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Big Brother Is Watching You!
100,000 New Cops or 100,000 More Snoops
JULY 2000: President Bill Clinton promised to put 100,000 new cops on the street with a officer on every corner. Clinton felt Americans would be freed from fear. (Unless the cops are from New York, Los Angeles and other corrupt cops that are nothing more than thugs hiding behind a badge.) When Congress made the initiative in it's 1994 crime bill Clinton said "there is no better crime fighting tool to be found." Despite the 9 billion dollars in federal spending the cops never appeared. A report by The Department of Justice reported that 78 % of police departments audited showed that the federal aid never helped add any new officers to their force. One reason could be the recent revelation of torture, murder, drug trafficking by the cops in areas as New York City and Los Angeles, plus numerous other cities could be a major factor. Washington is still recovering from its police scandal when 25% of the new 1,000 cops being hired had been discharged for misconduct or indicted for criminal activity. It is hard to justify this expense when the cops being hired are exposed to the easy pickings of corruption by their older brothers in arms. A good way to spend the money would be to evaluate, change training habits and the military mentality which has swept America's law enforcement agencies and take every current officer, subject them all to drug tests, lie detector tests for criminal activity, with the final outcome of firing all these hoods. It surely would eliminate allot of the criminal element and those officers who are doing their duty be given substantial raises or medical benefits and recognition from the public who are proud of the honest, hard working officer, who has the responsibility of protecting the citizens.
The Gestapo "American State Police" Tactics Deal in Torture
As in any society, you have the good cop/bad cop syndrome. What is disturbing is the law enforcement agency acts almost the same as the Mafia's Code of Silence. The Blue Wall of Silence code is NEVER RAT on your fellow officer, right or wrong. Officers who inform on their brothers in arms are often shunned, regardless if the officer who was reporting on
another policeman was justified. A movie about corruption in the New York Police Department made it's debut in the 70's called Serprico, in where a policeman informed on his fellow officers who were involved in drugs, bribery and corruption. A major victory against this The Blue Wall of Silence was one when officers Charles Schwarz and Justin Volpe of the New York City Police Department were found guilty in 1999 of torturing Abner Louima by holding him down and ramming a broken broom stick up his rectum causing major injuries. In fact, Volpe didn't even try to hide the fact of what he had done, but bragged about his attack on Abner Louima to other officers. Those officers didn't even report or turn him in, but remained
silent about this brutal attack. The only way this vicious attack was investigated was because of the persistence of the emergency room nurse to lead to a inquiry by persistent questioning by internal affairs officers and federal prosecuters. If not for that, these two nazi goons fascists would have been shielded from justice by the very same badge they wear to enforce it.
Officers Charles Schwarz and Justin Volpe were convicted but other officers who had heard them bragging on torturing Abner Louima and did not report it were acquitted of any crime. After a federal jury Tuesday, June 8 convicted only one of four New York City police officers accused of having a role in his beating and sexual torture, Abner Louima said he was disappointed because, " the verdict was not everything I wanted it to be." "But I'm confident that complete justice will be done in my case," Louima said. Two more New York City police officers were indicted Monday, June 20,1999 in the case of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was beaten and sodomized in a Brooklyn police precinct bathroom. Officers Rolando Aleman and Francisco Rosario, from Brooklyn's 70th precinct, were indicted on federal charges of making false statements about their whereabouts when Louima was put into a holding cell after the 1997 attack, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney in
the Eastern District of New York. A federal prosecutor charged  that former cop Charles Schwarz and two other officers `` concocted a story'' to conceal Schwarz's role in the police station sodomy attack on Abner Louima. `` It has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that that is exactly what these officers did,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Resnick told jurors in her summation in the three officers' conspiracy trial. She said that as representatives of the public trust, the officers were obligated to tell the truth. Instead, she said, `` They told one story ... then another and yet another story here at the trial. They concocted a story to protect one of their own.'' Prosecutors allege Schwarz, 34, held the Haitian immigrant down in August 1997 while Officer Justin Volpe sodomized him with a broken broomstick in a police station lavatory, then connived with fellow Officers Thomas Wiese, 34, and Thomas Bruder, 37, to cover up Schwarz's role. Volpe is serving 30 years after pleading guilty in May, 1999 to violating Louima's civil rights. As of this writing, officers Wiese, Bruder, and Schwarz also have been convicted of violation of  Louima's civil rights. Above pictured is former New York policeman Justin Volpe who changed his plea to guilty. Volpe shoved a broken broom handle up the rectum of a suspect then threatened to kill the suspect if he ever told anyone. Volpe even wept a little when stating to the judge, " I'm sorry for hurting my family. " Volpe made no apologies or showed remorse on his attack of suspect Abner Louima. Bad cops like Volpe are in every law enforcement agency, in every city today. Honest officers and the public alike need to police the police and expose crooked cops like Volpe before a state ran police goon squad takes over America and anarchy reigns over justice. Do not let crooked cops/state prosecutors hide behind their badges and oath of office. More law enforcers are becoming criminals and top law enforcement official Janet Reno has sent more cops to prison than any other attorney general. Reno's Justice Department has convicted a record  756 former law enforcement officers on federal corruption, brutality and other charges in the past five years, according to a USA TODAY review. The crackdown has caused the number of law enforcement officials serving time to jump more than 500%. But even more disturbing is the way the government operates and prosecutes .Take the case of convicted mafia king pin John Gotti, who was sentenced to life with the help of his under boss Sammy Gravono. The FBI made a deal with Gravono to testify against John Gotti. In exchange the government only charged Gravono with ONE count of racketeering ,and he served only two years in prison, and now is a free man. What is shocking is Mr. Gravono admitted to committing over 19 murders including his own brother in law. Now thanks to the FBI he walks the street a free man. It shows how corrupt and malicious the government can be when they want someone bad enough, regardless of guilt or innocence .In February 2000 Mr. Gravono was again arrested for dealing the drug ecstasy in which many teenagers use and is in jail once again. A man who murdered 19 people and also bargained with The FBI to put John Gotti in jail got a free pass plus at the tax payers expense received plastic surgery and was put into the witness protection program.

Other such police attacks include the murder of Pedro Oregon in Houston Texas, July 12, 1998. Without a warrant
and ignoring standard procedure, six policeman suspected that 22 year old Mr. Oregon was a drug dealer, crashed into his house and shot at him 34 times. There were no drugs, weapons in the house nor were their any drugs in the suspect's body. The six Houston officers were fired and the only charge was one count of trespassing by a Harris County grand jury.
In February 1999, in Bronx New York, four white officers were justified  in the murder of 22 year old africa american Amadou Diallo. Four officers who were part of a elite roaming street crime unit, stopped the suspect as he had just reached his apartment. Even now the reason is unknown as why they stopped and decided to question him, but the four officers claim that Mr. Diallo ignored their warnings to freeze and stated the suspect was reaching into his pocket at which time officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Ken Boss, and Richard Murphy, fired 41 bullets at Amadou Diallo, thus killing him. Amadou Diallo was unarmed. The four officers were acquitted as they claimed they believe Mr. Diallo had a gun in his hand, ( It was his wallet)
and it was dark. I can almost understand why the jury of eight white and four black citizens who acquitted the four officers
due to the fact it was dark, they were in a dangerous neighborhood known for gang crime, and they claimed to be in fear of their life. What I don't understand is the 41 shots fired at Mr. Diallo. The last time I looked at my wallet it doesn't fire or make any sounds remotely close to a handgun. The ideology it seems is, shoot now and ask questions later. The shooting began when one of the officers  tripped, thus falling down and his fellow officer assumed he was shot and that's when the bullets started flying. Also the four officers were in plain clothes. If you were a white person and four black men in plain clothes pointed guns at you in a rough part of town claiming they were police, what would you do? The family of the victim has filed a 61 million dollar law suit against the four officers and the city of New York.

