Breaking Padlocks - The REAL Double Wrench Method

Recently I have been highlighting YouTube videos from 'Lock Picking Lawyer' that demonstrate tools to quickly and quietly defeat locks. In his most recent video, he demonstrates a more effective way to break padlocks using the double wrench technique.

Breaking Padlocks - The REAL Double Wrench Method


Most common locks are not secure against force directed against the lock itself. When using locks to protect your property it is important to be aware of how those locks may be defeated.

Other videos I have recently highlighted on breaking locks include:

Using An Exhaust Manifold Spreader to Defeat Locks

Cutting Bicycle Cable Locks is EASY!

 

JCSO Deputy Fired; 263 Cases Under Review for Planted Evidence

According to the Jackson County Floridian (September 20, 2018), suspected misconduct by former Jackson County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Zachary Wester, fired from his job on Sept. 10, has led State Attorney Glenn Hess to file for the vacating of pleas and subsequent sentencing in six criminal cases, and dismissal of at least 41 pending cases in which Wester was a primary witness.  Other dismissals could follow — there are 263 cases in which Wester was involved this year, at varying levels, and all of those are being reviewed. At least one of those in which he was involved has already been through court, with the defendant’s plea and sentence set aside by a judge this Wednesday.

FDLE is conducting an internal investigation into Wester’s activities on behalf of Jackson County Sheriff Lou Roberts. That probe was triggered after allegations against Wester came to light. Hess said people in his office as well as defense attorneys had come to him with concerns.

Hess said Thursday that he’d seen a single video — but there are others to review — that led him to believe, in at least one case, Wester planted a packet of methamphetamine in the vehicle of a woman he’d pulled over. The woman denied that the methamphetamine was hers. Hess has filled to have that case dropped based on his review of the video’s content.
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This type of misconduct on the part of police officers is rare, but it doesn't mean that it can never happen - as we see in this case. Even if a police officer doesn't plant evidence, a department can structure an investigation to make it point to whomever it wishes.

Never consent to a search of your vehicle, property, or person.  

A Law Professor Explains Why You Should Never Talk to Police.

Father Shot 2 Police Officers Who Mistakenly Served Warrant at His Home

NBC 4 Washington, (September 20, 2018) reported that a man protecting his daughter from what he thought was a home invasion shot two police officers who mistakenly entered his apartment in District Heights, Maryland, Prince George's County's police chief says.

The officers and their nine-member special operations team went to the complex in the 2700 block of Lorring Drive to serve a warrant about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday. A confidential informant told police a drug dealer lived there, but the resident was actually a father who didn't know officers were trying to get in his home.

The team knocked on the door of the top-level unit and announced they were there, but no one answered. Despite the silence, the team had a feeling someone might be inside the apartment, so they used a device to open the door, according to police.

Inside the apartment, they found the father armed with a shotgun. Police say the man fired a single shot when the door opened, striking two officers.

Another officer returned fire, but no one was hit.

The officers were flown to a shock trauma center in Baltimore.
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It's 10:30 PM and you've fallen asleep while watching TV. Suddenly your door is battered open and armed men rush into your home... what would you do?

The Prince George's County's Police Chief seems to think that the father in this case was within his rights to shoot the people breaking into his home - even though those people were the police. Although the NBC 4 report doesn't specifically say, we might assume that the police were not wearing normal police uniforms (?)

This raises the question, do citizens have a right under the law to resist with force an unlawful arrest by police or actions taken by police with a defective warrant?

Cody Wilson, the Man Behind 3D Printed Guns, Arrested for Sex With a Minor

Authorities in Taiwan arrested the owner of a Texas company that sells plans to make untraceable 3-D printed guns who is wanted in the U.S. over an accusation that he had sex with an underage girl and paid her $500 afterward, official media reported.

Police in Austin, Texas, had earlier reported that Wilson's last known location was Taipei.
Austin police Cmdr. Troy Officer said Wednesday that before Wilson flew to Taiwan, a friend of the 16-year-old girl had told him that police were investigating the accusation that he had sex with the youth.

