote to convict Mr. Davis of Officer MacPhail’s murder. A federal court simply cannot interpose itself and set aside the jury verdict in this case absent a truly persuasive showing of innocence. To act contrarily would wreck complete havoc on the criminal justice system.” (The judge may have meant “wreak,” not “wreck.”)

"Five Years of Kafkaesque Legal Shenanigans,"

NACDL's seminar in Toronto included, as a highlight, attorneys, professors, and the Canadian Chief Justice (and Barry Scheck) discussing the Innocence Project, Wrongful Conviction and what is happening in Guantanamo. Here, the latest from the ACLU Blog Of Rights by Omar Khadr:

"Five Years of Kafkaesque Legal Shenanigans," One More Chance to Do Right by Omar Khadr

On Saturday, Alex Neve, Secretary General for Amnesty International Canada, wrote an op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen about the military commissions trial of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr. As we blogged earlier, Khadr's defense attorney, Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, collapsed in court, and the trial was stayed for at least a month. (We later learned Lt. Col. Jackson's illness was due to complications following gall bladder surgery last month.)

Neve sees this one-month stay as Canada's last chance to end the "five years of Kafkaesque legal shenanigans" and bring Khadr home:

It is a delay that offers the Canadian government one last chance to do right by Omar Khadr. It also offers a chance to demonstrate to the world that we do in fact stand by the important international legal standards dealing with child soldiers that Canada was instrumental in developing.

To date we have heard nothing but silence and excuses from the government. The Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal have both ordered the government to seek his repatriation. The Supreme Court has found that the Canadian government continues to violate his rights and that those violations must be remedied (by repatriation or some other means). UN human rights experts and agencies such as UNICEF have called on the U.S. government to abandon this trial and for Canada to seek his return.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has defiantly refused to do so. It is a position that has become a source of both international puzzlement and national embarrassment. I was even asked by various soldiers stationed at Guantanamo why Canada seemed so indifferent to Omar's fate.

It is an untenable position not worthy of our nation. But it is not too late to change it.

From the other side of the border, we've watched in horror as the U.S. government has charged towards the first prosecution of an alleged child soldier since World War II. The military judge has been holding scheduling conferences to determine when Khadr's trial can resume. It's full steam ahead once Lt. Col. Jackson is well enough to return to Gitmo.

So while it's Canada's last chance, it's also a last chance for our country to do the right thing, too. Send Khadr back home to Canada.

Missouri Case.net

Case.net provides access to the Missouri State Courts Automated Case Management System. Inquires on case records including docket entries, parties, judgments, and charges in public court. Only courts that have implemented the case management software as part of the Missouri Court Automation Program and only cases that have been deemed public under the Missouri Revised Statutes can be accessed through Case.net.

Watch Out for the Bus!

From the Fulton County Daily Report

How to spot the signs before you find yourself under the wheels.

To outsiders, Big Law Land seems like a fairly safe work environment -- beautiful buildings and climate-controlled offices filled with smartly dressed lawyers sitting in ergonomic chairs and using ergonomic mice. The most commonly reported worker's compensation claims must involve paper cuts and carpal tunnel syndrome. Not to dismiss these ailments, but compared to the risks associated with operating a wood chipper or catching crab in the Bering Sea, Big Law gigs are relatively safe.

Or are they?

The dangers associated with Big Law employment are not as noticeable as risk of drowning or dismemberment. But they can be almost as devastating to your career. One specific danger looms large in Big Law Land -- buses. As in be careful or you will be "thrown under the bus."

BEWARE OF THE BUS

Maybe this expression is foreign to you. Some people refer to this as being "hung out to dry" or "taking the fall." Let me explain. Being "thrown under the bus" is the workplace equivalent of being involuntarily thrown in front of an oncoming bus in order to slow the bus down and divert injury from the person who threw you in front of said bus.

Being thrown under the bus by a co-worker or superior is not just being called out for your failures. It is being blamed solely for something that is not necessarily, or entirely, your fault. You need to recognize the signs of a bus headed in your direction and develop a strategy for survival.

"How do I know if I have been thrown under a bus, and what can I do about it?"

Excellent question.

THE BLATANT BUS-THROW FACT PATTERN

Let's say that you are working for Junior Partner on a very important deal for Rainmaker Partner and MegaCorp. Junior Partner asks you to ship some boxes of paper back to the client by sending you the following e-mail:

To: Cog No. 343

From: Junior Partner

Time 7:30 p.m.

Subject: URGENT -- Please Ship Box!

Please ship Box No. 4 to Jane Doe at the client. My secretary can get you her address.

This must go out tonight -- surely you know where the latest FedEx drop is? Thanks!

Being a good Cog, you respond immediately, get the address from the secretary, get the box, look up the latest drop spot, dash to your car and race the box to the airport just in time for the last pick-up. Yes! Crisis averted!

Three weeks later you are summoned to a meeting with Rainmaker Partner and Junior Partner. You have no clue what has happened.

Rainmaker Partner to Junior Partner and Cog No. 343: "Does anyone want to tell me how MegaCorp's highly confidential documents were shipped to an ex-employee who then leaked them to the media?"

Junior Partner: "Sir, Cog No. 343 handled all shipment of boxes in this case. I am stunned."

You ask yourself, "I shipped that one box, that one night, to the person I was told to ship it to. What just happened here?"

Well, that strange feeling in your chest is the weight of the fat bus tires perched atop your little Cog body as you lie in the street protecting Junior Partner.

