Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Radical Justice

After quoting Mike at Crime and Federalism - “[Plea bargaining] has turned our system into...a risk-management system.  It has turned lawyers into actuaries.” - Windy Pundit offers up some Radical Ideas for Criminal Justice Reform:

Reverse Truth-In-Sentencing - if you don’t serve felony time-a full year-it doesn’t count as a felony.

Performance Pay for Indigent Defense - pay indigent defense lawyers for their performance.

Punishment in Lieu of Exclusion - If a judge rules that a piece of evidence was obtained illegally, allow the prosecutor to immediately indict the responsible police officers for “improper evidence obtainment,” a newly-created crime with a mandatory minimum sentence of, say, 60 days in jail. If the officers are convicted and sentenced before the main criminal case goes to trial-easily done if the prosecutor and the officer have agreed ahead of time that the officer will plead guilty immediately-the illegally obtained evidence is allowed back in.

Limited Incarceration Without Trial - This would allow the worst of the worst to be imprisoned even if the cases against them have technical flaws.

No Miranda Warning - These warnings are deceptive. If you wait until you receive your Miranda warnings to exercise your right to remain silent, you’ve probably already said too much.

Read the whole post and comments. Mark is a software developer, not a lawyer. I’m betting his goal of setting the right incentives for the legal players would warm the heart of Freakonomics’ authors Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt.

Via a Public Defender, adding his own not-so-radical proposal that “all interrogations should be videotaped.”

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

The astronaut’s photos

A Boing Boing reader:

One comment on the astronaut story: I was, in an earlier life, a prosecutor. The circumstances of booking photos are controlled by the people who control the arrest (cops and prosecutors, prison officials in some places). And while the facts of this case as alleged are horrific - the photo on right gives rise to at least two sets of inferences:

- astronaut is/was strung out, tired, upset etc.

- astronaut, after being arrested, interrogated, deprived of sleep, clothes confiscated (and in this case, news reports indicate that the clothes and wig are, in fact, seized as evidence) - and then shoved in front of the camera.

Compare to, e.g., photos of well-connected people who arrange surrenders with their lawyers (Lewis Libby, Martha Stewart) - they don’t look so unappetizing, upset, so guilty.

It’s not unheard of for the authorities to manipulate the taking of these photos so that they’re particularly unflattering.

REMEMBER: pictures lie!

LATER: Jon Stewart doesn’t. His headline? “Very accomplished woman in tragic local story.”

Amero fund set up

Attached to an OpEd by Alex Eckelberry in the Norwich Bulleting today - “When I first read of the case, my reaction was how illogical it all sounded: A middle-aged, substitute female teacher accessing porn on a classroom computer, in front of her students on one particular day? It made no sense.” - is a letter from Julie Amero’s husband:

For over two years now Julie has been the subject of many misconceptions as to what really happened in 2004. What many people do not understand is that the “Children’s Internet Protection Act” is a Federal Law enacted by Congress in December 2000. The FCC issued rules implementing CIPA in early 2001.
In part the law requires Schools and libraries to have policies and technology “IN PLACE” to block or filter internet access to pictures that are a) obscene, b) child pornography, c) are harmful to minors, for computers that are accessed by minors.

There is more, but you get the idea. It is not the substitute teacher’s responsibility to put these controls in place. It is the BoE’s responsibility. By their own admission, the Norwich BoE did not have these protections in place for a number of months / years?? No one except the IT director and his boss Pam Aubin really knows at this point how long the system was unprotected. It is with no surprise that the Norwich BoE has done everything in its power to make sure that the substitute teacher was arrested and brought to justice for this crime. Someone’s head had to go on the block, for if the parents of the Norwich children knew that is was their administrators that they so whole heartily placed their faith in to protect the children’s morals had so deceived them, what would be next.

Defending Julie against this gross abortion of justice has been very expensive. Up to this point, a valid defense fund was not required, but we have used up most of out life’s savings and we are coming up to sentencing in less than four weeks. We are hoping to bond Julie out of jail while she awaits her appeal. I have established a pay pal account in Julie’s name. Many of you have asked how you can help, now is the time. Please visit the site below and contribute what you can. All donations will be utilized exclusively for Julie’s defense. Any remaining contributions will be donated to organizations that are dedicated to vindicating unjustly accused victims of technology.

http://julieamer.blogspot.com/

Wes Volle
Julie Amero’s Husband

Emphasis mine. Here’s more from me on Amero.

