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from the double-double dept

I'm not sure when or if this has happened before: this week we've got cross-category winners in both the first and second place spots, both in response to the latest example of a SLAPP suit filed by a supposed free speech supporter. Norahc won first place for both insightful and funny by putting a name to this increasingly common hypocritical phenomenon:

Hereafter, this should be referred to as the Nunes Effect.

Meanwhile an anonymous comment took second place for both insightful and funny with a response to someone misusing the notion of "freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences" as though it was meant to include lawsuits:

Interesting theory. Then for the US, I propose a new civil law that allows people to sue others for owning guns. Like, if you are unhappy that someone owns a gun, you can sue them for up to a million dollars. Thankfully this would not infringe on the 2nd Amendment, since they are still free to own guns, just not free from the consequences.

And since that's all the winners right there, we now move straight on to editor's choice for both categories! On the insightful side, we've got a pair of comments about the ongoing privacy wars on multiple fronts. First it's That One Guy responding to the states that argued against the Pennsylvania ruling that compelled password production violates the 5th amendment:

A telling, and worrying, argument

"In a joint amicus brief in support of the Commonwealth, various states provide an interesting history of modern encryption, press the troubling consequences of Appellants position including the altering of the balance of power, rendering law enforcement incapable of accessing large amounts of relevant evidence and warn that adopting Appellants position could result in less privacy, not more, in the form of draconian anti-privacy legislation."

'If you don't let us violate constitutional rights we'll pass unconstitutional laws in order to let us do so' is really not the sort of thing you want multiple states arguing, as that shows a mindset that considers constitutional protections and privacy of the public not limits to be respected and something to uphold respectively, but obstacles to be worked around and/or undermined.

Law enforcement has never had access to all of the evidence they've wanted, and the fact that there are more ways for people to protect their privacy, even if that includes really terrible people, is not grounds to start giving them that which they have never had and never will have, especially when it will come at such a great cost to the general public.

Next, it's Bergman responding to our post about the EU telling the US to ban strong encryption:

Nerding Harder

The US government has over a hundred times greater access to people's communications, personal papers and everything else now than it did when the Fourth Amendment was written. The US government has surveillance capabilities beyond the worst nightmares of our founders.

Our law enforcement has never had a problem finding anyone from petty thieves to traitors, from illegal immigrants to foreign spies. But they're saying now that their incredible wealth of information is insufficient, that we are at risk of them being unable to catch all these bad people if we return to a level of government surveillance that persisted for most of our history, that they had zero problems with then.

The answer is as simple as it is obvious. The tech sector is not the group that needs to nerd harder. They people who need to nerd harder are the government agencies that are apparently slacking off, because with greater capacity to find bad guys they are claiming a reduced ability to actually pursue them.

Giving them more tools when they aren't fully utilizing the ones they already have is silly, they just won't fully utilize those either.

They just need to nerd harder at the NSA, DOJ and ICE.

On the funny side, we start out with allengarvin responding to our post about the court that tossed 82 pounds of marijuana because of the deputy's pretextual traffic stop:

"The rental car was only doing 60 mph in a 70-mph speed zone"

That crime is far worse than carrying 82 lbs of marijuana. If you're not passing someone, GET OUT OF THE DAMN PASSING LANE!!

And finally, we've got an anonymous response to our post about cord-cutting in which we accused cable execs of sticking their heads in the ground:

Pretty sure that is NOT where they are sticking their heads...

That's all for this week, folks!

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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt - Techdirt

You are here: Home / News / READ: Trump White House says no to participating in Wednesday impeachment hearing

December 1, 2019 by Sharyl Attkisson Leave a Comment

The Trump administration has sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee stating that the White House will not accept the invitation to take part in Wednesdays highly partisan impeachment hearing.

Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI

We cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the President a fair process through additional hearings.