In a court filing this week, Wilson was accused of having sex with the girl at an Austin hotel last month. A counselor for the teenager reported the accusation to Austin police a week later, according to the affidavit. Wilson met the girl through the website SugarDaddyMeet.com, where she had created an online profile, according to the document.

The girl, according to the affidavit, said they met in the parking lot of an Austin coffee shop before they drove to the hotel. The girl told investigators that Wilson paid her $500 after they had sex and then dropped her off at a Whataburger restaurant.

Wilson is identified in the affidavit as the owner of Austin-based Defense Distributed. After a federal court barred Wilson from posting the printable gun blueprints online for free last month, he announced he had begun selling them for any amount of money to U.S. customers through his website.  (KOMO 4 News, September 21, 2018)
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Well this is curious. Allegations of sexual assault suddenly appearing when the government is losing its battle to keep 3-D printed gun plans from being made available to the public. It's almost like the government just made up these charges to gain leverage over Mr. Wilson?

Is it possible that the government would open an investigation based on unfounded allegations? Do police officers plant evidence? Or, did Mr. Wilson pay an underage girl $500 for sex?

Video Warns of New Cartel Violence on Texas-Mexico Border

JUAREZ, Mexico (Fox San Antonio, September 17, 2018) - A video that has gone viral within the past two weeks warns of an escalation in violence along the Texas-Mexico border. The video which claims to be done by the “Artistas Asesinos” and warns of another faction of the Sinaloa Cartel that they will shed blood to control the major drug pipeline that is Juarez.

According to Mexican officials, the video is no joke as they are investigating deaths with the groups modus operandi.

The month of August, 2018 was the deadliest in Juarez so far with 182 homicides tied to the cartel war that uses the streets of Juarez, according to authorities, as a war zone.
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* Ciudad Juárez is a Mexican city on the Rio Grande, approximately 10 miles south of El Paso, Texas.

Cartel activities aren't limited to Juarez. A report from February 2018 stated, a Cartel drug distributor, met up with an undercover Washington State police officer to do a drug and weapon exchange. Cartel members were caught and arrested in an auto repair shop near Everett’s Evergreen Way. The Sinaloa Cartel is involved in exchanging massive amounts of guns, drugs and cash. Many times these exchanges and meetings can become extremely violent. The cartel has been distributing drugs in the Snohomish, King, Whatcom, Yakima and Franklin counties. During a raid officials seized eight more pounds of cocaine, two pounds of heroin, eighteen pounds of meth, and over 20 guns (some of military class). The cost of the contraband seized totals over three hundred thousand dollars.

 

 

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Tacoma Woman Found Shot Dead on JBLM, FBI says

According to the Tacoma News Tribune (September 20, 2018) the FBI is investigating the death of a Tacoma woman who was found dead on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a bureau spokeswoman said Thursday evening.

The body of Jessica Jackson, 34, was found on the base Sept. 13, FBI spokeswoman Jillian Voigt said.

Pierce County medical examiners found that Jackson died of multiple gunshot wounds to the head and ruled her death a homicide.

The FBI declined to give further details about Jackson’s death, citing an ongoing investigation.
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The FBI is trying to find whoever killed a Tacoma single mother and left her body on Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The remains of Jessica Jackson were found on September 13, but word is just getting out a full week later.

"She has a daughter and she left a lot of family," said friend Cecelia Rivero.
Rivero reported Jackson missing on September 4. Her body was found on the Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) training grounds in Spanaway.

It is not yet known when she was killed or where. Her friends believe she was murdered somewhere out in the county and then placed at JBLM.  (KOMO 4 News, September 20, 2018)
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Using An Exhaust Manifold Spreader to Defeat Locks

I recently posted a link to a video showing how easy it is to cut through bicycle cable locks using a ratcheting cable cutter.  Today I would like to highlight two more YouTube videos from Lock Picking Lawyer that demonstrate how to quickly and quietly defeat locks using an Exhaust Manifold Spreader (Screw Spreader).

