Author: Joe from MassPrivateI

Courthouse News – by Brian Grosh

CLEVELAND (CN) – A disabled veteran and a nonprofit advocacy group for the homeless backed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio claim Cleveland’s anti-panhandling ordinances violate First Amendment rights.

In a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Cleveland federal court, John Mancini and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, or NEOCH, say two Cleveland ordinances that criminalize panhandling are unconstitutional, content-based restrictions on free speech.  Continue reading “ACLU Challenges Cleveland’s Anti-Panhandling Laws”

MassPrivateI

The North Carolina Department of Transportation (DOT) will begin using drones to allegedly respond to emergencies.

According to an article in High Point Enterprise, DOT officials claim drones will be used to provide information during emergencies and could be used to reach dangerous locations. 

Does anyone really believe drones will only be used to keep DOT officials safe? Once one state DOT uses drones all the others will follow.   Continue reading “DOT to use drones to spy on motorists”

EFF – by Karen Gullo and Jamie Williams

Cities across the country are switching to wireless smart meters. You may even have one in your home. Utility companies say the new technology helps consumers monitor their energy use and potentially save money. But smart meters also reveals intimate details about what’s going on inside the home. By collecting energy use data at high frequencies—typically every 5, 15, or 30 minutes—smart meters know exactly how much electricity is being used, and when. Patterns in your smart meter data can reveal when you are home, when you are sleeping, when you take a shower, and even whether you cook dinner on the stove or in the microwave. These are all private details about what’s going on inside your home—details that should be clearly within the bounds of Fourth Amendment protection.  Continue reading “An Illinois Court Just Didn’t Get It: We Are Entitled to Expect Privacy In Our Smart Meter Data, Which Reveals What’s Going On Inside Our Homes”

Tenth Amendment Center – by Shane Trejo

LANSING, Mich. (Feb. 28, 2017) – A bill introduced in the Michigan House would allow customers to opt out of installing “smart meter” technology on their homes and businesses. Passage of this bill would allow Michigan residents to protect their own privacy, and it would take a step toward blocking a federal program in effect.

Rep. Gary Glenn (R-Midland) introduced House Bill 4220 (HB4220) along with 17 bipartisan co-sponsors on Feb. 15. The legislation would allow Michigan residents to opt out of any utility company smart meter program with no penalty.   Continue reading “Michigan Bill Would Allow People To Opt Out Of Smart Meters, Undermine Federal Program”

Buycott

In addition to the scary problem of privately-operated, for-profit prisons, for-profit corporations are further incentivising higher incarceration rates by tapping into the prison population and exploiting what essentially amounts to slave labour. Regardless of your politics or how you feel about prisoners’ rights, this affects you! The corporations that exploit prisoner labour, eager to get even more of it, will continue to bribe (“lobby”) Washington for more laws and harsher sentences, because more prisoners = more cheap labour. Any financial incentive to needlessly put more people in prison should be cause for alarm! Furthermore, it is the taxpayers who are subsidizing the decreased labour costs of these private corporations.    Continue reading “Boycott Companies That Use Prison Labor”

ProPublica – by Annie Waldman

Over the last three years, pharmaceutical companies have mounted a public relations blitz to tout new cures for the hepatitis C virus and persuade insurers, including government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, to cover the costs. That isn’t an easy sell, because the price of the treatments ranges from $40,000 to $94,000 — or, because the treatments take three months, as much as $1,000 per day.   Continue reading “Big Pharma Quietly Enlists Leading Professors to Justify $1,000-Per-Day Drugs”

MassPrivateI

Bourborn Street/Mardi Gras will never be the same as police state America uses our fears of terrorism to turn 20 neighborhoods into a giant surveillance network! As you’ll see, no one is safe from New Orleans spying surveillance cameras.