LATER - A plea appended to all of my Amero posts:

WE NEED A COMPUTER FORENSICS INNOCENCE PROJECT; a Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld of the computer forensics world. We need experts who believe in the presumption of innocence and are willing to spend the time it takes to dig through logs, registry entries and hard drives to find exculpatory material when present. This is hardly the first case of its kind and, unfortunately, it’s not likely be the last. Prosecutors who look for - and presume - guilt do selective searches for data supporting guilt; those accused rarely have the resources to pay computer forensics experts to counter that selective evidence. 

Identity fraud declines

And one of the main reason is the increased use of online banking and financial sites; the reverse of what you might think:

Identity fraud is declining in the United States--down an estimated 12 percent from the prior year--translating into total fraud reduction of approximately $6.4 billion. Indeed, about 500,000 fewer adults in the United States were victims of identity fraud in 2006 than 2005. It is estimated that 3.7 percent of Americans were victims in 2006, as opposed to 4 percent in 2005. Losses from identity fraud are calculated at $49.3 billion in 2006, down from $55.7 billion in 2005.

Why the decline? Factors cited in the report are better consumer education and awareness, and the increased use of online banking and financial sites that enable people to monitor their accounts more frequently.

Fraudulent new account openings have dropped from the prior year, with average fraud amounts also decreasing significantly. Such fraud has dropped from 1.5 percent for respondents for the prior year to a current rate of 1 percent. Plus, when fraudulent accounts are opened, victims are detecting the fraud more often using online channels, such as the viewing of statements. As such, average fraud amounts are dropping from $10,000 the year before to $7,260 now.

Here’s the Identity Fraud Survey.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Suspicious tracking

We’re losing more rights every day. Endgadget:

Earlier this month, the Seventh Circuit of the US Court of Appeals “ruled against a defendant who claimed that the surreptitious placement of a GPS tracking device amounted to an unconstitutional search,” essentially giving the coppers the green light to add a GPS module to a suspicious ride sans a warrant. While we’re sure the privacy advocates out there are screaming bloody murder, the district judge found that they had had a “reasonable suspicion that the defendant was engaged in criminal activity,” and it seems that a well-placed hunch is all they need for lawful placement. Interestingly, the government argues that no warrant was needed since “there was no search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,” but did add that “wholesale surveillance of the entire population” was to be viewed differently. So while this may come as a shock to some folks out there, it’s not like your vehicles have been entirely devoid of data capturing devices up until now anyway, so here’s fair warning to be on your best behavior when rolling about.

Philly.com on Cuban and Genarlow

You may recall that Mark Cuban said on his blog, “Personally, there is no chance I do business in the state of Georgia beyond the committment the Mavs have to play the Hawks until Genarlow is out of jail.”

Today the Philadelphia Inquirer chimed in with some suggestions of its own:

[Genarlow] Wilson was 17 when he engaged in consensual oral sex with a then 15-year-old girl at a New Year’s Eve party. Even though both Wilson and the girl were minors at the time, he was convicted of a felony (crazily, he would have only gotten a misdemeanor if they had had intercourse) and has to serve a minimum of 10 years before being eligible for parole under Georgia state law.

So we asked Cuban exactly what he’d be giving up with his boycott, since it didn’t seem his companies did a whole lot of work in Georgia. To the point, why not have the Mavs boycott the Hawks game to show how serious he was about standing up for Wilson?

To our surprise, Cuban e-mailed back that he’d “look into it.”

So we looked into what would happen to a team that forfeited a game for anything other than not having the minimum eight players available in uniform. Let’s just say that if you think the Commish has already been harsh with Cuban by fining him millions for numerous verbal indiscretions, you would have seen nothing yet.

But here’s another idea: Have the players on both teams donate their game check amounts to help Wilson’s family pay its numerous legal bills. Have them go to the Georgia State House together before the game to show public solidarity for Wilson. There are a lot of players involved with causes bigger than themselves, but they rarely put their collective fame and power together. In this case, they should… .

LATER: The AJC’s Political Insider takes notice.

Friday, February 02, 2007

100,000 clips pulled from YouTube - should we counter-sue?

CNet:

“After months of ongoing discussions with YouTube and Google, it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users,” Viacom said in a statement. “Filtering tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of unauthorized video.

“YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice, without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it,” the statement continued. “The recent addition of YouTube-served content to Google Video Search simply compounds this issue.”

