Smashed Frog

Brian D. Sweeney, United Flight 175

2011-09-10T10:38:00.003-04:00

As together we approach the tenth anniversary of the attack on our country, the loss of those who lives ended on 9/11/2001 is no less heartbreaking.

As a participant in the 2996 project, I was assigned the privilege of memorializing Brian D. Sweeney, a passenger on United Flight 175.

Of Viking Heart was written in tribute to a man I never met but came to know only by his passing, through the voices of his friends and family.

Today, I will think of those he left behind much too soon and their loss that never ends.

And I'll think of Brian, 38, who claimed to be part Viking and part Leonardo da Vinci.

Others remember Brian here.

We will never forget.

Keene's Pointe Just Says D-OH!

2011-08-10T18:22:00.007-04:00

Will this ever end?

Residents of a gated community in southwest Orange County are voting on whether to prevent registered sex offenders from living there — a move that attorneys are calling highly unusual.
The new homeowners-association rule would bar offenders from living in Keene's Pointe, a community of about 1,000 single-family homes just south of Windermere.
(...)

The proposed rule would prevent a sex offender from living within 2,500 feet of a playground or a school bus stop — limits that would keep offenders out of the entire community. The rule would not keep offenders from owning property in Keene's Pointe, however. It would not be retroactive and would apply only to future property transactions.
The new rule would be "very rare" for homeowner associations, said Tara Lyn Barrett, who specializes in community association law for the Orlando firm Brown, Garganese, Weiss & D'Agresta.
In most cases, residency rules for sex offenders are "regulated enough by state and local ordinances," Barrett said. "We represent about 60 associations, and not one of our convenants says anything in regard to that."
Blackwell said the idea came about when residents discovered that a sex offender was living in the community, even though no incidents took place.
"There are a lot of children in Keene's Pointe — a lot of playgrounds and bus stops," he said.
(...)

A Third District Court of Appeal ruling in May 2010 found that a Miami-Dade County ordinance prohibiting offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school was "not invalidated by Florida law and therefore remains in full force and effect."
"The Legislature has not clearly pre-empted local regulation of the field of the post-conviction conduct of sexual predators," the ruling stated.

Results of the vote are expected November 17.

Read more here.

24/7 Tracking vs Individual Privacy

2011-06-05T09:48:00.008-04:00

A Delaware criminal case presently before the courts may define what constitutes a reasonable expectation of privacy.

(...)

The American Civil Liberties Union this week filed a brief in Delaware v. Michael D. Holden, urging the state justices to uphold a lower court ruling that essentially bars police from using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to track people without a court-approved warrant.

Holden, 28, of Newark, was suspected of dealing drugs and was electronically tracked for more than 20 days by police without a warrant, ending with his arrest after police discovered 10 pounds of marijuana in his vehicle after he visited a suspected drug distribution house. The judge in the case tossed out the drug evidence, ruling that the lengthy warrantless tracking of Holden amounted to an illegal search.

(...)

With GPS devices in nearly all cellphones and in many cars and with the popularity of online applications with which users broadcast their locations to others in real time, Letang and others said the definition of what is private and what is public may have shifted. They also believe the permission that consumers have to give companies such as Apple and Google to use their equipment makes GPS tracking more common and potentially available to police if they subpoena those companies."It is tough to carve out an expectation of privacy when everyone else knows where you are," Letang said.

A comment by Superior Court Judge Jan R. Jurden back in December sums up what many civil rights libertarians have predicted for years: "The advance of technology will continue ad infinitum. ... An Orwellian state is now technologically feasible. Without adequate judicial preservation of privacy, there is nothing to protect our citizens from being tracked 24/7."

The case may make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, dependent on if the ruling is limited to the Delaware state constitution.

Read details of the case here.

The Books Get Theirs

2011-05-15T10:25:00.007-04:00

Legislative fiscal responsibility need not apply to the Book family.