Read the letter below:

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkissons work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Filed Under: News, US Tagged With: rep. jerry nadler, Trump impeachment

Emmy-Award Winning Investigative Journalist, New York Times Best Selling Author, Host of Sinclair's Full Measure

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READ: Trump White House says no to participating in Wednesday impeachment hearing - Sharyl Attkisson

The challenge of cleaning up dilapidated and unsafe structures in Martinsville has become overgrown with challenges for city inspectors.

As of November, just two employees had performed more than 1,200 inspections since the beginning of 2019, Building Official and Zoning Administrator Kris Bridges said.

Part of this workload involves following up on two resolutions Martinsville City Council passed in September to address property maintenance concerns from citizens.

One resolution declared more than 20 houses, which City Attorney Eric Monday described as frequent flyers because of recurring complaints, to be public nuisances and ordered property owners to repair the problems. Council added many of the same properties to the rental inspection program at its meeting on Sept. 24.

Since September, Bridges said his office has been working steadily through the rental inspection and public nuisance lists, taking these about five at a time. The inspectors must have time to examine the property and reinspect it once work is completed. Property owners who are found in violation must be given due process and an opportunity to remedy the issue.

At their meeting, council members decided to spare several other houses from the initial lists because the owners seemed willing to work with the city to make repairs. These also require communication and follow-up from the inspectors to make sure the work is being done as planned.

City inspectors are responsible for investigating property maintenance complaints from local residents. These range from junk cars and trash in peoples yards to abandoned houses that are open to squatters and the elements.

Bridges also is working through a list of houses that the council approved for demolition this year because they have deteriorated to the point of being dangerous. The demolition program was had been de-emphasized for several years but was revived by City Council in 2018.

All this is on top of the departments normal workload of inspecting new construction, building repairs and renovations in the city. And there is more construction going on than people might think, Bridges said. If you talk to local contractors, he said, Everybodys busy.

With only himself and inspector Mark Price conducting more than 1,000 inspections a year, Its a balancing act, Bridges said. We do the best we can with the limited resources that we have to address the situations that we can. We do respond to every complaint.

But the city is limited in the problems that can be addressed by limited staffing, lack of money, the time required for the complaint process and what is legal to act on. Bridges said the code allows a D-minus thats barely passing. Well, barely passing is still passing.

When receiving property complaints, he said, We have to look at, are these the worst in the city? Just because it looks bad doesnt mean it rises to the level of a code violation.

Emphasizing safety

The most important concern for the inspections department is safety. They must emphasize situations that affect safety of the occupant and safety of the public in general, Bridges said.

In terms of danger, a building that is open and unsecure against public entry is pretty much the worst of the worst. People can go in and do things like squatting, using building materials as fuel for heat, or other illegal activities. Its a danger to kids who may not understand what unsafe looks like, he said.

The next most damaging issue is having an open, second-floor entry, such as a damaged roof that leaves the property open to the weather.

Theres nothing you can do to make a house go downhill faster than, one, to be vacant, and two, open to weather, where moisture and animals can get in. Those are the top things that make properties high on the list, Bridges said.

Other safety issues can include hoarding or living in a house without proper utilities. A dwelling must have a way to heat water for sanitation, have sources of natural light and ventilation, and provide heat in the winter. This heat source must be permanently installed, not a space heater, he added.

If you dont have electricity but still have gas, you might be using the stove or oven to heat your house, which is very unsafe, Bridges said. Theres no requirement for air conditioning in a single-family dwelling, but there is a requirement for heat. Even then, the legal minimum is 65 degrees during the day and 60 degrees at night.

Protecting renters

Safety was the intent behind Martinsville City Councils addition of 18 properties to the rental inspection list. Council first established the program in November 2018 following several reports of unsafe conditions in local rentals, including bricks that had been removed from a fireplace and a gas line improperly hooked up to a water heater.

Bridges intends for it to be a living list: As some places get cleaned up, others can be added.