Police are spending $40 million dollars to install over a hundred new license plate readers, remote sensing technology, roadblocks, High Defintion thermal cameras equipped with night vision and much more. Police have also spent $12.6 million on a new spying command center.    Continue reading “Mardi Gras and Bourborn Street have been turned into America’s largest spying network”

Mercury News – by Michael Todd

SANTA CRUZ – Discord flared Thursday between Santa Cruz Police Department and Homeland Security Investigations after a five-year inquiry of alleged MS-13 gang activity spurred detainments based on questions of citizenship — not just criminal allegations.

Santa Cruz Police Chief Kevin Vogel, who is slated to retire in June, denounced Homeland Security during a press conference Thursday. He said the federal agency misled the police department about a series of raids Feb. 13. But Homeland Security spokesman James Schwab said the police department was aware that immigrants encountered during the investigation would be held briefly during review of their “identities and case histories.”  Continue reading “Santa Cruz police: Homeland Security misled city with ‘gang’ raids that were immigration related”

The Newspaper

Photo radar has some big fans at the Iowa Appeals Court. A three-judge panel on Wednesday tossed a class action suit against speed camera use in Cedar Rapids and, in a separate case, the same panel upheld the principles behind the city’s automated ticketing program. At issue were the $75 tickets issued by the Swedish firm Sensys Gatso on Interstate 380, where the high-speed route passes through city limits.

Motorists argued that the civil administrative hearings Cedar Rapids uses to confirm violations are rigged in favor of the city, depriving drivers of their due process rights. The judges reasoned that there is nothing preventing aggrieved ticket recipients from challenging the citation in a real court. even though neither Sensys Gatso nor Cedar Rapids have been eager to advertise this.   Continue reading “Iowa Appeal$ Court Defend$ $peed Camera$”

Tech Dirt – by Tim Cushing

Perhaps no entity generates more fake news than the FBI’s counterterrorism unit. Several times a year, a press release is issued announcing the bust of a so-called terrorist. Almost invariably, the “terrorist” has been handcrafted through the relentless intercession of undercover FBI agents.   Continue reading “Another ‘Terrorist’ Swept Up By The FBI, Which Had To Purchase $20 Of ‘Terrorist’ Supplies To Keep The ‘Plan’ In Motion”

Washington Examiner – by Adam Steinbaugh

Universities are the cradle of free speech, where ideologies and ideas clash, where academics and activists can agree, disagree, or be disagreeable. This is particularly true in the United States, where the First Amendment zealously guards against government surveillance and intrusion into free speech.

Yet at hundreds of campuses across the country, administrators encourage students to report one another, or their professors, for speech protected by the First Amendment, or even mere political disagreements. The so-called “Bias Response Teams” reviewing these (often anonymous) reports typically include police officers, student conduct administrators and public relations staff who scrutinize the speech of activists and academics.   Continue reading “Hundreds of campuses encourage students to turn in fellow students for offensive speech”

AirTalk – by Brian Markus

Before fighting everyone in the room to plug your smartphone into the communal charger: please don’t.

Or at least, beware.

Coffee shops, airports and almost every other kind of public meeting space have become regular safe havens whenever we’re desperate for that extra juice. But with the ubiquity of USB ports built into today’s phone chargers, this flow of “juice” isn’t just power anymore – it’s data. Important data.   Continue reading “‘Juice-jacking:’ how hackers steal your private data from public charging stations”

Tech Dirt – by Tim Cushing

In news that will surprise no one, police officers decided they must do something about someone filming the police department building from across the street. That’s where this Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision begins: with a completely avoidable and completely unnecessary assertion of government power.

Phillip Turner was filming the police department. He was accosted by two officers (Grinalds and Dyess). Both demanded he provide them with identification. He refused to do so. The officers arrested him for “failure to identify,” took his camera, and tossed him in the back of a squad car. Given the circumstances of the initial interaction, it’s surprising the words “contempt of cop” weren’t used on the official police report. From the opinion [PDF]:   Continue reading “Appeals Court Says Filming The Police Is Protected By The First Amendment”