Nine Terrifying Facts about America’s Biggest Police Force

The NYPD is the biggest police force in the country, with over 34,000 uniformed officers patrolling New York’s streets, and 51,000 employees overall — more than the FBI. It has a proposed budget of $4.6 billion for 2013, a figure that represents almost 15 percent of the entire city’s budget.

NYC’s population is a little over 8 million. That means that there are 4.18 police officers per 1,000 people. By comparison, Los Angeles, the second largest city in the U.S. with 3.8 million people, has only 9,895 officers–a ratio of 2.6 police per 1,000 people.

What has the NYPD been doing with all that cash and manpower? In addition to ticketing minorities for standing outside of their homes, spying on Muslims who live in New Jersey, abusing protesters, and gunning down black teens over weed, the NYPD has expanded into a massive global anti-terror operation with surveillance and military capabilities unparalleled in the history of US law enforcement.

In an email published by WikiLeaks, an FBI official joked about how shocked Americans would be if they knew how egregiously the NYPD is stomping all over their civil liberties. But what we already know is bad enough. Here’s a round-up of what the department has been up to lately.

1. “I Have My Own Army”

Last fall, Mayor Bloomberg famously bragged, ”I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.” So far he’s refrained from imposing military rule on the city, at least in the white neighborhoods, but the department nevertheless boasts an impressive arsenal.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told “60 Minutes” that the NYPD could shoot down a plane last year. When asked for details at a press conference, Mayor Bloomberg basically told reporters to fuck off, saying, “The NYPD has lots of capabilities that you don’t know about and you won’t know about.”
The New York Times has reported that the department’s Harbor unit has 6 submarine drones; four cost $75,000 and the two others cost $120,000, according to the Times. They are developing a portable radar that can see under clothes in order to search for weapons. Militaristic “Hercules teams,” are deployed to random parts of the city armed with automatic weapons and body armor. Their explicitly stated role is to terrify people. In a piece by Popular Mechanics, detective Abad Nieves described the unit’s job thusly: “The response we usually get is, ‘Holy s—!’ [...] That’s the reaction we want. We are in the business of scaring people–we just want to scare the right people.”

Last year, one of us asked a heavily armed Hercules team member what they were up to at the Lincoln Center. “Keeping you safe!” he barked, rolling his eyes at our unbelievable stupidity.

2. Relentlessly Expanding Their Global Presence

Whether you’re overseas or across the river in Jersey, there’s no longer any need to watch “NYPD Blue” for a glimpse at the famed officers. You can simply walk outside. The force operates in 11 foreign cities, including London, Lyons, Hamburg, Tel Aviv and Toronto. This year they added Kfar Saba, Israel, to their list of conquests — there, the NYPD has its own office complete with a department insignia and a banner inside which reads, “The New York Police Department. The Greatest Police Department in the World.”

NYPD officers have flown to Afghanistan, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, and Guantanamo, where they have been known to conduct “special interrogations,” according to New York Magazine. Domestically, the NYPD collaborates with the FBI in Washington. Under Commissioner Kelly’s watch, and with the blessing of the CIA, the force has also built a hidden counterterrorism bureau, complete with a Global Intelligence Room and a security area protected by ballistic Sheetrock.




3. Spying on Muslims and Fabricating the Results

In a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative series the AP revealed a NYPD surveillance program that makes the FBI and CIA look like civil liberties crusaders. To recap: for years, the department has been monitoring mosques, restaurants where Muslims eat, Muslim student organizations, and combing through the electronic communications of Muslim students at more than 13 colleges. Their investigations revealed such insightful observations as the fact that adherents to Islam pray 5 times a day.

The department insisted that their blanket surveillance of whole communities based entirely on their religion was perfectly legal. Apparently even members of the FBI disagreed. A new book by journalist Ronald Kessler (reported in the Daily News) reveals:

“What never came out is that the FBI considers the NYPD’s intelligence gathering practices since 9/11 not only a waste of money but a violation of Americans’ rights,” wrote Kessler [...] “We will not be a party to it,” an FBI source told Kessler.
The Mayor’s response was so glib that 10 House Democrats called it “underhanded and unprofessional,” reported the AP. When asked about criticisms by College Presidents about department surveillance of Muslim student websites, Bloomberg said, among other dismissive things, “I don’t know why keeping the country safe is antithetical to the values of Yale.”

Any time that the department is criticized for their civil liberties abuses, the mayor and police commissioner solemnly point to the number of terror attacks they’ve foiled since 9/11 — 14, a number trustingly repeated in the media. But ProPublica investigative reporter Justin Elliot went through the trouble of looking into the administration’s claim and found that of the 14 successes cited, only two could be credited to the NYPD. In the other instances, the plots were stopped by other agencies, or weren’t serious threats at all, or were instigated by NYPD informants providing alleged terrorists with money and bomb-making materials.

Meanwhile, a deposition on the Muslim surveillance program revealed that in six years of spying, the NYPD’s demographics unit had not come up with a single lead.

4. Targeting Activists

“They said they’d make me a deal,” Diego Ibañez, a 23-year-old Sunset Park resident, tells AlterNet. The deal, barked at him while he was in handcuffs, was that he erase the footage he’d captured of the cops arresting two young African American boys in the subway or that he could join them in jail. The “Cop Watch” initiative, in which New Yorkers exercise their legal right to film the police, has grown in response to increased police brutality, but the NYPD has been targeting anybody who tries to hold them accountable.

After spending nearly an hour under arrest, Ibañez walked away from his interaction with the police with a summons for blocking pedestrian traffic, a catch-all summons that, given that New York has a massive population crammed into the five boroughs, the police can literally use whenever they choose, which was more than 35,000 times last year. When he complained that a summons wasn’t part of the deal, the police said the deal was that he wouldn’t go to jail–that night.

“They said that filming the police was illegal, which it isn’t. But if it were illegal, then why didn’t they charge me for that?” Ibañez asked.

For more established Cop-Watchers, the police are more aggressive. One Cop Watch duo, Christina Gonzalez and Matthew Swaye, found fliers with their photos posted in police precincts criminalizing them as “professional agitators.” The NYPD targeted another long-time Harlem Cop Watcher, Joseph Hayden, slapping him with a charge of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, which means he faces two to seven years of jail time. The alleged weapons, according to Hayden and his laywer, were a souvenir Yankees baseball bat and a broken penknife that the police found in Hayden’s car after they scoured it for any excuse to nail him.

The suppression of Cop Watch is just the tip of the iceberg. The NYPD has used counter terrorism tactics including monitoring, targeting and mass arrests against activists involved in nonviolent social movements across New York City.

5. Constant Intrusion and Surveillance

In the decade after 9/11, Americans’ privacy rights have been violated in a variety of technologically intrusive ways, with the help of everything from spy drones to wiretaps. But few programs package together so many potential privacy infringements as ambitiously as the Domain Awareness System, (DAS) created by the NYPD in partnership with Microsoft.

24/7, DAS collects footage from CCTV cameras all over the city, checking the information against multiple databases, arrest records and 911 calls, and running it through license plate reader software that can track the movement of cars, and even take radiation readings. The department decides what information to archive and for how long. “Video will be held for 30 days and then deleted unless the NYPD chooses to archive it. Metadata and license plate info collected by DAS will be retained for five years, and unspecified “environmental data” will be stored indefinitely,” writes Fast Company.