It pays to be the daughter of a super lobbyist, but things can get complicated.
In the final days of the legislative session, lawmakers amended a bill to protect children from sexual abuse that gave $1.5 million to Lauren's Kids, a nonprofit run by the daughter of Ron Book, the Tallahassee uber-lobbyist from Miami.
The problem is, according to all accounts, neither of the Books asked for the money. The bill, HB 215, says the money must be used to finance a 24-hour abuse hotline and pay for sexual abuse prevention education in schools — programs already offered by Lauren's Kids without state funding.
The money the Books did ask for but did not receive: $3 million to finance the cost of relocating victims of sexual assault who are too threatened to remain at home. Instead, the late-session allocation was tacked onto a bill victim advocates had worked on all year. Among other things, the bill limits a defendant's access to child pornography evidence, allows the admission of prior sexual crimes as evidence and ensures the HIV testing of sex offenders.
(...)
If anyone knows who came up with the idea of steering the money to Book's hotline and community awareness program in a year when $3.8 billion was being slashed from the budget, they are not saying. Nor is anyone claiming credit.

Read more about the St. Petersburg Times has to say here. The Miami New Times is also on the story here.

FL AG Bondi Dogs Civil Rights Restoration for Ex-Felons

2011-02-25T11:05:00.006-05:00

When one of the very few good Florida policies go south...and fast.

The St. Petersburg Times, 2/25/2011:

(...)
"I don't believe that any felon should have an automatic restoration of rights," said Bondi, a former Tampa prosecutor elected in November. "I believe you should have to ask, and there should be an appropriate waiting period."
Bondi's proposal, set to be formally discussed at a March 9 Cabinet meeting, would reverse a major change that took place in April 2007 at the urging of former Gov. Charlie Crist, who said the civil rights restoration process in Florida was too cumbersome and cruel to many ex-offenders.
(...)
Bondi outlined her proposal abruptly at the end of the first meeting of a revamped Board of Clemency, at which officials showed a general reluctance to grant pardons or civil rights restorations, even in cases in which the Parole Commission staff recommended they be granted.
In more than a dozen cases, Scott said: "I deny the application." He said later: "The decisions today were very difficult to make."

Poor baby. Being governor is sooo hard.

According to one commenter to the St. Pete post, what Bondi suggests hurls the state back to a policy that dates back to just after the Civil War.

More than 100,000 Florida applicants await review of clemency applications.

Bondi's recommendation appears to be what those in the private sector would call an immediate reducer of the workload. It's backward, narrow and unfair and would likely be overturned in federal court.

(Here's an idea. Wouldn't it be just as timely to automatically restore civil rights as allowable by law? (Read more about who can make application here).

All this prehistoric nonsense from a woman who tied up the court system in attempt to hang on to a dog that was rightfully owned by a couple of Louisiana kids.

Woof.

The FBI Focuses on Lobbyist Ron Book (and Others)

2011-02-12T09:55:00.013-05:00

Wait long enough and what goes around, will eventually come around.

As reported in an exclusive by The Daily Pulp, the FBI is focused on lobbyist Ron Book.

(...)

In Broward and Tallahassee politics, influence peddling comes in countless forms. Here's one currently under investigation by the federal government:
A powerful lobbyist, seeking to curry favor with a state senator and benefit a major client, helps to secure the senator's boyfriend a job at the development firm the lobbyist represents. The boyfriend also happens to be a Housing Authority honcho who goes on to oversee two new multimillion-dollar publicly financed projects with the very developer who hired him.
This is one scenario that sources say the FBI is currently investigating as part of a major probe that involves recently convicted GOP fundraiser and lobbyist Alan Mendelsohn, who had deep ties to numerous politicians, including former Gov. Charlie Crist, former Senate President Ken Pruitt, embattled Congressman David Rivera, and state Sen. Eleanor Sobel. The same federal investigation also involves several figures from the massive Mutual Benefits Corp. Ponzi scheme, including MBC fraudster Joel Steinger, who is awaiting trial on federal charges himself.
Here are the players in the scenario:

The lobbyist: Ron Book, who represents a host of governments, including Broward County, and private clients, including the Miami Dolphins, as perhaps the most powerful lobbyist in Florida.
The senator: Muriel "Mandy" Dawson, a controversial Democratic legislator who was term-limited from office in 2008. She has longstanding close ties to Book and was implicated in federal court records with having received $87,000 in secret payments from Mendelsohn through her former Senate aide, Veronica Blakely.
The boyfriend: Scott Strawbridge, director of development and facilities at the Fort Lauderdale Housing Authority. Strawbridge began dating Dawson in 2006, and they have since broken up.

