DOJ Requests Supreme Court to Dismiss FISA Challenge

Today, the Department of Justice filed a petition requesting the Supreme Court to overturn an appellate court ruling that allowed a lawsuit filed by the ACLU that challenges the constitutionality of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act to go forward. The FISA Amendments Act, signed into law in 2008 allows unprecedented surveillance of Americans’ international communications with none of the safeguards that the Constitution requires. Little is known about how the Act has been used. In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the government revealed that every six-month review of the Act had identified “compliance incidents,” suggesting either an inability or an unwillingness to properly safeguard Americans’ privacy rights. The government has withheld the details of those “compliance incidents,” however, including statistics relating to abuses of the Act. The Act is scheduled to sunset in December 2012, and the ACLU is calling for amendments that would prohibit dragnet surveillance, require the government to be more transparent about how the law is being used, and place stronger restrictions on the retention and dissemination of information that is collected. Full story here.

SOPA Protest

You may have noticed that many websites dimmed their pages yesterday in protest of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). The proposed new law that would result in our government blocking access to websites that contain copyright infringing material. Many web based companies and non-profit organizations have come out in strong opposition to SOPA. As Justice William O. Douglas once said, "Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance."

Here is more from the ACLU's press release:

There are two bills pending before Congress — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate — that would not only impact unlawful infringing content, but also a wealth of completely legal content that has nothing to do with online piracy.

We opposed SOPA in its original form mostly because the impact on non-infringing content would violate the First Amendment right to free speech of the owners and authors of that content, as well as the rights of Internet users to access that content. In fact, we were asked to present our views at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee scheduled for today and submitted our testimony in preparation for that hearing. But the hearing was postponed after SOPA’s proponents promised to significantly change the bill and after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor proposed not to bring any bill to the floor for a vote unless it represented a true consensus of those who support and those who oppose SOPA.

Because of those developments over the weekend — and because the White House also issued a statement opposing any bill that would impact First Amendment-protected online content — we are redoubling our efforts to find the compromise that will not only inhibit online infringement of original works of art, but also will truly eliminate online access restrictions to lawful non-infringing content.

FBI's New Rules to Give Agents More Leeway on Surveillance

From FoxNews.com:

The FBI sought Monday to downplay its expanded surveillance powers for agents as civil liberty groups sounded an alarm that the new rules not only make it easier for agents to investigate suspects but give them startling leeway to spy on ordinary Americans.

The changes are expected to be outlined in a new edition of the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, a lengthy 2008 document detailing how far agents can go in tracking suspects. They will expand the use of techniques ranging from dispatching surveillance teams to digging through trash cans.

Civil liberties groups were briefed on the policy changes in May, and came out of the meeting worried the changes would allow agents to investigate innocent people, with less oversight than before.

"It's the government saying we can know all about your private life, but you can't know what the government is doing," Michael German, a former FBI agent now working with the American Civil Liberties Union, told FoxNews.com.

For instance, the new rules would allow agents to look up people on various databases without opening up a low-level inquiry known as an "assessment." Currently, agents have to take that formal step before looking into someone's background and provide some semblance of justification.

Full article can be found here.

TSA Ejects Oceanside Man from Airport for Refusing Security Check

By Robert J. Hawkins

John Tyner won't be pheasant hunting in South Dakota with his father-in-law any time soon.

Tyner was simultaneously thrown out of San Diego International Airport on Saturday morning for refusing to submit to a security check and threatened with a civil suit and $10,000 fine if he left.

And he got the whole thing on his cell phone. Well, the audio at least.

The 31-year-old Oceanside software programmer was supposed to leave from Lindbergh Field on Saturday morning and until a TSA agent directed him toward one of the recently installed full-body scanners, Tyner seemed to be on his way.

Tyner balked.

He'd been reading about the scanners and didn't like them for a number of reasons, ranging from health concerns to "a huge invasion of privacy." He'd even checked the TSA website which indicated that San Diego did not have the machines, he said in a phone interview Saturday night.

"I was surprised to see them," said Tyner.

He also did something that may seem odd to some, manipulative to others but fortuitous to plenty of others for whom Tyner is becoming something of a folk hero: Tyner turned on his cell phone's video camera and placed it atop the luggage he sent through the x-ray machine.

He may not be the first traveler tossed from an airport for security reasons but he could well be the first to have the whole experience captured on his cell phone.

