Law

The Smoking Gun has a collection of documents about the government’s case against suicidal government bioweapons researcher Bruce Ivins that is fascinating. Apparently he engaged in an “edit war” on the Wikipedia entry for the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority (which my mother belonged to). He regularly posted negative information there, and became angry when it was deleted. He claimed that KKG had labeled him an “enemy” and issued a “fatwah” against him, and he broke into a KKG sorority house to steal a KKG handbook during his postdoc fellowship at UNC Chapel Hill. The documents also show ties between Ivins and the American Family Affiliation, a conservative Christian group known for threatening boycotts against companies that do things like support gay rights, and with pro-life groups. He was a regular user of pseudonyms and multiple email addresses. The documents show that he was clearly a very disturbed individual. (Previously.) UPDATE (August 9, 2008): Ivins’ coworker Meryl Nass lays out the case for reasonable doubt about Ivins’ involvement at her blog. Hume’s Ghost points out in the comments that the anthrax attacks were used to help justify the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that the anthrax apparently originated there. One of the Glenn Greenwald articles Hume’s Ghost alludes to, about false claims that the anthrax contained bentonite which tied it to Iraq, may be found here. A nice quote from that article: ...

Radley Balko points out an article on the Answers in Genesis website (dating to before its split with Creation Ministries International) by CMI head Carl Wieland and Don Batten interviewing Christian “physicist of medicine” Saami Shaibani, and observes that this individual is a phony who has lied about his credentials and academic affiliation when testifying as an expert witness in several trials. He claimed to be a clinical associate professor at Temple University, when he was not. This is not the first time that creationist organizations have promoted individuals with phony credentials (see Dmitri Kouznetsov), and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Will AiG and CMI point out that they’ve been duped again? I pointed out issues with Saami Shaibani to CMI in October 2003, to which they responded that they were satisfied that he has the degrees he claimed–though they agreed to some concern about his claiming a false affiliation. I sent them multiple sources including this CourtTV link and three other newspaper links that are now dead links. Shaibani gets some terrible ratings as a teacher for his alleged repeated assertions that the United States sucks and England is wonderful.

In yet another absurd drug raid, a Prince George’s County special operations team busted down the doors of the home of Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, and shot his two dogs dead. This case was part of a scheme where drugs were being sent to homes of innocent people and then intercepted. Maryland does not allow no-knock warrants, but the authorities who entered Calvo’s home did not knock and refused to show a warrant when asked for one. The police expressed regret, but no apologies, for killing the mayor’s dogs. The militarization of U.S. police, their completely inappropriate tactics in drug raids, and their repeated killing of dogs all need to stop. Radley Balko at The Agitator has documented countless cases of such abusive actions, yet police are almost never held accountable for their actions. Perhaps in this case, since it involves a city mayor, someone will be held accountable. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. UPDATE (August 10, 2008): The police in this case claimed that they don’t have a standard practice of shooting dogs, but Balko shows that this case is far from unique in that respect. Calvo has spoken publicly about this raid and the fact that it is far from unique, except that in this case it was against the home of a mayor. ...

Upon learning that he was about to be the target of a prosecution for the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, U.S. government biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins killed himself on Tuesday with an overdose of Tylenol with codeine. Ivins became a suspect after it was discovered that he had failed to report anthrax contaminations at his lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in 2002. In late 2008, he was ordered to stay away from a social worker who had counseled him, Jean Duley, who would have testified against him at his trial. In Duley’s application for a protective order, she said that Ivins had stalked her and threatened to kill her. Ivins worked at the same lab where a prior “person of interest” in the case, Stephen Hatfill, also worked. Hatfill was cleared of involvement with the attacks and won a $5.8 million settlement from the Justice Department after he sued for harassment and privacy act violations. Hatfill also won a $10 million libel judgment against Vanity Fair and Reader’s Digest for an article by Donald Foster which claimed that Hatfill’s writings and travels connected him to the anthrax attacks. Ivins’ attorney claims that he was innocent, but if that were the case, wouldn’t his response have been more like Hatfill’s? Perhaps, perhaps not. Private investigator and former CNN reporter Pat Clawson, who was also a spokesperson for Hatfill, said on Friday that news organizations and the public should be “deeply skeptical” about any notion that Dr. Ivins was the anthrax killer unless and until solid evidence is brought forth.“Everybody is jumping to the conclusion that because this guy committed suicide, he must be the anthrax killer,” Mr. Clawson said. “That is a lousy premise. The pressure of these F.B.I. investigations on individuals is phenomenal, and it is quite likely that this guy cracked under that pressure but had nothing to do with the killings.” ...