YouTube has subsequently agreed to remove more than 100,000 video clips produced by Viacom properties, including MTV Networks, Comedy Central, BET and VH-1, according to a YouTube statement.

“It’s unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube’s passionate audience, which has helped to promote many of Viacom’s shows. We have received a DMCA takedown request from Viacom, and we will comply with their request,” said YouTube’s statement.

It’s all a negotiating tactic. Does anyone really believe they will give up all that promotion? But here’s where it gets interesting: how is Viacom finding the clips they want pulled?

It looks like what Viacom has done to YouTube is simply search everyViacom trademarked and copyrighted term against every Tube name, and then asked YouTube to pull down the videos, under the terms of the onerous and notorious DMCA.  YouTube has now pulled the videos.  Unfortunately, I suspect that tens of thousands of these videos are completely legitimate.

That’s Jim at OPML, The Harvard Book of. He suspects that because one of his videos got pulled:

I just recieved a notice that a video of mine has been removed from YouTube because of a complaint by Viacom.  The video, for the record, is a short home clip, about 30 seconds, of me and several friends having dinner in a ribs place in Somerville.  That this is the case should not be confusing to Viacom, given that the video is titled:

Sunday nite dinner at Redbones in Somerville, Mass:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUzOP42dg1I

Jim wants to do something about it. And he’s got friends:

I support YouTube in sending this on to me and taking down the video. What else are they to do?  Of course, now they have set up a situation where I perhaps have legal standing to go after Viacom. Of course I can’t afford to do this alone--but perhaps now I am part of a “class”--as in “class action law suit?” Anyone else interested.  This blog, by the way, is hosted at Harvard Law School Berkman Center for Internet & Society, so we should be able to get some local talent to help out.

Here is the email he got from YouTube. 

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Duke mistakes

Did you catch the parents of those accused in the Duke case last week on 60 Minutes?

“My son said, ‘Mom, when is it going to stop? When is this insanity going to stop?’ Knowing that he was still being charged with crimes that he didn’t do,” Kathy Seligmann recalls. [...]

“You have to remember that this has never been about the evidence. Never. If it were about the evidence, nine months ago, this case would’ve been totally dropped. This is about a man who chose to use a troubled young woman’s story of fantastic lies to advance his own political career, which was crumbling. He needed something big. He needed that magic bullet, and he shot it. He shot it at our sons,” says David Evans’ mother Rae. [...]

“We’d be hard-pressed to send Collin back to an environment where Mike Nifong is the newly-elected D.A., where the Durham police department is at his beck and call, where the leadership, the administration of Duke, when given the chance to stand up for our boys does not. It would be very hard as parents to send our sons back into that environment,” says one of Collin Finnerty’s parents.

Lesley Stahl, oozing empathy, didn’t ask tough questions. The media narrative had shifted. Kathleen A. Bergin of Feminist Law Professors, reacting to CNN’s Duke retelling special, “A Question of Race,” points out:

The disconnect between legal culpability and social responsibility simmers just below the surface of reporting on the Duke sex scandal… conspicuously left out of CNN’s [AJ: and CBS’s!] broadcast: (1) that team members called the two women “niggers” and “bitches”; (2) one threatened to rape them with a broomstick; (3) another spoke of hiring strippers in an e-mail sent the same night that threatened to kill “the bitches” and cut off their skin while he ejaculated in his “Duke-issued spandex;” and (4) one shouted to the victim as she left the team’s big house, “Hey bitch, thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt.” These facts are undisputed and highlight the sick and wretched depravity of this racialized episode.

Back on 60 Minutes, said David’s dad:

“It was a mistake, that was poor judgment. But then what you need to do is separate that from felony charges, talking about moral questions. These are felony charges. And if they did make a mistake, even though they did what many other students have done, they have paid for it dearly,” says David Evans, Sr.

Ok, fine. First, let’s do something serious to stop so “many other students” from doing it. And second, let’s not lose track of the fact that it was wrong and bad and deserving of some serious punishment.

Via David Shraub at The Debate Link.

Sex Crime vs Crime

Reuters reports that MySpace is donating its database of U.S. sex offenders to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Violet Blue at Tiny Nibbles isn’t so sure that’s a good thing:

These are state registries, and depending on the state you’re in, you’re a “sex offender” under Megan’s Law if you get caught urinating in public, mooning, skinny dipping, or if you get busted having consensual sex in public. Think of how lopsided these charges must be in homophobic states. Also, it’s a lesson in what sites like MySpace can and will do with personal information.