Said Mayor Bloomberg at a press conference, “What you’re seeing is what the private sector has used for a long time. If you walk around with a cell phone, the cell phone company knows where you are…We’re not your mom and pop’s police department anymore.”

But they promise not to spy on Muslims or anything crazy like that! The information is analyzed at a centralized location in downtown Manhattan. Pam Martens reported last year that the surveillance control center has spots for representatives of those famous crime-fighters, Wall Street’s big banks. Reporter Neal Ungerleider from Fast Company also says he saw seats reserved for the Federal Reserve, Bank of New York, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, and Citigroup.

At a press conference, Bloomberg also said that the department has plans to export the technology to other police departments, for a profit. So, the tax money spent enriching Microsoft will be recouped if all goes according to plan and the entire nation falls under DAS surveillance in a timely manner.

The DAS system is the logical culmination of a years-long campaign to load up Manhattan with surveillance cameras. Impressed by how thoroughly the city of London tracks the movements of its citizens, Mayor Bloomberg initiated the lower Manhattan security initiative in 2005 – expanded to midtown a few years later — whose primary objective was to cover Manhattan, underground and above ground, with cameras.




6. Police Brutality

Last winter, NYPD officer Richard Haste murdered an 18-year-old unarmed boy named Ramarley Graham in his bathroom. Video footage shows the teenager calmly walking into his parents’ home in the Bronx, quickly followed by a team of police officers who broke down the door without a warrant. According to witnesses, the police officers then rushed into the bathroom and shot and killed Graham at close range.

Graham’s case is but one of thousands of police brutality cases leveled against the NYPD. Over the last decade, brutality lawsuits and other claims against the NYPD have cost NYC taxpayers nearly $1 billion in settlements, reports the AP. One officer was sued seven times for using excessive force and brutality during arrests.

In one video taped assault in the Bronx last year, a police officer punched 19-year-old Luis Solivan in the face while another restrained him. According to Solivan, the police duo followed him to his house from the corner store, broke down the door without a warrant, pepper sprayed him, punched him in the face, and then handcuffed him and threw his head into the wall so hard that it left a hole.

In May, the police made headlines over the brutal beating of 19-year-old Bronx resident named Jateik Reed. A video captured four police officers kicking, punching and beating the the teenager with a police baton as he lay on the ground handcuffed (read Kristen Gwynne’s reporting on the incident here.)

Some of the cases of brutality are more creative, if not less sadistic. Another cop “strangled” a man’s penis with the drawstring of his pants, causing lacerations along the shaft that required emergency room attention. And, just in case you thought police brutality was limited to the human species, think again. Two NYPD officers were recently caught on camera in September shooting a homeless man’s dog.

But if you call death what it is–murder–the police take to the slanderous allegations none too kindly. In July, a duo of plainclothes officers wielded a pair of paint brushes to cover over a mural in Inwood that called the NYPD murderers, because, according to the wall’s property owner, “the police were upset about the mural and wanted it changed.”

7. Just a Numbers Game

For four friends in Brooklyn, it was supposed to be a relaxing 4th of July–just a few beers outside on the stoop–until the undercover police car showed up. In a desperate effort to hit their quotas, the two officers ticketed all four for public drinking–on their own front steps.

The NYPD’s quota system, which it claims it has already abolished, is rife with such absurdity. Recently, one cop was busted citing dead people with traffic violation tickets in an effort to meet his quotas. Another picked up a grandmother, who had never been arrested in her life, for prostitution when the woman was on her way to the hospital for an asthma attack.

Most insidiously, one former NYPD narcotics detective testified last year that he regularly watched fellow police officers plant drugs on people in order to hit their arrest quotas.

In April, a Federal judge agreed to a class action lawsuit filed against the NYPD under the allegation that the quota system “leads street cops to hand out summonses even when no crime or violation has occurred just to meet productivity demands from their bosses.”

Quotas lead to an absurdly high number of summonses–a half million per year–many of which are so ridiculous that about half are dismissed the moment the accused arrives at the courthouse. But the real problem is that they are racist. Think about it. You impose an absurdly high “goal” for the number of people police officers must stop in a multiracial city where power and money is still concentrated in the hands of whites, and you get racism faster than a Black man gets busted for shoplifting in Bloomingdales. Even a criminal court judge in Brooklyn admitted this fact when faced with yet another defendant charged with drinking in public this past June.

“As hard as I try,” he wrote, “I cannot recall ever arraigning a white defendant for such a violation.”

In 2011, the NYPD issued nearly 125,000 summonses for drinking in public–some issued against people who were sitting in the doorway of their own homes. Drinking in public was the most-issued summons and about a quarter of the half-million summons the force issued in total.

And then there were the additional 700,000 “stop and frisks”, more than 80 percent committed against black or brown residents. The department has defended the practice as an effective way to get guns off the street, but guns are found in a minuscle number of cases, less than 0.2 percent according to the NYCLU. Nine out of 10 people stopped have been innocent. What the practice does accomplish, is “corrode trust between the police and communities, which makes everyone less safe,” as the NYCLU points out. The searches are often abusive, violent and demeaning.

Then again, sometimes the police harassment isn’t motivated by quotas at all. Sometimes it’s just the result of men suffering from the NYPD badge’s most common side effect: a twisted Napoleonic complex. Such was the case when two NYPD officers found 14-year-old Rayshawn Moreno tossing eggs on Halloween in his Staten Island neighborhood. To teach the child a lesson in crime and punishment, the cops picked him up, drove him to a swamp, took off his shoes and shirt, beat him a little, and then dumped him in the water. Good thing the boy knew how to swim.




8. Above the Law

In July, the police discovered a missing man bound and gagged in a Queens garage owned by NYPD detective Ondre Johnson. The evidence was staggering: the police traced a ransom call to a phone line in Johnson’s house. The kidnapped man’s hands were were bound with zip ties, a common substitute for handcuffs used by the NYPD. But despite the considerable suspicion, Johnson wasn’t even called in for questioning. Instead, everyone else connected with the house was hauled off to the precinct, while the police simply took their fellow officer at his word.

This case was far from the first time that a police officer has enjoyed the privilege of being protected by his fellow police officers when he may have broken the law. The Blue Shield of Silence is still well in effect in New York City, as a New York state Supreme Court justice recently discovered firsthand. After being karate-chopped in the throat by an enraged police officer during a protest, the judge tried to press charges, only to find that all the other officers on scene lied to protect the assaulting officer.

“For this to happen, for me to be attacked by a cop — and for the cops to do this huge cover up — it’s really changing my view of the force,” judge Thomas Raffaele told The Huffington Post.

Sometimes the extent of the cover ups are shocking. In 2001, for example, police officer Joseph Gray killed a four-year-old boy, a pregnant mother, and the boy’s aunt when he drove drunk through the streets of Sunset Park in a police van after hours of marathon drinking in a police precinct’s parking lot. He was eventually charged with manslaughter, much to the chagrin of his fellow officers, who had botched or destroyed various pieces of evidence throughout the investigation, including leaving full sections of the accident report blank, destroying on-the-scene photographs, and asking Gray which blood alcohol test he thought he could “beat.”

Another NYPD officer was recently arrested for trafficking firearms out of his precinct in the East Village, stealing guns from the lockers of his fellow officers in order to sell them to a police informer who then sold the guns right back to the department at a profit.