Ed Brayton gives a summary of Radley Balko’s list of tough questions for the candidates. It’s a pity that our mass media is unlikely to ask any of them. (Yet kudos to Fox News for publishing Radley Balko’s columns asking them–they seem to be a whole lot better on the web than they are on television.) Brayton quotes the questions for McCain about how serious he is about cutting corporate pork when he personally profits from it (the laws that mandate alcohol be sold through distributors like Hensley & Co, where his wife got her fortune) and how he reconciles his support for the drug war with the fact that his wife was permitted to avoid any criminal penalties for her prescription drug problems. For Obama, he selected as favorites how Obama plans to pay for his proposed civilian national security force, how he reconciles his support for the drug war with his own past use of marijuana and cocaine, and why he supported the farm bill and supports ethanol subsidies. I think Ed clearly picked out the best questions Balko asked of McCain, but here are a couple other questions for Obama that I particularly liked: In a speech to Cuban-Americans in Miami, you called the Cuban trade embargo “an important inducement for change,” a 180-degree shift from your prior position. The trade embargo has been in place for 46 years. Did denying an entire generation of Cubans access to American goods, culture, and ideas induce any actual change? Wasn’t the real effect just to keep Cubans poor and isolated? In communist countries like Vietnam and China, trade with the U.S. has ushered in economic reform, and vastly improved the standard of living. Why wouldn’t it be the same if we were to start trading with Cuba? In addition to the drugs, Cuba, and school voucher issues, you have also changed or revised your position in recent months on the war in Iraq, government eavesdropping and immunity for the telecom companies, and holding employers accountable for hiring illegal immigrants. Under some circumstances, changing or revising one’s position can show admirable introspection — the ability to revise prior conceptions with new information. Some of your new positions are more conservative. Some are more liberal. But they do seem to have one thing in common: Should we be concerned that your shifts have been to those positions that give more power and influence to government? Are there any areas where you’d actually roll back the federal government?Balko asked a question of McCain about the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA, also known as McCain-Feingold), which I think did serious damage to the First Amendment and protects incumbent politicians by prohibiting any corporation (including nonprofits) or by an unincorporated entity using any corporate funds from running ads critical or supportive of a candidate within 30 days of a primary or within 60 days of a general election. I agree McCain should be asked tough questions about his apparent disrespect for political speech, but I didn’t particularly care for the specific question Balko came up with. ...

Creation Ministries International has updated its website about its legal battles with Answers in Genesis of Kentucky. The latest addition reports that in April, AiG served CMI with a lawsuit in the United States trying to stop the legal action in Australia–even though one of the two contracts AiG is trying to enforce specifies the law of the Australian state of Victoria as the governing law and forum. CMI will be defending itself in the U.S. against the new action.

Kat saw multiple police cars on her way home and now we hear a bunch of helicopter action nearby, and it appears there has been a shooting incident at South Mountain Community College, with three victims and a suspect in custody. UPDATE (5:08 p.m.): The shooting apparently took place at the campus Technology Center around 4 p.m., and the campus was quickly locked down, but the suspect had already left. The suspect was arrested at around 23rd Ave. and Grove, near his home. The news is reporting four victims admitted to the Maricopa Medical Center, two men aged 17 and 19, one 20-year-old woman, and one possible additional victim not confirmed. At least one male victim was aware and speaking as he was admitted, and the woman spoke with her father, Otis Williams, by cell phone after she was shot. One news report claims the suspect was known on campus, and that was apparently why he was quickly apprehended. Students are now being permitted to leave campus. Classes for the rest of today and tomorrow are cancelled. UPDATE (5:22 p.m.): Apparently the suspect, a black male driving a white truck, drove home where his father persuaded himself to give himself up to police, which he did. Police and fire department officials were on site at the campus within about five minutes after the first reports of a shooting (both police and fire stations are quite close by). UPDATE (6:04 p.m.): The ages of victims have been changed–the woman, a pharmacy student, from 22 to 20, and the 25-year-old male to 19. The 17-year-old has been identified as Christopher Taylor, by his brother Jay. A student reports that the shooter was one of two men who had been fighting in the computer center. The 19-year-old victim is reported in critical condition, while the other two victims are in stable condition. (Yet CNN reports that the woman was shot in the abdomen while the other two victims were shot in the leg. It describes the males as aged 17 and 25.) The alleged fourth victim apparently didn’t exist, and was incorrectly reported by one of the news reporters on the basis of watching people being brought in to the hospital. Or perhaps there was a 25-year-old shot in the leg and a 19-year-old who received more serious injuries? UPDATE (8:24 p.m.): CBS News 5 reports that there was a long-running dispute between the shooter and one of the victims, and police say that the shooting was gang-related. UPDATE (July 25, 2008): The shooter has been identified as 22-year-old Rodney Smith, a former SCC student and known as a regular at the computer lab, who came to campus to pick a fight with 19-year-old Isaac Deshay Smith, who was shot in the leg and was still in critical condition last night. The other two victims caught in the crossfire were 20-year-old Charee Williams, who was shot in the hip, and 17-year-old Christopher Lee Taylor, who was also shot in the leg. Five family members and friends of Rodney Smith were also taken into custody last night for interfering with the investigation and disobeying police officers. The most recent report does not mention gangs, but only a long-standing feud between the two Smiths. UPDATE (July 26, 2008): Rodney Smith has apologized to his “innocent victims” in court, and it has been reported that Isaac Deshay Smith and two others were involved in a fight last year in which Rodney Smith was punched and kicked while lying on the ground and his jaw broken in two places. ...