During the next half-hour, his cell phone recorded Tyner refusing to submit to a full body scan, opting for the traditional metal scanner and a basic "pat down" -- and then refusing to submit to a "groin check" by a TSA security guard.

He even told the guard, "You touch my junk and I'm going to have you arrested."

That threat triggered a code red of sorts as TSA agents, supervisors and eventually the local police gravitated to the spot where the reluctant traveler stood in his stocking feet, his cell phone sitting in the nearby bin (which he wasn't allowed to touch) picking up the audio.

According to TSA when the controversial body scanners were installed, travelers would have the option to request walking through the traditional metal detector it would be accompanied by a "pat down."

Why Tyner was targeted for a secondary pat down is unknown.

"I'm 6-foot-1, white with short brown hair," he said Saturday night. "I don't look like a terrorist."

Was he singled out for "punishment"?

Before Tyner was told he was getting a "groin check," a TSA agent is heard on the recording telling another agent "I had a problem with the passenger I was patting down. So I backed down. He was obnoxious."

Tyner is sure he was talking about someone else. On the whole, with a single final exception, he found the agents "professional if standoffish."

He did marvel that while his own situation was being deliberated, many passengers passed through the metal detector and on to their flights with no pat-down. "One guy even set off the alarm and they sent him through again without a pat-down," he said.

Once he threatened to have the TSA agent arrested though, events turned surreal.

A supervisor is heared re-explaining the groin check process to Tyner then adding "If you're not comfortable with that we can escort you back out and you don't have to fly today."

Tyner responded "OK, I don't understand how a sexual assault can be made a condition of my flying."

"This is not considered a sexual assault," replied the supervisor, calmly.

"It would be if you were not the government," said Tyner.

"By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights," countered the TSA supervisor.

"I think the government took them away after 9/11,' said Tyner.

"OK," came the reply.

More senior TSA administrators showed up, and one San Diego police officer. Tyner's personal information was taken down and then he was escorted out of the security area. After he put his shoes back.

His father-in-law, a 40 year retired deputy sheriff can be heard pleading in the back ground for some common sense.

Tyner went over to the American Airlines counter where an agent, to his amazement, refunded the price of his non-refundable ticket.

Before he could leave however he was again surrounded by TSA employees who told him he couldn't leave the security area. One, who kept insisting he was trying to help Tyner, told him that if he left he would be subject to a civil suit and a $10,000 fine.

Tyner asked if the agents who escorted him from the security area would also be sued and fined.

The same man who told Tyner he would be sued and fined if he left, also insisted that he did not tell him he couldn't leave.

So Tyner left.

Two hours later he wrote the whole experience up on his blog and posted the audio files to YouTube.

You could say it has gone viral.

By Saturday evening, 70,000 people had accessed the entry and 488 comments were posted to the blog item. Those comments are divided over Tyner's experience. "Only 5 percent say I'm an idiot," he said.

Far more applaud him for "standing up" to the security forces. Many more people share his disdain for how airport security is conducted.

"People generally are angry about what is going on," said Tyner, "but they don't know how to assert their rights....there is a general feeling that TSA is ineffective, out of control, over-reaching."

If Tyner has touched some undercurrent of resentment, he doesn't want to be the guy who leads the charge to overturn the machines. "I'm not so sure I'm the right person to start a movement," he said.

If he isn't, he can sound like he's auditioning for the job.

Tyner points out that every terrorist act on an airplane has been halted by passengers. "It's time to stop treating passengers like criminals and start treating them as assets," he said.

Blog post by John Tyner can be found here.

Rights for Non Citizens Courtesy of FlexYourRights

National Security Agency Executive Indicted

From Cato@Liberty

On Thursday, the government indicted former National Security Agency executive Thomas Drake for obstructing justice and mishandling classified documents—though the underlying crime, for which Drake was not actually charged, was leaking embarrassing information to national security reporter Siobhan Gorman (then of the Baltimore Sun, now at The Wall Street Journal). As Glenn Greenwald observes, the decision to move forward with a rare leak prosecution in Drake’s case stands in rather sharp contrast to the decision to look the other way when it comes to other sorts of wrongdoing in the world of intelligence.
For years, the NSA managed a sweeping program of warrantless wiretaps and large-scale data mining, which a federal judge recently confirmed was in gross violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The telecoms who participated in the scheme were, equally clearly, violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The FBI separately and systematically flouted the same law by obtaining call records for thousands of phone numbers without any legitimate legal process. And, of course, there’s the little matter of torture. For these crimes, the administration has pronounced a verdict of “boys will be boys,” on the grounds that it’s better to gaze boldly into our shining future than get bogged down in recriminations over all that old stuff.