When police officers’ misconduct does actually land them in a jury trial, they are rarely convicted. Last summer, an NYPD officer was found not guilty of rape after he walked a woman home while he was on duty, tucked her into bed, snuggled with her while she was naked, and then, when she woke up the next morning with the memory of having been raped, assured her that he’d used a condom in a tape recorded conversation.

Police officers who break the code of silence often encounter fierce repercussions. When police officer Adrian Schoolcraft captured internal corruption on a hidden video camera and leaked the tapes to the press, the NYPD locked him up in a psychiatric ward.

9. Protecting Wall Street from Women Wielding Underwear

The Sunday before last, the NYPD arrested Code Pink member Rae Abileah for waving a pink bra over her head outside of a Bank of America branch during a protest against Spectra Pipeline, which the bank is allegedly financing, according to the Raw Story. As a diarist on the Daily Kos quipped, “An anonymous source, who quoted an anonymous city official, said that Wall Street criminals are now safe to wreak havoc on our financial system without fear of reprisal from women who toss underwear.” On the anniversary of OWS last Monday, police arrested around 200 protestors.

At least Wall Street has paid for the favor! JP Morgan’s $4.6 million donation to the NYPD got attention last year because of its proximity to the Occupy protests (although the bank actually made the donation before the start of OWS), but donations by 1 percent corporations to the force are an annual part of the companies’ gift-giving. In 2009-2010, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital, Bank of America and Murdoch’s News Corp all gave over $75,000 to the force.


Source: Alternet.org

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Couple attacked by cat say they'll get it help

Source: APNEWS.com

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon owners of a 22-pound housecat who trapped them in their bedroom after attacking their baby say they're not giving up on their pet and are getting it medical attention and therapy.

Two days after police arrived to subdue the 4-year-old part-Himalayan cat, owner Lee Palmer of Portland says he's taking the feline to a veterinarian. A pet psychologist also is due at the house to see the cat, named Lux.

Palmer says the animal attacked after the 7-month-old child pulled its tail. The baby wasn't injured.

On the 911 call, the cat can be heard screeching in the background as Palmer says in a panicked voice: "He's charging us. He's at our bedroom door." Palmer also tells the dispatcher the cat has a "history of violence."

Officers used a dog snare to capture the cat, and placed it in a crate.

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State Trooper Kills Wife and Isn't Charged

JoAnne Miller was shot and killed by her husband, a state trooper, on Friday in Montgomery County, Pa. Image credit: YouTube

The woman was 22 weeks pregnant at the time of the shooting; unfortunately the baby did not survive the incident despite efforts to save it at the Mercy Suburban Hospital.

The officer, Joseph Miller, was apparently cleaning his gun when it accidentally went off, killing his wife. The police have issued a statement claiming that the shooting was accidental, this despite there being no actual investigation into the incident yet.

The shooting took place at the couple’s home on the 3000 block of Stoney Creek Road in East Norriton Township, the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office said.

According to Patch.com

“Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman and East Norriton Township Police Chief Karyl Kates have opened a joint investigation into the shooting.”





The officer has not been detained as of yet, proving once again that somehow police and other government agents are immune to the laws which they enforce on the rest of us. According to the legal dictionary, an act of involuntary manslaughter consists of

“In most states involuntary manslaughter results from an improper use of reasonable care or skill while performing a legal act…”

What the officer has done clearly constitutes involuntary manslaughter but it is likely -considering it will be his fellow policemen investigating him- that he will not be charged with a crime.

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Disabled Man Thrown to Floor and Punched by Police While Putting His Rubbish Out

A man diagnosed with autism and learning difficulties was allegedly assaulted by police outside his home, on 20th February.

33 year old Faruk Ali has severe autism, but has always enjoyed helping the binmen by putting out the bins for them outside his family home in Luton.  On February 20th, he put on his slippers and went outside to do just that.  But this time he was met by two uniformed police officers who thought he ‘looked suspicious’.

Neighbours claim to have seen the officers push Faruk into the wheelie bins, pin him to the ground and chase him, screaming, into the house.  The family say they witnessed police punch Faruk once inside the house.

The Bedfordshire Police officers claimed they believed Faruk was committing a burglary at the time of the incident, despite the fact he was wearing slippers and a badge identifying him as autistic.

Faruk’s brother Dhobir told the Mirror:

“The family has been traumatised by the whole experience. Faruk hasn’t actually recovered yet, he’s still traumatised.

“He is scared to leave the house, he has become more anxious and agitated and he is terrified every time he sees the police.

“When he came in the house with the police behind him I saw the bruises and cuts and straight away knew what had happened to him.

“Why did the police use such force? They said he looked suspicious but he was wearing slippers at the time and he was wearing a big coat.

“The officers in question have not been suspended from duty and they did not report this incident to the office immediately after the event.

“We don’t really know if the police are taking it seriously or not. We want to see these officers suspended.

“The fact of the matter is my brother is not the only one who suffers from autism in Luton and we want to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Witness Musthafa Hussain claimed:
“They dragged him, they punched him, they held him hard. It was outrageous.”

The incident is being investigated by Bedforshire Police, and overseen by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) – but despite several witnesses, and the seriousness of the allegations, the officers involved have not been suspended while the investigation takes place.
The decision not to suspend the officers was met with anger. The Ali family held a public meeting in Luton this week, where it was revealed that Faruk had been a victim of a similar attack by police in 2012, and that the police officers involved in the February attack did not immediately report the incident to their superiors.

Local Police and Crime Commisioner Olly Martin’s attended the meeting and told local press that it had all the hallmarks of a hate crime:

“My agenda is about trying to get confidence to people to report hate crime.“When you have something like this, which on the face of it could be presented as a hate crime, it undermines the role I am trying to do in terms of improving the outcomes for victims and giving them the confidence to report in the first place.”

Bedfordshire Police said:

“Bedfordshire Police is sorry for the distress Mr Ali and his family feel regarding the actions officers took due to their concerns for Mr Ali’s wellbeing on February 20 in Whitby Road, Luton.”

A spokesman added: “This incident is being taken seriously and an investigation has been launched by the Beds, Cambs and Herts Professional Standards Department which will be supervised by the IPCC.”

After mass outcry, it was announced on Monday 10th March that the officers involved would be taken off public facing duties while the investigation takes place – while the disabled community were told to maintain their confidence in the police force.

But why on earth should disabled people have any faith in the police?

There have been more than 333 suspicious deaths in police custody since 1998…and zero officers convicted. Here are some of those who lost their lives, and whose families are still seeking justice.

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Californian Gun Owners Stand Their Ground Against An Unconstitutional Law

Despite a new city law in Sunnyvale, Cali., requiring gun owners get rid of their so-called “high capacity” magazines or face fines or arrest, none of the owners of said magazines have turned them in to police.

At midnight on Thursday, Sunnyvale began implementing a new law that requires residents with rifle magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition to dispose of them or else, but the law reportedly failed to produce the intended effect.

“The Oakland Tribune reported Saturday that since Sunnyvale’s ban went into effect midnight Thursday, not one of the now-illegal magazines has been turned in,” the Associated Press reports.
In Sunnyvale, a person caught with a “high capacity” magazine could be subject to a misdemeanor fine of up to $1,000, six months in jail, or both. The city is one of two Californian communities promoting a ban on magazines, the other being San Francisco, whose ban is set to take effect April 7.