Martinsville cannot afford to have a full-blown rental inspection program like some larger localities do, which would include all rental properties in the city, he said. Instead, this one consists of the ones we receive the most complaints about.

Were restricted in what we can charge to run the program, so it cannot be self-sustaining. Were not in a financial situation where we can take on additional responsibilities and tasks that are not cost-neutral, he said. So, we came up with resolution through council that identified specific houses instead of making a broad stroke.

In addition, a full rental inspection program negatively would impact the large number of very responsible landlords out there, Bridges said. We do not need to put regulations on people who are doing what theyre supposed to.

The department strives to work with property owners and give them a reasonable amount of time to make improvements. Several of them are being very cooperative about letting us come in and take a look, he said. We do understand that this is not their only responsibility every day.

Ultimately, inspectors want to work with property owners to repair a problem without resorting to fines or legal action, Bridges said.

The people that ignore us, thats where things escalate, he said. It doesnt do anybody any good to get them in front of a judge, because the money they wouldve spent on the house now goes to court fees and lawyers, and thats not our goal. Compliance is our goal.

The complaint process

Property maintenance violations are driven entirely by citizen complaints usually meaning that a resident calls the inspections department to report a problem in his or her neighborhood. Residents can reach the inspections department at 276-403-5174 or in room 217 on the second floor of the Municipal Building.

When a citizen complaint comes in, inspection staff add it to a master list and go out to inspect the property in person. The complainant must give their name and contact info, but this is not publicly accessible information, Bridges said.

We do not take anonymous complaints. Complainant information is protected, if theyre fearful of some kind of retribution, he said. But we also want to be able to get back with the complainant and let them know what the status is.

If no violation is found, we call the complainant and let them know its not quite to that level, he said.

For example, a backyard that cannot be seen from the street cannot be cited. If its something we have to take extraordinary effort to see, its a little bit beyond the interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, in the opinion of the city attorney. Were not saying its not an issue, just that legally we cant necessarily take action on it, Bridges said.

If a property maintenance violation is found, the city then works to notify the property owner through various means. This includes a notice posted on the door, mail, and in the newspaper.

We have to be fairly consistent in how we notify people. We dont have access to everybodys phone information, he said.

Bridges said he realizes some owners live out of town, but if its your house, youre responsible for keeping up with your house. If you cant do it physically because youre four hours away, you need to get someone to do it for you.

Depending on the type of violation, the time given to get into compliance could be three, seven, 10 days or more.

Complainants can use the citys online tracking system to look up by property and see where your complaint is in the process, Bridges said.

The webpage has a lag time of a day or two, but it does pull directly from the citys property maintenance complaint tracker. The system can be accessed at http://mud-va.org/pmview.php, or by visiting the citys homepage at http://www.martinsville-va.gov, clicking the residents tab, then selecting property maintenance from the menu.

Grass is a tall order

The majority of complaints the city receives deal with high grass. However, this goes beyond a homeowner who skipped mowing the lawn for a week or two.

We dont have a landscaping ordinance; we have a high grass and weeds ordinance. The majority of the yard has to be 10 inches high or more, Bridges said.

Again, the intent behind the ordinance is protecting public safety. Grass that high provides an environment for ticks, snakes or other animals to live, as well as hiding other hazards such as sinkholes, he said.

A groundhog infestation can be just as bad as a snake infestation, Bridges said, because of the digging and burrowing, and creating holes you dont see when you walk across the yard.

Grass can also be a fire hazard when you have extra fuel. Most grasses, when they get up above 10 inches, they start dying off. It doesnt take much to light off a brush fire, he said. Thats when things escalate from a minor problem to a big issue that affects multiple occupants and residences. Thats what were trying to prevent.

If the property owner does not cut the yard down to acceptable levels by the deadline, Bridges said his department refers the case to Public Works to mow it. When we turn it over to Public Works, theyre only going to knock [the grass] down. Theyre not going to make it look pretty, he said.