Regina at Sex Drive Daily ups the ante:

I have at times wondered whether we need to specify when a crime is a “sexual” offense. Are laws around assault, harassment, exploitation, violence not enough? Do we have to add a whole ‘nother category if genitals are involved?

By separating it out as a different category of crime—and I know we do it with the best of intentions—do we create the additional overhead of shame on the survivor’s part?

If we treated violence as violence, regardless of whether or how genitalia is involved, would we be able to take some of the humiliation out of it for the assaulted? Or would we “encourage” sexual aspects to violent crime, because the consequences would be the same?

Monday, January 29, 2007

Amero gets the Fox News treatment

Julie Amero, the CT substitute teacher facing a possible 40 years in prison because her malware-infected PC generated porn pop-ups during class, gets the fair and balanced Fox News treatment here.

Here’s Lindsay Beyerstein on Why didn’t Julie pull the plug? and here she’s gathered some good background information.

Contrast Fox with this far more sane discussion with someone who actually knows something about the case listen to W. Herbert Horner, a computer consultant who examined her computer and testified on her behalf, interviewed on Public Radio’s Future Tense.

See also, State v. Amero, a blog from Austin, TX computer consultant Mike Conwell who’s angered at the injustice of the conviction.

Fox via Consoleman Blog, American Public Radio via Sunbelt BLOG. My first post on the case here.

LATER: Rick Green of the Hartford Courant weighs in, “To believe that Julie Amero deserves to go to jail for exposing her students to pornography takes some work.”

LATER STILL - A plea appended to all of my Amero posts:

WE NEED A COMPUTER FORENSICS INNOCENCE PROJECT; a Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld of the computer forensics world. We need experts who believe in the presumption of innocence and are willing to spend the time it takes to dig through logs, registry entries and hard drives to find exculpatory material when present. This is hardly the first case of its kind and, unfortunately, it’s not likely be the last. Prosecutors who look for - and presume - guilt do selective searches for data supporting guilt; those accused rarely have the resources to pay computer forensics experts to counter that selective evidence. 

Friday, January 26, 2007

Facing jailtime for spyware porn

Brian Krebs on Computer Security:

A 40-year-old former substitute teacher from Connecticut is facing prison time following her conviction for endangering students by exposing them to pornographic material displayed on a classroom computer.

Local prosecutors charged that the teacher was caught red-handed surfing for porn in the presence of seventh graders. The defense claimed the graphic images were pop-up ads generated by spyware already present on the computer prior to the teacher’s arrival. The jury sided with the prosecution and convicted her of four counts of endangering a child, a crime that brings a punishment of up to 10 years per count. She is due to be sentenced on March 2.

I had a chance this week to speak with the accused, Windham, Conn., resident Julie Amero. Amero described herself as the kind of person who can hardly find the power button on a computer, saying she often relies on written instructions from her husband explaining how to access e-mail, sign into instant messaging accounts and other relatively simple tasks.

Read the entire article, clickthrough to its links. You will find that in this case, as in so many others, the jury believed the police over a computer forensics expert and the testimony of the teacher. Said the expert:

This was one of the most frustrating experiences of my career, knowing full well that the person is innocent and not being allowed to provide logical proof.

If there is an appeal and the defense is allowed to show the entire results of the forensic examination in front of experienced computer people, including a computer literate judge and prosecutor, Julie Amero will walk out the court room as a free person.

Technophobia and sex panic combine in a lethal mix to find innocent people guilty.  We need a Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld of the computer forensics world. We need those who look for innocence, rather than only those who look for - and assume - guilt.

NOTE: Criminalizing the IT department for an expired firewall or not installing spam blockers isn’t that answer either:exclaim:

LATER: Mike Conwell, a computer consultant from Austin, TX angered at the conviction has a blog dedicated the Amero case, state v. Amero.

A plea appended to all of my Amero posts:

WE NEED A COMPUTER FORENSICS INNOCENCE PROJECT; a Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld of the computer forensics world. We need experts who believe in the presumption of innocence and are willing to spend the time it takes to dig through logs, registry entries and hard drives to find exculpatory material when present. This is hardly the first case of its kind and, unfortunately, it’s not likely be the last. Prosecutors who look for - and presume - guilt do selective searches for data supporting guilt; those accused rarely have the resources to pay computer forensics experts to counter that selective evidence. 

