Census records, of course, are not mentioned, and the statutory language protecting those records from legal process is unusually strong and unqualified. On the other hand, neither does the amended language explicitly override the federal statutes protecting the specified categories of records. Rather, it adds a layer of oversight for several types of requests that are implied to fall within the scope of §215. Indeed, at the time, this portion of the Reauthorization Act was publicly portrayed as increasing protections for sensitive records.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily impossible for those records to ever be obtained via a §215 order. As Weich’s letter clearly says, the Census Act prohibits “the Commerce Secretary and other covered individuals from disclosing protected census information.” But as the Supreme Court clarified in St. Regis Paper v. United States, that confidentiality requirement is only binding on specific covered individuals. If the government is able to get its hands on a copy of a census record by serving some non-covered individual, the record itself is not off limits.

BANK of America apologised after its local contractor entered the home of a mortgage borrower when she was away, cut off utilities, padlocked the door and confiscated her pet parrot, Luke.

Angela Iannelli, 46, alleged in a lawsuit that the October incident – which separated her from her 11 – year-old parrot for more than a week – caused so much “emotional distress” that she needed a prescription medication for anxiety.

A Bank of America spokesman said a bank employee erroneously believed the house was vacant and sent the contractor there with instructions to install a new lock and otherwise “secure” the property.

The bank spokesman said those instructions were inappropriate, because Ms Iannelli wasn’t in default and the house wasn’t vacant.
[...]
In her civil suit filed in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, Ms Iannelli said a contractor hired by Bank of America entered her house, north of Pittsburgh, in mid-October when she was away.

According to the suit, in an “invasion” of the home, the contractor stopped utility services, cut water lines and electrical wiring, damaged flooring and finishings, poured anti-freeze into sinks and toilets, and “stole” the parrot.

Ms Iannelli, who owns a diner and works part-time as a bartender, said Bank of America representatives weren’t helpful when she called in to protest.

They first denied knowing where the parrot was, and later told her she could go to the offices of the contractor, about 120km away, to retrieve the bird herself.

Comedy gold. This stuff just writes itself.

When Officer Adil Polanco dreamed of becoming a cop, it was out of a desire to help people not, he says, to harass them.

“I’m not going to keep arresting innocent people, I’m not going to keep searching people for no reason, I’m not going to keep writing people for no reason, I’m tired of this,” said Adil Polanco, an NYPD Officer.

Officer Polanco says One Police Plaza’s obsession with keeping crime stats down has gotten out of control. He claims Precinct Commanders relentlessly pressure cops on the street to make more arrests, and give out more summonses, all to show headquarters they have a tight grip on their neighborhoods.

“Our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them?” said Officer Polanco.
[...]
This audio recording exclusively obtained by Eyewitness News seems to back up Officer Polanco’s assertion of a quota. You can listen to one officer as he lectures his rank and file officers during roll call at the 41st precinct.
[...]
Eyewitness News asked, “Are you telling me they’re stopping people for no reason, is that what you’re saying?”

“We are stopping kids walking upstairs to their house, stopping kids going to the store, young adults. In order to keep the quota,” answered Officer Polanco.

The U.S. Court of Appeals on Wednesday released a ruling in favor of a group of zombies who say they were wrongfully arrested while protesting consumerism during the 2006 Aquatennial. The ruling reanimates the group’s federal lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis and its police, seeking damages of at least $50,000 for each person arrested.

A three-judge panel of the court ruled 2-1 that police lacked probable cause to arrest the group — seven people wearing white powder, fake blood and black around their eyes and shuffling around like zombies — for disorderly conduct. Police do not have immunity from claims against them for making the arrest, the court ruled.

The appeals court did side with the city on two other points — affirming the lower court’s dismissal of the zombies’ claims of false imprisonment and First Amendment retaliation.

Zombies 1 – Cops 0

While Italy’s laws are a lot different than ours and there’s a lot of European bad will toward Google, imagine if this inspires new laws here. Impossible? The music and movie industries are trying hard to get other country’s extreme anti-piracy laws here. Pay the right politicians the right amount of money and…

On Wednesday an Italian judge delivered a stunning verdict in a long standing case against Google. The ruling sentenced three top Google executives — David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal officer; George Reyes, former chief financial officer; and Peter Fleischer, chief privacy counsel — to a prison sentence of six months for violating privacy laws. A fourth employee, marketing executive Arvind Desikan, was found not guilty.
[...]
Despite the fact that the verdicts is largely a symbolic gesture, it represents a serious threat to the current way the internet is structured. To understand this, you must explore the case first.

Google describes the incident that started the case, writing, “In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate.”

Vivi Down Association, an advocacy group for people with Downs syndrome, complained about the video a couple months later to Italian authorities. Google went out of its way to try to cooperate with them. It took down the video immediately. [...] Despite that cooperation, Italian prosecutors decided to take the bizarre step of next charging a handful of Google executives for “allowing” the video to be uploaded.
[...]
The stunning verdict sets an alarming precedent. The decision, if upheld, threatens the freedom of having blogs, video sharing sites, internet hosting, Wiki pages, news sites with comments sections and virtually any other kind of user generated or user interactive content, for fear of criminal prosecution if users misbehave.

