What If We Ended the Injustice of Bail?

On any given night, more than 450,000 people in the United States are locked up in jail simply because they don't have enough money to pay bail. The sums in question are often around $500: easy for some to pay, impossible for others. This has real human consequences -- people lose jobs, homes and lives, and it drives racial disparities in the legal system.

This TED Talk makes some interesting points. What I found particularly interesting (and disturbing) was the claim that 90% of people who cannot afford to pay bail plead guilty, yet when the Bail Project paid bail and cases went to trial, 50% of those cases were dismissed, and less than 2% of those convicted at trial received a jail sentence.

 

Gmail Confidential Mode

In rolling out major updates to Gmail, Google announced Wednesday (April 25, 2018) that the popular email service will soon feature a new "confidential mode" that promises to give users more control over who sees the emails they send, and for how long.

When you write an email using confidential mode, you can select for how long the recipient will be able to read the email. Recipients will not be able to forward, copy and paste, download or print the content. You can't stop anybody from taking a picture of the screen of course, but what's maybe more important here is that if anybody ever hacked the recipient's account, that email with your confidential information will be long gone. For added security, you can also add a second-factor authentication here, where the recipient will have to receive an SMS message with a Google-generated passcode to read the email.

Some online privacy experts, such as Sydney Li, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that calling the new feature "confidential mode" is misleading. For one, Gmail's servers will still contain a copy of the email, Li said. -- While I understand EFF's point here, I think that confidential mode will be a good tool for those of you who use Gmail as your primary personal e-mail account. (Although moving your e-mail to a service like Protonmail would provide more confidentiality and security for your personal communications.)

Confidential mode isn't quite here yet, but should begin to roll out in the coming weeks. If you use Gmail keep an eye out for this new feature in new Gmail. In your Gmail account, click the gear icon in the top right corner, you will see an option to "Try the new Gmail" up top. Once you are using new Gmail, watch for confidential mode icon to be added to your new message options, during the coming weeks.

Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google !

An April 26, 2018 article in the Wall Street Journal asks: Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google !  

Recent controversy over Facebook Inc.’s hunger for personal data has surfaced the notion that the online advertising industry could be hazardous to our privacy and well-being. As justifiable as the focus on Facebook has been, though, it isn’t the full picture. If the concern is that companies might be collecting some personal data without our knowledge or explicit consent, Alphabet Inc.’s Google is a far bigger threat by many measures... Google's data-gathering empire is bigger and more pervasive than Facebook's - and while it hasn't been plagued by scandal, it can't evade scrutiny forever.

In 2016, Google changed its terms of service, allowing it to merge its massive trove of tracking and advertising data with the personally identifiable information from our Google accounts.

Google uses, among other things, our browsing and search history, apps we've installed, demographics like age and gender and, from its own analytics and other sources, where we've shopped in the real world. Google says it doesn't use information from "sensitive categories" such as race, religion, sexual orientation or health. Because it relies on cross-device tracking, it can spot logged-in users no matter which device they're on. Google fuels even more data harvesting through its dominant ad marketplaces. There are up to 4,000 data brokers in the U.S., and collectively they know everything about us we might otherwise prefer they didn't -- whether we're pregnant, divorced or trying to lose weight. Google works with some of these brokers directly but the company says it vets them to prevent targeting based on sensitive information. Google also is the biggest enabler of data harvesting, through the world's two billion active Android mobile devices.

DNA From Genealogy Sites Used By Police to Find Criminals in Your Family Tree

Have you or your family members submitted DNA to a genealogy site like Ancestry  or 23andme? If so, your DNA may be included in police investigations without your knowledge, and without you ever being suspected of a crime.

According to an ABC News (April 27, 2018) report, genealogy / DNA websites were used to find the suspected 'Golden State Killer', Joseph James DeAngelo.

Authorities used genealogical websites to track down the suspected serial killer known as the "Golden States Killer," sources told ABC News, describing it as a long, painstaking process.

The "Golden State Killer" is believed to have committed 12 murders, at least 50 rapes and multiple home burglaries in the 1970s and 1980s.

Investigators used DNA from one of the crime scenes and compared it to what’s available on genealogy websites to find a family tree for the suspect, sources said.

Officials then worked their way down that family tree until they found Joseph James DeAngelo, a 72-year-old former police officer.

Police placed DeAngelo under surveillance and later obtained his DNA from an item officers collected. It was confirmed as a match.

Privacy advocates are concerned that these companies leave the door open to sharing a customer’s genetic information with law enforcement. They say that doing so represents Orwellian state overreach and worry that customers may not realize what they’re agreeing to — or, even worse, that the imperfect technology involved puts innocent people at risk.

Bicka Barlow, a San Francisco-based defense attorney who specializes in DNA cases, says the public should think long and hard before completing an at-home DNA testing kit.

Barlow argues that DNA evidence "is not fool proof" and that new technology is actually increasing the chance of misidentifying people with DNA.

"When you did DNA testing back in the good old days you would get a single profile of one individual and that makes it quite easy to do a comparison," Barlow told ABC7 News. "But nowadays, the tests are so sensitive that crime labs come up with mixtures, meaning multiple people in a sample, somewhere around 70 to 80 percent of the time."