Thursday, January 25, 2007

ESPN on Genarlow Wilson

A major piece on the Genarlow Wilson case on ESPN.com today. You’ll remember that Genarlow is serving 10 years in a Georgia prison for engaging in consensual sex when he was 17 years old with a 15 year old girl:

He has followed his appeals from behind bars. He watched as the state legislature changed the law that put him there, then declined to make it retroactive, for reasons that still boggle the mind. That was a dark day.

He watched as B.J. Bernstein, his new attorney, filed a petition for writ of certiorari, asking the Georgia Supreme Court to review the case. The petition was denied, then set aside, then denied again, then appealed, then denied again. Those were darker days. [...]

No one involved believes Wilson should be in jail for 10 years.

The prosecutors don’t.

The Supreme Court doesn’t.

The legislature doesn’t.

The 15-year-old “victim” doesn’t.

The forewoman of the jury doesn’t.

Privately, even prison officials don’t. [...]

Hope is all he has left. He believes in a system that has failed him. He believes in those powerful men in Atlanta. He believes in the kindness of others, and in the skills of Bernstein. He lets her work, spending most of his days in the prison library, reading all the books he can. Sometimes, he pretends he’s a character, living in a fantasy world, not in a cellblock.

When the weather’s nice, he can run laps around the yard, as if he’s still on a football field, chasing down future first-round picks. The burn in his lungs feels like a time long past. It feels like freedom.

He looks through the windows just a moment more, sadness in his eyes, then turns around. Wilson stares down the hall of his prison, waiting on a day when he can go home.

Free Genarlow. Sign the online petition.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

9th Circuit: copyright orphans stay orphans

Bummer:

In a move that’s a blow to the U.S. movement to reform copyright law, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle, in his lawsuit to allow orphaned works into the public domain.

What’s a copyright orphan?

An orphaned work is a piece of copyrighted material, such as a film or book or song, for which there is no longer a commercial life, and no discernible owner. It’s otherwise out of print or unavailable, but no one can re-issue it, because no one can find out who they need permission from to re-issue it. Surprisingly, a majority of the works of the 20th century actually fall into this category.

Back in 2004, Kahle and Perlinger sought the help of the Stanford Cyberlaw Center to sue for an opt-in system on copyright of orphaned works. This would mean that to keep the work in copyright, someone would have to come forward and claim it through registration of some sort. Larry Lessig argued the case last November 13, 2006.

They believed that there was a First Amendment issue with works that sought to build on orphan works and that without the formality of opt-in, and that the system was creating a de-facto in perpetuity or near enough as make no odds perpetuity that violated the constitution’s clause on copyright, which states it’s there to:

"To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

9th Circuit said no dice on either argument.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Georgia justice

With six prisons in my town I always say we’re not a college town, we’re a prison town. A couple stories today highlight the state of justice in Georgia. We’ll begin with the a man in prison twenty two years for rape. He always claimed he was innocent; last week he was proven right:

An Atlanta man sentenced to 45 years in prison, who has always claimed his innocence, is being released after modern day technology cleared his name.

Willie ‘Pete’ Williams was convicted in 1985 for raping a woman near a Sandy Springs apartment complex. The case relied heavily on eye-witness accounts, and with the help of the Georgia Innocence Project, Williams was finally able to clear his name.

Thank God for the Georgia Innocence Project. Yesterday the AJC was reporting that the DA had to double-check the results and that the victim was standing firm in her identification.

The Innocence Project also identified someone they believed to be the real attacker. That guy still lives in Atlanta, apparently free after a 4 year sentence for pleading guilty “to rape, aggravated sodomy, kidnapping and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.”

Four years for the guilty guy vs 45 years for the innocent guy, the Innocence Project does the detective work that police are reluctant to accept and finds an admitted rapist that fits the profile who “reached by phone Saturday, said he has not heard from authorities.”

Michael wonders, what if that innocent guy had been sentenced to death? McClatchy Newspapers answers in a special series that finds few safeguards in capital cases in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia. Bad lawyers and Appeals Courts reluctant to intercede are the culprits.

That said, Georgia may be “an emerging bright spot” thanks to “a publicly funded, statewide capital defenders office began spending whatever is necessary to scour clients’ backgrounds for mitigating evidence.” McClathy profiles that office:

They spend what’s necessary. They do what’s necessary. They work every case as if it were their only one, no matter what.

