May 26, 2011
There is no right to privacy, unless you’re a police officer
Jon sent me a link to this post at Reason.com, discussing the odd court decisions which seem to indicate that you have no right to privacy, but that the police do:
Such incidents have led to a national conversation about the propriety of videotaping cops, even as dashboard cameras have become standard in squad cars. There seems to be some tension in the assumption that, as Graber’s lawyer put it, “the officer has a privacy expectation, but the motorist doesn’t.”
That asymmetry has been underscored by recent rulings over global positioning systems. Last year the Virginia Court of Appeals said Fairfax County police did not violate a suspect’s right to privacy when, without a warrant, they surreptitiously put a GPS device on his vehicle to track his movements. Individuals have no expectation of privacy on the public streets, the court ruled — a position also taken by the Ninth Circuit in California.
Yet this past January, Kathy Byron, a member of Virginia’s House of Delegates, introduced legislation that would have forbidden the use of GPS tracking devices for the purpose of following political candidates. People running for public office “are still entitled to some privacy,” she argued.
Even more disturbing is the steady increase in what the police are allowed to do without a warrant or even suspicion of criminal activity:
U.S. border-patrol agents often search the phones and computers of American citizens who cross the border — routinely “accessing email accounts, examining photographs and looking through personal calendars,” according to The Constitution Project, a watchdog group. “In some cases, electronic devices were confiscated for as long as a year.” And in Michigan, the State Police have high-tech forensic devices enabling them to download information from the cell phones of stopped motorists — something they have been doing without a warrant.
[. . .]
Soon Americans might have no right to expect privacy even in the privacy of their own homes. Earlier this month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that police officers may force their way into your domicile without your consent, without a warrant, and without what are usually referred to as “exigent circumstances” — e.g., someone inside the home yelling for help. The case, Kentucky v. King, concerned an incident in which police officers chasing a drug suspect ran into an apartment building, smelled marijuana, heard noises they thought might indicate someone was destroying evidence — and broke down the wrong door. This, said the Supremes, was perfectly fine.
May 22, 2011
The Tory “omnibus crime legislation” overview
Kathryn Blaze Carlson looks at the likely form of the new federal government’s “tough on crime” omnibus bill:
The Conservative government’s omnibus crime legislation, due ‘‘within 100 days,’’ will mark a watershed moment in Canadian legal history, imposing many controversial changes to how police and the courts operate, experts say.
The bill is sweeping in scale and scope: It is expected to usher new mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes — growing five marijuana plants to sell the drug would automatically bring six months in jail — and for certain sexual offences against children. It will expand police powers online without court orders, reintroduce controversial aspects of the Anti-Terrorism Act that expired in 2007, end house arrest for serious crimes, and impact young offenders and their privacy.
“This bundle of crime legislation represents the most comprehensive agenda for crime reform since the Criminal Code was introduced,” said Steven Skurka, a Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer.
As always, when the government bundles together a lot of bills, there are some good and some bad ideas all headed down the chute at the same time. An especially bad bit is the preventative arrest provision that expired with the original Anti-Terrorism Act, and another one is the one allowing the police to demand internet records from ISPs without a court order (or, one assumes, notice to the people whose internet records are of interest to the police).
May 19, 2011
Making light: are LED flashlights now “tacticool”?
Chris Dumm has a bit of fun reviewing an LED flashlight:
Remember back when Mag-lite was the last word in aircraft-grade aluminum illumination? Those old incandescent Mag-Lites weren’t any brighter than ordinary flashlights, but their indestructible machined-aluminum bodies made them the choice of police, private security, Elvis and burglars. They were “tacticool” before people had a chance to learn to hate that word. The longer D-cell Mag-lites resembled aluminum billy clubs; they delivered a more devastating blow than any Monadnock PR-24 police baton ever could. Despite their size and weight, however, they still weren’t all that bright.
Then new technology arrived in the form of noble gas (Xenon bulbs) and heavy metal (Lithium batteries). SureFire and Streamlight built flashlights bright enough to temporarily blind and disorient a target without having to bash his brains in with five D-cell batteries wrapped in an aluminum Little League bat. And they were tough enough to drown, drop and attach to the hardest-kicking riot shotguns in the SWAT unit’s arsenal without fizzling out at the worst possible moment.
The new flashlights were rugged, dazzlingly bright and incredibly compact. Their only drawbacks: astronomical prices (for lights, bulbs, and batteries) and battery run-times of one hour or less. They quickly became the law enforcement standard, until LED technology took the lead and never looked back.
May 18, 2011
Neil Davenport: The cognitive dissonance of “SlutWalk”
It’s possible to feel a bit sorry for Michael Sanguinetti, whose anachronistic, ill-advised, yet well-intended caution to female students at Osgoode Hall in Toronto triggered the SlutWalk phenomenon. By phrasing his advice in such a retrogressive way, he became the poster boy for all that women perceive as being wrong with the criminal justice system’s approach to solving the problem of violence against women.
