FBI Build­ing Bio­met­rics Data­base.

The FBI is build­ing a vast bio­met­rics database.

Given its track record, does any­one believe for a minute that his or her bio­met­rics infor­ma­tion will be secure in this database?

[Schneier on Secu­rity]

I cer­tainly don’t. But then, even if it were, I still wouldn’t want it to be there, because I’m actu­ally far more wor­ried by the FBI than by any­one who might steal the infor­ma­tion from them.

Sent by Frank Ney to one of the mail­ing lists I read:

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_7755506

“Some 500 LAPD gang and nar­cotics offi­cers are threat­en­ing to retire or change
jobs if the city fol­lows through on a pro­posal forc­ing them to reveal their
per­sonal finances, union offi­cials said.

“A financial-disclosure pro­posal set to be con­sid­ered by the five-member
civil­ian police com­mis­sion Thurs­day would be the last major hur­dle to com­ply
with a seven-year old fed­eral con­sent decree meant to root out police
corruption.

“Under the pro­posal, all gang and nar­cotics offi­cers with the rank of lieu­tenant
or below must pro­vide a detailed list of their finances includ­ing all their
prop­er­ties, past-due credit card debts, out­side income, stocks, bonds and
check­ing accounts.”

They’re allowed to do it to us, but squeal like stuck lit­tle pig­gies when the
shoe is on the other foot. Scratch a cop lightly, find a hypocrite.

I say, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” 500 less
offi­cial gang mem­bers in LA is a good start. Too bad this idea isn’t nation­wide
and applied to all law enforcement.

I agree with his conclusion.

AMY H. STURGIS: The Lakota Free­dom Move­ment.

Dur­ing Decem­ber 17^th-22^nd and beyond, the Lakota Free­dom Del­e­ga­tion to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. is tak­ing his­toric action to reclaim free­dom under nat­ural, inter­na­tional, and U.S. law, while devel­op­ing diplo­matic rela­tions with the Fam­ily of Nations.

Visit the Lakota Free­dom website.

Read press cov­er­age:
* “Descen­dants of Sit­ting Bull, Crazy Horse Break Away from U.S.“
* “Lakota Group Pushes for New Nation“
* “Lakota Indi­ans With­draw Treaties Signed With U.S. 150 Years Ago“

[Lib­erty & Power: Group Blog]

I’m afraid this won’t amount to any­thing, but it would be really great if they could actu­ally pull it off.

Every year, LA-based music indus­try mag­a­zine Music Con­nec­tion releases a Hot 100 Unsigned Artists list. This year I was pleased to see that quite a few peo­ple I’ve pho­tographed made the list. Con­grat­u­la­tions to Adri­anne, Amber Rubarth, Gabriel Mann, Jim Bianco, Kyler Eng­land, Rain­ing Jane, and Saucy Monky.

Want to Get Away With Mur­der in Chicago?.

Join the Chicago Police Department.

An eight-month Chicago Tri­bune inves­ti­ga­tion of 200+ police shoot­ings going back 10 years found that within hours of a police shoot­ing, the police depart­ment con­venes hastily-assembled, wagon-circling “round­ta­bles” of law enforce­ment offi­cials where police and wit­nesses are ques­tioned but not sworn or recorded, where the offi­cers involved are allowed to con­fer to get their sto­ries straight before being ques­tioned, and where the inevitable con­clu­sion is always that the shoot­ing was jus­ti­fied. From there, broader, show-investigations begin. Key wit­nesses go unin­ter­viewed. Foren­sic evi­dence is ignored. And the shoot­ing offi­cer is inevitably exonerated.

The Tri­bune found that even when infor­ma­tion is later made pub­lic that con­tra­dicts the find­ings of inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, the police refuse to reopen a case.

Wrong­ful death law­suits often prompt the only full account­ing of shoot­ings and the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tions that follow.

In a recent suit filed by Ware’s fam­ily, a vet­eran detec­tive who has been the lead inves­ti­ga­tor in numer­ous police shoot­ings tes­ti­fied that she han­dles too many cases to go back and re-interview offi­cers and recon­sider round­table rul­ings when autop­sies and other test results shed new light.