What should you do now? You have a few options -- with varying consequences:

a) Immediately defend yourself: "Rainmaker Partner, Junior Partner made me do it and gave me the address. It is not my fault!"

This is a bad option. The Rainmaker Partner will think you are throwing Junior Partner under the bus to save yourself, or even if he believes you, he will just think you are a whiner and blame you anyway.

b) Push the blame further downhill: "But I used the name and address from Junior Partner's secretary. I had no way to know it was wrong!"

This also will make you seem like a whiner. Even if the secretary and Junior Partner contributed to this error, as a Cog you are responsible for the errors of those above you (Junior Partner) and below you (all Junior Cogs, paralegals, secretaries and plant waterers).

c) Take it and delay vengeance: "Correct, I did ship the box. I apologize for this error. I will go back to my office immediately, look through my notes, determine what went wrong and develop a strategy for avoiding future failures and remedying the present lapse."

Good plan. Own the error, scamper back to your desk, pull up the e-mail from the Junior Partner, and forward it to Rainmaker and Junior Partner with the following addition:

"I have confirmed that I did in fact ship box No. 4 to Jane Doe, please see e-mail below. I realize my error was failing to conduct an independent inquiry to verify the employment status of this client representative before shipping the package on the last flight out of Atlanta. I will now undertake to verify all client contact information to avoid any future lapses. I also will be glad to accept responsibility for this error to the client."

Perfect. Not wimpy, shows who sent you the wrong information without (blatantly) casting blame, and illustrates your willingness to take one for the team. The partners will not require you to apologize to the client in person -- that would require introducing you to the client, and that is silly. They will just tell them it was a Cog and in a few years when you get to actually work with the client, they will never know you were involved in that little fiasco and not fired!

It is not always so easy to recognize when you are being thrown under the bus. It often happens when you are not in the room to defend yourself -- during a conference call with the client or a meeting of the partners you were not invited to attend.

Experienced bus throwers know better than to give you an opportunity to defend yourself. They will never put any directive or decision in an e-mail. They will claim ignorance of any decision they made which led to your error. The most dangerous ones will actually manage to convince you that they told you to do the opposite thing.

You can try to protect yourself by sending confirmation e-mails: "Partner, I just wanted to confirm that you want the box shipped tonight to Jane Doe at 234 Rocking Chair Lane." But you will get no response, or just an undocumented phone call confirmation. If they are that good, you are powerless to avoid a potential career-ending injury from the big fat bus tires if something goes awry. "The wheels on the bus go round and round ... ."

Rights for Non Citizens (Spanish Version)

Rights for Non Citizens Courtesy of FlexYourRights

Now Hear This: Book Review

From this awesome blog I found called Kevin's Security Scrapbook, I found a cool book that looks like a must read:
"Now Hear This!" by Winston Arrington - Available again!
Now Hear This! Electronic Eavesdropping Equipment Designs by Winston Arrington - Sheffield Electronics - 1997 (NOS)
(Click pictures to enlarge.)
Winston Arrington's electronic eavesdropping and countersurveillance design book is available again.

A portion of the review by Kevin (full post here):

Technically excellent, with some very unusual designs, it contains about 125 schematics; all may be built with a moderate level of experience. There is also a (now dated) countermeasures section which was contributed by me.

This book was never easy to purchase. The first printing had to be ordered directly from Winston, himself. This revised and expanded second edition was only sold briefly via the now shuttered Sheffield Electronics website. And, once in a looong while, a used dog-eared copy would show up on eBay to quickly sell in the $50.-$75. range. None have appeared there recently, however.

The picture of Winston's signature is from my copy of the book. Sadly, Winston is no longer with us to sign more of them.

Mandela's House Bugged

Interesting story, also from Kevin's Security Scrapbook:

Mandela's house 'was bugged'
It has been revealed that former president Nelson Mandela's Houghton house was bugged ahead the African National Congress's 2007 national conference. ...the listening device bug was discovered in the old Statesman's house by the police's VIP protection unit during a sweeping exercise. (more)

More on SBI Crime Lab in North Carolina: Flawed Evidence used in Death Penalty Cases

Earlier this month we blogged on the news of flawed forensic science developing out of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations Crime Lab. News to surface from the lab has included falsely reported evidence, flawed "testing" procedures, and false testimony in some cases. The Government ordered an investigation into the SBI lab after a recent case in which information involving falsified reports surfaced. The latest indicates that the SBI lab's findings may have been involved in death penalty cases that have resulted in executions. Full story from the Boston Herald here:

Analysts at North Carolina’s crime lab omitted, overstated or falsely reported blood evidence in dozens of cases, including three that ended in executions and another where two men were convicted of killing Michael Jordan’s father, according to a scathing independent review released Wednesday.

The government-ordered inquest by two former FBI officials found that agents of the State Bureau of Investigation repeatedly aided prosecutors in obtaining convictions over a 16-year period, mostly by misrepresenting blood evidence and keeping critical notes from defense attorneys. The Associated Press obtained the review of blood evidence in cases from 1987 to 2003 in advance of the report’s release.

It calls for a thorough examination of 190 criminal cases, stating that, at times, "information that may have been material and even favorable to the defense of an accused defendant was withheld or misrepresented."

Root Causes of Wrongful Convictions: Interview with Peter Neufeld

On August 17, 2010, Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project along with Barry Scheck, was interviewed by Slate about the causes of wrongful convictions and where reform is needed. Here in an excerpt (full article here):

How do most wrongful convictions come about?