The firm: Miami-based Carlisle Development Group, which built the $16 million Housing Authority project at Dixie Court and is slated to demolish and redevelop Dr. Kennedy Homes, the historic public housing development on the south side of Broward Boulevard. That project calls for another $21 million in federal funds. Heading Carlisle is Lloyd Boggio, the former principal of the Cornerstone Group, another major player in the government-subsidized affordable housing industry.

Check out the Book denial over at Bob Norman's blog here.

This Frog is not surprised by the above intermingle. As many who frequent this blog well know, Ron Book utilized his lobbyist ties as the steamroll to legislate residency restrictions for those persons designated as sex offenders by the state of Florida, going as far to use his position of Chairman of the Miami Dade Homeless Trust to segregate persons so classified to live beneath the span of the Julia Tuttle Causeway--a scenario which by any other demographic, let's say restricting the mentally ill to live as legal ordinance would indicate--would have prove a huge conflict of interest by anyone actually paying attention.

Book changed his tune once on Julia Tuttle once the story went international. (Stroll through the Smashed Frog archives to read more about the man under the federal investigation microscope here).

As an aside, The Miami Herald ran a story Friday, 2/11, tying Book to what would appear to ordinary mortals as yet another obvious conflict--his hiring by a developer to lobby the city he already contracts as a lobbyist.

(...)

A letter from City Attorney Lynn Whitfield to Book notes that his lobbyist agreement with the city “specifically states that you avoid any representation or relation which would create a conflict of interest.”

Book did not return calls for comment. Whitfield’s letter says Book’s relationship with Biscayne Landing developers “constitutes a direct conflict of interest” and “can be considered a breach of your contract with the City.”

No where to run to, baby.

No where to hide.

Rick Scott's Fired 15 List

2011-02-09T20:52:00.003-05:00

Florida Governor Rick Scott is checking his To-Do list.

Hmmm. Today, I'll fire 15 Department of Corrections execs.

And all I can say is...

...holy crap.

Listed in no particular order, I present--

--The Fired 15

Gerald Abdul-Wasi – Institutions Region 3 Director

Beth Atchison – Community Corrections Region 4 Director

Franchatta Barber – Assistant Secretary of Reentry

Randall Bryant – Institutions Region 1 Director

Richard Davison – Deputy Secretary

Pam Denmark – Deputy Assistant Secretary of Reentry

John Hancock – Deputy Assistant Secretary of Institutions

Frank Johanson – Assistant Secretary of Health Services, Clinical

Olugbenga Ogunsanwo – Deputy Secretary of Health Services

Cliff Rowan – Community Corrections Region 3 Director

George Sapp – Deputy Secretary of Institutions and Reentry

Barbara Scala – Community Corrections Region 2 Director

Page Smith – Director of Reception and Medical Services Hospital

Marta Villacorta – Institutions Region 4 Director

Wendel Whitehurst – Warden, Northwest Florida Reception Center

Mark Foley Visits the Young Republicans

2011-02-05T09:37:00.003-05:00

And on that note...

The Post on Politics:

(...)

Foley — who launched a talk radio show last year and recently flirted with entering the nonpartisan mayor’s race in West Palm Beach — is slowly regaining acceptance among Republicans.
Foley was on the host committee last year for a fund-raiser for Republican Sharon Merchant’s failed state Senate bid. He spoke to a Palm Beach County Young Republicans meeting last week and introduced new U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, at the grand opening of West’s district office in West Palm Beach Tuesday.

Foley’s speech to the YRs was his first public appearance at a Republican event since his resignation.
Foley had considered a run for mayor of Palm Beach, but felt the time wasn't right. "My mother is still alive. My family, my sisters, my partner, they'd all lived the drama," Foley said. "I'm not certain that they need to be put through the wringer on my behalf or for my political ambitions again."

Back in 2007, then Representative Mark Foley (R) was spirited off into rehab and his House computers cleared upon the discovery of sexually charged e-mails to male congressional pages. The Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus Co-Chair was never charged with the very laws he helped to create, which have ensnared countless individuals and destroyed not only their lives, but their families as well.

Read more over at Mark Foley Walks?