However, as Neil Davenport points out, the reaction seems to be directed at the legal system and attitudes of thirty years ago, not the system of today:
The legal system, at least officially, now takes any accusation of sexual assault against women very seriously. It’s ironic that SlutWalk is supposedly exposing the ineffectiveness of a legal system at a time of high-profile sexual assault charges made against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. More than ever, law enforcers in Britain and the US are likelier to act on an accusation of assault, even if the alleged crime took place years previously.
Faced with such a gap between feminist thinking and how society actually views violence against women, the anger expressed by SlutWalk protestors and cheerleading feminists rings a bit hollow. Although the protestors are aiming to avoid being victimised on the basis of what they wear, their offence taken at one police officer’s comments suggests a willingness to claim the mantle of victimhood for themselves. In this case, women are victims of a patriarchal state that doesn’t take violence against them seriously, even though the evidence suggests that the state is all too keen to monitor and regulate any type of contact between men and women. Feminists used to have many issues on which to express genuine grievance on the unequal treatment of women in society: equal pay and employment rights, abortion rights and so on. But since many of these issues have been resolved, more or less, there seems to be an on-going search for examples of oppression to facilitate the elevation of women to the exalted status of victimhood.
It’s perhaps not helped that the frothy issue of sexual identity is at the heart of the SlutWalk debacle. Some feminists argue that the protestors are feeding into a wider ‘raunch culture’ that is having a debilitating impact on young women. The sexualisation of society, the argument goes, is pressurising more young women to make themselves available to men in order to be accepted. SlutWalk is simply buying into the old madonna/whore duality that was often cited as an example of women’s inferior status in society. Again, though, this ignores how far society’s attitudes towards sex and women have changed. Women’s greater independence in society and the depoliticisation of marriage and the nuclear family have all helped transform attitudes towards women and sex.
Reminder: check state law before videotaping the police
Clive sent me this Wendy McElroy post from last year, but it’s still (mostly) valid today:
In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.
Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.
The legal justification for arresting the “shooter” rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where “no expectation of privacy exists” (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.
It shouldn’t need to be said that the police and the courts who’ve backed the police on this issue are wrong. But they appear to be running scared, at least in a few states:
Carlos Miller at the Photography Is Not A Crime website offers an explanation: “For the second time in less than a month, a police officer was convicted from evidence obtained from a videotape. The first officer to be convicted was New York City Police Officer Patrick Pogan, who would never have stood trial had it not been for a video posted on Youtube showing him body slamming a bicyclist before charging him with assault on an officer. The second officer to be convicted was Ottawa Hills (Ohio) Police Officer Thomas White, who shot a motorcyclist in the back after a traffic stop, permanently paralyzing the 24-year-old man.”
When the police act as though cameras were the equivalent of guns pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse. And the police want it to stop.
May 14, 2011
For their next act, they’ll allow “quartering large bodies of armed troops”
Indiana must be an interesting place to live, but their Supreme Court has an odd view of the notion that a man’s home is his castle:
Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.
In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.
“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”
And as I’m sure the law’n’order folks will be quick to point out, if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to worry about, right?
Even better, this is the second time this week that the court has reduced the rights of Indiana residents against police intrusion:
This is the second major Indiana Supreme Court ruling this week involving police entry into a home.
On Tuesday, the court said police serving a warrant may enter a home without knocking if officers decide circumstances justify it. Prior to that ruling, police serving a warrant would have to obtain a judge’s permission to enter without knocking.
H/T to Walter Olson for the link.
May 12, 2011
Afghanistan isn’t a “state”
Much of the problem with current expectations about the eventual outcome of the Afghan mission rest on the notion that Afghanistan is a country in the same way that Hungary or Denmark is a state. It’s not a state:
While the foreign troops are in Afghanistan to deal with international terrorism and the heroin (90 percent of it comes from Afghanistan), most Afghans see all this foreign intervention as a splendid opportunity. It’s as if Afghans were saying to foreign troops, “to you it’s a war, to me it’s an opportunity.” This is an ancient Afghan attitude. Afghanistan may appear to be at the corner of no and where, but it is actually astride the primary invasion route from Central Asia to India (including Pakistan which is still, historically and culturally, part of India). The Afghans have long since learned to step aside as the foreign invaders move through. Actually, many Afghans would join the invaders, so much so that these invasions, and the loot and stories the survivors brought back, have become a major part of the Afghan collective memory. Most Westerners have not got a clue about this cultural tradition, and how much it influences the behavior of most Afghans. Such culture shock is not unusual, but because of the greater isolation of Afghanistan from the rest of the world, there is more of it.
