Category: Legislation

I May Have Been Wrong About Former Cable Company Lobbyist Tom Wheeler

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It now appears that the FCC will preempt bans on municipal broadband, and rule that broadband service is a telecommunications service, preserving net neutrality:

A Federal Communications Commission proposal to preempt state laws that harm municipal broadband projects are being made official this week, with Chairman Tom Wheeler circulating a draft decision to his fellow commissioners, The Washington Post reported today. The commissioners are expected to vote on the matter on February 26, the same day they are likely to vote for new net neutrality rules.

Municipal broadband operators in Tennessee and North Carolina petitioned the FCC to preempt state laws that prevent them from expanding to nearby communities that want Internet service. Wheeler plans to invoke the FCC’s authority to remove barriers that prevent broadband investment and competition.

and

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission this week is widely expected to propose regulating Internet service like a public utility, a move certain to unleash another round of intense debate and lobbying about how to ensure so-called net neutrality, or an open Internet.

It is expected that the proposal will reclassify high-speed Internet service as a telecommunications service, instead of an information service, under Title II of the Communications Act, according to industry analysts, lobbyists and former F.C.C. staff members.

The change, the analysts and others say, which has been pushed by President Obama, would give the commission strong legal authority to ensure that no content is blocked and no so-called pay-to-play fast lanes exist — prohibitions that are hallmarks of the net neutrality concept.

I had figured that Wheeler was another Obama revolving door sellout.

While this is not a done deal, and the devil is, as always, in the details, I am pleasantly surprised.

Also, thanks to the FOUR MILLION people who made their voices heard against “Cable Company F%$#ery”.

This would not have happened without them.

I Want to Move to Canada, and Not for the Healthcare This Time

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Canada has just passed a law making illegal for software to update without the specific consent of the user. It’s an anti spyware/malware law:

Installing computer programs without consent became a civil offence punishable by fines in Canada this week.

Under the new regulations that form part of Canada’s anti-spam legislation, it is now illegal for a website to automatically install software on a visitor’s computer or for an app on your phone to be updated without first obtaining express consent from the owner or another authorised party. The updated rules are designed to protect Canadians from the “most damaging and deceptive forms of spam and online threats” without interfering with legitimate business.

The revised rules are targeting nuisances and worse such as adware on PCs and rogue apps on smartphones. False or misleading representations of products or services are also prohibited under the new regulations.

I will note that that this also has the effect of making Apple’s automatic, “Break your competitor’s software,” illegal.

I would like to see a similar law in the US.

While I am at it, I would also like to see an uninstaller as being mandatory under law.

The number of times that I’ve had to tediously uninstall a buggy update that installed itself (Adobe Acrobat comes to mind) pisses me off.

While I am at it, I want a pony.

I Will Set Aside my Skepticism ……… For Now

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In what amounts to a major change in policy, Obama appears to have to endorsed municipal owned and run broadband networks:

U.S. President Barack Obama said laws that impede local governments from bringing competitively priced, high-speed Internet to their residents hold back businesses and raise prices for consumers.

Obama used the the well-wired city of Cedar Falls, Iowa, which he said provides broadband access that’s almost 100 times faster than the national average, as an example for the rest of the country and to urge repeal of laws the prevent communities from creating their own networks.

“High-speed broadband isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity,” Obama on Wednesday told an audience at Cedar Falls Utilities, which has extended fiber lines capable of high Internet speeds to all local residences and businesses. “This is about helping local businesses grow, prosper and compete in a global economy.”

The president is urging the Federal Communications Commission to address barriers that keep communities from building their own broadband networks. His remarks were intended to touch on one of the messages he’ll deliver in his State of the Union address to the nation next week.

While the FCC might rule on this, the chance of any meaningful legislation from a Republican Congress is about the same as Ayman al-Zawahiri becoming a contributing editor at Charlie Hebdo.

Truth be told, I really don’t expect any significant moves on this issue, given the obvious heat that he and the FCC will take on net neutrality.

As if Christie and Cuomo Could not Get any Slimier………

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They both just vetoed reform of the Port Authority which had been passed unanimously by both legislatures.

It appears that they want to retain their patronage prerogatives:

In a joint press release on Saturday night, Governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie unveiled their long-awaited plan for reforming the Port Authority, while at the same time vetoing a Port-reform bill passed unanimously by both the New York and New Jersey state legislatures.

In separate letters sent to the legislatures in their respective states, Cuomo and Christie said that the program recommended by their “Special Panel on the Future of the Port Authority” was superior to the one they passed.

“The governance structure and other accountability measures recommended by the Special Panel will do a better job of improving accountability,” wrote Cuomo.

The governors also agreed to sign a separate bill that would make the bistate authority subject to the states’ freedom of information laws.

………

The bills the governors vetoed would have subjected the Port to standards already imposed on other New York State authorities earlier this century.