The owner will then be billed several hundred dollars as a discouragement to having the city be your lawnkeeping service. We dont want to be in the lawnkeeping service, Bridges said.

Demolition

The public nuisance and demolition lists are meant to give the inspections department more options to deal with the worst properties in the city. However, fixing up buildings or having them torn down takes time.

There are myriad opportunities to get these things taken care of, none of which are real fast, Bridges said.

In 2018, when council leaders revived the demolition program, Bridges presented a ranking of 50 or so buildings that had major structural failures or had otherwise deteriorated past the point of repair. As of September, inspections staff had started with a list of the top 13 houses, a complex process of notifying the owners, negotiating to have them repair or demolish it themselves if possible, looking at tax liens, and conducting asbestos surveys. When property owners are unable to fix or demolish the building, the city steps in.

Before the city pays to raze a building, we want to give everybody as much opportunity as we can to get it taken care of themselves, he said. If were having to tear something down, it should not be a fast process unless its an imminent danger to the public.

Budget is another issue. Projects range from $5,000 to up to $27,500 each, Bridges said. In this fiscal year, which began in July 2019, there is $15,000 allocated for demolition in the city budget, plus $10,000 in carryover funds from 2018.

Demolition is not cheap, he said. We dont have a big line item to tear things down.There are a lot of things that need to be addressed in order to do it right.

These include complying with regulations from the Department of Environmental Quality and properly disposing of materials containing asbestos in licensed landfills.

At the September council meeting, Bridges presented a list of the next 12 properties for demolition, but more money will need to be added to the budget before they can be addressed.

Kim Barto Meeks is a reporter for the Martinsville Bulletin. She can be reached at 276-638-8801.

Here is the original post:
City of Martinsville's inspectors face hundreds of assignments each month in fighting blight and unsafe building conditions - Martinsville Bulletin

Following a jurys recommendation from the summer, a judge on Monday sent a Georgia drug dealer to prison for more than 50 years.

Antron Adon Tucker, 44, was convicted in August of possessing methamphetamine with the intent to distribute, transporting meth into Virginia and possessing marijuana with the intent to distribute after a Wythe County Circuit Court jury trial.

After reaching their verdict, jurors suggested a possible punishment, which Judge Josiah Showalter Jr. followed this week.

According to police and the prosecution, Tucker, who has prior drug convictions in Georgia, was caught in Wythe County in 2017 while taking a variety of illegal party drugs to Harrisonburg to sell.

State sentencing guidelines recommended a punishment of six years in prison, but Tucker opted for a jury trial.

Calling the jurors 51-year recommendation heavy handed, Tuckers attorney, Randy Jones, asked Showalter to give his client a shorter sentence.

This court takes the jurys recommendation very seriously, said Showalter, who also imposed a $100,000 fine on Tucker, whos been held in the New River Valley Regional Jail since his arrest.

Tucker indicated in court on Monday that he planned to appeal his case.

S.C. man convicted of assaulting police officers

A South Carolina man pleaded no contest on Monday to five felonies stemming from an Aug. 3 police chase that ended in Wythe County.

Corey Dennard Black, 34, was convicted of felony eluding police, assaulting a police officer (two counts) and felony destruction of property (two counts).

According to Commonwealths Attorney Mike Jones, Blacks vehicle struck a state troopers vehicle and a Smyth County Sheriffs Office deputys vehicle during a high-speed chase on Interstate 81.

As part of a plea agreement, Black was sentenced to serve one year and four months in jail with credit for time served while awaiting trial.

After his release, Black will be on probation for five years, during which time hell waive his Fourth Amendment protections, which means police can search him without a warrant.

Blacks drivers license was also suspended for a year and he has to pay $2,500 to the Smyth County Sheriffs Office and $1,500 to the Virginia State Place for damage to the patrol vehicles.

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Convicted drug dealer gets 51-year sentence in Wythe - Southwest Virginia Today

Heres what the staff of the Technology and Press Freedom Project at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is tracking this week.