As noted by a commenter, Google has a long memory.

And so does this Frog.

On the Street

2011-01-30T13:35:00.004-05:00

My daughter recently found herself living in a homeless shelter.

She moved out of state to live with friends, find a job and start a new life outside this hellhole called Florida.

The living circumstances were not what she expected (too much to go into here) and after spending a few nights as the guest of an empathetic few just met at her temporary job (yes, these people still exist), she managed to find her way to an open door that helped her get back to the hellhole.

Many thanks to those who help those down on their luck. And thank you, thank you, thank you for being there for this Frog's daughter.

Bondi Hires Aronberg

2011-01-03T10:32:00.004-05:00

It's official.

Dave Aronberg jumps out of the frying pan head first into the mainstream.

The Buzz, 12/31/2010:

(...)

Republican Attorney General-elect Pam Bondi today named former state Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Democrat from Green Acres, to a newly created post in her office focusing on prescription pill abuse. "He’s very familiar with this issue. He cares very deeply about this issue," Bondi, a Republican, said of Aronberg, who made a failed bid to become attorney general, losing the Democratic primary.The fact that he’s a Democrat, she said, doesn’t matter."What I want to do is bring people together on all sides who all care about the issue," she said.

(...)

Aronberg will be based in south Florida and earn $92,000 a year as special counsel for the pill mill initiative. Shortly after her election, Bondi signalled she planned to make pain clinics that excessively dole out prescription drugs — so-called pill mills — a focus of her office.

As a Florida state senator, Aronberg had pushed for changes in the Sunshine State's residency laws for those persons designated sex offenders.

Happy Holidays

2010-12-24T22:43:00.004-05:00

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for the New Year!

:)

Sunny

Sheriff Grady Judd Takes on the First Amendment

2010-12-21T09:06:00.011-05:00

The recent arrest of Phillip Greaves by Florida authorities has constitutional advocates asking The Question.

Is free speech free?

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin regarding Greaves controversial book:

"It's repulsive and awful. But I don't think they can go forward because the book is clearly protected by the First Amendment," Toobin said. "This book, as awful as it is, it is only words."

Words on a page or over a computer screen gets a person arrested here in Florida. A conviction can result in sex offender registration.

(...)
Toobin pointed to a similar case that went to the Supreme Court in 2002 where cartoons depicting children in acts similar to ones in Greaves' book were deemed protected by the Constitution.

"Certainly the sheriff and I disagree about the constitutional issue, but I agree with him that the issue of child pornography is a very serious one and I'm certainly glad that law enforcement is taking an active stand against it," Toobin said.

Arresting officer Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd rebutted Toobin with the rationale behind the arrest.

(...)
"This has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with obscenity," said Judd. "We had a law in Florida that applied. We only needed jurisdiction."

Judd said his detectives were able to establish jurisdiction by conducting an undercover operation and purchasing and receiving a copy of the book through the mail.

"He mailed this book to us. It was a how-to book of how to sexually abuse children," Judd said. "It clearly violated Florida law. "There's too much hand-wringing across the nation. When we can't stand together as a nation and say you can't write a book with real stories of children being sexually abused, then it's time to change the law."

The "mailed book" is the "opening of the door"method sting operations have utilized for years to obtain arrest warrants. Judd justified the Greaves arrest by citing "...a Florida obscenity law that says that it is illegal to portray children in an explicit sexual manner."

Ironically, the sheriff may have unwittingly opened his own door to inspection of best practices used by law enforcement.

With the high profile coverage this case will certainly receive by the press, the spotlight on police sting tactics and what some refer to as entrapment will likely prove intensive.

Upside to a Down Economy

2010-12-18T08:42:00.006-05:00

Per Corey Rayburn Yung, associate professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, the economy has kept many states from fully complying with the Adam Walsh Act.

The commentary was offered in response to a viewpoint shared by John Walsh regarding the continued need for public notification efforts currently utilized to inform the community of the residences of those designated as sex offenders.

Notification of the legal sort apparently led to the death of David Morrison of Nevada. A contact card left by a detective at Morrison's home is suspected to have been the motive for his murder by his roommates.

An arrest has been made in the case.