More precisely, it would have required the Port Authority’s commissioners to certify in writing that their loyalty is to the authority (versus the governors who appointed them). It would have mandated that the authority write up policies for disposal and acquisition of authority property, establish a whistleblower program, require staff to report suspicions of fraud and corruption to the agency’s inspector general, require all commissioners to file annual financial disclosure statements, and more.

This stuff is governance 101, but they want to put their cronies in unaccountable positions of authority so that they can maintain patronage empires.

Corporate Purchase of the Criminal Justice System: MPAA Edition

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It appears that Google is involved in a pissing contest with the Mississippi Attorney General .

It appears that the latter is doing a cut and paste of MPAA legal filing.

Thankfully, the Sony hack has revealed these machinations:

Tensions between Google and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood exploded into public view this week, as Google filed court papers seeking to halt a broad subpoena Hood sent to the company.

 The Hood subpoena, delivered in late October, didn’t come out of nowhere. Hood’s investigation got revved up after at least a year of intense lobbying by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). E-mails that hackers acquired from Sony Pictures executives and then dumped publicly now show the inner workings of how that lobbying advanced—and just how extensive it was. Attorneys at Sony were on a short list of top Hollywood lawyers frequently updated about the MPAA’s “Attorney General Project,” along with those at Disney, Warner Brothers, 21st Century Fox, NBC Universal, and Paramount.

 The e-mails show a staggering level of access to, and influence over, elected officials. The MPAA’s single-minded obsession: altering search results and other products (such as “autocompleted” search queries) from Google, a company the movie studios began referring to as “Goliath” in around February 2014. The studios’ goal was to quickly get pirated content off the Web; unhappy about the state of Google’s voluntary compliance with their demands and frustrated in their efforts at passing new federal law such as SOPA and PIPA, the MPAA has turned instead to state law enforcement.

 The most controversial elements of SOPA/PIPA would have let content owners effectively shut down websites they said were infringing their copyrights or trademarks. This already happens—think of various peer-to-peer sites that no longer exist—but it usually involves drawn-out litigation. SOPA promised a faster-moving process that would have essentially made rights holders a website’s judge, jury, and executioner.

 To get the same results in a post-SOPA world, MPAA has hired some of the nation’s most well-connected lawyers. The project is spearheaded by Thomas Perrelli, a Jenner & Block partner and former Obama Administration lawyer. Perrelli has given attorneys general (AGs) across the country their talking points, suggesting realistic “asks” prior to key meetings with Google. Frustrated with a lack of results, Perrelli and top MPAA lawyers then authorized an “expanded Goliath strategy” in which they would push the AGs to move beyond mere letter writing. Instead, they would seek full-bore investigations against Google.

 If the AGs felt short on resources—well, Hollywood studios could help with that. Money from Sony and other Big Six studios was available to draft the actual subpoenas, to research legal theories to prosecute Google, to spread negative press about the search giant, and to reach out to other state AGs that might join with Hood.

 ………

 One chain of e-mails among the MPAA and studio lawyers bears the subject line “STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL PROJECT” and focuses on how Google could be pressured into altering its search results, demoting or removing so-called “rogue sites” that host high levels of copyrighted context.

 Most notes on the project came from Vans Stevenson, the MPAA’s VP of state legislative affairs; higher-level updates were written by MPAA general counsel Steven Fabrizio or took the form of memos written by Perrelli. Most information about the AG project was shared with a group of more than 30 lawyers, including several from the MPAA and RIAA, as well as each of the six big studios, but some were kept to just general counsels and their immediate confidantes.

 “[Attorney] General Hood told me by e-mail today that his conversation ‘with Google’s General Counsel did not go well,’ and therefore he followed up with the letter that was sent yesterday,” Vans Stevenson informed the group in November 2013. “Hood also said he was organizing a meeting during the NAAG [National Association of Attorneys General] meeting next week in New Orleans with his outside counsel Mike Moore, former MS Attorney General. Also attending that meeting will be MPAA/RIAA outside counsel Tom Perrelli and others, ‘so we can discuss the next move,’ Hood wrote…. I will keep you advised of further developments.”

 The e-mail includes a letter from Hood to Google general counsel Kent Walker. It was published earlier this week by The New York Times, which reported that most of the letter was actually written by Perrelli’s law firm.

(emphasis mine)

Google counter-sued, which has the AG Hood calling for a timeout:

It appears that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is making a strategic retreat in the wake of publicity about his investigation of Google.

On Friday morning, Google sued Hood, saying that a 79-page subpoena he had sent to the company was “punitive,” and violated Google’s First and Fourth Amendment rights. The company also pointed to recent press reports that showed Hollywood studios had lobbied heavily for the investigation.

Later that day, Hood sent a statement to The New York Times saying that he’s “calling a time out, so that cooler heads may prevail.” Hood says he wants to negotiate a “peaceful resolution to the issues affecting consumers” that he and other state AGs have pointed out in a series of letters.

