Author: Joe from MassPrivateI

Philly.com – by Angela Couloumbis

HARRISBURG – As cities nationwide grapple with fatal police shootings, many involving unarmed black men, Pennsylvania’s legislature on Thursday passed and sent to Gov. Wolf a contentious measure that would block public officials from immediately releasing the names of officers involved in such incidents.

The measure, sponsored by State Rep. Martina White (R., Phila.) and approved by the GOP-controlled legislature, stoked sharp opinions.   Continue reading “Pa. lawmakers approve ban on naming officers in shootings”

The Newspaper

For academics at the University of Maryland (UMD), merely collecting a toll from drivers for every mile they drive is not enough. UMD College Park researchers Di Yang, Eirini Kastrouni and Lei Zhang insist in a recent academic paper that motorists should pay a proportionally higher tax that is based on their income. Published in the journal Transport Policy, the article argues that a new variable-rate vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could supplement transportation funds being rapidly depleted by increased spending on transit infrastructure.   Continue reading “Maryland Academics Propose Income-Based Per-Mile Driving Tax”

Washinton’s Blog – by David Swanson

Officially, of course, the national bird of the United States is that half-a-peace-sign that Philadelphia sports fans like to hold up at opposing teams. But unofficially, the film National Bird has it right: the national bird is a killer drone.

Finally, finally, finally, somebody allowed me to see this movie. And finally somebody made this movie. There have been several drone movies worth seeing, most of them fictional drama, and one very much worth avoiding (Eye in the Sky). But National Bird is raw truth, not entirely unlike what you might fantasize media news reports would be in a magical world in which media outlets gave a damn about human life.   Continue reading “The U.S. National Bird Is Now a Drone”

Anti-Media- by Carey Wedler

“The war on our police must end,” Donald Trump forcefully demanded during a speech in Wisconsin in August. “It must end now.”

This sentiment is often parroted by right-wing outlets and savored by cop-loving Americans who should (according to what’s left of their ideological principles) harbor the utmost skepticism toward institutions of government.   Continue reading “War On Cops Debunked: More Cops Died By Accident Than From Violence in 2015”

Mother Jones – by Julia Lurie

This summer, 81,000 homes in Pittsburgh received a worrisome letter about their water. The local utility “has found elevated levels of lead in tap water samples in some homes,” it said. Seventeen percent of samples had high levels of the metal, which can cause “serious health problems.”

The situation was bad enough to attract the attention of Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor who helped exposed the Flint water crisis. “The levels in Pittsburgh are comparable to those reported in Flint,” he said in an interview with local TV station WPXI.  Continue reading “This Major City’s Drinking Water Was Fine. Then Came the Private Water Company.”

LifeZette – by Edmund Kozak

Concern is growing over revelations that voting machines in a significant number of states will be controlled by a company tied directly to billionaire leftist George Soros and his personal quest to create a nationless, borderless global state.

The U.K.-based Smartmatic company has provided voting machines for 16 states, including important battleground states like Florida and Arizona. The chairman of Smartmatic, Mark Malloch Brown, is a former UN official and sits on the board of Soros’ Open Society Foundation.   Continue reading “Concern Grows Over Soros-Linked Voting Machines”

Wall Street Journal – by Zusha Elinson

SAN DIEGO—The day when police zap suspects from the sky with drones carrying stun guns may be nearing.

Taser International Inc., known for its stun guns and body cameras, is exploring the concept of a drone armed with a stun gun for use by police. This week, the company held discussions with police officials about such a device during a law-enforcement conference here.   Continue reading “Taser Explores Concept of Drone Armed With Stun Gun for Police Use”

Washington’s Blog – by David Swanson

The 2016 Republican presidential primary was rigged. It wasn’t rigged by the Republicans, the Democrats, Russians, space aliens, or voters. It was rigged by the owners of television networks who believed that giving one candidate far more coverage than others was good for their ratings. The CEO of CBS Leslie Moonves said of this decision: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Justifying that choice based on polling gets the chronology backwards, ignores Moonves’ actual motivation, and avoids the problem, which is that there ought to be fair coverage for all qualified candidates (and a democratic way to determine who is qualified).   Continue reading “Rigged”

Star Tribune – by Liz Sawyer

The Minnesota Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a felon sentenced to five years in prison for the possession of a small BB gun, ruling Wednesday that the air-powered weapon is not a firearm.

Though the decision vacates the conviction upheld by the Minnesota Court of Appeals, it is not broad-sweeping. The ruling only covers Minnesota’s felon-in-possession statues, not someone who chooses to actually fire it.

Continue reading “Minnesota’s Supreme Court overturns felony conviction, rules that BB gun is not a firearm”

EFF – by Dave Maas

If we don’t speak up now, the days when we can walk around with our heads held high without fear of surveillance are numbered. Federal and local law enforcement across the country are adopting sophisticated facial recognition technologies to identify us on the streets and in social media by matching our faces to massive databases.

We knew the threat was looming. But a brand new report from the Georgetown Law Center for Privacy and Technology indicates the problem is far worse than we could’ve imagined.  The researchers compare the use of facial recognition to a perpetual line-up, where everyday, law-abiding citizens are pulled into law enforcement investigations without their consent and, in many cases, without their knowledge.   Continue reading “Memo to the DOJ: Facial Recognition’s Threat to Privacy is Worse Than Anyone Thought”

Forbes – by Thomas Fox-Brewster

In what’s believed to be an unprecedented attempt to bypass the security of Apple iPhones, or any smartphone that uses fingerprints to unlock, California’s top cops asked to enter a residence and force anyone inside to use their biometric information to open their mobile devices.

FORBES found a court filing, dated May 9 2016, in which the Department of Justice sought to search a Lancaster, California, property. But there was a more remarkable aspect of the search, as pointed out in the memorandum: “authorization to depress the fingerprints and thumbprints of every person who is located at the SUBJECT PREMISES during the execution of the search and who is reasonably believed by law enforcement to be the user of a fingerprint sensor-enabled device that is located at the SUBJECT PREMISES and falls within the scope of the warrant.” The warrant was not available to the public, nor were other documents related to the case.   Continue reading “Feds Walk Into A Building, Demand Everyone’s Fingerprints To Open Phones”

The Washington Post – by Matt Zapotosky

The private prison industry is lobbying against a Justice Department directive to end the use of their facilities, encouraging legislators to question the policy change and legally protesting one significant contract reduction.

The moves by the GEO Group and others demonstrate the practical and political hurdles that stand in the way of the Bureau of Prisons actually ending its use of for-profit facilities to manage federal inmates. The private prison industry claims that the decision to do so was based on faulty research and that officials need contractors because of overcrowding in the federal prison system.   Continue reading “Private prison industry fights Justice Department directive to end the use of contract facilities”

Tech Dirt – by Tim Cushing

This opinion — written by Texas appeals court judge Brian Quinn — is a breath of fresh air for those of us who have watched as courts have continually deferred to law enforcement officers and their declarations that nearly everything drivers do — or DON’T do — is “suspicious.”

It’s also a slap in the face of those same law enforcement officers — the ones who use their “experience and training” to find nearly any action, or lack thereof, to be supportive of a warrantless search.   Continue reading “Judge Tears Apart Law Enforcement’s Ridiculous Assertions About ‘Suspicious’ Behavior”