While it’s possible gun owners are openly defying the law, as many have done in Connecticut, it is also possible gun owners are holding out to make a profit or break even.
“Owners had the choice of allowing police to destroy the magazines, sell them out of state or to a licensed gun dealer, or move them out of town,” writes Josh Richman for the Oakland Tribune.
One Sunnyvale resident told Richman he had never been in trouble with the law, but that the new ordinance would have turned him into a criminal overnight.

“I’ve lived here in Sunnyvale for more than 40 years and I’ve never had so much as a parking ticket,” Leonard Fyock, a 67-year-old Sunnyvale resident, stated.
Fyock said he was able to get his magazines out of town before the ban took effect, but that he hopes “somewhere down the line this will get overturned.”

Though the law technically criminalizes anyone in possession of the newly-banned magazines, the city is still encouraging people to show up to the police station and hand them over.
“Barring any unusual circumstances, we wouldn’t cite people for voluntarily turning in their large-capacity magazines to public safety even though it is legally possible at this time to cite them,” city spokeswoman Jennifer Garnett said.

Former Sunnyvale Mayor Tony Spitaleri, the prime mover of the law, acknowledged the ban essentially criminalizes law-abiding citizens and that the law is flawed because anybody who wants to could transport a “high-capacity” magazine into city limits. Still, he thinks the city will be better off. “It doesn’t move the needle – yet, but it always starts somewhere,” Spitaleri said.
Though the measure banning magazines passed with a 67 percent vote last year, the lack of residents who have complied speaks volumes, and may highlight the American people’s frustration with unconstitutional mandates.
The NRA is appealing the law with the Supreme Court after California’s 9th Circuit denied their request for an emergency hold on the law.

From: Infowars.com

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"I can't wait to kick your door in." Says cop in Connecticut. *video*

Connecticut Cop says he can't wait to kick in doors to confiscating weapons. Bloodshed will happen because of this unconstitutional law.

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Now New Jersey Threatens to Ban Common .22 Rifles, Confiscate Guns

From: Bearingarms.com

Do anti-gun Democrats in New Jersey live in a vacuum? Are they completely unaware of the problems unfolding in New York and Connecticut with their gun registration/confiscation schemes?

Or are they simply too power-mad to care?

The New Jersey Assembly’s Law and Public Safety Committee was scheduled to hold a public hearing on Monday (postponed for snow) about a bill that reduces the maximum magazine capacity from 15 to 10.

Since the legislation covers both detachable and fixed magazines, it has the effect of to banning popular, low-caliber rifles.

The Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs gave the draft legislation to top firearms experts in the country to determine what guns would fall under the expanded ban.

They discovered that the bill would affect tube-fed, semi-automatic rifles because the magazine cannot be separated from the gun

Thus, the experts found that at least 43 common rifles would suddenly be considered a prohibited “assault firearm,” such as the .22 caliber Marlin Model 60, Remington Nylon 66 and Winchester 190.

Just having one such gun would turn a law-abiding owner into a felon overnight.

Anti-gun state legislators are losing their collective minds. If they aren’t careful, that might not be all they lose.

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Bloomberg's latest stats on school gun violence ignore reality

Are schools and colleges dangerous places, with lots of gun violence?

Some groups paint a picture of these places being particularly unsafe. Supposedly both murders and firearm suicides are very common at educational institutions. Last Wednesday, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s two groups, Moms Demand Gun Sense in America and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, jointly released a reportthat received massive uncritical news coverage.

Notice anything wrong in this picture? 

They claimed that 44 shootings occurred in schools and colleges nationwide since the Newtown, Conn. massacre on Dec. 14, 2012 and Feb. 10 of this year. Out of the 44 shootings, a total of 28 died. To dramatize their numbers, Bloomberg’s groups emphasized that one of these attacks occurred every 10 days.

But their statistics are not what they seem. Included in the numbers are suicides. Also included are late night shootings taking place in school parking lots, on their grounds or even off school property, often involving gangs. As “shootings,” they also include any incident where shots were fired, even when nobody was injured.

Look at some of the cases included in their misleading statistics:

• A student at Eastern Florida State College retrieved his gun from his car when two men attacked him. One of the men was striking the student with a pool cue, and the student fired his gun wounding him. The gun was legally stored in the student’s car and the police found that he had acted in self-defense.
• A 19-year-old was killed at 9pm in a field near the Hillside Elementary School in San Leandro, California.
• A professor at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology committed suicide in an empty classroom.
• A 23-year-old man committed suicide late at night on school grounds when no one was around the Algona High/Middle School in Iowa.
• A 38-year-old man was shot to death at 2am on the grounds of the Clarksville, Tennessee High School.
• A 19-year-old man committed suicide in the parking lot of a Portland, Maine high school. No one at the school was threatened.
The list goes on and on. Overall,

• About 40 percent of the deaths (11 out of 28) were suicides.
• Out of the 28 K-12 school shootings, at least four, possibly as many as eight, were gang shootings. Several of the college cases probably also involved gangs.
Indeed, gangs are a major problem. But they aren’t just a threat off school campuses. And some schools just happen to be located near dangerous areas, so the gang activity spills over to school grounds. Linking such violence to the Newtown tragedy is highly misleading.

Also, some perspective is needed. Contrary to what many people believe, high school shootings have actually been falling over the last two decades. To illustrate this let’s compare the five school years 1992-93 to 1996-97 with the five school years from 2008-09 to 2012-13. During the first period, the number of non-gang, non-suicide shooting deaths averaged 25 a year. During the recent five-year period, it averaged less than half that, 10 per year – and that figure does include the horrific Newtown massacre.

To put these numbers in perspective, there are about 50 millionyoung people between the ages of 6 and 17. Another 21 millionpeople are enrolled in colleges.

One of the motivations behind the report put out by the gun control groups was that the media was ignoring these so-called “mini-Newtowns.” Yet, all of these cases received extensive coverage. A gun at a school (or even near a school) is considered newsworthy. For example, USA Today ran at least one story on 24 of these cases.

Scaring Americans may be Bloomberg’s only tool for drumming up support for gun control laws. But it ultimately shows how little faith that gun control advocates have in their case.

Source: Foxnews.com

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Stolen Passports Point to Terrorism in Missing Airliner.

The use of stolen passports by two passengers to board a Malaysian airliner that vanished over the South China Sea raises concerns that terrorists may have caused the jet's apparent crash, say former U.S. security officials who specialize in transportation safety.

Use of stolen passports is a tactic of terrorists trying to avoid detection, while groups including al-Qaeda have sought to crash airplanes into oceans to cover up evidence, according to the experts. Oil slicks discovered yesterday in the Gulf of Thailand by Vietnam's military suggested the Boeing Co. (BA) 777-200 jetliner may have crashed there.

No evidence exists of terrorism at this point, said a U.S. official following the case who asked not to be identified because the investigation is in its early stages. Yet as the probe continues, investigators are likely to consider the two passengers "instant suspects" and will try to establish their real identities, said John Magaw, a former administrator of the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"That raised huge red flags -- the stolen passports and the plane crashing over water," said Magaw, who also was director of the U.S. Secret Service and now serves as a security consultant. "Those two things right there are highly, highly, highly suspicious."

The timing of a possible explosion over water "would indicate they were trying to destroy as much evidence as possible and to make it that much harder to trace," he said.

The Malaysian Airline System Bhd. (MAS) plane, en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, was carrying 239 people, including 153 Chinese passengers and three U.S. citizens, according to the airline and U.S. State Department.

Kip Hawley, a former administrator of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, said the stolen-passport report and the prospect the plane crashed into the Gulf of Thailand "makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck."