Lawful Duration of a Traffic Stop

Two recent cases have ruled on the lawful duration of a traffic stop:

United States v. Bowman:  Duration of a traffic stop. (4th Circuit)
It was undisputed that the initial traffic stop was complete when the officer issued Bowman a warning citation, returned his documents, and shook his hand. It was also undisputed that Bowman consented to the officer’s request to answer additional questions, which the officer did for approximately 40 seconds. However, the court concluded that this brief consensual encounter became a Fourth Amendment seizure when the officer told Bowman to "hang tight". As a result, the court held that the officer unreasonably prolonged the duration of the traffic stop; therefore, the district court should have suppressed the evidence recovered from [the] vehicle.

United States v. Rodriguez-Escalera:  Duration of a traffic stop. (7th Circuit)
While the court recognized that an officer does not need to rule out a suspect’s explanation for conduct that appears to be suspicious at first, a court may consider how facts later obtained confirm or dispel that initial suspicion. The court added that no criminal history, tips, or surveillance supported the trooper’s suspicions. Based on these facts, the court concluded that the trooper did not establish reasonable suspicion of criminal activity during the stop. Consequently, the court held that it was unreasonable to detain [the vehicle] beyond the time needed to complete the original purpose of the traffic stop because the only on-duty K-9 was busy with another stop.

In a previous case, Rodriguez v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 1609 (2015),  the U.S. Supreme Court stressed that a seizure justified only by a police-observed traffic violation becomes unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete the mission of issuing a ticket for the violation. The stop may not exceed the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made. In Rodriguez, the issue was raised in the context of whether the police unnecessarily extended the traffic-violation stop to conduct a dog sniff of the exterior of the vehicle for drugs.

Lower courts applying Rodriguez have had the difficult task of determining whether a vehicle stop for a traffic violation was unnecessarily and unlawfully prolonged by police so that they could pursue unrelated suspicions, usually related to illegal drugs. While the courts often observe that there is no rigid time limit for determining when a detention has lasted longer than necessary to effectuate the purposes of the stop, they nevertheless often look to the total time of the stop and the length of what is deemed the unnecessary delay in determining whether the police conduct was lawful. In State v. Linze, No. 42321, 2016 WL 90669 (Idaho Ct. App. Jan. 8, 2016), the court held that where the police extended a routine traffic stop (that lasted 19 minutes) by only approximately another two and a half minutes to conduct a dog sniff (or canine sweep) of the vehicle, such delay was unlawful and violated the driver's Fourth Amendment rights.

"A police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. The vote was 6 to 3.

--
Although written for Washington State, the publication "Traffic Stops in Washington: A Judge's Bench Book" provides guidance for citizens in every state wishing to understand traffic stops and what courts (WA Courts) consider when hearing cases arising from a traffic stop.

The Seattle Police Department Manual - Section 6.220 - Voluntary Contacts, Terry Stops & Detentions is also informative, and included some things that I found surprising, such as:

• Officers Cannot Require Subjects to Identify Themselves or Answer Questions on a Terry Stop.
• Under [WA] State Law, Traffic Violations May Not Be Used as a Pretext to Investigate Unrelated Crimes for Which the Officer Lacks Reasonable Suspicion.

 

Just Paste It

Just Paste It is a free blogging platform, similar to Telegraph, but offering a premium service with more features.

Using the Just Paste It free service you can post notes (articles) up to 10MB each. Once you post a note on Just Paste It you are provided with a link to that note which you can share with others.

Additional features of Just Paste It include the ability to upload pictures, movies, and audio files along with your note. By using the "Upload images" module you can easily add new images to your notes, or you can paste the images directly from the clipboard into the editor. You can also embed videos using the [video] tag, e.g., [video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmXmTGyIXgc[/video].

Just Paste It offers additional premium services, such as 50MB notes and password protection, for just $5 per year.

Just Paste It uses a "Captcha" challenge when you post a note. The Captcha caused some problems when connecting over TOR, but worked without issue when connecting through a VPN.

Just Paste It is a quick and easy way to share information. The site is owned by Wise Web Mariusz Żurawek, a company in Warsaw, Poland, but the site is registered through Cloud Flare, a US company.

China Assigns Every Citizen A ‘Score’ To Identify Who Is And Isn’t Trustworthy

CBS New York (April 24, 2018) reported that China Assigns Every Citizen A ‘Social Credit Score’ To Identify Who Is And Isn’t Trustworthy.

China Determines Your Standing Through Use Of Surveillance Video, Plans To Have 600 Million Cameras By 2020. China is rolling out a high-tech plan to give all of its 1.4 billion citizens a personal score, based on how they behave. Every Chinese citizen is being assigned a social credit score - a fluctuating rating based on a range of behaviors. It’s believed that community service and buying Chinese-made products can raise your score. Fraud, tax evasion and smoking in non-smoking areas can drop it. China’s growing network of surveillance cameras makes all of this possible.

How far into people’s daily mundane activities does this go? No doubt, the government and the people running the plan would like it to go as deeply as possible to determine how to allocate benefits and also how to impact and shape their behavior. How the new scoring system truly works is kept secret and could be easily abused by the government. The fear, of course, it that the government may use this social credit scoring system to punish people that it deems not sufficiently loyal to the communist party. And trying to clear your name or fight your score is nearly impossible, because there’s no due process.

--
China provides an extreme example of where many other governments and government agencies would like to go. The ability to totally monitor citizens' activities, and to take adverse action as the result of on-going investigations, or even bogus allegations and false reports made by government employees, is a serious problem.