There is growing alarm among some Los Angeles judges  that is one effect of the mushrooming police scandal, known as Rampart, named after a division in the city's police department. The scandal broke in September, 1999. In maybe a dozen cases thus far, there is growing evidence to suggest that jurors are simply refusing to believe police testimony in court, said Larry Fidler, supervising judge for the Los Angeles Superior Court Criminal Division. The spill over may be from the unfolding police corruption scandal. It has been alleged that officers in the now disgraced anti gang Rampart Division fabricated evidence, lied in court to win convictions on false charges, perjured themselves, committed assaults and even shot people. At least 99 people, the police chief thinks, were wrongly and falsely accused by apparently corrupt cops working out of the Rampart Division. At least 32 criminal cases have been reversed as a result of the investigation, and 20 officers have been relieved of duty, suspended or fired or have quit. A number of 70 officers are under investagation. (  As of this writing, there are no arrests, charges of any criminal activity by Los Angeles District Attorneys against ANY police officer. Make's you think a little as I'm sure the 99 people who are sitting in jail because of this sure are. ) Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, said the scandal may have a positive result. " For far too long, jurors and judges believed police officers and have given additional weight to the testimony of police officers," Ripston said. "So very often, innocent people have been convicted, and I think we're beginning to see a balance now because of the Rampart scandal. " The Rampart fiasco was brought to light when former cop and now a singing jail bird started ratting out on his brother " rat " officers. Covicted for stealing cocaine from a evidence room, former cop Rafael Perez began telling of numerous officers who lied under oath, planted evidence, dealed drugs, shot people, robbed banks and numerous other crimes.As of February 2001, the lawyer newspaper
known as The National Law Journal reported that five officers have been fired, over 30 had either retired or resigned due to the Rampart scandal. As of this writing, not ONE officer has even been arrested or charged with a single crime.

        Investigators Raid Homes of 17 LAPD Officers

May 6, 2000: LOS ANGELES -- Justice Department officials will bring a civil rights lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department unless city officials agree to a number of reforms, news reports said Saturday. The report of the probe came just hours after investigators raided the homes of 17 Los Angeles Police Department officers looking for evidence in connection
with the city's ongoing police corruption scandal. After a four year Justice Department probe that in recent months has focused on the department's Rampart station scandal, in which officers are said to have framed, beat, robbed and shot innocent people, federal investigators now believe they have enough evidence to sue the LAPD, the Los Angeles Times reported. Task force investigators have been gathering additional evidence for possible conspiracy charges, attempted murder and murder charges against some officers implicated in the police corruption case after former officer Rafael Perez confessed to participating in or witnessing unjustified shootings, evidence planting, false arrests and framing of innocent people, sources tell CNN. Perez has been cooperating with authorities as part of his plea agreement with state prosecutors following cocaine theft charges.

Cop Scandals Take Toll And Jurors are Wary of Police Testimony
May 16, 2000: The police brutality and corruption scandals in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere seem to have claimed another victim -- the trust jurors used to place in police officers who take the witness stand. An informal survey of prosecutors and defense attorneys by The National Law Journal has found that they are seeing an increase in hung juries and acquittals in
cases that rely primarily on police testimony, and that the reason may be a growing public cynicism regarding the honesty of police officers. Prosecutors blame the killings of several unarmed black men by police in New York, the Rampart scandal in Los Angeles and similar controversies in cities such as Hartford, Conn., Philadelphia, Oklahoma City and Louisville, Ky . " Cases that our supervisors would normally expect to get a conviction on -- they are just getting hung up," groans one Los Angeles prosecutor, speaking on condition of anonymity, as did most interviewed for this story. Not unexpectedly, criminal defense attorneys have sought to inject the scandals into their own trials, to sow doubt among jurors. "In the past, there was a false aura of accuracy and credibility that was given to police officer testimony," explains Los Angeles County Public Defender Michael P. Judge. "Now they seem to be evaluated by the same criteria as all other witnesses." Attorney Stephan Yagman was quoted in the The National Law Journal's September 25th, 2000 issue, " You can't sue the forest, but you can sue the trees." Mr. Yagman has been trying to use the RICO law against the LAPD and expose it for what it is, basically the MOB. But a 1991 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th circuit holds that government agencies cannot be sued under RICO ( Lancaster Community Hospital v. Antelope Valley Hospital, 940 F. 2d 397 ). To me this is another security blanket in which crooked cops can hide behind without fear of prosecution or incarceration. Mr. Yagman's claims of the LAPD is nothing short of the mob hiding behind a badge has merit. When any organization steals, murders, tortures, deals drugs, fabricates evidence in order to convict innocent people, even the Mafia would have to take a back seat to this group of so called US Law enforcement. As of December 2000,3-7 officers of the LAPD have been convicted and sentenced to prison terms.

 In New York, it began with the brutal Aug. 9, 1997, sexual assault of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. After his arrest
outside a Brooklyn nightclub, police beat him, dragged him into a precinct bathroom and jammed a broken broom handle into
his rectum. The attack was the first in a series of assaults and shootings by New York police of unarmed, predominantly black citizens -- a phenomenon critics attribute to the aggressive policing instituted under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Public outrage toward the city's police reached new heights with the Feb. 4, 1999, killing of Amadou Diallo, a 22 year old West African immigrant shot dead by four white plainclothes officers in the Bronx. After approaching Diallo in the vestibule of his building, the police fired 41 shots, hitting him 19 times. Instead of the gun police say they thought they saw in his hand, Diallo was holding his wallet when he died. In February, 2000 a mostly white jury acquitted the four officers on all charges. A month later, undercover officers in Manhattan shot and killed another unarmed black man, Patrick Dorismond, who scuffled with them when they asked him for drugs. In Los Angeles, police credibility began to unravel in September 1999, when an officer accused of stealing cocaine from a property room revealed a river of brutality, corruption and evidence fabrication at the Police Department's Rampart Division. The spreading scandal has resulted in scores of dismissed cases and the arrest of several officers.
Following the shooting of Diallo, prosecutors in Brooklyn lost the next five homicide cases that came to verdict, he says. In March, when three of the officers involved in the assault on Louima were convicted in federal court for obstructing  justice, eight cases that came to verdict the next day ended in acquittal. "When you have an 80 percent conviction rate, and when maybe nine or 10 cases come to verdict on a particular day, and eight ... are acquittals, you know something is going on," the prosecutor says. Sally Thomas, director of central operations for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, agrees that Rampart has negatively affected the ability to get convictions, but she adds that she is unsure how widespread that effect is. " If we have a case where we think the police are lying, of course we're going to try and use what's going on out there," says defense lawyer Lisa Schreibersdorf, of Brooklyn Defender Services in New York. "Instead of trying to convince people that it's possible that the police lie, we are now confronted with jurors who say, 'Yeah. We know police lie.'"