The primary cause is mistaken identification. Actually, I wouldn't call it mistaken identification; I'd call it misidentification, because you often find that there was some sort of misconduct by the police. In a lot of cases, the victim initially wasn't so sure. And then the police say, "Oh, no, you got the right guy. In fact, we think he's done two others that we just couldn't get him for." Or: "Yup, that's who we thought it was all along, great call."

It's disturbing that misidentifications still play such a large role in wrongful convictions, given that we've known about the fallibility of eyewitness testimony for over a century.

In terms of empirical studies, that's right. And 30 or 40 years ago, the Supreme Court acknowledged that eyewitness identification is problematic and can lead to wrongful convictions. The trouble is, it instructed lower courts to determine the validity of eyewitness testimony based on a lot of factors that are irrelevant, like the certainty of the witness. But the certainty you express [in court] a year and half later has nothing to do with how certain you felt two days after the event when you picked the photograph out of the array or picked the guy out of the lineup. You become more certain over time; that's just the way the mind works. With the passage of time, your story becomes your reality. You get wedded to your own version.

And the police participate in this. They show the victim the same picture again and again to prepare her for the trial. So at a certain point you're no longer remembering the event; you're just remembering this picture that you keep seeing.

Other than misidentifications, what other factors play a role in wrongful convictions?

The second most common cause is the misuse of forensic science other than DNA. In most of our cases, DNA [identification] didn't exist at the time of the conviction, so prosecutors relied on other types of forensic science. It could be serology, which was the old A/B/O blood typing. It could be bite marks. It could be fingerprints. It could be other forensic disciplines: tire marks, shoe print comparisons, fiber comparisons. None of these is bulletproof—some of them aren't even credible—so we see a lot of wrongful convictions stemming from those.

And there are several other very common causes as well. You have police and prosecutor misconduct. You have incompetent defense attorneys. You have jailhouse snitches, who as you can imagine are not the most reliable sources. And you have false confessions. Twenty-five percent of wrongful convictions involve false confessions. Most people can't imagine why anyone would ever confess to a crime they didn't commit, unless they were beaten into it. But these people weren't beaten. They wouldn't even meet the legal definition of coercion. It's just that the [interrogation] methods that are effective for getting confessions from guilty persons are so powerful that they net innocent people as well—particularly innocent people who are juveniles or have some kind of intellectual impairment or mental health problem.

I'm curious about police and prosecutor misconduct. I assume that most people in these jobs aren't actually trying to convict innocent people. So how does such misconduct come about?

I think what happens is that prosecutors and police think they've got the right guy, and consequently they think it's OK to cut corners or control the game a little bit to make sure he's convicted. The thinking goes, "God forbid a guilty guy go free because of smart lawyering by the defense" or what have you. They're so convinced that they are right that they feel exempt from behaving right. They don't realize that it's wrong to be unethical. And not just because it could convict an innocent person. It's simply wrong to be unethical.

You Have the Right to Remain Silent (Use It!)

Family of Woman Killed in Botched Drug Raid to Receive $4.9 Million

From CNN:

The city of Atlanta will pay $4.9 million to the family of Kathryn Johnston, a 92-year-old woman killed in a botched November 2006 drug raid, Mayor Kasim Reed's office announced Monday.

Johnston was shot to death by narcotics officers conducting a "no-knock" warrant. Investigators later determined the raid was based on falsified paperwork stating that illegal drugs were present in the home.

The incident prompted a major overhaul of the Atlanta police drug unit, and three former police officers were sentenced to prison terms for a cover-up that ensued.

Johnston's family will receive $2.9 million sometime in fiscal 2011, the city said, with the remaining $2 million to be paid in fiscal 2012, on or before August 15, 2011.

The payment represents the settlement of a lawsuit filed against the city by Sarah Dozier, Johnston's niece, Reed's office said in a statement. Initially filed in state court, the suit was moved to federal court, where a judge ordered the parties to mediation.

As the search warrant was being executed November 21, 2006, at Johnston's home, she fired at officers with an old pistol, apparently believing her home was being broken into. Six officers returned fire. Johnston's one shot went through her front door and over the officers' heads. They responded with 39 shots, hitting the elderly woman five times.

"The resolution of this case is an important step in the healing process for the city and its residents," Reed said in the statement. "As a result of the incident, several police officers were indicted in federal and state court on charges and were later convicted and sentenced for their actions. In addition, the narcotics unit of the Atlanta Police Department was completely reorganized, which included changes in policy and personnel."

Last year, former officer Jason Smith was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, while former officers Greg Junnier and Arthur Tesler were sentenced to six and five years, respectively.

All three men pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to violate civil rights resulting in death. Smith and Junnier also pleaded guilty to state charges of voluntary manslaughter and making false statements, and Smith admitted to planting bags of marijuana in Johnston's home after her death.

U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes ordered the three to split Johnston's funeral costs of $8,180, and to serve three years of supervised release after they complete their prison terms.

"I pray daily for Ms. Johnston," Smith said at the sentencing hearing, according to CNN affiliate WXIA-TV. "I also pray other officers in Atlanta will have the moral fortitude I didn't have."

Tesler was convicted on one state count of making false statements after filling out an affidavit saying that an informant had purchased crack cocaine at Johnston's home, in a crime-plagued neighborhood near downtown Atlanta.

The informant, however, denied ever having been to Johnston's home, leading to probes by federal and state authorities as well as the breakup and reorganization of the narcotics unit.