Watch It Here: 10 Rules for Dealing with Police

Watch It Here: 10 Rules for Dealing with Police

Posted using ShareThis

10 Rules for Dealing with Police, the new film from Flex Your Rights, premiered at Cato earlier this week. If you’re interested in knowing more about how to defend your rights during encounters with law enforcement, this is a must-see. You can watch the whole thing below, which includes discussion and commentary after the film.

Workplace Movements Tracked?

Many office buildings have scanners that give access to the building. Many offices are switching to personal scanners that are unique to the individual. Some offices even have scanners in different parts of the building that can "read" where the employee is in the building. Disconcerting for purposes of civil liberties perhaps but could be useful if dealing with alibi or surveillance issues. Check out this excerpt from article from "How Stuff Works".
Security passcards are often used to gain entry into areas and buildings with restricted access. The security passcard may be for general access, meaning that the passcard does not provide data about the person using it, or it may be individually encoded, containing specific information about the cardholder.

Typically, the data on an encoded security passcard includes:
* Name
* ID # (social security number or other unique number)
* Access level (where you're allowed to go)
An individually-encoded passcard looks a lot like a credit card. The stripe on the back of the security passcard is a magnetic stripe, often called a magstripe. The magstripe is made up of tiny, iron-based magnetic particles in a plastic-like film. Each particle is really a very tiny bar magnet, about 20 millionths of an inch long. The magstripe on the back of the card is very similar to a piece of cassette tape.

The magstripe can be "written" because the tiny bar magnets can be magnetized in either a north- or south-pole direction. When the polarity of the bars aligns in the same direction, the card is blank. To write data requires a process called flux reversal. Basically, the polarity of a bar is reversed so that the north pole is facing the north pole of the adjacent bar (N-N) or the south pole is facing the south pole (S-S). This causes a change in the magnetic field that can be detected by the card reader. Since there can be two different flux reversals, N-N or S-S, there can be two different information states. This corresponds nicely to the binary system of 1s and 0s used by computers.

Miranda?

aka We know you asked for an attorney 14 days ago but we decided to check on you and see if you still really wanted an attorney? In the new US Supreme Court case of Maryland v. Shatzer, the majority of the Court ruled that police may reinitiate questioning after a suspect has requested counsel as long as a sufficient period of time passes. What is a sufficient time? 14 days the Court decides...more below from the New York Times (full article here).

The police can take a second run at questioning a suspect who has invoked his Miranda rights, but they must wait until 14 days after the suspect has been released from custody, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The case arose from a second attempt to question Michael B. Shatzer, a Maryland man suspected of sexually abusing his young son. Mr. Shatzer, who was in prison for another sex crime, was first visited by a police detective in 2003. Mr. Shatzer invoked his rights under the 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona and refused to answer questions without a lawyer.

Two and a half years later, still in prison, Mr. Shatzer was approached by a different detective. This time, Mr. Shatzer waived his Miranda rights and made incriminating statements about abusing his son.

Mr. Shatzer’s lawyer moved to suppress those statements, relying on a 1981 Supreme Court decision, Edwards v. Arizona, which said that once a suspect had asked for a lawyer under Miranda, the authorities may not resume questioning.

The issue in Mr. Shatzer’s case, as Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for seven justices, was whether that prohibition on further questioning was “eternal.”

Justice Scalia said the main reason to forbid repeated attempts at questioning was to prevent badgering of a suspect held in custody while a crime was under investigation. He added that voluntary confessions were “an unmitigated good” and that suspects were always free to invoke their Miranda rights again when approached for further questioning.

Taken to an extreme, Justice Scalia added, the prohibition on further attempts at questioning would confer a sort of immunity on suspects who had once invoked their rights — even if the subsequent questioning concerned another crime in another jurisdiction.

The court could have answered only the question directly presented in Mr. Shatzer’s case — whether a gap of more than two years was sufficient to allow further efforts at questioning. In a concurrence endorsing the result but declining to adopt the majority’s reasoning, Justice John Paul Stevens said that was the route he would have taken.

But in a move that Justice Scalia conceded was “certainly unusual,” the justices in the majority picked a specific time period — 14 days after release from custody — after which the police could restart their efforts.

