The bipartisan compromise proposal to expand background checks to more gun sales died in the Senate this afternoon after the bipartisan majority fell far short of the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster on the bill. The vote was 54-46. While advocates thought they might be only two votes away not long ago, the six vote deficit makes it highly unlikely that the majority will ever secure the votes it needs. If Republicans had not filibustered, the measure would have passed, as final passage requires only 50 votes (plus the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Joe Biden).The proposal, authored by Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, was the best shot at passing any kind of expansion on background checks, even though it was far weaker than what Democrats and gun safety advocates had hoped for. But opponents of the bill deliberately misrepresented the bill by claiming it could lead to a national gun registry, which many gun advocates fear could lead to confiscation or even tyranny, even though the Manchin-Toomey proposal actually made it a felony officials to create a registry.Continue Reading… … Read More
Indiana man arrested for taking axe to Planned Parenthood facility
A man who believes Planned Parenthood “kills babies” took an axe to a facility early Thursday morning in Bloomington, Indiana, according to the Herald Times. Police arrested 27-year-old Benjamin D. Curell on felony charges of burglary and criminal mischief due to the “extensive…
Montana Rep. insists ‘no homophobic issues here’ as he votes against decriminalizing gay sex
A Montana Republican state representative insisted Tuesday that “there’s no homophobic issues here,” even as he prepared to cast a vote to continue applying felony criminal penalties to LGBT people, simply for being who they are. Explaining why he planned to vote against SB 107,…
Voter fraud charges dropped for Virginia Republican
This piece originally appeared on The Brad Blog.Given the professed concerns about election fraud among Virginia Republicans, it seems somewhat astonishing that the man at the center of the Commonwealth’s most notorious fraud scandal last year seems to be getting off the hook after initially being charged with 13 criminal counts including eight felony charges.Colin Small, a Republican Party voter registration supervisor who secretly tossed filled-out voter registration forms into a dumpster last year, had all of his felony charges dropped by the local Republican Commonwealth attorney prosecuting the case yesterday.Small was arrested and charged with 13 counts – including destruction and disclosure of voter registrations, as well as obstruction of justice — in Harrisonburg, Va., in the run-up to the presidential election last year, after he was seen by a local shopkeeper throwing away a bag of registration forms behind his store. Small’s felony charges were all dropped on Tuesday, according to local Fox affiliate WHSV.Continue Reading… … Read More
The iPhone Crime Wave
During the last 20 years, law enforcement officials,
criminologists, journalists, and other cultural observers have
attempted to solve the mystery of the nation’s declining crime
rates. Was the post-1990 drop in murders and other serious crimes
due to new police tactics that concentrated resources in unsafe
neighborhoods? Maybe. Was it longer prison sentences? The waning
crack trade? Increased availability of abortions? Maybe, possibly,
perhaps.
Bucking the trend, New York City in 2012 experienced its first
overall increase in major crimes in 20 years. But this time, Mayor
Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have decisively
fingered the culprit: It was Steve Jobs. Or, rather, the devices
Apple produced under his watch.
According to New York Police Department (NYPD) statistics, there
were 3,484 more major crimes in 2012 than there were in 2011.
(These numbers compare the first 51 weeks of each year.) The rise
in the total number of Apple-related thefts —which occurred during
burglaries, robberies, and grand larcenies —exceeded that number.
(The NYPD keeps track of seven categories of crime that it deems
“major.” They are murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary,
grand larceny, and grand larceny auto. It keeps track of three
categories of crime that it deems “minor.” They are petit larceny,
misdemeanor assault, and misdemeanor sex crimes.)
;“If you took out thefts of Apple products—not Galaxies,
Samsungs—just Apple products, our total [major] crime rate would be
lower than it was last year,” Bloomberg told the New York
Post. ;
Presumably New York City’s criminals are snapping up iPods,
iPhones, and iPads not because they prefer Apple’s battery life
management over that of its competitors but because the resale
market for Apple devices is robust and predictable. According to
The Wall Street Journal, high tariffs in
countries like Brazil can drive up the price of a new entry-level
iPhone 4s to $1,000, so used ones go for as much as $400 there.
Here in the U.S., secondhand dealers buying in bulk on Craigslist
pay as much as $500 for a used iPhone 5. Demand is strong. Resale
prices are high. There are millions of iPhones out there, but
unlike so many other products in our age of plenty, they have not
yet become too abundant to steal. ;
With other brands, theft is an iffier proposition. That
snatchable seven-inch non-Apple tablet could have an initial retail
price anywhere between $99 and $499, and there may not be much of a
secondhand market. This magnifies crime’s inherent risks: No one
wants to be the chump who earns a stretch in the Big House for
strong-arming some cheapskate out of what upon closer inspection
turns out to be a Nook Simple Touch. ;
Can New York City’s Apple- picking epidemic tell us something
about crime in general? Most theories about America’s long-term
crime trends share a common characteristic: They attribute the drop
to some factor that has depleted the nation’s supply of criminals.