"It sounds like a lot of other plots," he said, referring to one in 2006 involving terrorists who wanted to down jetliners in the Atlantic Ocean by using liquid explosives. That plan was foiled by U.S. and British officials.

Hawley said that based on his experience, U.S. authorities will be looking for evidence that, if an onboard bomb brought down the Malaysian jet, it may have been a test run for a larger attack on multiple planes, as envisioned by various terrorist groups.

The governments of Italy and Austria confirmed that two passports used to board the flight were previously reported stolen by citizens of their countries. After investigators determine the identity of those who used the passports, they will check to see if they were on watch lists of suspected terrorists, Magaw said.

Hawley, a consultant and author of "Permanent Emergency," a book about his time at the TSA, said he has been especially concerned about bombs hidden in the shoes of passengers because they are powerful enough to bring down aircraft and security officials have grown lax about checking footwear.

U.S. security officials last month cautioned airlines about a credible threat posed by shoe bombs.

Hawley said he expects that U.S. authorities, working with counterparts in China and Malaysia, will be particularly interested in how the Malaysian checkpoints worked and whether they properly scanned shoes for explosives.


He said U.S. authorities will also be checking satellite images to see if they detected an explosion on the plane.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council, Caitlin Hayden, said in a statement yesterday that "the United States Government is in communication across agencies and with international officials to provide any appropriate assistance in the investigation."

She also said U.S. officials "believe it is too early to comment on the causes" of the plane's disappearance. Her comments were followed by an announcement by the National Transportation Safety Board that it was sending a team of U.S. aviation-accident investigators to assist in the probe of Flight 370, joined by experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing.

Magaw and Hawley stressed that the jet's apparent crash could have been caused by other problems, ranging from pilot error to a failure of the airliner's systems.

Nations hunting for the plane had little to go on, with no distress calls, emergency-beacon signals, bad weather or other signs why an airliner would lose touch in one of the safest phases of flight.

Malaysia has been vulnerable to terrorist activity and has been used as a transit and planning hub for terrorists, according to a 2012 report by the U.S. State Department. Still, the department said the country hasn't suffered a serious terrorism incident for "several years."

The country doesn't require an entry visa for citizens of most countries on short-term visits, although it introduced a biometrics system in 2011 to record the fingerprints of travelers at its ports of entry, according to the State Department.

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NY Town Takes Man to Court Over Refusal to Remove Pro-Second Amendment Sign

A town in western New York state is pursuing charges against a man for refusing to remove a pro-Second Amendment sign from his property, an order the man and his lawyer are calling unconstitutional.

It all started last October when Hamburg resident Scott Zwierucha began displaying a sign on his fence showing support for his county’s sheriff, who stood up to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and said he would not enforce unconstitutional gun laws or ammo restrictions.
“Sheriff Howard- Fighting for Your Rights,” read Zwierucha’s first sign, commending Sheriff Timothy B. Howard for displaying remarkable spine in the face of fierce political pressure.
Zwierucha received a notice from the town for that sign in November, but says when he went to speak with the Town Supervisor he was told it was fine as it was constitutionally protected free speech.

But on Jan. 14, Zwierucha received another notice advising him to remove the sign.
At that point, Zwierucha switched to different signage, a large banner that displayed in bright, bold letters the message, “NY IS NOT S.A.F.E.!! STOP CUOMO – PRESERVE YOUR RIGHTS!!”

The sign of course referred to New York’s notoriously draconian anti-Second Amendment law rammed through the state legislature in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, which it turned out was so poorly crafted it actually turned police into criminals overnight.
In early February, Zwierucha received a summons indicating he had violated one of the town ordinances, specifically one dictating that “No images or language shall be painted, affixed to the outward side of any fence or directed at neighboring properties for any reason.”

Ironically, the town sent only him the second notice the day after the town board majority “flipped Democrat,” according to Zwierucha. His suspicions are sound considering our reportage of anti-gun democrats in the New York state Senate who had originally proposed gun confiscation be included in the SAFE Act.

“It in no way causes a problem for anyone,” Zwierucha told Buffalo News. “This is a first amendment issue. There are fences with commercial messages on it all over town,” he said.
It’s on this basis Zwierucha’s lawyer, Jim Ostrowski, wants the city to dismiss the case.

“You have an absolute right to have a political sign on your property in spite of any local laws to the contrary. . Off the public right of way you can have any sign you want and that’s been ruled on by the Supreme Court,” Ostrowski said during an interview with WBEN’s Hardline program.
Ostrowski may be referring to Ladue v. Gilleo, which in 1994 found a city law which prohibited a war protest sign in the window of a home was unconstitutional.

Gun rights groups, such as SCOPE and the Shooter’s Committee on Public Education, are already planning to hold a rally outside of the courthouse on Friday morning before the case is taken up by a judge.

From: Infowars.com

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Report: D.C.'s Green-Approved Buildings Using More Energy.

Washington, D.C. may have the highest number of certified green buildings in the country, but research by Environmental Policy Alliance suggests it might not be doing much good.

The free-market group analyzed the first round of energy usage data released by city officials Friday and found that large, privately-owned buildings that received the green energy certification Leadership in Energy Design (LEED) actually use more energy than buildings that didn’t receive this green stamp of approval.

LEED is the brainchild of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a private environmental group.

Washington, D.C.’s Department of Environment made the capital the first city in the nation to mandate LEED certifications in the construction of public buildings. The standards are now being phased in.

The results are measured in EUI’s, a unit that relates a building’s energy consumption to its size; the higher the number, the more energy is expended by a smaller building.

Take the Green Building Council’s Washington headquarters. Replete with the group’s top green-energy accolade, the platinum LEED certification, the USGBC’s main base comes in at 236 EUI. The average EUI for uncertified buildings in the capital? Just 199.

Certified buildings’ average comes in at 205 EUI, still less efficient than that didn’t take home the ultimate green trophy.

“LEED certification is little more than a fancy plaque displayed by these ‘green’ buildings,” charged Anastasia Swearingen, LEED Exposed’s lead researcher on the project. “Previous analyses of energy use by LEED-certified buildings have consistently shown that LEED ratings have no bearing on actual energy efficiency.”




Swearingen told The Daily Caller News Foundation the system doesn’t take into account any proof of energy efficiency. The LEED model grades buildings on ideal conditions — the certification is based on “if everyone shuts their blinds, turns off their computers at the end of the day, makes sure the lights are off — but it doesn’t factor in how much energy is really used after it’s actually occupied,” Swearingen contended.

In its own report released with the data, even the city’s Department of Environment acknowledged the concerns raised by the “dependence on a third-party organization, over which the government has no oversight, to set the District’s green building standards.” But while it understands the risks, the D.C. government continues to mandate the ratings for public buildings — and get cash from the program.

The city has collected $5.2 million in permit fees from the program since 2010.



Source: Dailycaller.com

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How Did The Maryland Transportation Police Know An Unarmed Man From Florida Was A Concealed Carry Gun Owner Before They Pulled Him Over?

Source: personalliberty.com

A Florida man was traveling South with his family on the way home from a wedding in New Jersey when the Maryland Transportation Authority Police (MTAP) began tailing his Ford Expedition. After about 10 minutes, the police pulled him over and told him they knew he owned a gun. They demanded he produce it for them on the spot — even though the firearm was locked away in a safe 1,000 miles away.