Screw Spreader to Defeat Locks

Upgraded Screw Spreader


The technique of using an exhaust manifold spreader to destroy locks and gain access to whatever they are protecting works well, and is something I have demonstrated in my own lock classes. If you need to break into something, consider this option... and if you need to protect something, remember how quickly and quietly this technique can be used to break your lock.

Report Ranking Military Installations for Sex Assault Risk Delayed

The Pentagon is finalizing the release of a potentially explosive report that will rank individual military installations and ships based on the likelihood service members may experience sexual harassment or sexual assault there.

The report, titled “Estimates for Installation- and Command-Level Risk of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment,” was slated for release this week, but last-minute concerns about the politically sensitive data, which would identify specific installations or ships as high risk, generated questions during pre-release briefings on Capitol Hill.

The Pentagon still intends to make the findings public eventually... The Pentagon commissioned the RAND Corporation to produce the not-yet published report “because we believe it will help us better understand and prevent sexual assault and sexual harassment,” Gleason said. "These estimates give us a better understanding of how the risk of sexual assault varies within and across the services, it is not a current snapshot of installation sexual assault reports.”

The RAND study relies on the raw data obtained in 2014 surveys completed for the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. By comparing survey response, locations and base populations, RAND’s report aims to “estimate sexual assault and sexual harassment risk across U.S. military installations, ships, and major commands.”  (Military Times, September 19, 2018)
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Over the past 10 years there has been a significant increase in the number of sexual assaults reported in the military. This is good, not of course because more people have been sexually assaulted, but because victims of these crimes are coming forward and reporting them.

Unfortunately, the increase in the number of sexual assaults in the military cannot all be attributed to better reporting. The statistics clearly show an increased number of sexual assaults occurring in the armed forces.

It is also important to note that not all allegations of sexual assault are true. False reporting may account for a small percentage of the increase in sexual assault cases in the military.

The Chicago Tribune (August 12, 2017) reported: Col. David "Wil" Riggins, after a highly decorated Army career that included multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was on the verge of promotion to brigadier general in July 2013 when he got a phone call at the Pentagon from the Army's Criminal Investigative Division to come in for a meeting. Once there, he learned that a blogger in Washington state had just accused him of raping her, when both were cadets at West Point in 1986. An investigation was underway.

Riggins waived his right to an attorney and immediately gave a statement denying any sexual assault of the woman, Susan Shannon of Everett, Washington. Shannon also cooperated with the CID investigation, which could not "prove or disprove Ms. Shannon's allegation she was raped," the CID report concluded. But in the spring of 2014, with the armed forces facing heavy criticism for their handling of sexual assault cases, Secretary of the Army John McHugh recommended removing Riggins from the list for promotion to general. Riggins promptly retired.

Then, Riggins sued Shannon for defamation, claiming that every aspect of her rape claim on the West Point campus was "provably false," and that she wrote two blog posts and a Facebook post "to intentionally derail [his] promotion" to brigadier general. During a six-day trial that ended Aug. 1, a jury in Fairfax County, Virginia, heard from both Riggins and Shannon at length. And after 2½ hours of deliberation, they sided emphatically with Riggins, awarding him $8.4 million in damages, an extraordinary amount for a defamation case between two private citizens. The jury ordered Shannon to pay $3.4 million in compensatory damages for injury to his reputation and lost wages, and $5 million in punitive damages, "to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again," according to one of the jurors.

In the above case with Col. Riggins, allegations of sexual assault made in July 2013, claimed that the assault occurred in 1986. Should claims of a crime that occurred 17 years ago be investigated? Should such claims be believed?

Of course the other side of this is that there may be cases of actual sexual assault that are not reported because the victims feel that they won't be believed, or that they will be retaliated against for reporting misconduct / criminal activity of someone in power.

Protester Who Suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury From a Flash-Bang Grenade Intends to Sue the Portland Police

A Portland protester named Aaron Anthony Cantu says he was running away from police when he was struck in the back of the head with an explosive device that penetrated the bike helmet he was wearing.