One theory, for example, holds that because individuals between the
ages of 15 and 24 tend to commit crimes at higher rates than people
in other age groups, crime started dropping when the country’s
median age began to rise, thus leaving fewer young people per
capita to commit crimes. Another theory stresses the correlation
between crime and high levels of lead in the bloodstream. When
leaded gas was banned, this theory suggests, childhood exposure to
high lead emissions began to drop as well, which eventually led to
fewer adults with the sort of neurological damage that is
associated with criminal behavior. ;
None of the major crime hypotheses pays much attention to the
ways in which the material landscape of America has changed. Yet
such changes obviously have at least some impact on
crime. ;
Car theft wasn’t a problem until cars were invented. Apple theft
barely existed in New York City a decade ago; according to Ray
Kelly, the police department recorded just 86 Apple-related crimes
in all of 2002. Since then, the company has made its products so
portable they’re nearly ubiquitous in public, thus prompting New
York City’s criminals to thug different. (On a more positive note,
subway thefts involving boomboxes, Sony Walkmen, and evening
editions of the New York Post are doubtlessly on the
wane.)
But if a new, highly desirable product can lead to a dramatic
increase in crime, perhaps the opposite is true as well. According
to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “there was
a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States from 1990
through 2010,” exactly the same time in which the country began to
experience a dramatic decrease in crime rates. Like the drop in
crime, the rise in obesity has provoked many hypotheses but few
definitive answers. One credible notion, however, is that
waistlines have grown out of increasing affluence and abundance.
Food got cheaper and far more accessible. Entertainment options and
labor-saving devices proliferated. Life got easier, more
convenient, and in many ways, far more pleasurable—so much so that
we tend to opt for seconds of everything (more pizza, more video
games, more social networking) as long as it doesn’t require much
exertion. ;
Think about the ways life has changed since 1990, and
specifically about the ways these changes affect young men, who
historically have been the cohort most likely to commit crimes. TV
sports programming has expanded exponentially. Video games have
become far more plentiful and immersive. Hip-hop evolved into a
multibillion-dollar lifestyle industry encompassing music, fashion,
and more. The Internet provided free universal porn. The rise of
big-box retailers like Walmart and Target made a wide range of
goods increasingly affordable. ;
Given that millions of well- paying jobs in the manufacturing
and construction sectors have been lost during the last 20 years,
and that this loss has its greatest impact on the prospects of
young men, these consolations may seem meager. Yet look at how
young men are expressing their discontent. Murder rates have
dropped. Rape rates have dropped. Property crimes have dropped.
Maybe this is all because of lower lead levels. Or maybe, in the
same way that technologically driven abundance has made us fatter,
it has also made us more content, giving us more opportunities for
self-expression, more opportunities to develop meaningful social
connections, and more material goods that are so easily obtainable
that they blunt the economic imperatives of crime.
Consider what’s happening in New York City with all those
non-Apple devices. Physically, they’re no harder to steal than
Apples, and there are plenty of them to be found on New York
subways. Yet because many non-Apple devices are so inexpensive,
they are relatively easy to replace (or perhaps easy to live
without), undermining the gadgets’ value from the thief’s
perspective. So even as these items proliferate, the rate at which
they get stolen is actually dropping.
Apple, meanwhile, is an ironic outlier. The creative tools with
which it equipped the world’s designers, developers, and media
producers played a crucial role in enabling our new world of
super-affordable material wealth. Yet despite the increasing
ubiquity of iPhones and iPads, worldwide demand for these products
remains so strong that they’re still not universally accessible. As
a result, they’re still worth stealing.
Of course, if theft of Apple devices increases so much that
their air of exclusivity begins to seem like a design flaw, a
solution is readily at hand. By flooding the market with
bargain-bin iPhone knock-offs, the company could instantly protect
its marquee products in ways that anti-theft apps like “Find My
iPhone” would be hard-pressed to match. In the end, abundance is
the most powerful form of security. ; … Read More
Computer law used against Swartz could become even harsher
Advocates have urged Congress to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act since way before 26-year-old hacker Aaron Swartz committed suicide in January while awaiting trial for a CFAA case that could have sent him to prison for decades and since then petitions to push for a new CFAA have come and gone. Members of both the US Senate and the House of Representatives have said that the legislation is too strict and needs adjustment, and meanwhile hackers like Andrew Auernheimer have had their lives turned upside down thanks to the government’s arguably asinine interpretations of the CFAA.Just this week, though, some real talk of an update to the CFAA finally started to surface. A draft began circulating on the Web on Monday that suggests Capitol Hill lawmakers might be looking to finally update legislation that’s been called draconian, archaic and drastically in need of serious change.Lawmakers are indeed in talk to revise the CFAA, but not in a way that warrants a round of applause from hackers, advocates and activists. A discussion bill being passed around would actually make the CFAA even stricter, essentially allowing the government to go after a multitude of not-so-malicious computer users and sentence them to lengthier prison stints than what’s already on the books.The House Judiciary Committee has started circulating a draft that would be used to update the CFAA in a number of aspects, but little would let so-called hackers off the hook for the questionable crimes that federal prosecutors have used to go after the