The Nevada Sex Offender Registry provides notification of Tier One"low risk" offenders to "... persons authorized to receive criminal history record information. Typically, this includes law enforcement, prosecutors and courts."

Meaning, the law protects the privacy of Tier One offenders, allowing them to resume some semblance of an ordinary life.

A search on Morrison resulted in the following:

"A search of the Statewide Registry has not produced any information that is available to the public through the Statewide Registry."

Presumably, Morrison was considered low risk or as now deceased, is no longer listed on the registry, which is not the case here in Florida. (Deceased, living under a bridge, incarcerated, it's all public record here in the Sunshine State).

Either way, sloppy procedures and the continued poor education of the public as to how easily an individual can be designated a sex offender contributed to Morrison's death.

David Morrison was thirty years old.

Swallowing a Political Pill

2010-12-14T21:56:00.004-05:00

How quickly one's political "passion" can change.

The Buzz, 12/13/2010:

Dave Aronberg, who lost his bid to be the Democratic nominee for Florida Attorney General, is a member of Republican victor Pam Bondi's transition team, advising the incoming attorney general on prescription drug abuse and pill mills. But will he become a permanent member of her team? "It's totally hypothetical," Aronberg said as he was leaving the "No Labels" conference in New York City. "We talked about my joining the office. Nothing is definite yet."

So how would Aronberg feel about having a boss who's fighting the federal health care legislation and the EPA's water quality standards? That's something that would have to be worked out, Aronberg said. "My passion has been fighting prescription drug abuse, trying to close down pill mills," he said. That's an area of common ground for him and Bondi, he said. "Pam Bondi and I agree that the issue of public safety should not be partisan," he said. "We differ on the health care lawsuit."

Aronberg's initial passion was an attempt to establish a statewide 1,500-foot buffer between where sex offenders live and places children gather. In doing so, get-tough sex offender housing ordinances passed by more than 120 Florida communities would have been repealed and faced compliance.

His efforts proved unsuccessful.

Pill mills should prove much more politically palatable to the voting public.

Geotags and Location

2010-12-11T10:37:00.005-05:00

Note to self when uploading photos from smart phones to Facebook and other social media sites.

Disable the geotag function.

Apparently, the ability to track down exact location via metadata embedded within the uploaded image is disturbingly easy. (Read Web Photos Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live).

As noted by the U.S. Army, Geotags and Location-based Social Networking:

• Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification to photographs, video, websites and SMS messages. It is the equivalent of adding a 10-digit grid coordinate to everything you post on the internet.

• Geotags are automatically embedded in pictures taken with smartphones.Many people are unaware of the fact that the photos they take with their smartphonesand load to the Internet have been geotagged

Protect you and yours. Read the full account here.

Nothing is private any longer.

Money Trailing Scanner Contracts

2010-11-17T06:01:00.010-05:00

American travelers are a bit verklempt over the see-more body scanners.

Sorry, folks. The current invasion of privacy rights is nothing new. Only this time around, it's happening to you and your loved ones.

As we found with Senator Orrin Hatch and the TrackerPal ankle bracelet contract--prior to everyone embracing the ability to be tracked through a cell phone GPS or OnStar in the car--a political contract (or at the very least, major lobbying) lies fast at work in our world.

The scanners prove no different.

(...)

If you've seen one of these scanners at an airport, there's a good chance it was made by L-3 Communications, a major contractor with the Department of Homeland Security. L-3 employs three different lobbying firms including Park Strategies, where former Sen. Al D'Amato, R-N.Y., plumps on the company's behalf. Back in 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed D'Amato to the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism following the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Also on Park's L-3 account is former Appropriations staffer Kraig Siracuse.

The scanner contract, issued four days after the Christmas Day bomb attempt last year, is worth $165 million to L-3.

Rapiscan got the other naked-scanner contract from the TSA, worth $173 million. Rapiscan's lobbyists include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. When Defense Daily reported on Price's appropriations bill last winter, the publication noted "Price likes the budget for its emphasis on filling gaps in aviation security, in particular the whole body imaging systems."