The idea is to fulfill - at long last - the Supreme Court’s edict that everyone who’s accused of a capital crime receives an adequate defense, in accordance with the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. [...]

Their record: 23-0.

More from the Times on mixtapes

Mixtapes and the DJ Drama raid in the Business Section of today’s Times:

last week, local authorities, working with the recording industry’s trade association, stunned fans and music executives alike by raiding DJ Drama’s studio in Atlanta and arresting him and a fellow D.J., Don Cannon, on racketeering charges. Investigators seized more than 81,000 allegedly pirated CDs and say the pair were producing unlicensed recordings and selling them without permission.

The raid sparked an outcry among many rap fans. But it also threatens to throw into public view the recording industry’s awkward relationship with mixtapes, long an integral element of rap culture and now commonly for sale on street corners, Web sites, many independent record shops and occasionally big chains.

Even as industry-financed antipiracy squads hunt for unauthorized recordings, senior executives at the major record labels privately say that they have courted - and often paid - top D.J.’s to create and distribute mixtapes featuring the labels’ rappers as part of efforts to generate buzz.

Label executives remained puzzled over the sudden arrest of DJ Drama, whose ascent through the unregulated world of compilations has largely taken place in plain sight during the last couple of years. There has been speculation that the police inquiry into his business affairs was further spurred by tips from a competitor or unhappy customer. Chief Baker of the Morrow police declined to comment on the participation of any informants.

I’m not into Rap, I don’t buy mixtapes. I did frequent clubs and know and buy them way back when:

Mixtapes have been part of rap since the genre’s earliest days in the 1970s - back then, D.J.’s who spun records at clubs or parties committed their playlists to cassettes. But the proliferation of CD burners in the last several years has made the production and wide circulation - or sale - of mixtapes easier than ever.

It has also enhanced their role in tastemaking. Particularly since formerly underground mixtape hero 50 Cent broke out as a mainstream rap superstar in 2003, the top producers of unlicensed CDs have been embraced by the industry’s biggest corporations, who wager that the D.J.’s reputations as renegades will translate into the sale of legitimate, licensed compilations, too.

The story reports that hip hop sales were down 20% last year. How the business types can think arresting DJs will help sales is beyond me.

Friday, January 19, 2007

“They signed releases”

We’ve got to do something to get our legal system in synch with the reality of how people actually behave in relation to agreements they unwittingly enter into.

I don’t like “End User license Agreements” - better known as “clickthrough agreements” - and don’t believe they should be legally binding. I believe the Borat releases intentionally obscured what was going on and as a consequence they should not be legally binding. And I think the cocky shock jocks hosting a water drinking contest that killed a woman last Friday illustrate the attitude of most of those in the media industry.

From the audio tapes:

Listener: “I want to say that those people drinking all that water can get sick and die from water intoxication.”

DJ: “Yeah, we’re aware of that.”

DJ: “Yeah, they signed releases so, we’re not responsible, it’s OK. (laughter) If they get to the point where they have to throw up, then they’re going to throw up and then they’re out of the contest before they die, so that’s good, right?”

Obviously not. ABC News:

“This is nothing new,” said fellow disc jockey Bruce Maiman from KFBK-FM, another station in Sacramento. “I can empathize with what they did…because it’s been done hundreds of times.”

Obviously true. I expect those DJs will be prosecuted. But all of us must learn what we’re giving up when we sign a release, negotiate the terms, and hold those accountable responsible for the abuse of their media power.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Not just on South Park anymore

According to Atlanta’s Fox 5, Atlanta police raided a recording studio and “cleaned the place out.” 17 people detained; 2 arrested “for making and selling illegal CDs.” Sounds like a South Park episode to me:

Via Boing Boing. More here.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

DoJ distributes cybercrime handbook to local police

CNet:

The new 137-page manual (click for PDF) appears to represent the Justice Department’s attempt to offer at least some basic technical and legal tips to law enforcement agencies that may not have computer experts on the payroll.

“Criminals can trade and share information, mask their identity, identify and gather information on victims, and communicate with co-conspirators,” the manual says. “Web sites, electronic mail, chat rooms, and file sharing networks can all yield evidence in an investigation of computer-related crime.”

The manual warns of the perils of assuming that the owner of a computer--especially Windows PCs, which can be vulnerable to security breaches--is responsible for what’s actually on it.