“Once a case is closed, it’s closed,” said Sylvia VanWitzenburg.

“Your tes­ti­mony is, once you close out a [police shoot­ing] case, no mat­ter what new infor­ma­tion comes in, you’re not going to go back and review it?” asked the attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Ware’s family.

“Cor­rect,” she replied.

The paper also found that even on those rare occa­sions when inves­ti­ga­tors find a shoot­ing to be unjus­ti­fied, the offi­cer in ques­tion isn’t disciplined.

Offi­cer David Rodriguez asserted that he shot Her­bert McCarter in the abdomen in a strug­gle over the officer’s gun in Decem­ber 1999. But Smith con­cluded Rodriguez lied and rec­om­mended his fir­ing, accord­ing to Smith and a law­suit filed by McCarter.

Key to that rec­om­men­da­tion: med­ical records show­ing that McCarter actu­ally had been shot in the back, and gun­shot residue tests on his clothes indi­cat­ing he had not been shot at close range.

Rodriguez, who declined to com­ment, remains a police offi­cer. Accord­ing to McCarter’s law­suit, no dis­ci­pli­nary action was taken despite the OPS chief investigator’s conclusion.

McCarter, how­ever, was charged with aggra­vated bat­tery of a police offi­cer. He was found guilty and sen­tenced to 5 years in prison.

In his 2006 law­suit, McCarter alleged that city offi­cials hid the OPS con­clu­sions and rec­om­men­da­tion from his lawyer in his crim­i­nal trial. The city set­tled McCarter’s law­suit for $90,000 this year.

The same offi­cer was later sued in another ques­tion­able shoot­ing. That suit resulted in a $4 mil­lion set­tle­ment from the city.

Finally, the paper found that this incred­i­ble def­er­ence to police offi­cers extends also to offi­cers who shoot peo­ple while off-duty. Cops who’ve shot peo­ple after drink­ing at bars, in road rage inci­dents, and dur­ing domes­tic dis­putes are given the same admin­is­tra­tive priv­i­leges (priv­i­leges not given to you or I) as cops who shoot some­one while on duty.

Via Rogier van Bakel.

[The Agi­ta­tor]

From what I’ve seen this sort of thing is stan­dard for all cops, not just those in Chicago.

Vic­tims on Trial: The Every­day Busi­ness of Courts. The first case turned out to be typ­i­cal. This was a per­son picked up for “pub­lic intox­i­ca­tion,” which amounted to overcel­e­brat­ing fol­low­ing a foot­ball vic­tory and dar­ing to walk on the government’s side­walks under the influ­ence of one too many. Arrested, jailed, bailed out. Now was the time to face the judge.

What is your plea? Guilty, your honor.

What do you have to say for your­self? I’m so sorry that I did this and I won’t do it again.

The judge then decides to be lenient. He gives the min­i­mum fine plus court costs. I couldn’t find any con­sis­tency in this pric­ing scheme, but gen­er­ally it amounted to between $400 and $1,500. The judge asks the per­son to pay it now. When he says that he doesn’t have the money, the judge con­sid­ers a pay­ment plan, con­tin­gent on the guilty declar­ing his income to the court­room; it aver­ages $400 per month.

How about you pay $100 per month? Fine.

Oh, and there’s one more thing. The criminal’s driver’s license is sus­pended for six months. How can he get to work? That’s his prob­lem. It is a very spe­cial prob­lem since the court has decided to loot the per­son of a quar­ter of his income dur­ing this very period. How can you keep your job? Hard to say. Life is tough. And that’s the price you pay for drink­ing a few beers and dar­ing to walk on the side­walk. [Lud­wig von Mises Insti­tute]

Chimps Outscore Col­lege Stu­dents on Mem­ory Test. AP’s Mal­colm Rit­ter reports that young chim­panzees were bet­ter at remem­ber­ing a series of num­bers flashed on a screen, than the Japan­ese col­lege stu­dents used as a con­trol group. Sci­en­tists plan to repeat the exper­i­ment using 5^th graders against the great apes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Slash­dot]

That’s pretty impres­sive, con­sid­er­ing that get­ting into col­lege in Japan is basi­cally a giant decade-plus mem­ory train­ing exercise.