An early TSA contractor for full-body scanners was the American Science and Engineering company. AS&E's lobbying team is impressive, including Tom Blank, a former deputy administrator for the TSA. Fellow AS&E lobbyist Chad Wolf was an assistant administrator at TSA and an aide to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who sits on the Transportation and Defense subcommittees of Appropriations. Finally, Democratic former Rep. Bud Cramer is also an AS&E lobbyist -- he sat on the Defense and Transportation subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee.

Always follow the money.

Nancy Grace Gets Off $cott Free

2010-11-12T06:10:00.006-05:00

After four years, the wrongful death lawsuit against Nancy Grace is over.

The Duckett family agreed to a settlement which requires Grace to pay $200,000 annually to a trust fund set aside for still missing Trenton Duckett, two years of age at the time of his disappearance.

Here's an interesting condition.

Should Trenton remain missing at age thirteen, the trust would be transferred to The Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Trenton's mother committed suicide after an on-air interview with Grace, who overly pressed the young woman for details about her missing son. The family filed suit against Grace and CNN, claiming both were responsible for the death. Attorneys for the defendants sought dismissal for years, but proved unsuccessful in doing so.

Trenton would be six today.

Grace offers her typical gracelessness here.

GPS: All the Buzz

2010-11-11T09:52:00.003-05:00

What do mosquitoes and mosquito control workers share in common?

Apparently both prey on others.

Mosquitoes for obvious reasons. Mosquito control workers for sticking it to taxpayers.

(...)

A citizen's complaint triggered an eight-month investigation in which officials cross-referenced data from previously installed truck GPS trackers with daily employee inspection records, Director Craig Simmons said.
As a result of the investigation, three mosquito control workers also were fired in late June.
"With the fiscal position the county government's in, with pending layoffs, we couldn't fathom why employees would choose to do something like this when we have the ability to track them," Simmons said.
Spray-truck personnel are typically unsupervised about seven hours a day, Simmons said. Each week, they inspect about 8,000 mosquito-prone sites across 86 geographic spray zones along the Space Coast.
The GPS investigation examined on-the-clock activities during a seven-week span from August to September 2009. Disciplinary letters reveal details about the terminated workers' alleged misdeeds during that timeframe:
A technician made 20 unauthorized trips to the Port St. John Public Library and drove home 78 times.When his supervisor told him he did not have permission to visit the library, the worker responded: "That's a lie from the pits of hell! That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a lie!" his notice of dismissal shows.

It didn't take a GPS to foresee this type of tracking merge into the mainstream.

The Gelber-Bondi Race

2010-11-01T06:02:00.006-04:00

I've stayed silent much of this election cycle, choosing instead to enjoy the anxiety of many incumbents as unknown candidates picked them off at the primary and stand to do the same during tomorrow's election.

Don't get me wrong. I'm more than slightly horrified over just who may find themselves in positions of political power Wednesday morning, but then, I've had that feeling now for years.

Of particular interest to me is the Florida Attorney General race. Seasoned politician Dan Gelber appears perplexed over his current situation, polling under Pam Bondi, a former prosecutor who (in my opinion) appears quite unprepared for the position.

Gelber has been no friend to certain families in Florida, thanks to a certain lobbyist who has captured his attention with misinformation over the many years Gelber was in the position to effect change. So, part of me enjoys the reality of disgusted voters slapping him in the face.

But then we have Bondi, who failed the character test some time back after hauling a Louisiana family into court as a means to keep the Katrina dog she adopted from returning home to its Louisiana family.

Quite the choice.

If Gelber pulls off this race, I hope he remembers that real people who have committed no crime are effected--often quite harshly--by Florida law.

If Bondi is the state's next AG, at the very least, her predecessor Bill McCollum is out of politics.

It's Just Too Hard to Tail a Vehicle...Too Hard!

2010-10-20T06:09:00.007-04:00

Ah.

The St. Pete Times asks the age-old question.

Should authorities need a warrant to put a GPS tracking device on your car?

(...)

"We do utilize GPS for investigations, and we do have a policy that addresses the usage," wrote Hillsborough sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter in an e-mail. "But we cannot release the policy due to the fact that it reveals investigative techniques."

Procedure that was actually upheld by the courts.

Enter Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

(...)

"The needs of law enforcement, to which my colleagues seem inclined to refuse nothing, are quickly making personal privacy a distant memory," he wrote in a widely read dissent.

(...)