In a tort claim filed with the City of Portland on Sept. 19, Cantu's lawyers say he was standing between SW 1st Avenue and Naito Parkway on SW Columbia Street when police began firing flash-bang munitions at counter-protesters who had gathered to oppose a Patriot Prayer rally on August. 4, 2018.

Cantu's tort claim, which is a formal notice of his intent to sue the city, says he did not hear dispersal orders that were given at the intersection of Naito Parkway and SW Columbia Street. He did not see any signs of violence or projectiles thrown by the protesters. Video footage has not confirmed police claims that protesters threw objects at officers before the first flash-bang was shot into the crowd.

Cantu ran toward SW 1st Avenue after the first explosion. The claim says Cantu heard three more loud booms before he was struck in the head.

He fled through an intersection that was open to traffic and tried to get treatment from a street medic at a bus stop, but police continued to use riot control devices on the crowd and Cantu had to move again. At a hospital, doctors put a tube in his head to drain blood that was pooling from a hemorrhage caused by the explosion.

The claim alleges that Portland police have engaged in a pattern of deploying unreasonable force against left-wing protesters, and highlights Aug. 4 as one of the worst examples the city has seen.
"The Portland community has been subject to this treatment—nearly exclusively on left-wing protesters—by the Portland Police at protests before," the claim says. "However, on August 4, 2018, the Police's willingness to use so much lethal force on fleeing protesters represents a new low that needs to be addressed."

Cantu's tort claim is at least the second to be filed after the Aug. 4 protest. Another protester, Michelle Fawcett, filed a tort claim against the city on Sept. 13 after being hit in the arm and chest with a flash band that gave her third-degree chemical burns. (Willamette Week, September 19, 2018)
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Alameda County Sheriff's Office Secretly Recorded Attorney-Client Conversations

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 2018, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office illegally recorded at least one confidential conversation between a juvenile crime suspect and his attorney, the county public defender’s office said Monday [August 20, 2018], and an exchange between two sheriff’s officials captured on video suggests that the practice may have been routine.

The allegations that the agency made recordings that violated the attorney-client relationship were laid out in a motion filed in Alameda County Superior Court by the public defender’s office, and are supported by a body-camera video obtained by The Chronicle.

Secretly recording a conversation between a person in custody and the person’s attorney is a felony under California law. The district attorney’s office will investigate whether to file charges in the case, an agency spokeswoman said.

Public Defender Brendon Woods asked a Superior Court judge to order the Sheriff’s Office to bar “eavesdropping and illegal recording of privileged communications” between attorneys and their clients.

“It shouldn’t just be concerning to me as a public defender; it should be concerning to everyone as a citizen — that the government has taken on this position, or asserting some sort of authority, where they can violate people’s rights,” Woods told The Chronicle.
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Kidnappers Attempt to Snatch 2 Girls Near Shelton, WA School

Shelton, WA police are investigating two attempted kidnappings of young girls Tuesday afternoon in the same area.

In the first instance, a 12-year-old girl was walking home from school just before 3 p.m. when she was approached by a man in a car in the 1500 block of Jefferson Street near Olympic Middle School and Mountain View Elementary School, according to Shelton Police Chief Darrin Moody. The man told the girl to get into the car or he would "hurt" her.

The man in that incident was described as driving a light brown SUV similar to a Chevy Tahoe. He was described as Caucasian, about 30 years old with a skinny build and wearing an orange cap.

Then about an hour later, an 8-year-old girl was walking along "K" Street near Jefferson Street after exiting a school bus and said a man in a car approached her and told her to come to him.

It's not known yet if the same suspect is involved in both incidents, says Capt. Mike Fiola with Shelton Police. He says the suspect descriptions are somewhat different, but have some similarities.

In the second event, the suspect was driving a light blue, Jeep-type car and was described as white or Hispanic, with long sleeve white/blue plaid short with brown hair and was wearing glasses.
(KOMO 4 News, September 18, 2018)
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The probability of there being two separate, random, child abduction attempts in the same immediate geographic area within an hour is highly unlikely.