Judge Tosses NSA Spy Case-

The Electronic Frontier Foundation intends on appealing a ruling issued earlier this week in San Francisco by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker. The Judge dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails. The lawsuits accuse the government of teaming with the nation’s telcom companies to funnel Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision was a major blow to the two suits testing warrantless eavesdropping and executive branch powers implemented following the 2001 terror attacks. The San Francisco judge said the courts are not available to the public to mount that challenge.

“A citizen may not gain standing by claiming a right to have the government follow the law,” (.pdf) Walker ruled late Thursday.

Read More here

FBI Catch the Call? Subpoena the Records

FBI broke law for years in phone record searches...(The Washington Post reports full article here.)

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.
The FBI's general counsel says Director Robert S. Mueller III did not learn about the unlawful collection of phone records until 2006, when they ended.

Additional documents here.

Big Case on Voting Disenfranchisement with Criminal Convictions

From Ninth Circuit Blog:

Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Farrakhan v. Gregoire, No. 06-35669 (1-5-10). This is a big civil rights/disenfranchisement case. Originally filed in 1996, plaintiffs contended that due to racial discrimination in the State of Washington's criminal justice system, the automatic disenfranchisement of felons resulted in the denial of the right to vote on account of race. This violated Sec. 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The 9th (Tashima joined by Reinhardt) reversed the district court’s denial of summary judgment for plaintiffs in a 1983 action brought by minority citizens of Washington state who had lost their right to vote pursuant to the state’s felon disenfranchisement provision. In a prior appeal, Farrakhan v. Washington, 338 F.3d 1009 (9th Cir. 2003), cert denied, 543 U.S. 984 (2004) ("Farrakhan I"), this court reversed the district court’s summary judgment and held that vote denial claims challenging felon disenfranchisement laws were cognizable under § 2 of the VRA.

The 9th first found that Farrakhan I remained binding precedent despite contrary decisions from the 1st, 2nd, and 11th circuits. The 9th recognized the circuit split with its decision in Farrakhan I, but did not recognized Farrakhan I as clearly erroneous or that it needed to be reconsidered. The 9th found that the plaintiffs had standing, and that the plaintiffs had demonstrated that the discriminatory impact of Washington’s felon disenfranchisement was attributable to racial discrimination in Washington’s criminal justice system. The panel thus held that Washington’s felon disenfranchisement law violated § 2 of the VRA. The 9th remanded with instructions to grant summary judgment to plaintiffs given the evidence already before the court. Dissenting, Judge McKeown argued that the majority erred in granting summary judgment for the plaintiffs and that the proper approach would have been to remand the case to the district court for consideration of the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment. On remand, the court would weigh the evidence as to racial discrimination, and to assess other factors to determine if the VRA had been violated.

Given the state constitutional issues, the statutory VRA issues, and a circuit split, plus the shadow of McCleskey, this could well be headed to the Supremes, if there is not an en banc first.

A Sonic Silver Bullet for Fighting Crime

Gunshot monitoring technology scores big with local police.

From CNN.com:

Police surveillance cameras can make civil libertarians queasy. But what if cops could listen for dangerous crime instead of watching?

Enter ShotSpotter, a Mountain View, Calif., company that has installed microphones on telephone poles in 45 cities and counties across the U.S. with few complaints from local citizens.

ShotSpotter monitors only one thing: gunshots. Its microphones can detect a gunshot from a mile or more away. The system determines the exact location of each shot using triangulation and wirelessly transmits a recording of the sound to police dispatchers. Today ShotSpotter monitors about 125 square miles with 900,000 inhabitants and charges $25,000 per square mile of coverage. The company is expanding, with 50 employees and counting.

The system was installed in San Francisco late last year as part of a crime-fighting initiative. Since the beginning of the year, the city's homicide rate has dropped 50%.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, the microphones have already had a deterrent effect. "There's an understanding within the criminal element of the technology, and I think that's causing incidents to decrease," says Lt. Mikail Ali, who oversees monitoring of the two-square-mile area covered.

CEO James Beldock, 34, who took over the company from scientist founder Robert Showen in 2004, was struggling with anemic growth until he acquired a small wireless company in 2005. That let ShotSpotter lose the cumbersome telephone wiring required by earlier versions of the technology.