He wrote that there seems to be no limit to what technologies the government can use to violate privacy.

He noted that in 2009 a Sprint Nextel official revealed that the company gave its customers' cell phone locations to the government more than 8 million times that year. The company said that it was all done legally and that the number of customers affected was far less.

"By holding that this kind of surveillance doesn't impair an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy," wrote the judge, "the panel hands the government the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives. …

"There is something creepy and un-American about such clandestine and underhanded behavior."

Yep.

Could not have put it better myself.

While I'm off checking beneath my car, check out the commentary beneath the above article.

Priceless.

The Social Network's Social Message to Young Men

2010-10-16T10:32:00.006-04:00

I finally got a chance to take in The Social Network and was struck by an implied message that likely I--as the only Frog in the movie's audience--picked up on.

In at least three specific scenes, young college-aged men acted in their own best interest and inquired after the ages of young women in attendance at various parties.

And in one scene, the young lady had lied about her stated 21 years of age.

My hopes are a young man does not need to attend Harvard to get the point.

Live Stream Chilean Miner Rescue

2010-10-12T21:09:00.003-04:00

We watch and wait.

The New Web

2010-10-12T20:52:00.003-04:00

We told you so.

As reported by The New York Times:

Nearly everyone who uses the Internet will face the privacy risks that come with those capabilities, which are an integral part of the Web language that will soon power the Internet: HTML 5.

(...)

“It’s going to change everything about the Internet and the way we use it today,” said James Cox, 27, a freelance consultant and software developer at Smokeclouds, a New York City start-up company. “It’s not just HTML 5. It’s the new Web.”
But others, while also enthusiastic about the changes, are more cautious.
Most Web users are familiar with so-called cookies, which make it possible, for example, to log on to Web sites without having to retype user names and passwords, or to keep track of items placed in virtual shopping carts before they are bought.

Read how soon nothing will be sacred here.

***

"Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds."

--John Perry Barlow

NASA Meets SCOTUS

2010-10-05T05:43:00.005-04:00

Does NASA have the right to probe medical records, finances and drug history of employees?

Twenty-eight scientists--who work at positions that do not require security clearance--think not. Because of the unclassified nature of their employment, the plaintiffs cite the background checks as an invasion of their personal privacy.

(...)

The controversy began in 2004 when NASA, then under the direction of Michael Griffin, ordered all scientists working at JPL to undergo comprehensive, open-ended background checks — beyond the standard pre-hiring reviews for federal employees — or risk losing their jobs.

Read more here.

The Supreme Court will hear formal arguments today.

Titusville's Foreclosure Registry

2010-09-18T09:59:00.006-04:00

As I've watched the citizen-driven Fair Districts initiative successfully bulldoze past legal attempts by the Florida state legislature to remove Amendments 5 and 6 off the November ballot, I had a thought.

If citizens are frustrated enough to draw the line on gerrymandering in this state--the practice of the majority party power "drawing districts to favor incumbents or political parties with little rhyme or reason as to the interests of voters"--then how much longer before citizens reach a similar limit regarding the impact of public records overreach on their individual right to privacy?

Case in point.

The city of Titusville, Florida unanimously approved a $150 charge on homeowners who face foreclosure proceedings or have mortgages in default.

The city would pocket half the fee and give the other half and "...to Suntree-based Federal Property Registration Corp., which will help identify foreclosed property and manage the registry."

Yep. You read right. A foreclosure registry.

(...)

Under the agreement, Darnell's company would contact lenders with foreclosures in the city, inform the lenders of the city's registration requirements, and provide an electronic method of registration for the lenders, including through the city's website. A mortgagee would have to register the property with the city within 10 days after the mortgage is declared in default.

Reasoning?

It's quicker.

(...)

"This is a quicker way of identifying and registering these properties than the 'one-by-one' process the city would use through code enforcement," Titusville City Manager Mark Ryan said in a memo to the city council. "Many cities are struggling with new inventories of foreclosed homes, and creating ordinances as a way to help mitigate the damage to communities and recover costs incurred."

Two hundred properties have since been registered.

How much more must Floridians endure?

Read Titusville's public records policy here.

Read Florida's Ballot Initiative 101 here.

And vote YES on Amendments 5 and 6.