If the statements of the girls are true (i.e. they are not making up stories about kidnappers) then the two events almost have to be related. Either a single individual is attempting to abduct a young girl, or a group of two or more are working together to commit this crime.

According to the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Person File, there are 88,089 active missing person records, of which juveniles under the age of 18 account for 32,121 (36.5%) of the records (as of December 31, 2017).

Kids Live Safe has a free on-line e-book that contains Steps to Protecting Your Children from Abduction and Kidnapping.

One recommendation that I like is the use of personal alarms. These alarms are much louder that a child's cry's for help. Any child can use these alarms to help protect themselves from abduction, as well as call for help when facing other potential dangers.

China's Digital Dictatorship

China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens. For some, “social credit” will bring privileges — for others, punishment.

What may sound like a dystopian vision of the future is already happening in China. And it’s making and breaking lives.

The Communist Party calls it “social credit” and says it will be fully operational by 2020.
Within years, an official Party outline claims, it will “allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step”.

The system will be enforced by the latest in high-tech surveillance systems as China pushes to become the world leader in artificial intelligence.

Surveillance cameras will be equipped with facial recognition, body scanning and geo-tracking to cast a constant gaze over every citizen.

Smartphone apps will also be used to collect data and monitor online behavior on a day-to-day basis.

Then, big data from more traditional sources like government records, including educational and medical, state security assessments and financial records, will be fed into individual scores.

If successful, it will be the world’s first digital dictatorship.  (ABC Australia, September 9, 2018)
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I previously discussed Life Inside China's Total Surveillance State in July 2018.

While China may be an extreme example of the surveillance state, many other governments seek this type of control over their populations. It is essential to personal freedom that we oppose all types of mass surveillance.

Crimson Hexagon - Facebook Surveillance

Crimson Hexagon, a Boston data analytics company, raised some eyebrows when it announced that its access to the firehose of user data from Facebook and Instagram had been reinstated—after being suspended and investigated by the social media giant for alleged misuse of data for surveillance purposes.

Crimson boasts of having gathered the largest public repository of social media data... Initially pitched as an antiterrorism tool, software like Crimson’s has spread quickly across all levels of law enforcement, from immigration agencies to police departments. In a March 2017 lawsuit against the Memphis Police Department, the ACLU of Tennessee alleged that the police were using “social media collator” software to spy on local Black Lives Matter protesters in violation of a consent decree.

The ACLU said in a July filing that in addition to tools like Geofeedia and NC4, police officers used a fake Facebook profile to spy on Black activists and “chatter” around protest activities. The police surveillance encompassed “any of the organizations that arose out of Ferguson” around the country, and was shared with police, school officials, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Dept. of Defense, utility companies and FedEx and Autozone.  (Fast Company, August 22, 2018)
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Police Target Random People Who Signed Anti-Trump Petition

According to an article on Raw Story (August 30, 2018) police pulled fake ‘Antifa’ lists from a neo-Nazi web-site and used it to target random people who’d signed an anti-Trump petition.

Harvard Law School Lecturer Thomas Frampton is suing the Louisiana State Police (LSP) on behalf of a civil rights lawyer who discovered a list titled “full list of antifa.docx” that bore a striking resemblance to a hoax roster circulated on the neo-Nazi Stormfront website.

In May, New Orleans-based attorney William Most filed a request for public records on all LSP emails “containing hate speech and racist catchphrases,” the report noted, including the “white genocide” conspiracy theory.

The LSP delayed for months, issued an initial denial of the request and then finally released a cache of 64 emails — one of which contained a file named “full list of antifa” as an attachment. According to the suit, the document was circulated among high-ranking officials in the state police and was also given to local law enforcement groups.

Most requested a copy of the email — but was told by the LSP that “releasing the document could ‘compromise’ an ongoing criminal investigation in which LSP anticipates arrests, and reveal the identity of its ‘Confidential Informant,'” the report noted.

Frampton alleges in the lawsuit that the document originated on the conspiracy theory-oriented 8chan message board before being spread on Stormfront and other white supremacist sites.