Rather unsurprisingly, after the Mississippi AG told the press that he had received no funding from the MPAA, and challenged them to look, the press looked, and to no one’s surprise, they found MPAA money:

The saga of Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and his cozy ties to Hollywood continue to come out. He’s been claiming that, sure, he met with Hollywood’s top lawyer, Tom Perrelli, had him prep Hood for a meeting with Google, and even took a ~4,000 word angry letter that Perrelli wrote for him, signed it as his own and sent it to Google — but he did all that without knowing that Perrelli worked for Hollywood’s top lobbying arm, the MPAA. Uh huh.

And then in a press conference, he insisted that he was doing this out of his own interest in protecting the children — but also admitted that his office didn’t have any intellectual property experts and didn’t have a million dollars to do an investigation (approximately the amount the MPAA’s leaked emails show them discussing to fund this investigation) and that he needed to rely on such help from “victims” to make his case. It’s fairly rare, though, that “victims” of a crime run the actual law enforcement investigation and fund it as well.

Still, in that last post, we also mentioned how Hood implied that anyone suggesting he was “paid off” might be defaming him, and apparently also stated that he wasn’t getting any money from Hollywood, encouraging reporters to “check records.”

Okay then. Let’s… check the records. Here, for example, is the MPAA’s Political Action Committee apparently giving $2,500 to an operation called “The Friends of Jim Hood.”

And, you can also look at the public record of who donated to his campaign, which pretty clearly shows donations to his campaign from NBC Universal and 20th Century Fox.

And it goes on and on.

One big take away about all this is that the leaked emails reveal that the Hollywood studios long term goal is to break DNS:

Most anti-piracy tools take one of two paths: they either target the server that’s sharing the files (pulling videos off YouTube or taking down sites like The Pirate Bay) or they make it harder to find (delisting offshore sites that share infringing content). But leaked documents reveal a frightening line of attack that’s currently being considered by the MPAA: What if you simply erased any record that the site was there in the first place?

A bold challenge to the basic engineering of the internet

To do that, the MPAA’s lawyers would target the Domain Name System (DNS) that directs traffic across the internet. The tactic was first proposed as part of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in 2011, but three years after the law failed in Congress, the MPAA has been looking for legal justification for the practice in existing law and working with ISPs like Comcast to examine how a system might work technically. If the system works, DNS-blocking could be the key to the MPAA’s long-standing goal of blocking sites from delivering content to the US. At the same time, it represents a bold challenge to the basic engineering of the internet, threatening to break the very backbone of the web and drawing the industry into an increasingly nasty fight with Google.

One final note, it appears that various legislators and Attorneys General are trying to restrict the practice of AGs getting secret funding from industry to prosecute cases.

Notice however how the New York Times story completely avoids mention that the MPAA was literally writing an AG’s legal documents:

In state legislatures and major professional associations, a bipartisan effort is emerging to change the way state attorneys general interact with lobbyists, campaign donors and other corporate representatives.

This month, during a closed-door meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General, officials voted to stop accepting corporate sponsorships. In Missouri, a bill has been introduced that would require the attorney general, as well as certain other state officials, to disclose within 48 hours any political contribution worth more than $500. And in Washington State, legislation is being drafted to bar attorneys general who leave office from lobbying their former colleagues for a year.

Perhaps most significant, a White House ethics lawyer in the administration of George W. Bush has asked the American Bar Association to change its national code of conduct to prohibit attorneys general from discussing continuing investigations or other official matters while participating in fund-raising events at resort destinations, as they often now do. Those measures could be adopted in individual states.

The actions follow a series of articles in The New York Times that examined how lawyers and lobbyists — from major corporations, energy companies and even plaintiffs’ law firms — have increasingly tried to influence state attorneys general.

These outside players have tried to shut down investigations, enlist the attorneys general as partners in litigation, or use their clout to try to block or strengthen regulations emerging from Washington, the investigation by The Times found.

While it may be a stretch to say that a lot of state Attorneys General are for sale, they certainly appear to be for rent.

Your Moment of Eric Arthur Blair

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The Obama administration is claiming that US human rights law does not apply to the mercenary rebels that the US is training and arming in Syria:

Buried down in a report about Pentagon plans to train more mercenaries to fight against Syria we find this declaration of intend by the Obama administration to (again) break the law:

The military screening plan came together after the Obama administration determined that the training program for the Syrians would not be subject to what are known as the Leahy laws, which typically govern U.S. security assistance to foreign forces.

Under those laws, a small office at the State Department works with U.S. embassies overseas to ensure that recipients of State or Defense Department security assistance aren’t linked to major human rights abuses.

…

Because the Syrian rebels will not be part of a state-sponsored force, the laws will not apply, U.S. officials said.

Wait a second. The U.S. congress has set aside $500 million to train, equip and pay these fighters. The U.S. military will do the training. And the Obama administration claims that these are not “state-sponsored forces”? Is the U.S. no longer a nation state?