The recent revelation in July, 1999 shows that  FBI agents withheld information from the government's own prosecutors in the Terry Nichols case involving the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing in which Timothy McViegh was convicted and
sentenced to death. This new evidence withheld by FBI agents have now made it possible for a new trial for Terry Nichols. In the week of August 21, assigned defenders asked a judge  to be withdrawn form representing Mr. Nichols due to
insufficient funds as they claimed the cost to properly defend him would be 5 million dollars. A Federal Judge over ruled a new trial for Nichols claiming he had sufficient access to the already existing evidence at the time of his first trial, regardless of what
federal agents withheld from the governments own lawyers. Now current Oklahoma City District Attorney Bob Macy wants to have Nichols moved to Oklahoma City and put him on trial for 168 murder counts due the bombing fatalities. Of course, this will be at the tax-payers expense which will cost the citizens of Oklahoma City millions of dollars.
Terry Nichols was moved to the Oklahoma City in January 2000.

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-----------------------------------------WACO TEXAS
FBI officials are set to officially drop their long held claim that agents had not fired any potentially flammable devices into the vicinity of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, the day it erupted in flames, killing more than 80 people. FBI sources tell CNN the agency plans to release a formal statement Wednesday acknowledging for the first time that two CS
gas canisters were fired at a concrete bunker in a pit outside the wooden structures which went up in flames hours later. Attorney General Janet Reno is expected to face questions about the FBI's handling of the ill fated Waco siege at her weekly press conference, scheduled for Thursday morning. The FBI acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that potentially flammable devices may have been fired in the vicinity of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, on the day in 1993 when more than 80 members of the religious sect perished in a fire. When will citizens demand that law enforcement
agencies be held accountable for criminal action rather than using their authority and oath of office to hide behind it to shield them from prosecution? Account's of the FBI trying to cover their own ass are well documented in cases as Waco, the shooting
of Randy Weavers wife and his son at Ruby Ridge (Mr. Weaver received a 3.1 million award in his law suit. ) The Oklahoma
City bombing and numerous other cases to many to mention.
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This Chart shows the amount of corruption just on the border concerning law enforcement officers being sent to prison for looking the other way on drug shipments crossing the border.What is bothersome that reports show that officials are not doing all they can to stop or doing nothing at all. Police agencies and officers alike frown upon investigating or reporting on fellow officers. The chart shows only 1 conviction in 1991 and only 14 convictions in 1998.I find it hard to believe that out of all the thousands of officers on border patrol that only 14 were convicted in 1998. One other thing I might ad to this macabre story. It happens every day in every city, perhaps not as vicious as the Abner Louima case, but just as corrupt when cops hide behind their badges and commit crimes of civil rights violations, torture and even murder. In the 1990's The Chief of Police in New Orleans and other officers were convicted of murder and drug trafficking. It is no small wonder that for every officer killed in the line of duty, that TWO policemen will commit suicide themselves, possibly due to the stress of the job, or because of their conscience in not reporting on fellow officers who commit crimes, or they are criminals themselves and would rather take their own life rather than go to prison where they surely will be raped or killed. Even criminals in prison view the lowest of scum as crooked cops and child rapists, and will deal with their new cell mates in a harsh and brutal way.

The circus murder trial of O.J. Simpson was filled with blunders in police procedures by detective VanAtter and the lying on the stand by detective Mark Fuhrman who committed perjury and was exposed as a racist and crooked cop. Are the police perfect and infallible? Of course not! Am I or you who is reading this article perfect and infallible? Of course not! No one is perfect as we are all humans and make mistakes. But when it comes down to a law enforcement agency or state prosecutor in ANY criminal case, they should be held more accountable in their actions as they are sworn employees under oath, to protect the citizens of the state. Instead, it seems the state is more concerned about the blunders of law enforcement and the blatant misconduct of the state's prosecuting attorneys. As I have said many times in my investagations, the state has all it's money resources at YOU, the tax payer, where as the accused must fund his own defense if he has any money at all. The O.J. Simpson trial was a fiasco. The only thing we all really know, is that two young people were brutally murdered, and the clumsy efforts of the LAPD may have sent a guilty man free. I must admit, after hearing all the pros & cons, I would have used common sense and vote the way the jury did, NOT GUILTY, but in my heart, I would have sent O.J. Simpson to prison for life. The main concern for me was in the trial that samples of Mr. Simpson's blood taken at the crime scene and on the socks found in his bedroom had a blood preservative in it, which proves in my mind it was tampered with which would lead me to believe some sort of  tampering with the evidence. Fight Against Police Abuse in Your City.
http://www.aclu.org/library/fighting_police_abuse.html
 

    Police Reports Still Hide Protected Under FOIL Law
June 30, 1999 While there is no blanket exemption from New York's Freedom of Information Law for police  investigative reports, an appellate court has ruled that before such reports are released, they must  be scrutinized in chambers to protect the privacy  and safety of witnesses who may be identified. (What about the rights of the accused? ) The Appellate Division, First
Department,  In the Johnson v. New York City Police Department,  yesterday unanimously reversed a 1997 order of Acting Justice Diane Lebedeff directing the Police  Department to produce reports to William  Johnson concerning his arrest for the 1990  shooting death of a Bronx superintendent, George  Braswell, in the lobby of an apartment building.  Mr. Johnson's
conviction on a manslaughter charge was affirmed on appeal. He then submitted a request under the Freedom of  Information Law (FOIL) for the police investigation reports, called DD-5s. The Police Department responded by disclosing  eight pages of documents and nine copies of photographs, but declined to provide any further  information. ( Thus making FOIL Law a fiasco!) Presiding Justice Betty Weinberg Ellerin, writing  for the four judge panel, agreed with Justice Lebedeff that there was no blanket exemption for  police records, ( The Police Under Special Protection, putting them ABOVE the american citizen. ) under two other exceptions in FOIL Public Officers Law §87(2)(b) and (f), pertaining  to privacy and public safety considerations. But Justice Ellerin objected that the petition for  the documents should not have been granted without an in camera examination by the lower  court to protect witnesses identified in the reports. ( Again, what about the accused? ) She noted the Police Department's contention that witnesses "believe in and rely on the  confidentiality of all of their statements to the police." Anyone who thinks that all police and law enforcement agents are square and honest is a idiot in this editor's opinion The judge rejected Mr. Johnson's argument that the privacy exemption did not apply because he  knew the identity of many of the witnesses to the crime. ( Maybe the witness is wrong or made false statements to the police.)
Five Police Goons Charged With Obstruction of Justice
MARCH 2001 : MIAMI (AP)  Five members of a special police unit were charged Wednesday with lying to federal investigators during an investigation of a 1996 drug raid in which a 73 year old man was killed in a hail of 123 bullets.
Jose Acuna, Ralph Fuentes, Arturo Beguiristain, Eliezer Lopez and Alejandro Macias were indicted by a federal jury investigative panel on obstruction of justice charges. All five officers, members of the Miami police SWAT team, or Special Weapons and Tactics unit, have been on the force for at least 12 years. The five officers were accused of fabricating evidence and agreeing to make false statements regarding the slaying of Richard Brown, a retired seaman who was gunned down by the five officers and a sixth team member. The Miami Officers, The LAPD and The NYPD and Oklahoma City Police Department must be going to the same police academy when it comes to shooting citizens, lying to investigators and fabricating evidence and alibis and perjury. The officers were placed on paid administrative leave Wednesday pending the outcome of their case, police said. They could get up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Bond was set Wednesday at $ 100,000 for four of the defendants; they immediately posted bond. The fifth defendant, Macias, was to appear in court Thursday. The SWAT team said Brown was seen dealing drugs from his home earlier on the day of the raid. The officers said Brown refused to let them into the apartment and then fired two shots from a revolver when they burst through the door. Brown was gunned down as his 14 year old great granddaughter sought cover. The obvious problem to this story is when a SWAT Team is called in, they do not ask a suspect to open the door, they batter the door down themselves. No drugs were found inside the home, but some were found outside a window. Brown's family has said the SWAT team's informants were wrong and called his shooting brutal and unnecessary. Harry Solomon, attorney for Lopez, said the defendants will be vindicated. `` These are fine dedicated police officers who are only being tried because of political pressure exerted on the U.S. Attorney's Office,'' he said. The fact is lawyer Solomon is correct, it's almost a miracle if any cop is ever convicted of any crime, regardless if they are guilty. Cell phones are growing smarter all the  time, and Bell Labs wants to make them smarter about where cell phone calls are made from. Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs unwrapped a technology The company claims will allow mobile phone companies to pinpoint a caller's location to within 15 linear feet. The company said the technology will be
useful for locating 911 callers in distress. User location could also be used to provide driving directions and local traffic information. According to Bell Labs, the technology will allow cellular network operators to  easily meet a October 2001 Federal Communications Commission mandate requiring that all cell phones be able to locate 911 dialers. David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, outlined the privacy concerns over location technology
in general. "We are very concerned about the deployment and requirement of  location tracking information in the cellular networks," Sobel said. "The concern is that, once the capability is developed and the architecture for location tracking is in place, it will be very difficult to restrict use of that capability only to emergency situations." Sobel said that once the capability exists, cell phone firms will face pressure from both commercial industry and from the government to routinely track location and record the whereabouts of people when they use their cell phones.