John Filippidis of Hudson, Fla., told The Tampa Tribune he wasn’t speeding or doing anything illegal when the cops took an interest in his car. In fact, he’d intentionally left his Kel-Tec .38 pistol locked up at home precisely because he understood the potential legal headaches that can arise when traveling through multiple State jurisdictions with a firearm.

“I know the laws and I know the rules,” he said. “But I just think it’s a better idea to leave it home.”

So when the Maryland police pulled him over, they took his license and registration back to the patrol cruiser, then returned to the car and ordered him to get out. Here’s the Tribune’s narrative:

Ten minutes later he’s back, and he wants John out of the Expedition. Retreating to the space between the SUV and the unmarked car, the officer orders John to hook his thumbs behind his back and spread his feet. “You own a gun,” the officer says. “Where is it?”

“At home in my safe,” John answers.

“Don’t move,” says the officer.

Now he’s at the passenger’s window. “Your husband owns a gun,” he says. “Where is it?”

First Kally [John’s wife] says, “I don’t know.” Retelling it later she says, “And that’s all I should have said.” Instead, attempting to be helpful, she added, “Maybe in the glove [box]. Maybe in the console. I’m scared of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I might shoot right through my foot.”

The officer came back to John. “You’re a liar. You’re lying to me. Your family says you have it. Where is the gun? Tell me where it is and we can resolve this right now.”

Of course, John couldn’t show him what didn’t exist, but Kally’s failure to corroborate John’s account, the officer would tell them later, was the probable cause that allowed him to summon backup — three marked cars joined the lineup along the I-95 shoulder — and empty the Expedition of riders, luggage, Christmas gifts, laundry bags; to pat down Kally and [daughter] Yianni; to explore the engine compartment and probe inside door panels; and to separate and isolate the Filippidises in the back seats of the patrol cars.

Ninety minutes later, or maybe it was two hours — “It felt like forever,” Kally says — no weapon found and their possessions repacked, the episode ended … with the officer writing out a warning.

The incident left Filippidis angry and embarrassed, outraged that his children had to endure the unnecessary ordeal while watching the police treat their father like a criminal. And he has no idea how the Maryland Transportation Authority Police knew about his lawful firearm, obtained and maintained in the State of Florida.

MTAP wouldn’t comment to the Tribune, citing an internal investigation into the matter. The police captain who supervises the officer who made the stop has apologized to Filippidis, along with an MTAP Internal Affairs officer.

But Filippidis still doesn’t know why he was stopped, how any of them knew that he was a lawful gun owner in Florida or why it made any difference to the police once they had him in their sights.

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MEET THE COMPANY THAT CAN TRACK EVERYWHERE YOU'VE BEEN AND TELL POLICE ABOUT IT

Source: alternet.org

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security called for bids on a national license plate tracking system. The database would contain information from license-plate-reader cameras that scan and log passing cars and assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in hunting down "criminal aliens and absconders," according to the contract proposal. As the Washington Post pointed out, DHS failed to address the privacy issues that might arise from recording the movements of anyone who's ever been in a car.

After the bid unleashed a torrent of criticism and bad publicity, DHS canceled the contract proposal and claimed that ICE leadership didn't even know about this effort to up their game. Everyone relaxed; DHS was not trying to build a database of everybody's vehicular movements after all. As it turns out, DHS didn't need a national license-plate database, because such a database already exists. It's run by a private company called Vigilant Solutions and ICE and other law enforcement agencies have been dipping into it for years, according to documents obtained by ACLU Massachusetts.

According to its website, Vigilant "creates intelligence by merging previously disparate data sets such as fixed and mobile license plate recognition, public records, facial recognition, and more." In its spare time, it's suing the state of Utah for passing a law restricting the collection of license plate data.

AlterNet spoke with Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty program at the Massachusetts ACLU, about Vigilant Solutions, law enforcement abuses of privacy and the dangers posed by license plate reader databases.

Tana Ganeva: Why do you think there was so much confusion around this story and what should people know?

Kade Crockford: I'm not sure why there was so much confusion about the story. The first references to it I saw were from the right-wing blogosphere and basically the headlines were things like, "DHS plans to build massive license plate reader database!" Naturally I was interested in that because it is a pet obsession of mine. And so I clicked on the solicitation for bids and I actually read it—unlike that many people who wrote about it. And it was pretty clear to me that in fact no, DHS did not intend to build its own nationwide license plate reader database. The solicitation read almost exactly like it was written by the company Vigilant Solutions, a description of a database the company already offers law enforcement nationwide.

So my assumption is that in fact what DHS was doing was going through a relatively mundane bureaucratic procedure that they have to go through in order to apportion funds for the purchase of more subscriptions to this database.

As a document we posted to the ACLU website shows, ICE has been tapping into this database for years. Law enforcement all over the country has been tapping into it. The FBI more than likely does as well. It holds about 2 billion individual license plate records in it, and according to the company it grows almost 100 million plate reads per month and those numbers are just going to keep going up. So ultimately what we're looking at is a database that contains billions of records and law enforcement has access both for free on a tier one subscription plan, which allows a limited number of searches per week or month and then a tier two subscription service that they have to pay for, which I believe gives unlimited search of the database.

So it's false to say that this database is not actually happening as a result of DHS withdrawing the solicitation. More than likely DHS is going to in fact pursue more subscriptions to this database. I would be very, very surprised if [Homeland Security Secretary] Jeh Johnson instructs ICE to never use this database again. I think there's been a lot of misunderstanding about some of the basic facts about the state of license plate tracking technology today.

TG: How is the database being used?

KC: In the documents we obtained they're using it to do what ICE does, which is to hunt people down to deport them. There's one reference in the document about an ICE agent who was looking for this mother and her two kids to deport the mother. But he couldn't find her because she wasn't living at the address they had on file for her. But thank God for the Vigilant Solutions database, which contained records of her license plate and so this ICE agent staked out the house where her car was last seen by the surveillance system and sure enough, there she was, and success story—he separated this mother from her children and deported her.




And police are using license plate readers for a variety of purposes. We found a couple years ago in one of the reports the AP published about the NYPD spying on Muslims. The NYPD was using license plate readers, parking them outside of mosques to collect records of every person who drove to the mosques.

But your imagination is the limit in how police can use this information, for legitimate purposes and illegitimate purposes. I'm sure that police departments are using them in the way they say they are, to track down people they suspect of criminal activity, but frankly I would be very surprised if police departments were also not using them to track dissidents and ex-girlfriends and all the other abusive ways information can be used inappropriately.

TG: Groups that defend the technology say there's nothing to worry about, it's just to track stolen cars or bad guys. And the technology doesn't sound that bad—it's just taking pictures of your license plate.

What should people know about how the data is collected and used? What are the ramifications of having a giant national database of license plate information?

KC: Ultimately, as the technology proliferates and we get to the point where we are now with surveillance cameras in urban areas—they are everywhere. The same is going to be true with license plate readers soon and once that happens law enforcement or anybody else with access to these private databases are going to be able to enter someone's license plate number into a database and up will pop a map showing where you've driven over a period of years or decades, depending on how long these companies retain the information.

As of right now, my assumption is that they retain it indefinitely. We've heard nothing from the company about them deleting this information after a certain amount of time. What we're really looking at is a massive retroactive location tracking system: completely warrantless, completely suspicionless, targeted at the entire population.

And if I need to spell out why that's a problem for people, then really that's a problem.