 Besides that the Leahy law as codified for the Pentagon in Section 8057 of the 2014 Omnibus bill does not say anything about “state-sponsored forces”:

(1) None of the funds made available by this Act may be used for any training, equipment, or other assistance for the members of a unit of a foreign security force if the Secretary of Defense has credible information that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.

(2) The Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall ensure that prior to a decision to provide any training, equipment, or other assistance to a unit of a foreign security force full consideration is given to any credible information available to the Department of State relating to human rights violations by such unit.

There is nothing about “state-sponsored” in the Pentagon relevant portion of the Leahy law. Will these trained be “foreign”? Yes. Will they be “security forces”? Arguably because they will likely bring more insecurity to Syria than security. But they will have weapons, will be organized in units and will fight. That seems to fit the expression “foreign security force”.

………

All the groups the CIA has trained and equipped to fight against Syria have committed major human rights violations. But the Leahy law does not apply to the CIA. Now as the Pentagon takes over the training of such groups the Leahy law becomes relevant. I dare anyone to find a group of Syrian insurgents fighting against the Syrian government that has not indiscriminately shelled civilians and not committed other major human rights abuses. There is none.

The Obama administration wants to avoid the applicability of the Leahy law because applying it would leave the Pentagon without any potential recruits to train as mercenaries against the Syrian government. It decided to break the law by using an interpretation that actually not covered by the laws wording. It has thus decided to break the law.

Barack Obama, who was a critic of the expansive view of the Unitary Executive advanced by the Bush administration, has become one of its biggest fans.

Worst Constitutional law professor ever.

What Emptywheel Says

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Journalist, and internet deity on privacy and national security, Marcy Wheeler explains whyshe is opposed to the latest attempt to reign in government spying, the USA Freedom Act (USAF).

Basically it comes down to the fact that neither the state security apparatus, who are operating under legal opinions that are classified, nor Barack Obama, who has kept those legal opinions from the public, can be trusted not to take an absolutely maximalist approach to any possible loopholes under any regulatory regime, and this bill is full of loopholes.  Here are her section headings:

  • No one will say how the key phone record provision of the bill will work
  •  USAF negotiates from a weak position and likely moots potentially significant court gains 
  • USAF’s effects in limiting bulk collection are overstated
  • USAF would eliminate any pushback from providers
  • USAF may have the effect of weakening existing minimization procedures
  • USAF’s transparency provisions are bullsh%$
  • Other laudable provisions — like the Advocate — will easily be undercut

Basically, any bill that is not passed over strenuous opposition from the Worst Constitutional Law Professor ever will be meaningless.

If Obama supports it, it will be an expansion of the surveillance state.

Read the whole thing.  It’s worth it.

Streamlining = Enabling Fraud, Waste, and Inefficiency

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I am very dubious of this proposal to, “streamline military acquisitions.”

Basically, the problem is a lack of adult supervision of either the defense contractors, or the Pentagon, or the resulting revolving door, is the problem with our current system,. not excessive regulation:

The Pentagon and Congress have better odds of reaching agreement on how to streamline myriad overlapping laws that slow the process of buying military equipment and services, a top Defense Department official said.

“I am optimistic,” Andrew Hunter, a former congressional aide who helped draft many of those laws before joining the Pentagon four years ago, told reporters Thursday. He said he saw emerging consensus among industry, lawmakers and defense officials about the need for changes.

Hunter, who runs the Pentagon’s joint rapid-acquisition initiative, also has led a drive to simplify current laws, which Frank Kendall, an arms buyer for the Department of Defense, has said put “an extraordinary and unnecessarily complex burden on our program managers and staff.”

U.S. defense officials have been in talks with congressional committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and hope to submit some reform legislation as part of the fiscal 2016 budget process, said Hunter, who is moving to a job with the Center for Strategic and International Studies next month.

“We’ve come up with some proposals that we hope will be favorably received,” he said. Hunter said the goal was to build on some key legislation already in place while giving program managers more flexibility to focus on the main issues.

The Pentagon initiative dovetails with fresh efforts by the House and Senate armed services committees to reform the slow, cumbersome U.S. military acquisition process and reverse years of schedule delays, cost overruns and other challenges.

Sorry, but the problem ain’t excessive regulation, it’s a system which is corrupt and dysfunctional to its core.

This is the Best Idea that I have Heard all Day

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The canvassing board in Michigan has just certified the language for a petition to prevent hospitals to overcharge the uninsured:

The Board of State Canvassers on Monday unanimously approved the form a statewide ballot initiative petition that aims to prohibit a health care provider from charging a higher price to some for medical goods or services.

A group called Stop Overcharging is backing the “citizen initiated” legislation, which would limit a hospital or provider to charging somebody any more than 150 percent of the lowest amount the provider had accepted as payment in full.

The example they give is if somebody was charged $2,000 for an MRI but the provider accepted $600 as payment in full, the provider couldn’t force an uninsured person or auto accident victim to pay more than $900.

