Abbie Hoffman Moment

Kansas City Judge Says It's Okay To Drive Drunk If You're A Firefighter

Wyandotte County; Kansas City, Kansas......Firefighter Michael Quinn drove a fire truck, while he was off duty, through the lawns of some unsuspecting people after consuming enough booze to boost his blood alcohol to .09 three hours after the accident! District judge Aaron Roberts may dismiss the case because, while everyone else who refuses a breathalyzer or blood test when suspected of drunk driving, it was unreasonable search and seizure in Michael Quinn's case. Does that sound fair to everyone in Kansas who has been convicted of DUI based upon similarly gathered evidence? Does that sound like it sets a precedent that will encourage safe highways and fewer traffic accidents? Has the honorable Judge Roberts considered that the auto insurance of every driver in Kansas may become more expensive if his obvious favoritism of a government employee sets precedence forcing courts to allow every driver in Kansas to potentially enjoy the same legal privilege? If he hasn't, he should, because at the very least, such a decision will keep the Supreme Court in Kansas busy for awhile.

Frisbee Golf, Anyone?

While on the subject of abuses of law enforcement, and unlawful search and seizure, here's some cell phone footage from Ankeny, Iowa. A cop was simply not satisfied with a routine traffic stop and expressed an unrequited desire to unlawfully search the car he had pulled over. The driver declined the offer, and eventually left, but not without recording the incident. Now the police in Iowa want everyone to know that they are terribly sorry about the whole thing, and that it is just a small, isolated incident. Once again, the advice is worth reiteration: always record interactions with police.

Yet Another Attack On The Fourth Amendment

Here we go again. The Cyber Security Information Sharing Act of 2014, courtesy, once again, of Dianne Feinstein, would allow sharing of personal information between major internet sites and the United States government. You can get in touch with your representative here to request that your Fourth Amendment rights be protected and this bill be scrapped. On the bright side, Apple's new mobile operating system, i0S8, was engineered only to unlock for the owner of the device, even if Apple or the retailer is presented with a search warrant. Of course, this would not even be an issue if the United States Government would just let J. Edgar Hoovers tactics remain in another era.

ACLU Addresses The Rights Of Photography

It's become abundantly clear, lately, that police officers in America do not like added scrutiny provided by amateur and professional photographers and cell phone users. Unfortunately, this finding also coincides with a massive revelation that police officers often think that they are above the law, and can inflict violence whenever their little hearts desire, even to the point of murder. Many of them do not even understand the United States Constitution, much less respect it.

The good news is that those of us who take pictures of police officers and grab cell phone video of our tax dollars being spent are, according to the law, within our constitutional rights. No police officer has a right to shut down a news team or a private citizen taking pictures. The only loophole, in certain states, has to do with wiretapping laws: recorded audio cannot be deliberately captured and shared in all locales. But then, an officer carrying out his duties in public is not a private conversation, so the wiretapping laws do not apply in those instances.

The American Civil Liberties Union has found itself defending cases involving private citizens with cell phone and corporations such as television stations because of this issue with police officers and photography. As recently as the second week of August, police in Ferguson, Missouri did not want their tear gas activities photographed and recorded by journalists, so they handcuffed and arrested a couple from the Huffington Post and the Washington Post. As it happens, the only laws broken were broken by police.

Why is accountability so difficult for law enforcement to accept?

It's The Day We Fight Back

Today is The Day We Fight Back. Government agencies have gathered private information on Americans and stored it, only using it to their own advantage. We never hear about missing children getting found because of data gathered by the NSA, or travelers warned of danger by spying government agencies, yet we hear, more and more often, about SWAT teams mysteriously finding addresses that might belong to petty criminals and barging into the wrong houses, and about violent cops who do not wish to appear on camera. The longer this continues, the less the Fourth Amendment mean to the American people.

Here is a link to take action now. Using your zip code, the website will help you find the appropriate representative for your area. Congress will get quite a bit more email today than usual, so it is recommended that you telephone Congress, as well.

The Day We Fight Back

Mass Surveillance. What a concept; it conjures up an Orwellian image of government control extending everywhere, reaching into all affairs, personal and otherwise. The argument can and has been made that there really are no actual secrets and there never were, but what about warrantless grabs of information government agencies against an innocent, but targeted citizen? The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prevents warrantless searches and seizures of our property in person, but where does it fit in electronic communiques?