Police can easily  "eavesdrop" on pagers if a bill approved by the US Senate becomes law. The bill says law enforcement officials can monitor all messages sent to  targeted pagers without having to convince a judge that the information can be found only in that way. "Congress is trying to do an end run around the Constitution and gut the privacy of millions of pager owners," said David Banisar, author of The Electronic Privacy Papers. According to the legislation, judges will be required to approve police surveillance of  numeric pager data without subjecting law enforcement requests to the more exacting current requirements of search warrants or wiretap orders. The rules governing alphanumeric pager monitoring are left unchanged. "It makes the court into nothing more than a clerk," said Dave Kopel, a lawyer at the Independence Institute and a  former assistant attorney general of  Colorado. "The judge must issue the order based on a law enforcement officials'
representation."  Devices to monitor whom Americans call and receive calls from already fit into this warrant less category and are frequently used by police. Government statistics say 7,323 units called pen registers and  trap and trace devices  were used in 1998. The US Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that  police didn't need a warrant to record  what numbers a person dialed. "The installation and use of a pen register, consequently, was not a 'search,' and no warrant was required," the five justice
majority concluded.

Cell phone users of the future many never have to get lost or deal with the embarrassment of asking for directions. But if they ever need help, ( or don't need help), police and paramedics won't have trouble tracking them down. On Wednesday, September 16, 1999, the US Federal Communications Commission agreed to allow mobile phone companies to distribute handsets equipped with global positioning satellite, or GPS, technology that pinpoints the location from which a call is made. GPS technology, which uses an embedded device in a handset to transmit location information to a satellite, is one of two main technologies used for tracking the source of mobile phone calls. But technologies for placing the location of cell phones have raised the hackles of privacy advocates, who say the technology can be used to track users without their consent.
Steve Poizner, chief executive of Snap Track, a company that develops GPS systems for wireless handsets, said many carriers are leaning toward the satellite technology. Getting FCC approval was the last major hurdle in the way of a commercial launch. Now Big Brother can easily find you if you use your cell phone. Of course the next step will be the chip implantation's into human beings so Big Brother will always know where his soon to be slaves are at every second of the day. As the Star Trek half human/half machine creatures known as The Borg would say," Resistance is futile."

If anyone in Washington qualifies as an ardent foe of encryption, it's congressman Porter Goss (R-Florida). Two years ago, the chairman of the House Intelligence committee tried to make it a crime to distribute privacy protecting software, such as PGP
or recent versions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. The plan failed, but Goss didn't give up. On Wednesday, he and the panel's ranking Democrat introduced a bill to jump start the US market for encryption products with backdoors that would support government surveillance. The "Tax Relief for Responsible Encryption Act" gives companies a 15 percent tax break on the costs of developing government snooping encryption products, in which a copy of the secret key needed to unlock scrambled data is placed within reach of law enforcement or "other techniques." Law enforcement groups and their allies is the Clinton administration have long pressed for snooping encryption products, complaining that a parade of undesirables, such as pedophiles, drug smugglers, and money launderers, might use crypto to communicate in secret. Of course they failed to mention they would acquire the snoop technology just for the sake of snooping on ordinary citizens and corporations at their own whims. But the idea of the government subsidizing potential privacy invasions doesn't appear to be wildly popular. " I think the government's role is to protect the individual liberties of its citizens, they should be giving companies incentives to strengthen encryption," said Jennifer DePalma, a graduate fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. " They should let the free market continue to put an emphasis on protecting people's privacy," she said.
Intel & MicroSoft Are Tracking You Online
     As Well As Your ISP
Whenever you turn on your computer, you are leaving a trail of your data information. This trail links you to documents, your tastes and web surfing habits, plus where you live and other information. Intel unveiled it's Pentium III chip which employees a Processor Serial Number ( PSN ). The encoded 96 bit number hard-wired chip traces any online communications to it's mother computer. The dreaded COOKIES on many web sights are embedded into your PC without your knowledge that
can find out your password, name and web sights you have visited. Microsoft admitted that Windows 98 generates a fingerprint unique to identify you known as GUID. This GUID is generally hidden in Office 97 Word, Excel, and Power Point programs. What makes this most disturbing is every time you visit www.microsoft.com, this program scans your PC automatically and gathers information without your knowledge .It's not enough that Intel & Microsoft make billions in sales to it's customers, but even after they have dipped into your pocket they now have the technology to dip into your privacy and your PC without you even knowing it. A Web security guru named Richard Smith stated a web sight & your ISP has copy logs of everything you view ,download, send via e-mail plus even talks in the various chat rooms you frequent .Your ISP in most cases will gladly hand over any information to law enforcement and not put up much of a fight. When two or five agents walk into a Internet Service Providers place of business and demand information of certain customers, even without a search warrent, that is pretty intimidating (that's why they get away with it) and the ISP will gladly work with them to avoid all the legal hassles. In One case in September 1999, Michael Rostoker, a San Jose engineer and patent attorney was arrested for trying to pay $150,000 to engage in sex with a 13 year old Vietnamese girl. Officials seized e-mail between Rostoker and the girl by serving a search warrant on Rostoker's e-mail provider, Hot Mail. The e-mail, the affidavit states, shows that the two have engaged in sex on several occasions. Now my point is that what ever you send over the Net via e-mail, whether it is criminal or not, ( Including cyber sex) it is being recorded and accessed by legal or illegal means.