Part of the culture shock is the realization that Afghanistan is not a country, at least not in the Western sense of the world. In Western terms, Afghanistan is a feudal monarchy. That means that the “king” (president Karzai) serves, and survives, at the sufferance of the local barons (warlords, drug gang leaders, provincial governors, tribal leaders). Until the last few centuries, this was how things worked in the West. But in many parts of the world, and especially in Afghanistan, the medieval mind, and form of government, is alive and well.
While many residents of Kabul (the capital and largest city) would like a modern (efficient and much less corrupt) Western style government, the “rural aristocracy” (corrupt local leaders) have no interest in this kind of central control. Thus the rural leaders do whatever they can to prevent an the creation of efficient national army or police force. Local leaders will attempt, often successfully, to corrupt the military and police units in their neighborhood. National level politicians also like to “own” army or police units, and if they can’t do that, they will try to steal money meant for the security forces. So NATO commanders have come to evaluate the effectiveness of Afghan police and army units based on the honesty of the commander, and his ability to deal with all those officials who want to buy him off. There are not many Afghan unit commanders who make the grade. To do so means you must behave in a decidedly unconventional manner.
This is why the whole notion of “nation building” is the right title for the wrong idea. Afghanistan needs a nation to be constructed, but it will take much more than just suppressing the Taliban and the heroin trade. No nation can go from a feudal/tribal level to nation-state in a generation — at least, no nation ever has, and there’s no chance that Afghanistan will be the first to do so.
April 30, 2011
The Toronto Sun goes full gonzo on Jack Layton
In an earlier post, I was wondering if the mainstream media was going to give Jack Layton and the NDP the same kind of coverage that they had been devoting to the Liberal and Conservative campaigns. Instead of doing the same thing, one of Toronto’s newspapers decided to channel their British tabloid counterparts:
Jack Layton was found laying naked on a bed by Toronto Police at a suspected Chinatown bawdy house in 1996, a retired Toronto police officer told the Toronto Sun.
The stunning revelation about the current leader of the New Democratic Party comes days before the federal election at a time when his popularity is soaring.
When the policeman and his partner walked into a second-floor room at the Toronto massage parlour, they saw an attractive 5-foot-10 Asian woman who was in her mid-20s and the married, then-Metro councillor, lying on his back in bed.
Layton was cautioned by police and released without being charged.
So no crime was committed, no charges were laid, and it happened in 1996. Perfect time to pull it out at the very end of an election campaign.
“When police decide they need to make an arrest, he said, they find a way to make an arrest”
Not the finest day in Albertan justice:
Charges have been dropped against three Alberta men accused of shooting dead a pregnant wild horse and tossing its body down a hillside. For more than a year, the RCMP and the Crown were sure they had the right guys. They even charged the then-12-year-old son of Jason Nixon, one of the accused. But then, just as the trial began, the defence produced an important piece of exculpatory evidence: The horse hadn’t been shot.
The Mounties had assumed it had been. They were operating on a tip from a man named Dave Goertz. Mr. Goertz, as everyone involved in the case knew, was a crackhead and a meth addict. He reported the crime after a local group that defends Alberta’s wild horse population posted a $25,000 reward.
[. . .]
Apparently, the word of a drug addict was enough for the guardians of our justice system to arrest three innocent men and run them all the way to trial, costing them their jobs, a small fortune and untold grief.
[. . .]
The horse had been badly decomposed, apparently, by the time police found it, so determining whether it had been shot wasn’t possible. And yet, lacking critical evidence, the province proceeded with its prosecution for wilfully killing and careless use of a firearm. The three men faced a maximum of five years in prison.
This kind of thing, said defence lawyer Willie deWit, “is what happens in our system a lot of times.” When police decide they need to make an arrest, he said, they find a way to make an arrest. They ignore anything that might exculpate the accused, and seize on anything that feeds their assumptions of guilt.
April 27, 2011
Syrian update
With attention focused on Libya, the Syrian situation is still highly volatile:
Bashir Assad clings to power by manipulating the fear within the many factions supporting him that they would have to flee the country, to avoid death or prison, if the current government fell. Then there is the threat that the security forces would use extreme violence to suppress the demonstrations. This, however, could enrage the general population and trigger a bloody civil war. The only thing everyone can agree on is a desire for peaceful resolution of the crises. But Assad and his cronies don’t want to give up power, and they may have to risk everything to find out how far most Syrians are willing to go to force big changes.