Right now, there are two important pieces of proposed legislation that need attention from our representatives. First is the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Improvements Act, written by Dianne Feinstein. Her idea of updating and reform would simply legalize all the illegal data mining already done by NSA. It would also allow legitimate spying tactics on actual espionage suspects overseas, the original purpose of FISA, to be utilized here, in America. Because of the obvious conflicts with the Fourth Amendment, this is not a good idea. On February 11, we are asking everyone to call or write their representatives to state opposition to Feinstein's FISA Improvements Act.

The second proposed piece of important legislation is the USA Freedom Act. This act would amend section 215 of the Patriot Act, which is used to mine and store phone records of Americans. Limits would be placed on the data that is collected, the amount of data that can be stored, and the length of time it can be saved. The bill would also amend the FISA Amendments Act, (FAA, 2008) which allows warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. Our representatives need to know that we support this.

To anyone who still thinks that the NSA and that government agencies actually have the best interests of American citizens at heart, think about the fact that despite so much metadata and other information that there is barely room to store it, America still has unsolved missing persons cases.

Separation Of Communication And State

Moving from the analog world to the digital world has left some loose ends in national and global communications which, instead of protecting, the United States government has exploited. Separation of Church and State is not respected or guarded carefully enough; and now it is time to write and enact legislation about the separation of communication and State! Most Americans do not thoroughly understand their fourth amendment rights, and that apparently, is by design. Schools need to return to actual teaching, and demand that students learn before graduating, and citizens need to understand their rights when communications have been intercepted unlawfully and abused. Has anyone gotten around to questioning what might be the government's keen interest in carrying out such abuses?

Anonymous To Saxby Chambliss

Fourth Amendment, anyone? Saxby Chambliss, R-Georgia,  apparently does not think his constituents care about keeping it intact. Not only has his voting record supported the gradual transformation of America into a police state, he can actually be heard lying through his teeth at about 2:30 of the above video, during an interview with George Stephanopoulos. His biggest campaign donors are Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton ,Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon, Verizon, at&t, and Microsoft, the very companies who made all of this intrusion into conversations protected by the Fourth Amendment possible in the first place. Coincidence? Not a chance.

There Are No Secrets

Remember the old days, when it was always considered prudent not to write a message on paper unless it was something one wished to proclaim from the rooftops? And we were occasionally reminded that a piece of paper can last longer than the writer who wrote on it? Can anyone remember the days before national television, when print media ruled? It seems that America has a few people in power who do not remember these things. It also seems as if some of these people either never learned about Richard Nixon, and the Watergate scandal or have forgotten about it. While Watergate wiretapping was unsophisticated compared to today's sources of information and methods of harvesting the same, it is surprising that NSA did not expect anyone to find out about their disregard for the Fourth Amendment rights of all Americans.

It may be time for our President to address the nation about this, and to learn from Nixon's mistakes. The warrantless snooping and unfounded investigations of innocent citizens since 2001 have not significantly reduced the number of occurances of any type of crime, and have not assisted in finding missing persons. In view of the glaring inefficiency of civil rights violations as a form of governance, perhaps it is time to try some transparency and honesty.

 

Prism, Privacy, And Edward Snowden

Your tax dollars at work, once again. Edward Snowden, who told us all about Prism, which can trace internet and cell phone signals in real time. While Snowden had a high level security clearance and all of the responsibility that goes with it, were his actions of divulging the information truly criminal, and if so, is he really guilty of treason? He did not go to any of our enemies with information about the fourth amendment rights of Americans getting violated, he came to the American people with it. Now that he has done that, he is the subject of an investigation, and his last known whereabouts were a hotel room in Hong Kong. He has since been offered asylum in Iceland.

Something that is rather disturbing is described in the video below, in an interview with Christiana Amanpour and Glenn Greenwood. Greenwood suggests that it is now no longer safe to be an investigative journalist, because if a journalist spends too much time with his source, he could also be considered culpable in some way, should the story covered concern a crime, and be charged as an accomplice! Also, an editor for the Washington Post, covering the story about Snowden, reportedly overheard security officials in a discussion at an airport stating that Snowden should "be disappeared", rather than extradited back to the United States to stand trial! So much for justice and due process. Perhaps it is easier, when possible, to just deny a person his day in court and skip due process!
 