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on his recent exchanges on a religion law mailing list with former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, in which Klingensmitt repeatedly makes false statements and attacks straw men. UPDATE: After reading more about Klingenschmitt, I’m going with dishonest. RBH (2008-07-24): Klingenschmitt: Intellectually dishonest or merely lazy?False dichotomy. You neglected the most likely alternative: "crazy." Lippard (2008-07-24): I'll be happy to accept that additional disjunct. ...

The mainstream media has reported the arrest of the City of San Francisco’s network administrator, being held on $5 million bond, as though he had secretly taken control of the city’s network and servers and held them hostage, and implies that he has access to data stored on servers on the network. The reality, however, appears to be somewhat different. Paul Venezia at InfoWorld has dug a little deeper, and found that Terry Childs, a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE, Cisco’s top certification), was responsible for managing San Francisco’s “FiberWAN” MPLS network, which he, though not the top network architect, built and managed himself. He has always been the only one with access, which he protected vigorously for fear that no one else around him was competent to do so. His paranoia seems to me excessive and misplaced–the risk of no one else having access is itself a single point of failure, and the fact that he originally refused to write remote configuration to flash, meaning that in the event of power failure the devices would not come back up and function properly without intervention, shows him to be a bit off. Childs never “tampered” with any system or network device to take it hostage, he simply maintained control of what he built and refused to give others access to it. He never has had control of any servers or databases apart from the ones directly involved in managing the network, such as the authentication servers for the network. So the talk of data being stored on the network including “officials’ e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail bookings” appears to be irrelevant. Nothing has been done to prevent anyone from accessing any of those things or to gain unauthorized access to them; the network is still up and functioning normally, and Childs didn’t have any special access to or manage or control the host-level access to the servers with that data. Now, he was probably able to intercept data transmitted on the network (necessary for troubleshooting), but if sensitive data was only accessed via encrypted sessions, even that risk wouldn’t exist. Childs’ problem appears to be that he was overprotective, untrusting of the competence of his peers and management (perhaps with some justification), and placed technological purity and security over business requirements. Not unusual features for people with a very high level of technical skill. Check out Venezia’s article–it looks to me like he’s got the goods on this story. UPDATE (July 23, 2008): Childs gave up the passwords to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, after a secret visit arranged by his attorney, Erin Crane, with the mayor. Childs’ attorney’s statements are consistent with Venezia’s article: ...

Scott Conover was arrested by a Johnson County, TN sheriff’s deputy for taking his picture during a traffic stop–not his own, someone else’s. He drove up to a stop in progress, slowed down, took a picture with his iPhone, and kept going. Officer Kenneth Lane went after him, pulled him over, falsely claimed that taking a picture of him was illegal and that he had to turn it over, and then arrested the guy, using two sets of handcuffs. The charge: “disorderly conduct, unlawful photographing, and pointing a laser at law enforcement officers”–all three of which were bogus. More information, including a link to the officer’s barely literate report, written four days after the fact, at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. UPDATE (August 9, 2008): Turns out there’s more to the story, and it makes the cops look even worse. Conover was taking a picture of what was part of an ongoing campaign of harassment against him, by going after the patrons of his bar. In this particular case, Conover knew that the driver of the car was a woman who was acting as designated driver for her husband, and only the husband had been drinking, and so he followed to take pictures to document what was going on. And this harassment of his patrons began after Conover was a witness to deputies beating up a man outside of his establishment, and he made a statement supporting that man. Conover had also previously sued the sheriff’s department and settled for an undisclosed sum.