ShotSpotter's clients include the U.S. Army, which has been testing the system in Iraq. As a result, the Commerce Department classified the microphones as military munitions, which meant that they couldn't be exported. But Beldock fought back, spending roughly $500,000 on lawyers and consultants. "Night-vision goggles went through the same thing 15 years ago," he shrugs.

It paid off: ShotSpotter won the right to pitch its product to police chiefs around the world. Its first target: Brazil, another country with a history of major gun violence.

Full article here.

FBI Delves Into DMV Photos in Search for Fugitives

(AP) - In its search for fugitives, the FBI has begun using facial-recognition technology on millions of motorists, comparing driver's license photos with pictures of convicts in a high-tech analysis of chin widths and nose sizes.

The project in North Carolina has already helped nab at least one suspect. Agents are eager to look for more criminals and possibly to expand the effort nationwide. But privacy advocates worry that the method allows authorities to track people who have done nothing wrong.

"Everybody's participating, essentially, in a virtual lineup by getting a driver's license," said Christopher Calabrese, an attorney who focuses on privacy issues at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Earlier this year, investigators learned that a double-homicide suspect named Rodolfo Corrales had moved to North Carolina. The FBI took a 1991 booking photo from California and compared it with 30 million photos stored by the motor vehicle agency in Raleigh.

In seconds, the search returned dozens of drivers who resembled Corrales, and an FBI analyst reviewed a gallery of images before zeroing in on a man who called himself Jose Solis.

A week later, after corroborating Corrales' identity, agents arrested him in High Point, southwest of Greensboro, where they believe he had built a new life under the assumed name. Corrales is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles later this month.

"Running facial recognition is not very labor-intensive at all," analyst Michael Garcia said. "If I can probe a hundred fugitives and get one or two, that's a home run."

Facial-recognition software is not entirely new, but the North Carolina project is the first major step for the FBI as it considers expanding use of the technology to find fugitives nationwide.

So-called biometric information that is unique to each person also includes fingerprints and DNA. More distant possibilities include iris patterns in the eye, voices, scent and even a person's gait.

FBI officials have organized a panel of authorities to study how best to increase use of the software. It will take at least a year to establish standards for license photos, and there's no timetable to roll out the program nationally.

Full article here.

Sealing of Los Angeles Courtroom in Wrongful Death Suit of Jewish Defense League Member Has First Amendment Implications

A Los Angeles Federal Judge closed a two-day trial this week in a highly unusual and controversial order. The trial is a civil wrongful death action involving the 2005 prison killing of Jewish Defense League activist Earl Krugel. Earl Krugel was imprisoned in the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Phoenix for plotting the bombing of a Culver City mosque and an Arab American politician's office. Three days after Krugel's arrival, David Frank Jennings, a tattooed racist housed in the general population of the medium-security facility, used a paving stone from the prison recreation yard to bludgeon Krugel to death with five blows to the head. Thirty-five years was added to Jennings sentence for the murder. Krugel's widow brought a wrongful death suit. Prison officials requested the closure claiming sensitive information related to gangs and security in inmate management and prison security. Previously, the United States Supreme Court has rejected prison security as a reason to close a trial in a case involving racial segregation in California prisons. An excerpt from the article (full article here):

Constitutional scholars and press-freedom advocates deemed the broad secrecy accorded the trial by U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson perplexing -- and a likely violation of the 1st Amendment.
Wilson issued a protective order covering U.S. Bureau of Prisons policies and practices in evaluating inmates for gang affiliation and potential to harm others. In deference to the order, Wilson banished media and spectators from the courtroom Tuesday and Wednesday, from the swearing in of the first witness through closing arguments.His ruling late Thursday was filed under seal.
"This is outrageous. This is not Russia, North Korea or Iran. This is the United States," said Benjamin Schonbrun, attorney for Krugel's widow, Lola, who was seeking damages for the wrongful death of her husband at the hands of a known white supremacist.

Permission Wall Graffiti: Embracing Graffiti As Art

Murals of Belfast
Great Post from Grits for Breakfast about having graffiti in public spaces. An excerpt:

By having "permission walls", the artists are able to develop their craft without time and/or legal constraints, allowing for more complete, intricate pieces of public art. In Orlando, the trend of giving street artists “permission walls,” or walls where they have permission to paint their work, has tamed some of the sabotage. By allowing graffiti artists to work with permission, they are free to develop their craft without fear of getting caught before completion, and the artwork becomes a colorful, mural-sized effort to which the artists can point with pride. These permission walls encourage friendly competition between teams, or crews, and there is a sense of pride among them for having created something with great exposure.