As for Prism, it has always been sound advice to remember that there really are no secrets. The programs in use by NSA to store and interpret meta data stores such a large volume every day that the effort becomes counterproductive through having too much information to sort. The real invasion of privacy comes in the form of tracked computer information and cell phone data.....while one's calls are not necessarily heard, they are tracked. The trail of telephone numbers is logged, and of course, one's location, or approximate location, is also traceable. But then, there have been cameras on traffic lights for quite some time, now. Most stores have surveillance systems, decent schools have cameras, and Walmart sells cheap security cameras for homes. There really isn't much privacy to be had at this point in our history as humans. Anything that cannot be determined by studying the above mentioned methods of spying can often be divulged for free by the local Avon Lady.

 

Edward Snowden. A petition to pardon him for any crimes with which he may be charged is here.

 

A Person Who Likes Abusive Cops

"You need to pack up and leave town.... there is surely there is a place for you, but it's definitely not here! You add nothing to the community"........This is part of a comment left for me under this post, concerning police brutality and abuses of authority. I can only assume that this person, whose IP number revealed an address and identity of someone from whom better demeanor than anonymous threats is expected, was in approval of the police coming to my house and battering me because a county attorney did not like my testimony concerning a case she wanted to win. There was more to the comment than I have reproduced here, but the commenter proceeded to attack my family in the rest of it, so I cut it short of the mention of the others in my home. All I am willing to say about that part of it is this: my husband is one of the best neighbors you could ever have; if you want to be a creep to him and the rest of our family, it is certainly your loss, not ours. As for this person's approval of law enforcement battering an older woman because of her penchant for the truth and justice, it reaffirms the opinion I have had of this Northeast Kansas community for quite some time. I can live anywhere I choose in MY country. I am also entitled to my Fourth Amendment rights, as those who disregarded them are about to discover. It is not up to any dingbat Northeast Kansas, undersocialized, WestboroBaptistChurchMember lookalike to determine where I can live. And it does not matter if I stay or go; the county will still be held accountable for the injustices done to yours truly and family.

Someone else had a few words to mince with this person, and those go as follows:

 "You won't get past me. I am all over this situation.And I am a force to avoid. Believe it.You see, you ignorant fool, I am protected by ten-thousand angels. Yes, I am. And I will gladly send ten-thousand demons after YOU.I know all about your threats. I know what you are trying to pull here and I'm warning you...it will never happen.Juli and Keith are my friends. You don't mess with my friends. I am on the West Coast, right now and that is working to my advantage. And I am totally capable of contacting the right people if you so much as stare at my friends the wrong way.If you are involved in the County government or affiliated with law enforcement, you better watch your step. Because right now, I am watching YOU. I and several other key people are keeping a sharp eye on what is transpiring in Frankfort and in Marysville, Kansas. And if you get stupid (more than you already are)and step out of line, I guarantee that you will OFFICIALLY regret it."

Sincerely,
Ruthie Rader

This is but one of many messages I have gotton from quite a few different parts of the country about this situation. It seems that abuses of citizens by law enforcement and the rest of the judicial community have touched a raw nerve in the population's collective subconscious. I had no idea how many people would react to the pictures of the contusions left on me by that Marshall County Undersheriff, and I had no idea how emotional of an impact the situation could and would make. Please believe me, person who approves of police brutality, most people who share our nation are not happy about things like this. And the Constution is clear: I am under no obligation to be a clone of you, or of the congregation of Westboro Baptist Church, in order to enforce and enjoy my Fourth Amendment rights. If my insistence upon equality and respect is why you think I "add nothing" to this community, you need to realize that the most beautiful people in the world do not look anything like you. In fact, your comment, in connection with your particular role in frankfurter stand village, has nudged the school district just a little bit closer to consolidation. I do know the spot from which your signal reached me. As this is a small community, information from my tracker, a little investigative snooping, and a map of the place in this town that has used your IP number recently was all I needed. I also know who you are.

 

Supreme Court Throws Out Kansas Drug Conviction

A Riley County drug case got overturned by the Supreme Court yesterday. It seems that when Riley County, Kansas police forced their way into the apartment of James Campbell, thinking they smelled pot, (they were right, by the way) they needed a better reason then their olfactory senses to burst into Campbell's apartment and begin the search and seizure process. While Campbell had been sentenced to thirty-seven months behind bars, he is now no longer sentenced to any time behind bars. It seems that the only exception to a person's fourth amendment rights when the police want to come in, but one does not want them to come in is the "exigent circumstance exemption", when the policeman feels that he is in danger. But this time, even though the policeman lied and said Campbell had a gun pointed at him, the High Court ruled that it was not a reason to go inside the residence. Conviction overturned.