Five weeks of escalating violence have left over 200 dead, and over a thousand arrested (and hundreds later released). While nearly all the dead are protestors, more security forces personnel are getting killed. The government is using armed militias (from the groups that have always supported the Assad dictatorship) as well as the police and “special” (secret) police to try and control or terrorize the growing number of demonstrators. There are also said to be small numbers (hundreds) of “security specialists” from Iran. Some Hezbollah gunmen are believed involved as well, and Syrians are accusing these “foreigners” for many of the killings. While most of the leadership posts in the police and army are held by minorities (like the Alawite sect the Assads belong to), most of the troops are majority Sunni Arab. Thus Assad controls management, but has to be careful with the rank and file.
If enough civilians hit the streets, there won’t be enough security forces to confront them, and the entire structure of the Assad police state will start coming apart. Iran might try to stop it, with a massive transfer (by air) of security personnel, and many more from Hezbollah entering by land. Hezbollah loses a lot if it no longer has those land supply routes from Syria. Meanwhile, each Friday (the Moslem Sunday), the demonstrations get larger. The way things have been going, it won’t be many more Fridays before Assad and his crew are gone, or the country is getting blown apart by civil war. It’s unclear if democracy or a new dictatorship will replace the old government. There are many tribes and factions in Syria, and predicting how they will all shake out is not possible.
Update: Just so you don’t forget, at the same time the Syrian government is attempting to suppress the demonstrations, it is running (unopposed) for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.
April 20, 2011
Logic, consistency not strong points for this would-be terror gang
A group of would-be terrorists were discovered before they could put their plans into action partly because of their disdain for “infidel” technology:
Recently, a British Moslem (Rajib Karim) was sentenced to 30 years for attempting to use his job at British Airways to help plan, coordinate and carry out terrorist attacks. One reason Karim was caught was the refusal of his terrorist cohorts in Yemen and Bangladesh to use modern cryptography for their communications. The reason was that the modern stuff was all invented by infidels (non-Moslems). Instead the group was forced to use ancient (over 2,000 year old) single letter substitution codes. The group’s implementation of this was accomplished using a spreadsheet. Unlike modern ciphers, like PGP and AES, the ancient substitution methods are easy to crack with modern decryption techniques.
A major shortcoming of Islamic radicalism is its disdain for modern, particularly non-Moslem (Western) technology. This often causes problems, like the one Karim (a computer specialist with British Airways) had with his less educated fellow terrorists in Yemen and Bangladesh. But what Karim encountered was another major problem for Islamic radicals, the fact that these groups tend to attract a disproportionate number of poorly educated recruits. The Islamic world, in general, is less educated and literate than the West, thus giving Islamic radical groups a poorly educated pool of potential recruits to begin with.
The disdain is highly selective, unless spreadsheets were also part of the Arabic cultural heritage.
April 14, 2011
British high court rules 2009 G20 “kettling” illegal
While I may disagree with the protesters and their messages, the police “kettling” technique has always disturbed me far more. Britain’s high court has now ruled that police broke the law while kettling G20 protesters in 2009:
In a landmark judgment on Thursday, high court judges found for protesters who had claimed police treated them unfairly. It also criticised the use of force by officers.
In the case, the court heard that officers used punches to the face, slaps and shields against demonstrators who police chiefs accept had nothing to do with violence. The judgment does not strike down the police tactic of kettling or mass detention, but it will be seen as a rebuff to the Met.
The judgment places limits on the use of kettling. It says: “The police may only take such preventive action as a last resort catering for situations about to descend into violence.”
March 17, 2011
Police and fire unions threaten to “boycott” businesses that support Wisconsin governor
You’ve got a nice office here, guv. Shame if anything were to happen to it, y’know?
Here is another reason public unions should not be allowed to collectively bargain with politicians running a local or state government. Union leadership — including those from law enforcement and firefighters — have sent letters out to local businesses demanding they publicly oppose the efforts of Wisconsin’s legislature and governor or face the consequences.
Not only are they suggesting they publicly oppose the fiscal-sanity measures in Wisconsin, they are flat out telling them they will publicly boycott businesses who do not proactively do so. From James Taranto’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
In the letter to Wisconsin businessmen, however, we see why so-called collective bargaining is particularly corrupting to the police. Although the letter explicitly threatens only an economic boycott, when it is written on behalf of the police — of those on whom all citizens depend to protect their safety — it invariably raises the prospect of another kind of boycott. Can a businessman who declines this heavy-handed “request” be confident that the police will do their job if he is the victim of a crime — particularly if the crime itself is in retaliation for his refusal to support “the dedicated public employees who serve our communities”?
LauraW clarifies the message here:
We’re the Police and Firefighters Unions.
If you don’t accede to our demand, we’ll put you on The Naughty List. And, um….boycott you. That’s our threat. We’ll boycott you. That’s all.
Right.
…did we forget to mention that we are cops and firefighters?
Just checking. Making sure you caught that.
H/T to Jon for the link.