We have a Fourth Amendment in the United States, which protects us from unwarranted intrusion into our private life unless the government has reason to believe we're up to no good and shows that reason to a judge and gets a warrant.

We're finding that in the absence of legislators updating the law to reflect the kind of technologies we use to communicate and the technologies that law enforcement uses to spy on us, courts are hashing out how to apply the Fourth Amendment, and the First Amendment in the digital age and it's a very uneven playing field right now. There are some places in which there are more restrictive laws as a result of courts ruling that certain law enforcement techniques can only be done with warrants, and there are other places in the country where it's the Wild West, there are no meaningful restrictions.

And license plate readers are one area in which we think it's very obvious that if we wait for some sort of case in which somebody's brought up on charges that were based off of retroactive long-term location tracking through a license plate reader, of course they'll make the same kind of judgements they've made about cell site location information for example, which is a good thing in a sense, but we don't want to wait for someone's rights to be violated before we actually fix the law.

We believe that it's legislators' responsibility to step up to the plate and regulate these tools. Contrary to the claims of companies like Vigilant Solutions, which profit from hits to people's privacy, the ACLU's position is not that we oppose all uses of license place readers. I understand that there are probably a lot of people who do, and I sympathize with them, but our position is in fact that there's a compromise that can be made. That there are reasonable interests on the law enforcement side, in retaining even non-derogatory license plate data for a couple of days. A week or two tops. Because it's possible that in the event of a serious crime, a rape, a murder, that information will be incredibly useful to law enforcement agencies, to see who's in the area at the time of this crime, and that's OK—we acknowledge that.

What is not legitimate and not OK is for law enforcement to be tracking innocent people's movements over a period of months or years or decades or indefinitely. This is not acceptable in a free society, and we believe that courts are ultimately going to make that judgment. It's just that we shouldn't wait five or 10 or 20 years until the courts get this question before them. We should act now to update the law to just require the same thing that we want of cops when they go to a cell phone company to get information about where our cell phones have been.

Our argument is that that should be protected by a warrant, and the same should go for license plate data. If the cops collect it themselves, they should only be able to retain it for a limited amount of time. Again, days or weeks, not months or years. And if they're getting it from a private company like Digital Solutions that they should have to get a warrant for that, in the same way that you have to get a warrant to go to AT&T and demand cell site location information.

TG: What are the ramifications of having private companies collect this kind of data?

KC: It's really tricky because in a sense it allows law enforcement to obtain access to months or years or even decades of this information through a sort of back door. And that's why need to make sure there's a warrant protection in there. So Vigilant is obviously the leader in this field, it's the company we have to worry about right now (it also has a sister corporation called Digital Recognition Network that sells this information to insurance companies).

Anyway, they're suing the state of Utah right now, citing a First Amendment claim, because the state of Utah passed a very restrictive bill that says that private companies can't collect this information, so this is a real problem where maybe the First and Fourth Amendments do conflict in a way, but that doesn't mean that we as data subjects, essentially, should completely lose our right to privacy and information showing very detailed maps of where we've been over a period of months or years, so the question of exactly how to regulate privately held data sets is a very complicated one and one that people are trying to work out.

But the very immediate answer to the problem of law enforcement's deployment of this tool is to require police to get a warrant before they access this data because that would essentially prevent police from doing what they do now, which is simply log onto this website and perform searches. As far as we know, there's nothing stopping police officers from making 1,000 searches a day if they want to, if they have paid for the access. So we want to prevent those kinds of fishing expeditions.




Even though it's disturbing and very creepy that a private company is tracking you and selling this data to other companies, Vigilant Solutions can't lock you up and the police can. And so it's critical that we deal with this immediately. The much more difficult question of how to regulate privately held data sets we're really just beginning to grapple with. And there are some sort of consumer protection analogues that we might want to think about, but right away the law enforcement question is easy to deal with, and we should deal with it.

TG: What are other states doing to restrict police use of license plate data?

KC: New Hampshire's law bans license plate readers almost entirely front the state, including police use of them. The only license plate readers that are used in the state are at certain bridges. But cops are even prevented from using them in New Hampshire. There are department policies in places like Ohio, with the Ohio state troopers—they don't keep any plate data unless it's a hit, shows evidence of a crime.

So police departments throughout the country are using this technology in very different ways. A good way of explaining the two different ways to use the tool is, one of them is what the Ohio state patrol is doing, which is to automate a process that law enforcement has always done which is to check license plates against lists of stolen cars, etc. And to go after the people if there's some sort of allegation. The second way of using license plate readers is what Vigilant is doing, and what many law enfacement agencies around the country are doing, which is to use them as intelligence tracking databases. And that is the piece of this technology that we think incompatible with a free society.

Even something that's not suspicious, like where your girlfriend was last night or to see where the journalist who's been bothering you about the license plate readers has been hanging out, to see if you can catch them drinking at a bar.

That actually happened in Canada. There was a journalist who was getting under the skin of a police department and they used a license plate reader and discovered this journalist hung out at a certain bar and they sent a cop there hoping to catch the journalist driving drunk. Again, your imagination is really the limit over how you can use this information. And that's precisely the problem, so we need to have judicial involvement and for there to be specific evidence of a crime instead of just this free-for-all.

TG: There are various efforts at the state level to regulate these different types of mass surveillance, but at the federal level the pull seems to be in the opposite direction.

KC: Congress has moved in the wrong direction since 9/11, breaking down barriers between different law enforcement agencies, making it easier for agencies to share information about perfectly innocent people, the creation of massive domestic database storage. There's the National Counterterrorism Center, which is run by the CIA but staffed by members of all sorts of domestic law enforcement agencies. So Congress has moved in the wrong direction.

But I do think there's a huge role for state legislators to play here. Obviously when state legislators enact laws to protect people's privacy from unwarranted cell phone tracking, or license plate tracking, or drone surveillance—that does not restrict the FBI and DHS from doing those things in the states. So that's a major problem. Particularly given the level of coordination and organization between state and federal law enforcement at this point. So even if we pass local and state laws, state cops might be able to get around them just by calling up their buddy at the FBI and asking them to do the surveillance for them because they can't do it without a warrant, but the FBI can.

We need Congress to act to bring the Fourth Amendment into the digital age. In the absence of Congress acting, the courts are doing it, and the problem with that is that it's giving law enforcement a patchwork of laws. In order not to just protect people's privacy but lessen headaches for people trying to understand the state of the law, and for law enforcement trying to apply it, we absolutely need a uniform federal law reform.

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Penn & Teller call bullshit on gun control

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CA gun shop gains critizism from NRA for selling Smart Guns.

By Michael S. Rosenwald 
-washingtonpost.com


The California gun store that put the nation’s first smart gun on sale is facing a furious backlash from customers and gun rights advocates who fear the new technology will encroach on their Second Amendment rights if it becomes mandated.

Attacks in online forums and social networks against the Oak Tree Gun Club have prompted the store to back away from any association with the Armatix iP1 smart gun. The protests threaten the nascent smart gun industry, which received a jolt of support recently when a group of Silicon Valley investors offered a $1 million prize for promising new technology.