Tesler's state conviction was reversed on appeal. According to their plea agreements, Junnier and Smith will serve their state sentences concurrently with the federal sentence.

Shortly after the probe began, Junnier began cooperating with authorities, providing "valuable assistance in the investigation and prosecution of Smith and Tesler," according to a statement issued last year by federal prosecutors. Smith also cooperated to a lesser extent, and both men's sentences were reduced in exchange for their cooperation.

Prosecutors have said that officers regularly presented false information to obtain warrants and that they cut corners to make more time for lucrative side jobs providing additional security to businesses, often while on duty, and receiving cash payments.

The investigation into the botched raid also led to guilty pleas from the police sergeant in charge of the narcotics unit and another officer who admitted to extortion, authorities said.

Geotags in Web Photos Reveal Secrets about You

Finding information on Geotags off pictures that an investigator retrieves from sites like Facebook and MySpace can be useful when the exact location of where the picture was taken needs to be known.

 

KATE MURPHY, New York Times

When Adam Savage, host of the popular science program "MythBusters," posted a picture on Twitter of his automobile parked in front of his house, he let his fans know much more than that he drove a Toyota Land Cruiser.

Embedded in the image was a geotag, a bit of data providing the longitude and latitude of where the photo was taken. Hence, he revealed exactly where he lived. And since the accompanying text was "Now it's off to work," potential thieves knew he would not be at home.

Security experts and privacy advocates have recently begun warning about the potential dangers of geotags, which are embedded in photos and videos taken with GPS-equipped smart phones and digital cameras. Because the location data is not visible to the casual viewer, the concern is that many people may not realize it is there; and they could be compromising their privacy, if not their safety, when they post geotagged media online.

Savage said he knew about geotags. (He should, as host of a show popular with technology followers.) But he said he had neglected to disable the function on his iPhone before taking the picture and uploading it to Twitter.

"I guess it was a lack of concern because I'm not nearly famous enough to be stalked," he said, "and if I am, I want a raise."

Still, Savage has since turned off the geotag feature on his iPhone, and he isn't worried about the archived photo on Twitter because he has moved to a new residence.

But others may not be so technologically informed or so blase about their privacy.

"I'd say very few people know about geotag capabilities," said Peter Eckersley, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, "and consent is sort of a slippery slope when the only way you can turn off the function on your smart phone is through an invisible menu that no one really knows about."

Indeed, disabling the geotag function generally involves going through several layers of menus until you find the "location" setting, then selecting "off" or "don't allow." But doing this can sometimes turn off all GPS capabilities, including mapping, so it can get complicated.

The website ICanStalkU.com provides step-by-step instructions for disabling the photo geotagging function on iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Palm devices.

A person's location is also revealed while using services like Foursquare and Gowalla as well as when posting to Twitter from a GPS-enabled mobile device, but the geographical data is not hidden as it is when posting photos.

A handful of academic researchers and independent Web security analysts, who call themselves "white hat hackers," have been trying to raise awareness about geotags by releasing studies and giving presentations at technology get-togethers like the Hackers On Planet Earth, or Next HOPE, conference held last month in New York.

Their lectures and papers demonstrate the ubiquity of geotagged photos and videos on websites like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Craigslist, and how these photos can be used to identify a person's home and haunts.

Many of the pictures show people's children playing in or around their homes. Others reveal expensive cars, computers and flat-screen televisions. There are also pictures of people at their friends' houses or at the Starbucks they visit each morning.

By downloading free browser plug-ins like the Exif Viewer for Firefox (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3905/) or Opanda IExif for Internet Explorer (opanda.com/en/iexif/), anyone can pinpoint the location where the photo was taken and create a Google map.

Moreover, since multimedia sites like Twitter and YouTube have user-friendly application programming interfaces, or APIs, someone with a little knowledge about writing computer code can create a program to search for geotagged photos in a systematic way. For example, they can search for those accompanied with text like "on vacation" or those taken in a specified neighborhood.

"Any 16-year-old with basic programming skills can do this," said Gerald Friedland, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. He and a colleague, Robin Sommer, wrote a paper, "Cybercasing the Joint: On the Privacy Implications of Geotagging," which they presented on Tuesday at a workshop in Washington during the Advanced Computing Systems Association's annual conference on security.

The paper provides three examples of so-called cybercasing that use photos posted on Twitter and Craigslist and a homemade video on YouTube.

By looking at geotags and the text of posts, Sommer said, "you can easily find out where people live, what kind of things they have in their house and also when they are going to be away."

"Our intent is not to show how it's done," he said, "but raise awareness so people can understand their devices and turn off those options if they want to."

ICanStalkU.com, developed by the security consultants Larry Pesce of the NWN Corporation in Waltham, Mass., and Ben Jackson of Mayhemic Labs in Boston, uses a more direct approach to warning about the potential dangers of geotags. The site displays a real-time stream of geotagged photos posted on Twitter; the person who posted the photo also gets a notification via Twitter.

"The reaction from people is either anger, like 'I'm going to punch you out,' or 'No duh, like I didn't already know that' or 'Oh my God, I had no idea,'" Pesce said.

In the latter category was Cristina Parker of El Paso, Texas, who sells appliances part-time at Kmart and also manages social media for small companies. ICanStalkU.com notified her last week that a photo she had posted on Twitter of her Chihuahua, Zipp, also revealed where she lived.