The Fourth Amendment bars unreasonable searches and seizures of people, property, and homes by typically requiring a warrant supported by probable cause to believe that a crime has been, is, or will be committed.

Border officials, however, have long asserted and courts have recognized the border search exception, which permits warrantless searches at the border. The basic theory is that you can search persons and possessions without a warrant because the government interest in enforcing customs and immigration laws makes such searches reasonable even without a warrant.

The advent of widely available, portable electronic devices with the ability to store a lifes worth of private data has made such searches all the more controversial as they grow increasingly invasive with technological advances.

In an important decision last week, a federal court in Boston ruled that federal agents cannot rely on this doctrine to conduct suspicionless searches of travelers electronic devices at the border and other U.S. ports of entry. Weve received an important question: What does this mean for journalists traveling internationally who are worried about exposing confidential journalistic material or source contacts stored on their electronic devices?

The short answer is that journalists crossing the border should take comfort in the courts ruling (and congratulations to the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation for the win!), but they should continue to take the same digital security measures recommended by the Reporters CommitteeandCommittee to Protect Journalists, among others.

This is partially because the ruling came from the district court, which means that the government has an opportunity to appeal the ruling to the appellate court and perhaps to the Supreme Court. Our caution also stems from incidents like the journalist trackingrevealed by NBC 7 San Diego, which the Reporters Committee continues to investigate throughFreedom of Information Act litigation. Were not sure if border officials could adopt a position that reporting on border activities would actually confer reasonable suspicion that a journalist could have information related to border enforcement operations.

Additionally, plaintiffs in the lawsuit sought two types of relief one requesting the court to declare that the governments policies permitting searches absent probable cause are unconstitutional, and another asking the court to issue an injunction prohibiting border officials from conducting suspicionless searches. The district court partially granted the declaratory relief (the court found that the heightened standard of probable cause that plaintiffs sought was not warranted at the border), but it denied the injunctive relief without prejudice, meaning that plaintiffs are not barred from requesting this relief again in future proceedings.

While last weeks ruling is undeniably a step forward in ensuring Fourth Amendment protections at the border, caution should remain the order of the day, particularly for journalists. The best approach is to ensure youre not carrying sensitive data when crossing international borders.

Linda Moon

The whistleblower who exposed how the U.S. government kept tabs on reporters covering events on the southern border hasidentified himselfas Special Agent Wesley Petonak, a nine-year veteran of the San Diego Homeland Security Investigations office. Petonak said he raised concerns with his superiors about the constitutionality of monitoring and stopping journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists, but they said it was standard practice. He eventually took photos of PowerPoint slides that alerted him to the dossier and shared the photos withNBC 7 San Diego. In response to learning about this surveillance, in May, the Reporters Committeejoined a coalition of 103 organizationsin sending a letter to the acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Securitydecrying the practice. The Reporters Committee and NBC 7 San Diego alsofileda FOIA lawsuit against four government agencies for refusing to provide records about the database or application used to monitor and target journalists. This week, the American Civil Liberties Union alsofiled a lawsuiton behalf offive photojournalistswho were targeted by the surveillance.

The city of Fullerton, California, filed itsopposition to an appellate courts decision to lift an injunction that would have prevented bloggers from publishing city documents. As a quick review of the case, the city had sent one of the bloggers a link to the city Dropbox account in response to a public records request that, the city claims, inadvertently provided access to a wide range of city documents. In its suit, the city alleged that the bloggers only had permission to access a small portion of these files. By allegedly accessing the other files, the city argues that they violated federal and state anti-hacking laws. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also filed afriend-of-the-court briefin support of the bloggers, echoingsimilar argumentsadvanced by Reporters Committee attorneys that the hacking laws target technical break-ins (e.g., hacking into a password-protected account), not, as is the case here, access to a publicly available Dropbox account.