Most people are so naive when they surf the Internet or engage in IRC, Chat Rooms, Sending of e-mail or files to one another. John Catlett, president of Junk busters Corporation in Green Brook, NJ stated, " Many people feel that surfing the web is anonymous as watching television or reading the paper, it's more like wandering around a trade show and leaving your name tag on it for others to view. " The White House and many government agencies collect your internet address every time you visit one of their web sites with out your knowledge. They claim the collected data  purpose is for catching hackers and terroists, who then can be tracked to their ISP provider. This may be one purpose, but the main purpose is collecting and building a government profile on it's citizens. With a little persistence you can find out a person's identify and  history within hours. Now their are many sites like http://www.anonymizer.com that can mask your identity, but Michael Lambert, a security expert stated, " If your not going to show me who you really are, then why should I let you surf or visit a certain web site? " Many web sites take the ISP address of these anonymous identity services and block out anyone who tries and enter their site. And who is to say that  these ISP's who claim to mask your identity are not ran by or monitored by the government intelligence community?

     US Secret Service is Big Sister
A New Hampshire company began planning in 1997 to create a national identity database for the federal government, newly disclosed documents show. Image Data's US $1.5 million contract with the US Secret Service to begin digitizing existing driver's license and other personal data was widely reported early this year. But documents unearthed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center reveal the details and scope of the project. An Image Data presentation to the government  marked
confidential  stressed that pilot projects in three states would "ensure the viability of deploying such service throughout the United States," according to about 300 pages of files EPIC obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. In a February 1999 report, Image Data CEO Robert Houvener ridiculed the idea that there were any legitimate privacy issues at stake, including those raised by civil libertarians when the project was first disclosed. Privacy groups aren't wavering."We think that their proposal for a national database of photographs runs directly contrary to the types of privacy safeguards that should be developed, " says EPIC director Marc Rotenberg, who met with Houvener last week. "This is not a database that people can easily opt out of. You have to give up your photograph when you get a driver's license."  Houvener, who says he has been a "victim of identity fraud," says his national photo file will be targeted at "identity criminals" that he estimates cost businesses billions of dollars a year. The bottom line is a national data-base with your photo on it. Add that to the police's coveted DNA data-base for all citizens then you might as well take privacy out of  Webster's Dictionary. The problem lies in that is a known fact that everyday teenagers can hack into government computers to manipulate web pages or information. Now the crooks and the government have you on a chip in a national data base for all to see and for many to alter. As Chicken Little would say, " The sky is falling!" This time the chicken is right.  Familiar to generations of Americans from countless movie and TV arrests, the Miranda warnings are regarded by civil libertarians as basic. But some conservatives say the required police warnings exact a heavy toll, seriously harming public safety. " You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law." Police have been giving the warnings before questioning criminal suspects ever since a 1966 decision, Miranda vs. Arizona, said they had to.
 The nation's highest court, then far more liberal than today, sought to remedy  the "inherently coercive " atmosphere of police interrogations by imposing procedural protections. The court said police must tell suspects they have  rights, including a lawyer's help while answering questions, and inform them that a lawyer will be appointed to represent them if they cannot afford one. The ruling flowed from the Fifth Amendment's guarantee that no one "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness
against himself." But the court never explicitly said its decision or the police warnings were required by the Fifth Amendment. American law enforcement authorities initially hated the ruling but eventually credited it with improving police efficiency. Opposition never disappeared entirely, especially over what should happen when police, intentionally or not, fail to give the warnings. Such failures now routinely result in a valuable piece of evidence a confession or some incriminating statement being lost to prosecutors.

Worried that federal agents' errors might lead to truthful confessions being  thrown out of court, Congress sought to overturn the Miranda ruling in 1968 and passed a law that said federal courts do not have to dismiss confessionsmade without Miranda warnings. But the law lay largely dormant for nearly 30 years, until a surprising federal appeals court ruling this year. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court, ruling in the case of a Maryland man accused in seven bank robberies in Maryland and Virginia, said Charles Dickerson'sincriminating remarks to FBI agents should be admitted as trial evidence against him even though he may not have received a proper Miranda warning. Neither Dickerson nor the federal prosecutors who opposed his appeal focused on the 1968 law, known as Section 3501. But University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, representing the conservative Washington Legal Foundation as a friend of the court, argued that 3501 allowed use of the evidence regardless of any Miranda violation. The appeals court, by an 8-5 vote, agreed. It ruled that 3501 means that failing to issue Miranda warnings
no longer requires automatic exclusion of evidence in federal prosecutions. James Hundley, the court appointed Fairfax, Va., lawyer who plans to file Dickerson's Supreme Court appeal by July 30, thinks the appeals court was dead wrong" but worries nevertheless for his client, free on bond while awaiting trial, and for the nation at large. " Sure, we run the risk of having the whole country stuck with a bad Supreme Court decision, but I have to represent my client zealously," Hundley said. "If police can violate Miranda with impunity, where's the check on police  power? The warnings could disappear. " There's enough of a constitutional aspect to Miranda that Congress cannot take away the rights it provided," he said. "If you don't force police to give the warnings, you effectively are taking way the rights. " The American Civil Liberties Union contends the Miranda
ruling "was based on constitutional ground" and that the 1968 law is blatantly unconstitutional because Congress
enacted it "with the express purpose of returning to the pre-Miranda, case by case determination of whether a confession
was voluntary. " The Clinton administration previously took the same view, with Attorney General Janet Reno calling 3501 unconstitutional.