"I immediately tweeted back to find out what I can do about it," said Parker. The site sent her a Web link to instructions on how to turn off the geotag function on her LG Ally smart phone. "It's definitely good to know for me personally and because of my social media work, too," she said

Because of the way photographs are formatted by some sites like Facebook and Match.com, geotag information is not always retained when an image is uploaded, which provides some protection, albeit incidental. Other sites like Flickr have recently taken steps to block access to geotag data on images taken with smart phones unless a user explicitly allows it.

But experts say the problem goes far beyond social networking and photo sharing websites, regardless of whether they offer user privacy settings.

"There are so many places where people upload photos, like personal blogs and bulletin boards," said Johannes B. Ullrich, chief technology officer of the SANS Technology Institute, which provides network security training and monitors the Internet for emerging security threats.

Protecting your privacy is not just a matter of being aware and personally responsible, said Sommer, the researcher. A friend may take a geotagged photo at your house and post it.

"You need to educate yourself and your friends but in the end, you really have no control," he said, adding that he was considering writing a program to troll the Internet for photos with geotags corresponding to users' home addresses.

"I'm beginning to think there may be a market for it."

Calif Judge Weighs Former FBI Informant's Lawsuit

By GILLIAN FLACCUS and THOMAS WATKINS, Associated Press

A former FBI informant who infiltrated a mosque and helped bring in a counterterrorism suspect suffered a blow in trying to sue his former handlers over his alleged mistreatment when the agency cut him loose.

A federal judge issued tentative rulings Thursday against Craig Monteilh, who for more than a year worked to spy on Orange County mosques and helped build a case against an Afghan-born man who prosecutors say has ties to Osama bin Laden.

U.S. District Court Judge James Selna will hear arguments from attorneys Friday on the FBI's motion to dismiss the lawsuit and issue a final ruling.

Selna indicated he would dismiss the lawsuit against the agency and against a supervisor who oversaw Monteilh's operation.

If Selna tosses Monteilh's lawsuit, it will be a major setback for the man who claimed he was hung out to dry by his FBI handlers at the end of a sensitive counterterrorism operation he said was dubbed "Operation Flex."

Monteilh, a 48-year-old former fitness instructor with a criminal past, provided information in the case against Ahmadullah Niazi, who was arrested in February 2009 on suspicion of lying about ties to terrorist groups on his application to become a U.S. citizen and other papers.

Monteilh claims FBI agents spent months instructing him to pretend to be a half-French, half-Syrian Muslim convert and secretly film and record dozens of worshippers at mosques, including the Islamic Center of Irvine.

In court papers, Monteilh said he worked for the FBI for 15 months in 2006 and 2007 and his level of involvement in the surveillance operation grew until he led prayers and made $11,200 a month for his spying.

But things turned sour when the Irvine Police Department accused him of scamming two women out of more than $157,000 by getting them to give him money to invest in human growth hormones and supplement sales.

Monteilh claimed he was in fact working on behalf of an FBI drug task force and was instructed to plead guilty to grand theft so he wouldn't blow his cover as an informant. The agency disputes that and denies having any part in the scam.

"The FBI absolutely was not involved in directing Mr. Monteilh to defraud anyone," spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

Monteilh eventually served eight months in prison in the case.

"It's all about justice for my family. They took me away from my children and my wife for eight long months," Monteilh said.

His attorney, Adam Krolikowski, said if the judge's ruling becomes final, he will appeal and also file an amended complaint against the FBI supervisor.

"The fact of the matter is that Mr. Monteilh is a man who was betrayed by the FBI and he was sent to prison for work that he performed for the FBI," he said.

Aside from suing the agency, Monteilh also has tried to get back at the FBI by working with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California as it crafts a lawsuit of its own.

In April, he signed a 28-page declaration detailing his informant work to help the group as it prepares for the lawsuit. That case has not been filed.

"The ACLU of Southern California is deeply concerned about the FBI's use of informants in religious institutions," the ACLU said in a statement. "Mr. Monteilh has given the ACLU information in the course of our investigations, as have dozens of other individuals throughout the region. The ACLU does not now and has never represented Mr. Monteilh in any litigation."

Monteilh has also met with Niazi's defense attorney, Krolikowski said.

Though the FBI has said little publicly about the case, it is scrambling behind the scenes to silence the ex-informant. In recent days, Associate General Counsel Henry R. Felix has asked Monteilh's lawyer to disclose any information he shares with civil rights lawyers representing his former targets and has warned Monteilh a nondisclosure agreement he signed remains in effect.

The unusual case underscores the risks the FBI takes when it relies on outsiders to help build cases in sensitive counterterrorism investigations.

It is not uncommon for informants to feel disillusioned at having worked for the government when investigations end, but it's rare for an informant to turn against the FBI, said Ken Wainstein, former general counsel for the FBI.

"Like any relationships, sometimes the handler-confidential informant relationship can go south," he said.

Monteilh is no stranger to legal woes. The one-time machine operator at a Wonderbread factory has a lengthy rap sheet dating to the 1980s, and a history of evictions and debts for everything from car payments to rent to credit cards.

His brushes with the law accelerated dramatically after a bitter divorce in 2000, when his ex-wife alleged in court papers he had threatened her life, tried to choke her and pulled a gun on her.

In court papers and his ACLU declaration, he says he was asked to work as an informant for local law enforcement in 2004, when he became friendly with some police officers in a local gym. By 2006, he was promoted to the FBI's counterterrorism operations.

Monteilh alleges he gathered phone numbers and contact information for hundreds of Muslim-Americans and recorded thousands of hours of conversation using a device on his key fob or cell phone during his stint with the FBI.