It’s something that has come up in the discussion of no-fault reforms. The petition is designed to incite action from the state legislature on that topic.

“We would hope that they would, we would wish that they would, but we’re preparing if they wouldn’t,” said Rocky Raczkowski, a former state lawmaker who is heading up the petition drive.

………

The Board of State Canvassers unanimously approved the petition as to form, meaning it meets state guidelines and can be circulated.

The group can start collecting signatures after the Nov. 4 election, and Raczkowski said they plan to move quickly. Asked if paid circulators would be circulating the petitions, he said the group was still examining its options.

There is some political baggage along with this, it seems to be associated with insurance “Reforms” that favor the auto insurance industry, but the idea that part of the healthcare delivery problem in the USA is the price of healthcare appears to be gaining currency, and this is a good thing.

The idea that, for example, the cost of an identical service can vary by over an order of magnitude at the same hospital in the is much, if not most of the problem here.

The New York Times revealed something very similar recently, when it discovered that many hospitals employed ER physicians who were out of network, who then price gouged patients, since they were not covered by any agreement with insurance carriers:

When Jennifer Hopper raced to the emergency room after her husband, Craig, took a baseball in the face, she made sure they went to a hospital in their insurance network in Texas. So when they got a $937 bill from the emergency room doctor, she called the insurer, assuming it was in error.

But the bill was correct: UnitedHealthcare, the insurance company, had paid its customary fee of $151.02 and expected the Hoppers to pay the remaining $785.98, because the doctor at Seton Northwest Hospital in Austin did not participate in their network.

“It never occurred to me that the first line of defense, the person you have to see in an in-network emergency room, could be out of the network,” said Ms. Hopper, who has spent months fighting the bill. “In-network means we just get the building? I thought the doctor came with the E.R.”

Patients have no choice about which physician they see when they go to an emergency room, even if they have the presence of mind to visit a hospital that is in their insurance network. In the piles of forms that patients sign in those chaotic first moments is often an acknowledgment that they understand some providers may be out of network.

Note that this sort of shenanigans is why ER doctors income has gone up in recent years.

ER’s are going Wall Street, and the only people who win in this game are the worst among us.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor, Ever

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Note that FBI Director James Comey was specifically chosen by Barack Obama, and the President’s behavior to this point has indicated a strong bias toward the position that, “You don’t need to worry about privacy if you have nothing to hide.”

Thus I see Comey’s request for sabotaging the security of computers and mobile devices by requiring back doors to be a position explicitly supported by the whole administration, and as the saying goes, the Cossacks work for the Czar:

FBI Director James Comey has launched a new “crypto war” by asking Congress to update a two-decade-old law to make sure officials can access information from people’s cellphones and other communication devices.

The call is expected to trigger a major Capitol Hill fight about whether or not tech companies need to give the government access to their users’ data.

“It’s going to be a tough fight for sure,” Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the Patriot Act’s original author, told The Hill in a statement.

He argues Apple and other companies are taking the privacy of consumers into their own hands because Congress has failed to pass legislation in response to public anger over the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

“While Director Comey says the pendulum has swung too far toward privacy and away from law enforcement, he fails to acknowledge that Congress has yet to pass any significant privacy reforms,” he added. “Because of this failure, businesses have taken matters into their own hands to protect their consumers and their bottom lines.”

“If this becomes the norm, I suggest to you that homicide cases could be stalled, suspects walked free, child exploitation not discovered and prosecuted,” he said last week.

Comey is asking that Congress update the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), a 1994 law that required telephone companies to make it possible for federal officials to wiretap their users’ phone calls.

It’s a back door, much like the infamous Clipper chip, and the greatest effect of such a change would be to allow cyber-criminals to access your data, your machines, and your identity, because if they cripple security in the interest of law enforcement, criminals will avail themselves to the same technology.

Wisconsin and Texas Voter Suppression Laws Blocked

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These are only short term injunctions though:

The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked Wisconsin from enforcing its strict voter identification law in this year’s election.

 By a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an emergency appeal from civil rights lawyers who argued it was too late to put the rule into effect.

 Lawyers for the ACLU had noted the state had already sent out thousands of absentee ballots without mentioning the need for voters to return a copy of the photo identification.

 It would be “chaos,” they said, for the state now to have to decide whether or not to count such ballots because the voters failed to comply with the new law.

 Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. The six justices in the majority did not issue a written opinion to accompany the decision to lift an order by a lower court that would have allowed the law to take effect.

So not surprised that the three most right wing justices decided that keeping the n*****s from voting is more important than preventing chaos in the already started balloting.

At nearly the same time, a federal judge in Texas struck down that state’s new voter ID law on the grounds that it violated the constitutional right to vote and discriminated against racial minorities.

 Texas Atty. Gen. Gregg Abbott said the state would appeal the ruling.