Video
Not long ago smart guns, personalized weapons that only fired for authorized users, were seen only in the movies. Today, after millions of dollars and more than 10 years of research, there are finally smart guns for the public. But there are only two viable systems available for the public to purchase. The Washington Post's Mike Rosenwald talks about the reason why and the future of the technology.
Not long ago smart guns, personalized weapons that only fired for authorized users, were seen only in the movies. Today, after millions of dollars and more than 10 years of research, there are finally smart guns for the public. But there are only two viable systems available for the public to purchase. The Washington Post's Mike Rosenwald talks about the reason why and the future of the technology.
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Firearms manufacturers use digital technology to make guns safer. Click Here to View Full Graphic Story
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The vitriol began almost immediately after The Washington Post reported last month that the Armatix iP1 smart gun was for sale at the pro shop. Electronic chips inside the gun communicate with a watch that can be purchased with the gun, making it impossible to fire without the watch. Gun control advocates, who believe smart guns could reduce gun violence, suicides and accidental shootings, marked the moment as a milestone.

“These people are anti-gunners,” someone said of Oak Tree on the store’s Facebook page, adding, “I will never step foot in this dump.” On Yelp, a user wrote, “If you care about the ability to exercise your [Second Amendment] rights, I would suggest that you do not continue to frequent this place.”

The protests are fueled by worry that being able to purchase the iP1 will trigger a New Jersey law mandating that all handguns in the state be personalized within three years of a smart gun going on sale anywhere in the United States. Similar mandates have been introduced in California and in both chambers of Congress.

Oak Tree, which is located outside of Los Angeles, owes New Jersey an apology, a Facebook poster wrote.

The opposition has apparently shaken Oak Tree, one of the largest gun stores and shooting ranges in California.





Gun rights advocates and Armatix executives have been mystified by the store’s response, which has been to deny ever offering the gun and apologizing for any confusion in several places online, including to a gun rights advocate at Examiner.com.

The denials come despite Oak Tree owner James Mitchell’s extensive comments about why the gun was put on sale there. Armatix executives also provided The Post with two photos of the gun for sale in a gun cabinet at the facility, as well as multiple photos of customers shooting the iP1 at an event in a specially designed firing range with large Armatix signs.

Saying that “we’ve been helping the company get the gun introduced here out West,” Mitchell told The Post earlier this month: “I walk in a delicate line because I am an extremely pro-gun conservative type person. But I’m also logical, you know.” He said the technology, if accepted, could “revolutionize the gun industry” and provide a compromise between gun rights advocates and gun control supporters.

Mitchell has apparently discovered that gun rights advocates have little appetite for smart-gun technology.

The protests echo what Smith & Wesson endured after it signed a landmark gun control agreement with the Clinton administration in 2000 that called for the company to research and introduce smart guns. Boycotts of the company’s products nearly put it out of business.

“The minute you touch guns, you are going to get a huge response from the gun lobby,” said John Rosenthal, the founder of Stop Handgun Violence, a Boston area organization advocating for smart guns. “The concern of the gun industry is that if you personalize guns, then you are going to put a regulation on an industry that has none.”

Oak Tree executives did not respond to numerous requests for comments about the backlash and why they were now denying carrying the gun. Reached by phone, Mitchell said, “Not taking any phone calls. Thanks.” Then he hung up.

Belinda Padilla, president of Armatix’s U.S. operation, described a “mind-blowing” set of events following The Post’s original story. At first, she said Oak Tree officials, who lease her an office at the facility, were “ecstatic” with the coverage, telling her they needed more guns in the store because a TV news crew was coming to film a report.

But that tone quickly changed. Padilla said Mitchell told her that he had received phone calls from gun rights groups questioning the gun’s sale and that he had canceled the TV interview.

The National Rifle Association, a fierce opponent of smart-gun technology, did not return several requests for comment on whether it called Oak Tree. The National Shooting Sports Foundation denied calling Oak Tree.

Mitchell “was clearly distraught,” Padilla said. “I told him, ‘It’s going to be okay. You’re doing the right thing.’ Then it just got worse.”

Padilla, whose company has a federal firearms license registered to Oak Tree’s address, soon discovered that Armatix hats and other merchandise were put away. The special firing range that she and Oak Tree outfitted, painted blue with a large Armatix sign, was repainted. When she took a client to buy the gun at the store, she was told there were “computer glitches.”

Though she said she is “disappointed to say the least” about Oak Tree’s reaction, Padilla also said she felt bad for Mitchell.

“It’s sad, because at the end of the day, he was trying to do something good, which is provide choice for those people that want safety,” Padilla said.

But many customers and gun rights advocates don’t see it that way. Even though many smart-gun proponents, including the Silicon Valley group offering the $1 million prize, say the market should decide whether the technology is accepted, a fear of mandates looms.


“People have a reasonable suspicion that anti-gun governments will work toward mandating this unproven technology,” said Brandon Combs, president of the California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees, a Second Amendment advocacy group. Gun owners, he said, find it “purely offensive.”

And many Oak Tree customers have loudly made that known.

David Simantob, a member of the gun range, said in an e-mail: “Oak Tree’s association with Armatix the last year was never satisfactorily explained, and their recent back pedaling trying to explain it away has unfortunately created an even bigger problem for those of us who care about our Second Amendment rights.”

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Federal Reserve President finally acknowledges how bad quantitative easing is..

Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Charles Plosser is "very worried" about the potential for unintended consequences of the Fed's massive quantitative easing program.

Plosser told CNBC that the U.S. was still suffering from "lasting effects" of the recession and "may never return" to its previous growth rates—and warned that policy should not bet on growth returning to previous rates, saying it could be "many, many years." 

Fed's Plosser: We need to begin to get rid of QE)

With gross domestic product expanding at a 2.4 percent annual rate, according to the Commerce Department last Friday, Plosser said that the country was "pretty close" to its steady state growth and may never get back to where it once thought it could be. "To keep trying to think that we're going to do that, means that we keep trying to overplay our hand in terms of policy," he added.

Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
Plosser, a noted hawk at the Federal Open Market Committee, expressed concerns over the unwinding of the central bank's asset purchases. The Fed has undergone three stages of quantitative easing (QE) since the finical crash of 2008 in an effort to increase liquidity and stimulate lending. Its bond purchases of $85 billion-a-month last year have been dialed back at recent policy meetings, with $65 billion added to the economy this month as the Fed proceeds towards the exit door. 

"I am very worried about the potential for unintended consequences of all this action. And it's very difficult for us to know because we've never done this before," Plosser said, adding that the curbing of this extra liquidity in the global economy would be "very challenging".

"Sometimes if you don't have Plan B, you don't have a plan," he warned.

Central banks across the world have followed the Fed's lead by injecting more cash into the system, with the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan both embarking on QE with benchmark interest rates at record lows. Plosser said that there is a lot of pressure on central banks around the globe and expectations of what these banks can do have risen to "unhealthy highs."

"I would lie to see over time, central banks to gradually pull themselves in to the background, because we are not the 'panacea,' we are not the 'silver bullet,' " he said.

The current unwinding of the Fed's asset purchases has caused wobbles in emerging market currencies. U.S. investors that once searched the world for a high yield on their assets are now returning home in expectation of more normal monetary conditions.




On two different occasions, countries including Brazil, Turkey and India have seen weakness in their currencies with analysts claiming that the moderation of easy money as being a key reason.

Plosser said that monetary policy is primarily a domestic policy and problems and challenges arise when other countries decide to tie their monetary policy to another country in some form or fashion.

He added that Fed Chair Janet Yellen, and her predecessor Ben Bernanke, have managed to get this policy just right, stating that they should focus first and foremost on the U.S. economy.

"The best thing the U.S. can do for the global economy is have a strong economy itself...over the longer run that will make for a much healthily world economy," he said.
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