His said his handlers told him to work out with Muslims at gyms, asked him to get codes for security systems so they could enter mosques at night and encouraged him to ask mosque members about "jihad" and supporting terrorist operations abroad.

In June 2007, however, mosque members became suspicious of Monteilh and requested a restraining order, saying that he had spoken repeatedly about engaging in jihad.

A judge granted the order and roughly six months later, the Irvine police arrested him for the steroid case.

Monteilh was released from prison in 2008 and now lives with his second wife in Orange County.

Attorney General Suspends North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations After Major Problems Discovered

North Carolina is the latest in the ongoing series of scandals from state crime labs. Last week, Attorney General Roy Cooper suspended the unit that handles bloodstain pattern analysis after it emerged that the State Bureau of Investigations changed reports and testimony to match prosecutors theories on what had occurred in a murder scene. This latest case of questionable results began in the fall of 2007 when county prosecutors studied a suspicious bloodstain in a crime scene photograph, looking for evidence that Kirk Turner intentionally slashed his wife's throat with a pocketknife. Turner, a dentist, claimed that he acted in self-defense; however, prosecutors noticed a V-shaped stain on Kirk Turner's T-shirt. Prosecutors met with SBI Bloodstain pattern analysts who altered testimony and reports to match the prosecutors' theories. The men further conducted a series of "tests" to attempt to justify their results. One analyst stuck steadfastly to the story, even after it became clear that he had filed an erroneous account of the crime scene.

Testimony from the SBI has come under questioning in three other cases recently, most notably after one man was freed after seventeen years and another after fourteen years. Both convictions relied heavily on blood stain evidence from the SBI crime lab that turned out to be unreliable.

Read More at the News Observer which includes additional video accounts and detailed articles here:

In the fall of 2007, Davie County prosecutors studied a suspicious bloodstain in a crime scene photograph, looking for evidence that Kirk Turner intentionally slashed his wife's throat with a pocketknife.

Turner, a Kernersville dentist, said he killed Jennifer Turner in self-defense after she attacked him with a 7-foot spear. But prosecutors noticed a V-shaped stain on Kirk Turner's T-shirt.

They charged Turner with murder, and then turned to the State Bureau of Investigation to help prove their theory: Turner killed her, wiped the knife on his shirt, then staged the scene by ramming the 18-inch blade through his thigh, twice.

Quantcast

Bloodstain pattern analysts Gerald Thomas and his mentor, Duane Deaver, embraced the prosecutors' theory.

Thomas quietly changed his initial report, which was consistent with self-defense. After a renowned bloodstain pattern expert disagreed with Thomas, Deaver and Thomas conducted unscientific tests to shore up the prosecution.

Thomas stuck steadfastly to the story, even after it became clear that he had filed an erroneous account of the crime scene.

Last year, a jury quickly acquitted Turner. The foreman said jurors were stunned by the SBI's conduct.

"Politically, socially, religiously, I'm conservative; I'm a law-and-order man," said Landon Potts, an insurance claims adjuster. "But I don't know what other word to use but a fraud."

Deaver is a major character in the emerging story of the SBI's troubles. His withholding of evidence contributed to three judges in February declaring Greg Taylor innocent of a 1991 murder and freeing him from life in prison. Attorney General Roy Cooper then ordered an audit of the blood analysis unit.

At the bureau's crime labs, where Deaver has been a key agent and trainer, analysts charged with using science to solve crimes have hidden test results or concocted bizarre experiments to shore up a prosecutor's case, a News & Observer investigation reveals.

Deaver and Thomas are among at least 10 SBI agents and analysts who have tailored their investigations to please prosecutors, ignored key evidence or locked on to suspects who turned out to be innocent.

Government Stretches Misdemeanor Computer Crime to Create Felony

Read More at NACDL
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers asked a federal appeals court Thursday to block the government's attempt to wrongly expand federal computer crime law, turning misdemeanor charges into felonies.

In an amicus brief filed in U.S. v. Cioni, EFF and NACDL argue that federal prosecutors abused computer crime law when they brought felony charges against Elaine Cioni for accessing others' email. Under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a first-time unauthorized access offense is a typically a misdemeanor. But in Cioni's trial, the government pushed for felony convictions, claiming that the CFAA violations were in furtherance of violations of the Stored Communications Act (SCA). However, the acts that they claimed violated the SCA were identical to acts that violated the CFAA.

Only the Paranoid Survive - Andrew S. Grove

A great piece from Andrew Grove, the CEO of Intel.  This applies not only in the business world but in the world of Public Defense.

Sooner or later, something fundamental in your business world will change.

I'm often credited with the motto, "Only the paranoid survive." I have no idea when I first said this, but the fact remains that, when it comes to business, I believe in the value of paranoia. Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left. I believe that the prime responsibility of a manager is to guard constantly against other people's attacks and to inculcate this guardian attitude in the people under his or her management.

The things I tend to be paranoid about vary. I worry about products getting screwed up, and I worry about products getting introduced prematurely. I worry about factories not performing well, and I worry about having too many factories. I worry about hiring the right people, and I worry about morale slacking off.

And, of course, I worry about competitors. I worry about other people figuring out how to do what we do better or cheaper, and displacing us with our customers.

But these worries pale in comparison to how I feel about what I call strategic inflection points.

I'll describe what a strategic inflection point is a bit later in this book. For now, let me just say that a strategic inflection point is a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end.