    Miranda Challenge Possible November 1, 1999
Some of the nation's top federal prosecutors are pressing the Justice Department to break with decades of tradition
and challenge the landmark Miranda case before the Supreme Court. Sources close to the effort say that U.S. attorneys
from California, Oklahoma, and Colorado, including  key prosecutors from the Oklahoma City bombing case, have urged
Justice officials to support a controversial 1968 law that tightens loopholes created by Miranda v. Arizona, which was issued
two years earlier. The campaign is striking because Justice Department leaders have ignored the 1968 law for years, once even
pulling back an appellate brief  that relied on it. What's more, Attorney General Janet Reno wrote members of Congress in
September 1997 that she could not defend 18 U.S.C. §3501, which requires only that a suspect's confession be voluntary,
because she believed it to be unconstitutional based on the 1966 Miranda decision. Critics of Miranda bemoan that suspects
even those who willingly confessed to crimes sometimes go free because they were not read all their rights as enunciated by Miranda. A conservative legal assault that has gained steam in the past three years has given louder voice to their complaints. A Justice Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity says that the department  took the unusual step of requesting feedback from  U.S. attorneys and police agencies as part of its decision making process. Such other groups as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers have railed against the notion of weakening the protections offered by Miranda, especially in the face of what they view as the broad and menacing power police wield over accused criminals in government custody. The issue of whether confessions should be excluded when police fail to advise suspects in custody of their rights has percolated in recent years. That's mainly due to the unyielding efforts of  Paul Cassell, a University of Utah College of Law professor, and the D.C. based Washington Legal Foundation (WLF ) .Cassell has called Miranda "the most damaging opinion" of the Supreme Court era presided over by liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren. Cassell's advocacy helped prosecutors win a similar case in district court in Utah in 1997, despite problems that defense lawyers raised with Miranda warnings on behalf of client Jose Rivas-Lopez. And the WLF's amicus brief in Dickerson convinced the Richmond, Va. based U.S. Court of Appeals for the  4th Circuit that §3501 trumps Miranda. The move by some prosecutors to support the federal statute came to a head when a group of  U.S. attorneys in the 10th Circuit, ( which encompasses Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming) allowed their names to be used on a letter urging Justice officials to support the 1968 law in their upcoming Supreme Court brief. The law had already gained the support of prosecutors and judges in the 10th Circuit, based on the Rivas-Lopez case and another decided by the appeals court in 1975. The letter was drafted by Sean Connelly, an assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado. Connelly once handled appeals in the Criminal Division at Main Justice. He's also well known for writing many legal briefs as part of the team that successfully prosecuted Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Connelly declined comment on his role in the effort to supersede Miranda, saying, "I think the government should speak with one voice. I think our discussions should remain internal." Patrick Ryan, the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma, is one of the prosecutors who allowed his name to be used on the letter. Ryan, who coordinated many of the victims' rights issues in the Oklahoma bombing prosecution, stepped down from his post in Oct. 1999  to return to private practice. " As long as a statement by the accused is voluntary, it ought to be admissible," says Ryan, who notes he is no longer speaking as a representative of the Justice Department. "There's nothing in the Constitution that mandates Miranda. I don't think it's anything the Framers of the Constitution thought anything about." He adds: "I don't see it's in the best interest of the public to throw out a confession that somebody freely gave just because they weren't read their rights. " That's exactly what irks people like William Otis, an 18 year veteran of the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Otis says he resigned last April because he was disgusted with the Justice Department's refusal to employ §3501 in the Dickerson case. In 1997, a federal trial judge threw out statements made by Charles Dickerson, who allegedly helped rob at least one Virginia bank, because Dickerson had not been read his rights by FBI agents while Dickerson was in custody. Prosecutors were late in presenting evidence that might show Dickerson was given Miranda warnings, and sought to use §3501 to avoid having to release him. A three judge panel of the 4th Circuit, and later the entire court, chastised the department for not relying on the more liberal requirements of the 1968 statute. Prosecutors mentioned the law in a  footnote in their first brief appealing the trial judge's ruling, but Otis says that the solicitor general's office, which must approve all appeals in the federal courts, shied away from using §3501 in its request for a rehearing before the full appeals court. Otis, a lifelong prosecutor who sent Solicitor General Waxman a nine page letter spelling out his concerns in September, says Justice's failure to use all of the arguments in its arsenal is a breach of the public trust. " If the government is going to treat its own client worse than it treats opposing counsel's client, I have a problem with that," says Otis. "It's hardly  unusual that chiefs of appeals in U.S. attorneys' offices do a little fussing with the solicitor general's office. But I never quit before. " It's far from clear whether the Supreme Court will decide to take Dickerson. But passionate partisans on both sides of the issue should know more in the next six weeks, according to James Hundley, a Fairfax, Va. based lawyer who represents Dickerson. That's when the Supreme Court is expected to decide whether or not to hear the case.
MIRANDA WINS! OR DID IT?
JULY 2000: The landmark Miranda v. Arizona decision of 1966 (384 U.S. 436) was constitutionally based and therefore may not be overturned by an act of Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 26, 2000. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote, "Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture." The vote was 7-2 in which the two Judges who voted against it  , Scalia and Thomas, were joyfully defeated in their biased and unethical vote concerning the decision. For those who are not aware of what the Miranda Rule is you only have to go back to Jack Webb in the TV series Dragnet:

You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.
You have the right to a attorney.
If you can not afford a attorney one shall be appointed you
Do you understand these rights?

Anytime a citizen is arrested the above basic statement must be made to the accused before the police can even question him.
The police should comply with these fundamental rules when a citizen's freedom has been taken away by being arrested and then incarcerated. The thought that congress would find this ruling even approachable to be not lawful is a serious erosion in their current constitutional mentality. The two judges Scalia and Thomas were perhaps asleep during there decision or hung over from a political fund raiser. I myself find this decision a way back on the right road of government and the seven judges of
the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld this decision should be applauded and congratulated on their vote which was a victory for
american citizens everywhere.

President Bill Clinton on Thursday, September 16,1999 announced the federal government will spend $15 million this year to buy back guns in urban areas, and again urged Congress to pass new gun restrictions as part of a juvenile crime package. Surrounded by chiefs of police from across the country, and speaking to an audience of mayors and county officials, the president urged Congress to overlook pressure from the National Rifle Association and pass new gun restrictions. The troubling
aspect of even submitting a law like this is if the voluntary action of gun owners selling their weapons back to the government will not work, then it won't be long until the congress approves the taking of guns from legal registered owners. Besides, what legal owner of a hand gun would even think about selling his weapon to protect his/her family and property? Maybe to protect it from the government when they come knocking or kicking on your door to confiscate it.
Big Brother Takes Away Australian Citizens Registered Guns
AUSTRALIA: The results are in from the governments forceful taking of registered firearms from  Australia's citizens
in 1999. One year after gun owners were forced to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed, including semi-automatic .22 rifles and shotguns, a program costing the government over 500 million dollars, the results are a dramatic increase in criminal activity has been experienced. Gun control advocates respond "Just wait... we'll be safer... you'll see...".
Yes indeed! After 12 months of statistics  the crime of homocides rose 3%, assaults rose 8%., and armed robberies increases a staggering 44%    This type of governmental thinking should warn all citizens of any country to be wary of the threat of this type of Big Brother mentality. Of course, when Big Brother comes to YOUR door and not only take away your guns, but perhaps your property, your money, and even you, he doesn't want the citizens to be able to defend themselves.

Will Canada Big Brothers Acquisition of Citizens Firearms Be as Australia's?

JULY 2000: In a blow to Canadian gun owners, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the federal firearms act is constitutional and all firearms including rifles must be registered with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police by the year 2003. I'm not sure of the purchasing of firearms, but one would think when a citizen purchases a firearm it is already been recorded by the government. Canadian handguns have required registration since 1934. The 1995 law  would now include hunting rifles which are already documented at the time of purchase. The Canadian Supreme Court declared the government has the right to control
public safety. But who will be safe from the government as it seems it wants to know where all guns, rifles in Canada are
and who owns them and their whereabouts. Naturally only law abiding citizens would comply while criminals and rouge cops would waste their time in registering. Mr. Bruce Sutton, president of a Canadian firearms association was stated saying, "The Canadian Supreme court is out of reality." Failure to comply with the new registration of all firearms would result in a five
year prison term. The President of the United States NRA spokesman Charlton Heston was quoted ," Not to surrender to the federal government in which it involves a citizen's basic fundamental right."