I guess that’s progress.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Presumtion of innocence?

The Times has an article on the propensity of criminal defendants to give statements to police. Don’t. Here’s what the police think:

“Everybody talks,” said Daniel J. Castleman, chief of investigations for the Manhattan district attorney. “Almost nobody doesn’t talk. And the reason for that is that people think they can either talk their way out of it or mitigate the crime. It’s human nature.”

Isn’t it equally possible that they talk because they are nervous? And isn’t an interrogation an inherently anxiety-producing circumstance to find yourself in?

Whatever you do, don’t offer up your alibi. If you do, prosecutors love it “because it shows what they call ‘consciousness of guilt.’”

Defendants may try to talk their way out of a charge, but do they succeed?

“Never,” said Gerald B. Lefcourt, who has defended clients from the Black Panthers to Harry B. Helmsley. “Which is why if it’s up to me, every client I have should know they should never, ever, under any circumstances speak to law enforcement unless I’m there.”

Obviously, police and prosecutors have no presumption of innocence. We know that innocent people make false confessions. This is well documented and if we were more focused on really solving crime - as opposed to building conviction statistics and marking cases closed - we would videotape all interrogations; written statements too.

The WaPo had a series on false convictions in 2003 that I can no longer find online.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Detecting computer-generated porn

CNet:

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal law banning the possession of images of minors in lascivious poses that were either Photoshop-altered adults or completely computer-generated. Since then, to secure a conviction, prosecutors must prove that a defendant possessed images of real--not virtual--children.

This brings us to the case of Rudy Frabizio, whose employer discovered sexually explicit images on Frabizio’s computer that appeared to involve minors. The FBI was contacted, and Frabizio was indicted on one count of possession of child pornography.

Initially, the FBI chose as its expert witness Hany Farid, a Dartmouth College professor of computer science, who had written a program to determine whether an image was real. But then Frabizio’s defense attorney discovered that the program had a 30 percent false-positive error rate: it frequently classified a real photograph as computer-generated. It also classified an image of a cartoon dragon called “Zembad” as real. [...]

After that revelation, the FBI quickly switched witnesses. Its new expert was Thomas Musheno of the FBI’s Forensic Audio, Video, and Image Analysis Unit.

The FBI claimed that Musheno could simply look at each image--with no computer program required--and figure out which is legal and which is not. Musheno concluded that 6 of the 19 JPEG images definitely depict real children and 10 others “appear to be” real children. (Musheno holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in photography, not in any technical disciplines, and the FBI handbook (PDF) does not discuss how to detect computer-altered images.)

Said the judge:

“I have serious doubts as to whether a person visually studying the images in this case can distinguish real pictures from manipulated or wholly virtual ones with the level of confidence required in a criminal prosecution,” Gertner wrote. She cited computer science research that said even “experts cannot know whether a digital image is real or virtual.”

Musheno was not allowed to testify.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Sunstein on Marshall

The University of Chicago Law School chapter of the Black Law Students Association is holding a series of talks in honor of the 40th anniversary of Thurgood Marshall’s appointment to the Supreme Court.

All sound interesting; the first was outstanding. It was from Cass Sunstein who clerked for Marshall in the 1979-80 term. He concludes his 50 minute remarks by quoting a speech Marshall gave in 1987 commenting on the bicentennial celebration of the constitution:

I cannot accept this invitation [to speak at the founding], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever “fixed” at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite “The Constitution,” they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago. [...]

If we seek, instead, a sensitive understanding of the Constitution’s inherent defects, and its promising evolution through 200 years of history, the celebration of the “Miracle at Philadelphia” will, in my view, be a far more meaningful and humbling experience. We will see that the true miracle was not the birth of the Constitution, but its life, a life nurtured through two turbulent centuries of our own making, and a life embodying much good fortune that was not.

Thus, in this bicentennial year, we may not all participate in the festivities with flagwaving fervor. Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights.

Still enthralled by The Wisdom of Crowds, I recently waxed poetic on the brilliant system of nondemocratic checks and balances established by the Founding Fathers that had the effect of filtering up the emergent intelligence of the national crowd.

I’d better be careful! What was I thinking?

There may well be some truth to the notion that the obstacles to direct democracy had the unintended effect of facilitating some emergent intelligence, but the direct effects of legislative electoral compromises, as I was eloquently reminded while hearing then rereading Marshall’s words, were far more costly than we like to think.