Two updates on the Section 215 reauthorization front: Congresspassed, and the president signed, a continuing resolutionto continue funding the government that included a 90-day extension to the expiration of the foreign intelligence surveillance law provision that allows the government to collect telephone metadata in bulk. Second, on the heels of hearings by the judiciary committees in both chambers of Congress, the Office of the Director of National Intelligenceclarifiedthat the Intelligence Community does not use Section 215 for warrantless collection of cellphone location information (determined by pinging cell towers or GPS data). Without fully ceding the authority to do so, the ODNI acknowledged that the Supreme Courts decision inCarpenter v. United States, which mandated warrants for cell-site location information (a legal term of art) in domestic criminal investigations, makes the continued warrantless collection of such data a tenuous legal proposition.

Facebookrevealedin its latest transparency report that the number of U.S. government demands for user dataincreasedto 50,741 during the first half of this year, compared to 41,336 demands in the second half of last year. The company reported that it provided some account or user data to authorities in 88 percent of the cases, and that two-thirds of the U.S. authorities requests were accompanied by a gag order. The order prevents the company from revealing the request to the user. As we noted in a recentfriend-of-the-court brief, the use of gag orders poses more serious problems for newsgathering as more information held by third-party providers moves to the cloud.

A newreportfrom the Pew Research Center found that the majority of Americans 72 percent believe that all or most of what they do online and on their cellphone is being tracked by companies, while 47 percent think their activities are being tracked by the government. The report also stated that 31 percent of Americans believe all or most of their offline activities, such as where they go and who they talk to, are tracked by companies, while 24 percent think their offline activities are tracked by the government.

As we highlightedearlier this month, the Pentagon decided not to award a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Amazon for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, project. Amazons founder, Jeff Bezos, owns the Washington Post, and both he and the paper have been criticized by the President. Amazon saidthis weekthat it plans to officially challenge the governments decision, contending that it was potentially influenced by improper political considerations.

The Justice Departmentreversed its positionin a FOIA suit to obtain documents related to the investigation of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired after an internal report found he had misled investigators about authorizing the release of information to the media. The government dropped its claim that the documents cannot be released on the basis of their relevance to an ongoing investigation, and the Justice Department filed a motion that would permit the plaintiffs in the case Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to begin receiving the requested materials. This movesuggests DOJ prosecutorsmay no longer be entertaining criminal charges against McCabe, though government attorneys declined to rule out that possibility.

A recent federalcourt rulingin a FOIA suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the FBI will require the government to disclose whether it has records related to the use of social media surveillance tools on citizens and noncitizens alike. The ACLU brought the suit in light ofpublic records indicatingthat the FBI was seeking contractors to help it develop ways of analyzing social media data.

Finally, last weekend and again this week, The New York Times and The Intercept shared details from hundreds of pages ofsecret Iranian intelligence cables. The New York Times also shared details from hundreds of pages ofinternal Chinese documentsthat were leaked anonymously. Look out for a more in-depth discussion of these leaks stories soon.

Bonus: The Freedom of the Press Foundation published thisnifty guideabout what to buy the security-conscious journalist in your life this holiday season.

Gif of the Week:Theres been a lot of talk about surveillance and privacy this week, and we couldnt help but think of this classic film about neighborly surveillance.

Like what youve read?Sign up to get This Week in Technology + Press Freedom delivered straight to your inbox!

The Technology and Press Freedom Project at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press uses integrated advocacy combining the law, policy analysis, and public education to defend and promote press rights on issues at the intersection of technology and press freedom, such as reporter-source confidentiality protections, electronic surveillance law and policy, and content regulation online and in other media. TPFP is directed by Reporters Committee Attorney Gabe Rottman. He works with Stanton Foundation National Security/Free Press Fellow Linda Moon and Legal Fellows Jordan Murov-Goodman and Lyndsey Wajert.

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This Week in Technology + Press Freedom: Nov. 24, 2019 - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press