Laptop network in cruisers makes dramatic difference. A Washington State Patrol trooper (Above) accesses data from the laptop in his car. Washington State Patrol troopers using networked laptop computers in their cars identified and arrested nearly twice as many fugitives as fellow troopers operating without laptops. The experimental telecommunications system includes a laptop docking station in the patrol car that allows troopers to quickly plug their computers into the vehicle as they begin each shift. THAT WAS just one of the dramatic findings of an analysis of a communications experiment in which hundreds of state patrol cruisers were equipped with a mobile computer network to supplement traditional radio based police communications systems. Conducted by the auditing firm KPMG Peat Marwick LLP, the Washington State Patrol Mobile Computer Network Productivity Study was completed in May. But the computer is only reliable as the person entering the data. Let's say a crooked cop or a hacker accessed it's main frame and put YOUR name, address, car tag in it's file saying you are wanted for rape, murder, etc. and are considered armed and dangerous. Just by pulling over and reaching for your vehicle registration might make a officer think you are reaching for a weapon and the next thing you know you will have six bullets in your head. As part of a Mobile Computer Network Project  launched in 1991, the state patrol has “wired” about 350 of  its vehicles with networked IBM Think Pad computers and printers. The original purpose of the networked laptop concept was to enable patrolling troopers to more quickly access various databases of crime and vehicular information.

The mobile system has boosted fleet wide trooper efficiency in other, unexpected ways. For instance, KPMG’s analysis found that computer networked troopers were able to ticket 112 percent more speeders and 292 percent more drunken drivers than non networked troopers. In addition, researchers found that troopers using the laptops arrest two additional felons or misdemeanants every five weeks over their colleagues who do not” have access to the network. A test group of computer networked Ohio state troopers averaged 18.9 more arrests per trooper than non networked troopers. Delaware
State Police documented an increase of 500 traffic and criminal arrests in the first year of using a mobile network in their patrol cars. The Somerville, N.J., Police Department estimated that a networked officer runs 100 plates on average for one work shift compared with three or four by non networked officers. The laptops connect troopers quickly to national databases such as the National Crime Information Center operated by the FBI, and National Law Enforcement Telecommunications, a network available to every law enforcement agency in the United States. This is the very same FBI who has been exposed
to numerous cover ups and lies from Waco, withholding information from the government's own prosecutors in the Oklahoma City bombing case regarding the Terry Nichols trial. The same FBI who tried to hide the truth about the Ruby Ridge murders of Mr. Weaver's wife and his teenage son. I'm not comfortable in the fact that one of Big Brother's agencies is in charge of entering information on American citizens. State patrol users point out, however, that such systems do have a downside. One major problem is the lack of enough additional UHF frequencies to expand the system. Another glitch is that cars can lose contact with the network as they travel outside communication range. The WSP network is designed to re-establish contact with the system without intervention once the patrol car drives back into the coverage zone. Also, the BIG GLITCH as intentional or accidental entry of false data on citizens. The company Trilon Technology has displayed it's new software ShotSpotter. The program can detect exactly were a gun has been discharged according to inventor Robert Showen. LASD century Station Tom Forier stated," If you shoot a gun off your back short,  we can now find were the shot was discharged.