Strategic inflection points can be caused by technological change but they are more than technological change. They can be caused by competitors but they are more than just competition. They are full-scale changes in the way business is conducted, so that simply adopting new technology or fighting the competition as you used to may be insufficient. They build up force so insidiously that you may have a hard time even putting a finger on what has changed, yet you know that something has. Let's not mince words: A strategic inflection point can be deadly when unattended to. Companies that begin a decline as a result of its changes rarely recover their previous greatness.

 

View the Full Article here.

Are American Banks Helping Do the Laundry?

Full Article at available from Seattle Times here:

Since 2006, more than 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles. Among the dead are police, soldiers, journalists and ordinary citizens. The U.S. has pledged Mexico $1.1 billion in the past two years to aid in the fight against narcotics cartels.

Behind the carnage in Mexico is an industry that supplies hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines to Americans. The cartels have built a network of dealers in 231 U.S. cities from coast to coast, taking in about $39 billion in sales annually, according to the Justice Department.

Twenty million people in the U.S. regularly use illegal drugs, spurring street crime and wrecking families. Narcotics cost the U.S. economy $215 billion a year — in overburdened courts, prisons and hospitals and lost productivity, the department says.

"It's the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy," says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia's anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia's branch network.

"If you don't see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you're missing the point," Woods says.

Cleansing dirty cash

Wachovia is just one of the U.S. and European banks that have been used for drug- money laundering. For the past two decades, Latin American drug traffickers have gone to U.S. banks to cleanse their dirty cash, says Paul Campo, head of the financial-crimes unit of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
American Express Bank paid fines in 1994 and 2007 after admitting it had failed to spot and report drug dealers laundering money through its accounts. Drug traffickers used accounts at Bank of America in Oklahoma City to buy three planes that carried 10 tons of cocaine, according to Mexican court filings.

Federal agents caught people who work for Mexican cartels depositing illicit funds in Bank of America accounts in Atlanta, Chicago and Brownsville, Texas, from 2002 to 2009. Mexican drug dealers used shell companies to open accounts at London-based HSBC Holdings, an investigation by the Mexican Finance Ministry found.

D.C. Circuit holds that GPS Monitoring is a Fourth Amendment Search

As reported at the Volokh Conspiracy, this week the D.C. Circuit held that government use of a GPS device to monitor the location of a car on public roads is a Fourth Amendment “search” when conducted over a long-term period, in this case a one month period of time. The case is United States v. Maynard. In Maynard, co-defendant Jones was convicted in a cocaine conspiracy which relied upon investigation resulting from the twenty-four hour a day monitoring of Jones's jeep over the period of one month. The D.C. Circuit held that the use of the GPS tracking device violated co-defendant Jones reasonable expectation of privacy:

Jones argues the use of the GPS device violated his ‘reasonable expectation of privacy,’ Katz, . . . and was therefore a search subject to the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment. Of course, the Government agrees the Katz test applies here, but it argues we need not consider whether Jones’s expectation of privacy wasreasonable because that question was answered in United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983), in which the Supreme Court held the use of a beeper device to aid in tracking a suspect to his drug lab was not a search. As explained below, we hold Knotts does not govern this case and the police action was a search because it defeated Jones’s reasonable expectation of privacy.” Id. at 16 (Katz full cite omitted).

This decision is in conflict with the Ninth Circuit's opinion in United States v. Pinedo-Moreno, 591 F.3d 1212 (9th Cir, 2010). For more detailed discussion on how to use as a practitioner, see the Ninth Circuit Blog. The Ninth Circuit Blog article also contains an interesting discussion on the use of cell phone towers for pinging that is easier than ever before to use as a "tracking device". It is becoming routine that federal law enforcement are using cell-phone location data through sealed applications. (Further reading here).
When working this type of case as an Investigator, it is important to get discovery that includes the type of device used, how the device stores the information, whether there was a warrant application that included a time limit, and how the device works (e.g. whether the device can be remotely accessed or whether it has to be retrieved and manually downloaded) so that the investigator is armed with all information possible to assist in a motion to suppress.

Crack Cocaine Bill Signed!

Big news of the week is the signing of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 by President Barack Obama. The Fair Sentencing Act does not eliminate the mandatory minimum for trafficking crack cocaine, however the infamous 100-to-1 sentencing ratio is now reduced to 18-to-1. Moving forward, 28 grams of crack cocaine will trigger a five-year prison sentence and 280 grams of crack will trigger a 10-year sentence. The law could affect an estimated 3,000 cases annually, reducing sentences by an average of about two years and saving an estimated $42 million over five years. The new law also increases sentences for drug offenses involving vulnerable victims, violence and other aggravating factors.

The quarter-century-old law that Congress changed with the new bill has subjected tens of thousands of blacks to long prison terms for crack cocaine convictions while giving far more lenient sentences to those, mainly whites, caught with powder.

However, the new law is not retroactive...

State of Alert: Public Defender

Attorney Asks Supreme Court to Stop Guantanamo Prosecution

Full Story Here

(CNN) -- The youngest detainee at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility is to be tried next week by a military commission -- with a life sentence as one possible outcome -- and now his lawyer has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to stop it.

Omar Khadr was 15 when he was apprehended in southeast Afghanistan in 2002, accused of lobbing a grenade that mortally wounded a U.S. medic. He also is accused of receiving one-on-one training from al Qaeda and being caught on a surveillance video making and planting roadside bombs where U.S. troops traveled.

Now 23, he faces trial at Guantanamo on August 10, on charges of murder and attempted murder in violation of the law of war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism and spying.

Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was born in Toronto, also is the only Westerner still held at the Guantanamo facility.

Initially, President Barack Obama's order to close the Guantanamo facility postponed the trial and left the case in limbo. But last November, his case drew the attention of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Holder made headlines that month by announcing that five detainees accused of complicitity in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be transferred to New York City to stand trial in a civilian court. At the same time, he clarified the status of Khadr and four others -- saying they would face military commissions.

The five due for trial in New York included the professed mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Later, after local officials objected to the costs and potential security threats, the administration backtracked, putting the issue under review.

That leaves Mohammed in legal limbo for now, as Khadr faces trial in a matter of days.

But his military attorney, Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the military commission trial.

Jackson said in a statement accompanying the petition that "the sad truth is that military commissions are discriminatory" and provide "only second class justice."

"If you are a citizen, like the Times Square bomber, you get all the protections of federal court. If you are a non-citizen, you are tried by military commission," he said. "This kind of discrimination is something we cannot stand for as a country."

He said that in previous wars, citizens and non-citizens received the same standard of justice.

The Life of the Public Defender, or what they should show you in career counseling

Would You Ask This Man for His Papers?

ACLU Video

Facebook Discovery Tips

Handy discovery tips for Facebook from Law and Technology News:

Facebook has over 500 million active users.

Twitter users are recording an average of 55 million tweets a day.

If an employee files suit against your client, what are the odds the employee uses social media? I'd say they're pretty good. Just imagine missing the Facebook post:

"I'll do whatever it takes to get back at my employer."

The first thing I do after I receive a copy of an employee-filed complaint -- before I read the complaint -- is check the plaintiff-employee out on Facebook and other social networking sites.

I print any information that employee has made publicly available. I save any pictures the employee has published online and I send a list of the employee's friends to my employer-client to cross-check against a list of current and former employees. I do this because, generally, a Facebook user will allow friends greater access to online content.

Why do I want this information? Because many social media users do not filter what they publish online -- they find social media cathartic. So, for every couple of banal "I'm going to the movies with John tonight" online posts, you'll find an "I just had the worst day in the office because …" post.

Don't believe me? Check out this, this, this, and this blog post from Delaware labor and employment attorney Molly DiBianca, who writes about how a waitress lost her job for a complaint made on Facebook.

WHAT IF THE PLAINTIFF RESTRICTS FACEBOOK ACCESS?

Recently, in EEOC v. Simply Storage Management, a federal court permitted an employer to obtain discovery of an employee's social networking activity that, through privacy settings, the employee had made "private" and not available to the general public.

That makes sense, right? I have yet to see a tweet or a Facebook status update appear on a privilege log.

So, as part of discovery, an employer should consider requesting:

All online profiles, postings, messages (including, without limitation, tweets, replies, retweets, direct messages, status updates, wall comments, groups joined, activity streams, and blog entries), photographs, videos, and online communications that:

1. refer or relate to the allegations set forth in the complaint;

2. refer or relate to any facts or defenses raised in the answer;

3. reveal, refer or relate to any emotion, feeling, or mental state; or

4. reveal, refer, or relate to events that could reasonably be expected to produce a significant emotion, feeling, or mental state.

IF THAT DOESN'T WORK, BRING OUT THE BIG GUNS: SUBPOENAS, SPOLIATION

If the responding employee no longer has access to responsive information, then go right to the source with a subpoena. To guide you, here is a list of internet service provider mailing addresses for service of subpoenas. (Just be prepared to pay some hefty fees, such as those Facebook charges for processing a third-party subpoena). And make sure you obtain a written consent (such as this one from LinkedIn) from the employee. As labor and employment attorney John Hyman explains in a recent blog post, many social networking sites use the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq., to aggressively protect the privacy of user content.

Conrad Black: My Prison Education

Here is an excerpt printed from the National Post by Conrad Black on being released from federal prison:

Before I got into the maw of the U.S. legal system, I did not realize the country has 47 million people with a criminal record, (most for relatively trivial offenses,) or that prosecutors won more than 90% of their cases. There, at Coleman, I had seen the courage of self-help, the pathos of broken men, the drawn faces of the hopeless, the glazed expression of the heavily medicated, (90% of Americans judged to require confinement for psychiatric reasons are in the prison system), and the nonchalance of those who find prison a comfortable welfare system compared to the skid row that was their former milieu. America’s 2.4 million prisoners, and millions more awaiting trial or on supervised release, are an ostracized, voiceless legion of the walking dead; they are no one’s constituency.

Of course, I was glad, jubilant, to leave, (though a return is not an impossible result of the pending rehearing), but also grateful for many of the relationships I had formed; enlightened by my observation of American justice on the other side of the wall; and happy to have got on well in an environment very foreign to any I had known before.

My departure was processed quite cordially and the personnel even conducted us to a back exit, through a padlocked gate, far from the media, and shook hands and waved as I slipped the bondage of the U.S. government. It had been 28 months and 18 days since I arrived. The send-off was more congenial than the reception and the ride back to Palm Beach was on the same roads over the same flat, scrubby landscape of strip malls and bungalows as the approach. It seemed more verdant and welcoming on the way back. The drive was contemplative and uneventful.

I was delighted to be back in my home, which the prosecutors had tried to seize for years. For the first time since I was last there, I enjoyed pristine quiet, free of loudspeakers, screamed argument, and the snoring of a hundred men. I had a glass of wine, and waited for Barbara, to celebrate the happiest of all wedding anniversaries.

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