Rather than containing an actual list of anti-fascist organizers, the lawsuit alleges that the roster “contains the names of thousands of ordinary, law-abiding citizens who signed an online petition against President Trump.”
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This type of thing happens all too frequently. Many police departments and other government agencies conduct open source intelligence (OSINT), collecting and distributing information obtained from public / semi-public web-sites.

A person conducting OSINT sees something on-line and distributes it to a mailing list as part of a daily / weekly bulletin. Often the distributed information does not have a working link to the original source of the information. Those that receive the information (like a fake Antifa list) now re-distribute it and credit the source as the police department / government agency from which they received it - thereby giving credibility to completely inaccurate and fake information.

In the absolute worst cases departments and agencies will send out information "posted and reported as found" with no sourcing or analysis whatsoever.

If you receive information that you intend to rely on for official purposes, ensure that you know the original source of that information.

It’s not just what you know, but how you know it.

Check your sources and validate your data.

By its very nature intelligence is imperfect (i.e., everything cannot be known, analysis is vulnerable to deception, and information is open to alternative interpretations). Credible sources and validated data create accurate intelligence. Poor premises and accepting information as found results in inaccurate conclusions.

From Democracy to Freedom

From Democracy to Freedom
The Difference Between Government and Self-Determination

Democracy is the most universal political ideal of our day. George Bush invoked it to justify invading Iraq; Obama congratulated the rebels of Tahrir Square for bringing it to Egypt; Occupy Wall Street claimed to have distilled its pure form. From the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea to the autonomous region of Rojava, practically every government and popular movement calls itself democratic.

But what is democracy, precisely? Is there a common thread that links all these different variants? And can any of them deliver on their promises?

In this critical appraisal, we trace democracy from its classical origins to its current ascendancy around the globe. Reviewing how democratic discourse has served recent social movements in the United States, Spain, Greece, Bosnia, Slovenia, and elsewhere around the world, we conclude by asking what it would mean to seek freedom directly rather than through democratic rule.

Available as a free PDF, or in print for $10.
This book is also available in Portuguese and in German.
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U.S. Coast Guard Member Appears to Flash "White Power" Signal on TV.

According to Circa (September 15, 2018) an MSNBC interview with the U.S. Coast Guard appears to show a background member flashing a white power hand sign.

In the video, the support staff member in the bottom left is seen using a hand gesture associated with white supremacy.

MSNBC was interviewing Captain John Reed, the head of the response efforts for Hurricane Florence in Charleston, South Carolina. Following the interview, the U.S. Coast Guard released a response on Twitter that the man shown making the gesture has been removed from the Florence response efforts.
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I discussed this hand sign and its meaning as a "white power" symbol in July 2018. Simply put, this hand gesture is NOT a white power sysbol, rather its association with white power was stared as a hoax on 4Chan. The 4Chan hoax was to show that the masses can be tricked into believing and repeating almost anything. - Well the hoax seems to be gaining ground.

According the ADL: "The “OK” hand gesture originated as one of these hoaxes in February 2017 when an anonymous 4channer announced “Operation O-KKK,” telling other members that “we must flood Twitter and other social media websites…claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy.” The user even provided a helpful graphic showing how the letters WP (for “white power”) could be traced within an “OK” gesture. The originator and others also suggested useful hashtags to help spread the hoax, such as #PowerHandPrivilege and #NotOkay. “Leftists have dug so deep down into their lunacy,” wrote the poster, “We must force [them] to dig more, until the rest of society ain’t going anywhere near that s***."

 

Cutting Bicycle Cable Locks is EASY!

On his YouTube channel "LockPickingLawyer" demonstrated just how easy it is to cut through the cable of a bicycle lock.

Of course, bicycle cable locks are used to secure bicycles, but they are also used to secure other more valuable property and sometimes used to secure gates to restricted areas. As can be seen in the short (2:45 min) video, these cables provide only the most minimal protection, being easily and quietly cut.

It is important to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of any items that we use for security.