 The Wisconsin and Texas cases were the two most closely watched tests of new voter rules this year. In both states, the Republican-led legislatures sought to tighten the rules for voting and to require all registered voters who did not have driver’s license to obtain a photo ID card at a state motor vehicles office.

In Texas, a gun license was acceptable too, but not a college ID, even a college ID issued by a state college.

Funny that.

Sanity in Minnesota

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He has a sense of outrage that Stewart Lacks

Minnesota has changed the law to require a conviction or guilty plea before allowing civil forfeiture:

In a big win for property rights and due process, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed a bill yesterday to curb an abusive—and little known—police practice called civil forfeiture. Unlike criminal forfeiture, under civil forfeiture someone does not have to be convicted of a crime, or even charged with one, to permanently lose his or her cash, car or home.

The newly signed legislation, SF 874, corrects that injustice. Now the government can only take property if it obtains a criminal conviction or its equivalent, like if a property owner pleads guilty to a crime or becomes an informant. The bill also shifts the burden of proof onto the government, where it rightfully belongs. Previously, if owners wanted to get their property back, they had to prove their property was not the instrument or proceeds of the charged drug crime. In other words, owners had to prove a negative in civil court. Being acquitted of the drug charge in criminal court did not matter to the forfeiture case in civil court.

As Lee McGrath, the executive director of the Institute for Justice’s Minnesota chapter, put it, “No one acquitted in criminal court should lose his property in civil court. This change makes Minnesota’s law consistent with the great American presumption that a person and his property are innocent until proven guilty.”

The bill faced stiff opposition from law enforcement and a bottleneck in the legislature. In March, the Star Tribune called it an “outrage” that lawmakers were “dragging their feet on one of the big, common-sense changes” to the state’s forfeiture laws. Ultimately, SF 874 found wide, bipartisan support, passing the state senate 55 to 5 and the state house unanimously. The reforms will go into effect starting August 1, 2014.

The story is from May, but I just found about it, and I also found this presentation from John Oliver on this issue, and I it was just too good not to discuss.

Civil forfeiture statute has clearly morphed into a deeply corrupt enterprise, and it needs to be completely restructured.

The Minnesota law is a good start, but I would also change the disposition of funds.

 When law enforcement is paid for sh%$ like this, it rapidly begins to resemble a protection racket.

My suggestion would be a scholarship funds.

Bravo, Occupy the SEC

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Occupy the SEC now has a simple rating of your Congress critter.

It’s a pretty simple system:

Methodology

Our methodology was rather straightforward. We created a simple formula that allowed us to produce a score between 0 and 100 for each member of the House . A score of 100 means that a member voted in a manner that was consistent with our positions on every bill. Conversely, a score of 0 means that the member took the opposite view of OSEC on all considered bills.

Additionally, we gave some weight to the sponsorship and cosponsorship of bills. If a bill was “good” then we viewed sponsoring (or introducing) the bill as good and therefore rewarded that individual with what amounts to additional good votes. If the individual introduced a “bad” bill then we subtracted from the member’s score by counting the sponsorship as if it constituted additional bad votes. Co-sponsorship of bills was treated in a similar fashion but the weight we applied was smaller. Lastly, we added a multiplier to each bill that reflected the importance of the bill and its potential impact. For instance, if the bill was just a minor “technical fix” then it received a small multiplier, but if the bill was aimed at, say rehauling an entire agency (as HR 3193 aims to do by changing the makeup of the CFPB), then we viewed votes on that bill as being more significant, and consequently applied a larger multiplier to it.

Rather unsurprisingly, the Dems score better than the Republicans, but I would note that any Dem under 50 should be considered for a primary challenge.

H/t naked capitalism.

The Handmaiden’s Tale, Alabama Edition

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In the can you top this world of Talibaptist abortion restrictions in the United States, Alabama has started giving legal counsel to the embryo, but not the girl:

Ever since Sandra Day O’Connor resigned from the Supreme Court in 2006, anti-abortion activists have been playing a game of chicken with the justices. On one side are the activists, who want to push anti-abortion laws as far as they can without getting slapped down by the court. On the other side is Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wants to let states make abortions harder and harder to obtain without actually outlawing them. For more than 20 years, Kennedy has approved literally every anti-abortion law he’s encountered, leading some liberals to fear he’d finally abandoned Roe v. Wade altogether.

Soon, however, Kennedy may finally be forced to balk. On Tuesday, the ACLU sued to halt an extreme new Alabama law targeting minors who are seeking abortions. The measure is very clearly designed to degrade and humiliate teenage girls, far beyond what any state has previously attempted (and what the Supreme Court has allowed). Alabama already requires a minor to secure parental consent before obtaining an abortion, but if she cannot—if, for instance, it was her parent who raped and impregnated her—she can ask a judge to bypass this requirement. The new law takes that judicial bypass and turns it on its head, permitting the judge to appoint a lawyer to represent the minor’s fetus and advocate for its best interests. The judge may bring the district attorney into court to question the minor. And, worst of all, the district attorney can call witnesses to testify against the minor—and in favor of her fetus.