GPS Tracker on Car Without a Warrant?

An interesting circuit split is developing on the issue of whether the police should be able to put a GPS tracking device on your car without first obtaining a warrant. In State of Wisconsin v. Sveum, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld the use of a GPS device to gain information on the travel of Sveum:

The result is a detailed history, including time information, of the device’s location and, hence, the vehicle’s location. While Sveum’s car was in his driveway, police secretly attached the device to the underside of his car with a magnet and tape. The police tracked Sveum’s car with the device for about five weeks. During this time, Sveum parked his car in his enclosed garage and inside a garage at his place of employment, a car care center.

We agree with the State that neither a search nor a seizure occurs when the police use a GPS device to track a vehicle while it is visible to the general public. The seminal cases on this topic are United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983), and United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705 (1984).

By contrast, in People v. Weaver, the New York Court of Appeals held that using a GPS device to track movements without a warrant does violate the New York State Constitution:

It would appear clear to us that the great popularity of GPS technology for its many useful applications, may not be taken simply as a massive, undifferentiated concession of personal privacy to agents of the state. Indeed, contemporary technology projects our private activities into public space as never before. Cell technology has moved presumptively private phone conversation from the enclosure of Katz's phone booth to the open sidewalk and the car, and the advent of portable computing devices has re-situated transactions of all kinds to relatively public spaces. It is fair to say, and we think consistent with prevalent social views, that this change in venue has not been accompanied by any dramatic diminution in the socially reasonable expectation that our communications and transactions will remain to a large extent private.

UK Study Shows Cameras in Public Places Do Little To Reduce Crime

From The Guardian full article here)

The use of closed-circuit television in city and town centres and public housing estates does not have a significant effect on crime, according to Home Office-funded research to be distributed to all police forces in England and Wales this summer.

The review of 44 research studies on CCTV schemes by the Campbell Collaboration found that they do have a modest impact on crime overall but are at their most effective in cutting vehicle crime in car parks, especially when used alongside improved lighting and the introduction of security guards.

The authors, who include Cambridge University criminologist, David Farrington, say while their results lend support for the continued use of CCTV, schemes should be far more narrowly targeted at reducing vehicle crime in car parks.

Results from a 2007 study in Cambridge which looked at the impact of 30 cameras in the city centre showed that they had no effect on crime but led to an increase in the reporting of assault, robbery and other violent crimes to the police.

See-Thru Body Scanner the Norm By Summer

This alarming news reported from the ACLU Blog of Rights regarding the "Naked Scanner" that will be standard in US airports by summer:

Yesterday, Slate’s William Saletan wrote about the TSA’s new policy towards body scanner —a.k.a. "naked"—machines. Saletan points out that two years ago, the naked machines were offered as an alternative to physical pat-down searches to passengers who set off the metal detectors or were flagged for a secondary screening. Naked machines were considered less invasive than the grope-and-grab.

Well, the alternative will soon become the norm this summer, when the strip-search machines will replace the metal detectors in several U.S. airports. That’s right: this summer, you will no longer have a choice of whether to enter the naked machine or not. As Saletan puts it, the choice is "Show us your body, or we’ll feel you up."

Federal Judge Enjoins Penn "Sexting" Prosecution

A Federal Judge on Monday barred a Pennsylvania Prosecutor from filing charges of child pornography against three teenage girls that were caught with explicit pictures of themselves. The ACLU filed a lawsuit on the girls' behalf, arguing that the proposed prosecution violated freedom of speech and parental rights. More details from Reuters article:

By Jon Hurdle

PHILADELPHIA, March 30 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday barred a Pennsylvania prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against three teenage girls caught with sexually suggestive pictures of themselves on their cell phones.

U.S. District Judge James Munley said he was issuing a restraining order on Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick because his proposed action would violate freedom of speech and parental rights.

The ruling came after the American Civil Liberties Union sued Skumanick on behalf of the girls and their families.

"The court agrees with the plaintiffs that the public interest would be served by issuing a TRO (temporary restraining order) in this matter as the public interest is on the side of protecting constitutional rights," the judge said.

The case has attracted national attention and revolves around the growing practice among teens of "sexting," a play on the term texting, in which nude or semi-nude photos are sent on cell phones or posted on the Internet.