Make no mistake about it, the Social Security Number for every US Citizen is a numbering code for human beings. For all it's intent & purposes, it is a national numbering system that the federal government uses to seek information on every citizen. Perhaps the most disturbing abuse of the Social Security Number is the congressional authorized rule to force parents to get numbers for their new born children in order to claim them as dependents. This is not a isolated incident. In fact, since the creation of the Social Security Number in 1934, there have been almost 40 congressional authorized uses of the number as a identification number for non-Social Security programs. In many states, thanks to Big Brother, one can not get a job, driver's liscense, or receive a birth certificate without first presenting their Social Security Number to a bunch of governmental bureaucrats. I'm just stating that Big Brother is slowly taking away our freedom, privacy and civil rights. The Wall
Street Journal published a article in December, 1999 where the Social Security Number for over 75 Generals and Admirals were acquired in a fraud scam to purchase credit cards under the officers names. The numbers were obtainable through the Congressional Record. The social security number has been used this way for years. Some believe the numbers were acquired through a web site operated by privacy advocate Glen L. Roberts in Oil City, Pa. Mr. Roberts says he posted the data of the military officers to make a point on how the social security number is being used as de facto national identification number and to show the military and the general public how there is to much information out there. A few of the victims included members of the joint chiefs of staff including Army General John Shalikashvili who is the head commander. The Pentagon now has employed only the last four digits of military personnel's  social security number. In December 1999 The National Security Agency, which uses spy satellites and  foreign listening posts to monitor threats
to US security, denied on Monday that it intended to begin spying on Americans at home. Newsweek magazine in its Dec. 13 issue said the NSA was drafting a memorandum of understanding to clarify ways in which it could help the FBI track terrorists and criminals in the United States. " Under Executive Order, NSA is authorized to provide technical assistance to law enforcement," a statement from the agency said. "Any assistance NSA provides is performed in accordance with federal law and regulations. " The NSA and CIA are supposed, ( But do not.) to operate overseas and not spy on Americans domestically, while the FBI investigates federal crimes inside the United States. The Newsweek article said there was a new alliance between the NSA and FBI and posed the question: "In their zeal, will the crime fighters and electronic sleuths illegally spy on US citizens?" But Judith Emmel, NSA spokeswoman, said the intelligence agency would not be snooping on Americans in the United  States. " The National Security Agency operates  in strict accordance with US laws and regulations in protecting the privacy rights of US persons," she said. "Its activities are conducted with the highest constitutional, legal, and ethical standards. " Anyone who would believe this statement is in dire need of mental education concerning the government's Big Brother sister agencies. Harvey Kushner, chair of the criminal justice department at Long Island University, said if the NSA helped the FBI  track terrorists in the United States it would set "a dangerous precedent" and violate the agency's mission. "Do we really want the NSA to be spying on US citizens?" Kushner said in a statement reacting to the article. "Where will it stop? American public opinion over the years has overwhelmingly spoken against covert and clandestine agencies mucking around in domestic affairs," he said. It appears there is a systemic security flaw in high speed, cable modem Internet services, as a Detroit area user has
discovered that he could access other computers on the system, much the same way a Minnesota man did earlier this year
(see Privacy Times, Oct. 20 ) . According to the October 26 Detroit News, Bill Krebs, a subscriber to AT&T's @Home cable
 modem service, found that icons representing other users in the "Network Neighborhood" folder on his Windows desktop
permitted easy access to files on computers of other subscribers, including business invoices, legal documents, personal letters,
resumes, spreadsheets, videos and photos.  Printers also were accessible.   Worse yet, viruses could be inserted into other
computers. " It's as good as sitting at somebody else's computer, said Krebs, a 27 year old networking specialist for The
Computer Co. in Royal Oak, Michigan.  It's as easy as point, click and drag, he said. Many of the computers that pop up in the
"Network Neighborhood" folder are password protected.  But that's the bare minimum of security, Krebs said.  Windows
password protection can be bypassed with any of a number of user friendly, "password crack" and "password recovery" programs available for free over the Internet.  "Having a Windows password as your only barrier is just laughable," Kreps told the Detroit News.  "You shouldn't be able to get that far.  You shouldn't be able to see these people." On Oct. 4, AT&T deployed software that scours the network and turns off sharing features for new customers when they first log on, the newspaper reported. "We thought some cable installers were forgetting to take care of this," said Norm Schryer, a research director at AT&T Labs in Menlo Park, Calif.  AT&T is considering new security measures to protect all customers, but Schryer said it was grappling with serious tradeoffs between security and performance.  He admitted that @Home customers are exposed to one another when printer- and file sharing options are left on, the default setting on many Windows PCs. But AT&T has apparently declined to inform customers about the security risks.  Three different @Home customer service representatives told the Detroit News about the benefits of the service, but nothing about security.  After being asked about it, each contacted a supervisor before returning with assurances about the system's security.  @Home subscribers expressed shock when they were informed their computers were vulnerable, insisting they were never warned by the company. @Home, a consortium of more than 20 cable companies, is used by 620,000 people nationwide.  AT&T has more than 83,000 @Home customers, and expects to have 150,000 by year-end.  Media One, another Michigan provider, has more than 140,000 subscribers to it's high speed Internet service.  (http://www.detnews.com/1999/technology/9910/26/10260168.htm)According to Infoworld, a technical expert with Watchdog Technologies found that someone within his cable sub network had logged on to his PC and was examining his files within the five minutes it took him to set up his firewall hardware.
(http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/livngst/991018bl.htm)  On July 10, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Bill Jorgenson, a home health care worker, was able to penetrate the computers of other cable modem subscribers, viewing everything from confidential business data, to address books and pornography.
            --------- Your Boss May be Monitoring Your E-mail
Dec. 8, 1999 | Worried that your boss knows you've been checking out those nude sites and sending dirty jokes? You should be. Just last week the New York Times fired 20 employees at a Virginia payroll processing center for violating corporate policy by sending "inappropriate and offensive" e-mail, and the Navy reported that it disciplined more than 500 employees at a
Pennsylvania supply depot for sending sexually explicit e-mail. Xerox fired 40 people in October for violating company
computer policies and Boeing has fired a few on similar grounds too. Such cases hardly come as a surprise: 45 percent of major U.S. companies engage in "electronic monitoring of communications and performances," according to a 1999 survey conducted by the American Management Association (AMA ) . Many firms contend that this "monitoring" -- defined by the survey as the storage and review of e-mail, voice mail messages, computer files, even telephone conversations and videos of employee job performance  is a tool to measure employee productivity. Some companies, including the Times, only check employee e-mail when they've been apprised of a violation of corporate policy, but others routinely monitor computer activities to identify employees who are slacking on the job or whose  X-rated surfing habits or e-mail messages could potentially expose a company to sexual harassment suits. And surveillance software marketed by companies like Telemate. Net promises even more. Telemate. Net says it can help employers detect security breaches, "monitor employees' compliance with Internet and voice network usage policies and detect abuse" and "measure productivity of Internet and telephone based sales activities. "After all, an employee's at work to do work," says Eric Rolfe  Greenberg, director of management studies at the AMA. " Employers have a legitimate interest in a worker's performance." Privacy advocates, of course, are up in arms. "Companies should not be monitoring their employees unless they have proof they're failing to complete their work or misusing company resources," says Andrew Shen, a policy analyst for Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). "To do so is a violation of their right to privacy." Wouldn't you be absolutely irate if you found out your company was recording and listening to the phone calls you made? It's a practice that would be understandable if those calls related directly to your job performance, as they would if you were a telemarketer, but not in too many other industries. Why shouldn't employees have the same expectations about their e-mail  on the Web?  It is called a personal computer, after all. But the troubling truth is that employers can monitor every word typed and every site visited on a company owned computer and be completely within the law. Unlike a cop wiretapping your phone, your boss needs no subpoena, no suspicion that you've ever wasted an iota of company time, before reading your e-mail or employing surveillance software to track your Web surfing habits. And there are few laws challenging the corporate view that any information sent or received by an employee's computer is company property. Connecticut is the only state, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), whose laws require companies to disclose their monitoring practices to employees. Not a single state has outlawed the practice.
    Court Says Police Don't Need A Search Warrant
January 7, 2000 For the first time, the Court of Criminal Appeals  has recognized Texas police officers' right to stop and search cars without a search warrant if they  feel the public's safety could be in jeopardy. Critics call the court's Dec. 16 ruling in Wright v. State a dangerous expansion of police powers. "If  I weren't a white male living in a nice part of  town, I'd be scared," says Keith Hampton, an Austin criminal defense lawyer. In Wright, the court followed Cady v. Dombrowski, a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that carved out a "community care taking" exception to the  Fourth Amendment prohibition against warrant less searches. In Cady, the Supreme Court ruled that police officers had the right to conduct a warrant less search of a car that had been impounded after an  accident, because the officers feared a gun had been left in the trunk. " Concern for the safety of the general public who  might be endangered if an intruder removed a  revolver from the trunk" justified the search, the Supreme Court held. According to Wright, a Williamson County deputy sheriff alleged he saw someone vomiting out a rear window so he stopped the car to see if the  passenger, Kyle Wright, needed help. When he approached the car, the officer allegedly saw a marijuana cigarette on a console between the two  front seats. It is undisputed, according to the opinion, that the officer did not observe any traffic law violation prior to stopping the car. Wright was charged with possession, and he  pleaded no contest. The 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin, however, ruled that the marijuana was inadmissible, because it was the fruit of an illegal stop. But the Court of Criminal Appeals didn't agree and reversed. " As part of his duty to 'serve and protect,' a police officer may stop and assist an individual who may are a questionable person , given the totality of the circumstances, would believe is in need of help," wrote Judge Stephen Mansfield for the majority. In determining whether a stop is reasonable, Mansfield ruled that courts should consider the following: the nature and level of distress exhibited by an individual; the individual's location; whether the individual was alone or had access to assistance; and the extent to which the individual  presented a danger to himself or others. The court remanded the case for a determination of whether the officer's stop was reasonable in light of these factors. Five judges joined Mansfield in recognizing a "community care taking" exception to the Fourth Amendment. Three judges dissented. "Texas took a pretty bad case to embrace the  community care taking function," says Wright's attorney, David H. Reynolds of Austin. " If the driver had been throwing up, now there would be some concern for the public welfare." Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Cheryl Johnson echoed this criticism in her dissent. "(I)t is difficult to imagine how appellant, the passenger leaning out of the right rear passenger window throwing up, was a danger to the general  public," wrote Johnson, who was joined by Judge  Tom Price. "How does being a passenger in a vehicle exclude someone from being a part of the general public?" counters David Glickler, the assistant Williamson County attorney who represented the state. "I think there are not unreasonable circumstances one can imagine in which someone is a passenger held against their will, and it would be nice if everyone in the general public could believe the police are there  to help. " In a separate dissent, Judge Larry Meyers concluded that aiding someone who appears sick  is a valid public interest, but he didn't believe
Wright exhibited a sufficient level of distress to  justify the stop. "In these circumstances," he wrote, "(Wright's) privacy interests under the Fourth Amendment outweigh the State's interest in rendering aid."

 Hampton expects Wright to trigger many more public welfare stops or "love stops" as he calls  them. " Why did you stop him? Well, he looked like he was lost or he looked like he might not be feeling well," says Hampton. "We are giving police the power to love us to death. " He adds that the opinion will give prosecutors a potent weapon to counter a defendant's efforts to exclude incriminating evidence found during a welfare stop. " The prosecution will put a halo right over the head of the police officer and say he was fulfilling the police power of caring for his community. That will happen in every case, and who can counter that? " Wright also paves the way for officers to poke their noses in people's homes, not just their cars, warns Neil McCabe, a criminal law professor at South Texas College of Law. " Maybe some people trust police officers more than I do," he says.

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