A federal class action claims a suburban school district has been spying on students and families through the “indiscriminant use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students,” without the knowledge or consent of students or parents. The named plaintiffs say they learned that Big Brother was in their home when an assistant principal told their son that the school district knew he “was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the school district.”

The families say the Lower Merion School District issued Webcam-equipped personal laptop computers to each of its approximately 1,800 high school students: in Harriton High School in Rosemont, and Lower Merion High School in Ardmore.
[...]
“Additionally, by virtue of the fact that the webcam can be remotely activated at any time by the school district, the webcam will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it.

They can confiscate your cash if you’re carrying “too much” because, obviously, only drug dealers carry cash. Your laptop, iPod and other electronics can be confiscated at the border because you might have illegally downloaded music or videos. Remember the days when it was only cops in Northern Mexican towns shaking people down for bribes and you thought, that could never happen here?

Sobriety checkpoints in California are increasingly turning into profitable operations for local police departments—operations that are far more likely to seize cars from unlicensed motorists than catch drunk drivers. An investigation by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley with California Watch has found that impounds at checkpoints in 2009 generated an estimated $40 million in towing fees and police fines—revenue that cities divide with towing firms. In addition, police officers received about $30 million in overtime pay for the DUI crackdowns, funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety.

In dozens of interviews over the past three months, law enforcement officials and tow truck operators say that vehicles are predominantly taken from minority drivers, often illegal immigrants. In the course of its examination, the Investigative Reporting Program reviewed hundreds of pages of city financial records and police reports, and analyzed data documenting the results from every checkpoint that received state funding during the past two years. Among the findings:

• Sobriety checkpoints frequently screen traffic within, or near, Hispanic neighborhoods.
• The seizures appear to defy a 2005 federal appellate court ruling that determined police cannot impound cars solely because the driver is unlicensed.
• Departments frequently overstaff checkpoints with officers, all earning overtime.

First it was the guards who phoned in for help instead of helping a 15yr old girl who could have been stomped to death. Now this. What’s next?, Too dangerous (ie, they might be sued) for cops, firemen, etc to leave the station house? Oh, right. They’re too busy breaking into people’s houses to do real police work.

The five-year-old girl, her-six year-old brother and their father Chris Grady were in the car when it plunged into the river Avon in Evesham, Worcestershire, on Thursday morning.

Mr Grady and his son Ryan, managed to escape from the submerged car. They were helped clear by police officers on the riverbank. However, Mr Grady’s daughter, Gabrielle, was trapped inside the vehicle for 97 minutes before the closest police dive team, based in the next county, could arrive. The divers then took a further 12 minutes to rescue her.

The officers already on the scene were prevented from diving in earlier to rescue her by police safety regulations.

The little girl remained in a critical state in hospital yesterday while her brother yesterday began to make a recovery. He was well enough to sit up in bed and talk to family at his bedside.

West Mercia police admitted last night that safety regulations barred normal police officers from jumping into rivers to try to save people.

And you thought the whole ‘they can eavesdrop on you even when your phone is off’ thing was all you had to worry about with cell phones.

The Justice Department is poised this week to publicly defend a little known law enforcement practice that critics say may be the “sleeper” privacy issue of the 21st century: the collection of cell phone “tracking” records that identify the physical locations where the phones have been.

It may come as a surprise to most of the owners of the country’s 277 million cell phones but their cell phone company retains records of where their device has been at all times–either because the phones have tiny GPS devices embedded inside or because each phone call is routed through towers that can be used to pinpoint the phones’ location to within areas as small as a few hundred feet.

Such location “logs” never show up on your monthly cell phone bill. But federal court records filed over the past year indicate that federal prosecutors and the FBI have increasingly been obtaining such records in the course of criminal investigations–without any notice to the cell phone customer or any showing of “probable cause” that tracking the physical location of the phone will turn up evidence of an actual crime.
[...]
It also briefly became an issue in last year’s New Jersey gubernatorial race when the ACLU obtained records showing that, as U.S. attorney, Republican candidate (and now governor) Chris Christie had acquired such records 79 times without judicial warrants. (Christie called criticism of the practice “overblown hyperbole”.)
[...]
The thrust of the department’s argument: cell phone tracking records are “routine business records” that contain “non content” data and are therefore “unprotected” under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

Do it for economic survival? Don’t do it because you see it as a moral issue? Do it to get back at the bailed out bankers who profited at the public’s expense? Don’t do it because you love your house more than the money you’ll never get back on it?

No Help in Sight, More Homeowners Walk Away

In 2006, Benjamin Koellmann bought a condominium in Miami Beach. By his calculation, it will be about the year 2025 before he can sell his modest home for what he paid. Or maybe 2040.