All of this is quite heinous. But it gets much worse. If the judge rules in favor of the minor, the district attorney is now permitted by law to appeal the ruling and make his case all over again to a higher court. By letting the district attorney call an endless number of witnesses then appeal an unfavorable ruling, the law creates a loophole that could let the state delay a minor’s abortion to the point that she couldn’t even legally receive one. (In Alabama, that’s 20 weeks, unless there is a threat to the mother’s health.) If Alabama gets away with this law, in other words, it’ll have effectively nullified young women’s constitutional right to an abortion.

I would also note that parental notification laws, in more than a few of the cases, means that the girl has to ask permission from her rapist.

This is undiluted evil, and should no more be compromised with than we would with Osama bin Laden,

Fabulous!

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The Uganda constitutional court has ruled their Kill the Gays (lite) bill unconstitutional:

Gay rights campaigners in Uganda and around the world are celebrating a decision by the country’s constitutional court to strike down a widely condemned anti-gay law on a legal technicality.

Activists in the courtroom cheered after a panel of five judges ruled on Friday that the speaker of parliament acted illegally when she allowed a vote on the measure despite at least three objections that not enough MPs were in attendance.

“The speaker was obliged to ensure that there was quorum,” the court said in its ruling. “We come to the conclusion that she acted illegally.”

While celebrating the ruling, activists warned that homosexuality remained a criminal offence in the east African country under colonial-era laws.

While much of the blame for this rests on the politicians of Uganda, who are, after all, human beings with their own capability of agency, but I really do think that we should be investigating members of “The Family” in the United States for conspiracy to commit genocide.  (Click the link, the Family is a scary bunch of people)

It’s nice that Uganda cannot throw people convicted of “aggravated homosexuality” into jail for life, but it would be nicer still if they were to repeal the colonial-era laws.

The Republicans Have Completely Screwed the Pooch

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Here’s a Blast from the Past

Because John Boehner could not put an child refugees bill that a single Democrat could vote for, and because cannot count Republican votes, he had to pull the bill from the floor, and delay the Congressional recess:

House Republicans are poised to delay their August recess by one day, as they frantically scramble to pass a border security bill.

After a chaotic afternoon, which saw the GOP leadership suddenly pull their legislation from the House floor because of flagging support, lawmakers planned a Friday morning meeting at 9 a.m. to try to plot a path forward. Plans are in flux, and subject to change at any minute, aides and lawmakers warned.

In a Thursday afternoon meeting, Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) heard from a number of Republicans who did not want to leave Washington until a package passed the House — a sentiment reflected by nearly every lawmaker who emerged after the meeting ended.

Last time a Republican politician shortened a vacation, it was W coming back early from vacation to sign the Terry Sciavo bill, (see Vid) and we all know how the politics on all of that played out.

Needless to say, this clusterf%$# does not bode well for the Republicans.

To paraphrase Napoleon, never stop your enemy when is busy stepping on his own dick.

I am still worried a bit  about the collateral damage to the rest of us though.

Cell Phone Unlocking Legal Again

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Following on the Senate’s lead, the House has passed a bill re-legalizing the abilities of consumers to unlock cell phones:

This afternoon, the House passed S. 517, the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, under unanimous consent. The bill allows consumers to “unlock” their cell phones so they can take a phone with them from one service provider to another. The bill already passed in the Senate, and will now make its way to the President’s desk for signing.

 The following can be attributed to Laura Moy, Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge:

“This important legislation responds to hundreds of thousands of Americans who signed petitions, called, and wrote to government leaders asking for the right to unlock devices they legally own.

 “We are particularly grateful to Mr. Goodlatte, Mr. Conyers, and Ms. Lofgren for their work on this important issue and their willingness to find a compromise that works for their constituencies, as well as for the wireless industry and public interest groups like ours.

 “This bill ensures that consumers will be able to do what they rightfully expect to be able to do with phones they have purchased: use them on whatever network they like. It protects consumers who unlock their devices from possible criminal and civil liability under an overreaching copyright law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was designed to protect copyright but has had enormous unintended consequences.

“Not only will this legislation deliver on consumers’ expectations that they can use devices they own the way they see fit, but it will have other positive effects as well. It will make it easier for consumers to switch from one provider to another, improving competition in the wireless market; it will improve the availability of free and low-cost secondhand phones for consumers who cannot afford to purchase new devices; and it will keep millions of devices out of landfills.

 “This is also an important first step toward reforming the DMCA, which goes far beyond its original intent to protect copyright. Ms. Lofgren has introduced a bill that would go beyond phone unlocking to allow Americans to break any digital lock as long as they’re not violating copyright. This could apply to consumer products that all Americans use, ranging from cars to tractors to hearing aids. We hope the House will take up the Lofgren bill soon.”