“People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,” Mr. Koellmann said. “Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?”

After three years of plunging real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million-dollar bonuses, after the Obama administration’s loan modification plan raised the expectations of many but satisfied only a few, a large group of distressed homeowners is wondering the same thing.

New research suggests that when a home’s value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage, the owner starts to think hard about walking away, even if he or she has the money to keep paying.
[...]
The number of Americans who owed more than their homes were worth was virtually nil when the real estate collapse began in mid-2006, but by the third quarter of 2009, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners had reached the critical threshold, with their home’s value dropping below 75 percent of the mortgage balance.

Is it just me or does anyone else think the copyright laws weren’t created for this kind of use?

An offhand comment the other day by a friend caught my attention—”Did you know that you can’t watch the Super Bowl on a TV screen larger than 55 inches? Yeah, it’s right there in the law.”[...]Could it be that some of those giant flat panel TV sets now finding their way into US living rooms are actually violating copyright law?
[...]
US Code Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 110 is called “Limitations on exclusive rights: exemption of certain performances and displays,” and it lays out 12 of these exemptions to copyright restrictions. Are 55+ inch TVs mentioned specifically? They certainly are. TV broadcasts and movie showings can only be displayed so long as “no such audiovisual device has a diagonal screen size greater than 55 inches, and any audio portion of the performance or display is communicated by means of a total of not more than 6 loudspeakers.” So there it is in black and white—a ban on big TVs!

Sort of. [...] The exemption opens by saying that turning on a TV set in one’s house does not incur any sort of “public performance” liability under copyright law. So long as you’re using a set that can reasonably be described as “a single receiving apparatus of a kind commonly used in private homes,” you’re in the clear.

(Okay, not completely. You cannot make a “direct charge” to “see or hear the transmission,” though you can apparently ask friends to cover the cost of food and drink. You also cannot further transmit the broadcast “to the public,” so diverting a live video stream onto the Internet and streaming it to the world is right out. Otherwise, you’re fine.)
[...]
Though it was in fact written into copyright law, the NFL’s action generated such bad press that several US Senators pressured the league to change its enforcement practices, law or no law. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA, now D-PA) even introduced S. 2591, a bill which singled out “professional football contests” and allowed nonprofit groups to show the games on any size screen.

It took a Kansas jury on Friday just 37 minutes to find Scott Roeder guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated assault in the shooting of Dr. George Tiller.

The prosecution said all along that this was a clear-cut murder case, and the defendant even admitted the crime. The defense wanted the jury to consider a voluntary manslaughter charge, which carries a much lighter sentence than murder. But the judge ruled against that.

Roeder testified that he believed abortion was murder and said he needed to stop it by killing Tiller, one of the few doctors who provided abortions later in pregnancy. Roeder did not deny any of the facts surrounding the May 31 shooting.

Kim Parker, one of the prosecutors, says she hoped the judge’s decision to not allow the jury to consider second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter resonated.

“Hopefully it sends a clear message that this type of conduct is clearly not justified under the law,” Parker said. “There is no place for this. There are no medals to be given for those who violate the rules.”

Three Guantanamo Bay detainees whose deaths were ruled a suicide in 2006 apparently had been transported from their cells hours before their deaths to a secret site on the island, an article in Harper’s magazine asserts.

The account released Monday raises serious questions about whether the three detainees actually died by hanging themselves in their cells and suggests the U.S. government is covering up details of what precisely happened in the hours before the deaths on the night of June 9, 2006.

Harper’s reported that the deaths of the three detainees, or the events that led directly to their deaths, most likely occurred at a previously undisclosed facility a mile or so from the main Guantanamo Bay prison complex.

Harper’s based much of its account on interviews with several prison guards who said they knew of the existence of the ”black” site and that they saw three detainees removed from Camp Delta several hours before the deaths were reported and said the prisoners were transported in a white van toward the secret site.

Those who knew of the black facility referred to it as ”Camp No,” reported the magazine, quoting Army Sgt. Joe Hickman, one of the guards. Anyone who asked if the black site existed would be told, ”No, it doesn’t,” the magazine reported, quoting Hickman. The article will be published in the magazine’s March issue.

We’ve pointed out in the past how unfortunate it is that so few browsers recognize the sarcasm markup tag in HTML, because sarcasm sometimes gets missed in text. Apparently some random company is trying to fix that by creating an explicit sarcasm punctuation mark, called the SarcMark, made up of a squiggle around a dot. I’m hoping the whole effort itself is sarcastic, because the company has apparently registered a trademark on it (no, you can’t use that punctuation!) and is trying to get you to pay $1.99 for a special app to let you use the mark. What a great deal! I’ll buy 6!

I have to admit that the inability of some people to detect, or even understand sarcasm is a real problem. I’ve written before about the teacher who was actually arrested for posting a sarcastic comment. And I was taken seriously for a piece I wrote that I considered to be obvious satire. (Note to the internet, when the writer is in favor of euthanasia for healthy people, he’s probably kidding!)