The Library of Congress decided that unlocking cell phones should become illegal under the DMCA, and people’s heads exploded, because they were being told that they could not unlock cell phones that THEY owned.

BTW, the Lofgren bill that is mentioned would change Section 1201 of the DMCA by making it it only applies to attempted piracy, and not to people doing things unlocking their own phone:

New legislation sponsored by Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and Jared Polis (D-CO) takes a broader approach to the issue. In addition to explicitly legalizing cell phone unlocking, the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013 also modifies the DMCA to make clear that unlocking copy-protected content is only illegal if it’s done in order to “facilitate the infringement of a copyright.” If a circumvention technology is “primarily designed or produced for the purpose of facilitating noninfringing uses,” that would not be a violation of copyright.

 For example, Lofgren’s bill would likely make it legal for consumers to rip DVDs for personal use in much the same way they’ve long ripped CDs. It would remove legal impediments to making versions of copyrighted works that are accessible to blind users. And it would ensure that car owners have the freedom to service their vehicles without running afoul of copyright law.

Here is hoping that the rent seekers of the IP debate don’t win.

In Which a Pundit Gets it Completely F%$#ing Wrong

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Over at The Atlantic they are wringing their hands because gay rights groups are now balking at religious exemptions embedded in gay rights legislation because of the Hobby Lobby decision:

In the Hobby Lobby decision handed down last month, the Supreme Court was asked to strike a balance between women’s rights and religious freedom. But the major conflict that has erupted in the wake of that decision has been between religious freedom and gay rights. The resulting controversy has split gay-rights and faith groups on the left, with wide-ranging political fallout that some now fear could hurt both causes.

One chapter of the controversy is set to close on Monday, when President Obama plans to sign a long-awaited executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against gays and lesbians, according to a White House official. But the debate that began over that order’s provisions for religious nonprofits has spilled over into a broader conflict. Many prominent gay-rights groups have now withdrawn their support from a top legislative priority, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, over the religious exemption it contains.

It’s not a bad thing, this response is essential to good governance.

As I have noted before, “My dear, religion is like a penis. It’s a perfectly fine thing for one to have and take pride in, but when one takes it out and waves it in my face we have a problem.” 

Civil rights should not be conditioned to kowtowing to those who use religion for self-aggrandizement or as an excuse to show hostility.

Religion is a private matter, and not a matter of public morality, nor should it ever be.

On a more pragmatic level, these religious carve outs create an impetus for more carve outs, so now we have a nurse suing a birth control clinic because they would not hire her because she would refuse to prescribe to birth control.

This is insanity, and it needs to stop.

Yes, Please Put the Democratic Party on the Right Side in the Battle Against Cable Company F%$#ery

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House Democrats just submitted a bill to enforce net neutrality:

A group of Democrats in Congress have drafted a bill to bar the FCC from allowing “fast lane” prioritization deals.

Dubbed the “Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act,” the legislation would call on the FCC to ban carriers from making the paid prioritization deals in which content providers pay service providers to receive better connection speeds. Additionally, the bill would block service providers from prioritizing their own services.

“Americans are speaking loud and clear – they want an internet that is a platform for free expression and innovation, where the best ideas and services can reach consumers based on merit rather than based on a financial relationship with a broadband provider,” Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said when announcing the bill.

“The Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act would protect consumers and support a free and open internet,” Leahy said.

The bill is being presented in the Senate and House by Leahy and congresswoman Doris Matsui (D-CA), and is being cosponsored by senator Al Franken (D-MN), congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), and congresswoman Anna Eshoo(D-CA).

I don’t think that it can survive a Republican filibuster in the Senate, and it would never even get to the floor in the house, but this is no longer an obscure technical issue.

Thanks to John Oliver, this issue has a name, “Cable Company F%$#ery,” and everyone knows what that means.

They won’t get the legislation in this Congress, but it is an election winner.

I’m just hoping that if this ever makes it to be a vote, the Dems won’t water this down.

The Koch Suckers Win in Ohio

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They just got a bill passed in Ohio ending their renewable power initiative:

As renewable energy production has surged in recent years, opponents of government policies that have helped spur its growth have pushed to roll back those incentives and mandates in state after state.

On Wednesday, they claimed their first victory, when Ohio lawmakers voted to freeze the phasing-in of power that utilities must buy from renewable energy sources.

The bill, which passed the Ohio House of Representatives, 54 to 38, was expected to be signed into law by Gov. John R. Kasich, who helped negotiate its final draft.

It stands in marked contrast to the broad consensus behind the original law in 2008, when it was approved with virtually no opposition, and comes after considerable disagreement among lawmakers, energy executives and public interest groups.

………

Eli Miller, Americans for Prosperity’s Ohio state director, backed by the billionaire industrialists David H. and Charles G. Koch, called the proposed law “a prudent step” to re-examine standards that could be a “potential impediment to job creation and job growth here in the Buckeye State.”

Seriously, the Kochs are a cancer on American society in general, and American politics in particular.