likes of Swartz — who faced 35 years for downloading academic articles — or Auernheimer, who was sentenced to 41 months last week for discovering a security flaw on the servers of telecom giants AT&T.If the proposed revisions to the CFAA are approved in Congress, not only will penalties be more severe but simply discussing alleged computer crimes could be grounds for a felony conviction. The proposal involves extending maximum sentences for CFAA violations, grouping some forms of hacking with racketeering and even criminalizing the “conspiracy and attempt” of computer crimes that never come to fruition.In order to fight against repressive attempts by the government to censor the Internet, Aaron Swartz helped co-found an advocacy group called Demand Progress in 2010. This week, the organization’s executive director emailed the media to voice his opposition to draft law.”This proposal is a giant leap in the wrong direction and demonstrates a disturbing lack of understanding about computers, the internet and the modern economy,” Demand Progress’ David Segal wrote to reporters on Monday.”Already the outdated Consumer Fraud and Abuse Act is used by overzealous lawyers to prosecute routine computer activity,” continued Segal. “If enacted this proposal could end computer security research in the United States and drive innovation and creativity overseas.”While the proposed CFAA changes would actually more narrowly define some crimes, it would nevertheless allow for federal prosecutors to go after a myriad of nonviolent hackers and security researchers if they wish to pursue felony convictions.One example, for instance, would rewrite a current provision of the CFAA that outlaws the trafficking of passwords in situations where log-in credentials in the wrong hands would mean bad news for either government computers or interstate or foreign commerce. If the draft is approved, however, sharing “any password of similar information or means of access” through which a protected computer can be accessed without authorization would be a crime.“It would make ‘trafficking in passwords’ used to access any protected computer an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison — which, theoretically, could mean that sharing your login information for Netflix or The New York Times could land you in jail” Slate’s Justin Peters wrote this week.Unfortunately for computer researchers, the term “protected computer” is so vaguely defined by the federal government then going to even a website without expressed approval could constitute a violation depending on who’s interpreting the law.”Everybody here accesses a protected computer by the definition of the law,” Auernheimer told TechNewsDaily back in November while a jury deliberated — and eventually convicted him — of breaching AT&T’s servers. “The ‘protected computer’ is any network computer. You access a protected computer every day,” he said.”Have you ever received permission from Google to go to Google? No. Nobody has,” Auernheimer said. “Every computer with an Internet connection … that’s a pretty broad scope of protected computers.”If the CFAA is reformed to fit the latest proposal, though, Auernheimer could have been convicted without ever following through with his “hack.” He was convicted of essentially finding a backdoor on AT&T’s servers that in turn let him view the email addresses registered to roughly 114,000 Apple iPad users. He never accumulated any private data beyond the email addresses and didn’t have to crack a password or hack himself past any sort of encryption. In the draft, though, hackers caught conspiring or simply attempting to violate the CFAA in any means would be prosecuted “for the completed offense,” even if their intentions never materialize beyond messaging a friend about an illicit act.Under the proposed changes, accessing a protected computer without authorization and causing damage would mean a prison sentence of up to 10 years, not the current five. That isn’t to say the would-be CFAA reforms would be entirely bad, though. Those caught and convicted of foreign espionage aimed at US businesses would see their jail sentences extend by five years, and inflicting damage on critical infrastructure computers — devices wired to America’s power grid, transit systems, the stock market and others — would return a maximum sentence of 30 years. Congress and the US Attorney General’s Office would have to act as well: one provision of the discussion draft involves promoting federal cybersecurity and another demands the nation’s top lawyer establish something called the “National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force,” which could put hacker witch-hunts in the hands of a whole new breed of federal agents. Unfortunately, another provision would put them at risk of a whole new array of charges — the update would also update the United States’ current racketeering laws so that computer fraud under the CFAA could be grounds for a prosecution under the country’s RICO statutes.“The bill would redefine computer crimes as a form of racketeering, which seems like something specifically designed to make it easier to prosecute groups like Anonymous,” Peters writes for Slate.Days after Swartz committed suicide in his New York apartment, US Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Florida) said Congress would be “looking at what occurred in specific instances and what needs to done to make sure that the law isn’t abused.”Instead of fixing the CFAA, the potential revisions would only worsen it.“[I]t almost feels like the Judiciary Committee is doing it on purpose as a dig at online activists who have fought back against things like SOPA, CISPA and the CFAA,” TechDirt’s Mike Masnick writes. “Rather than fix the CFAA, it expands it. Rather than rein in the worst parts of the bill, it makes them worse.” … Read More
Stop dogging Michael Vick!
Delete it from your iCal: Philadelphia Eagles quarterback and convicted former animal abuser Michael Vick will not be appearing in a bookstore near you any time soon. His publisher announced this week he has withdrawn from a scheduled book tour due to “credible threats.” Nice grasp of how it works, bullies. Because nothing says I am a compassionate humanitarian who’s on the higher moral ground than anybody else like throwing around a few threats of violence.Vick, who served over a year and a half in prison after pleading guilty in 2007 to felony charges regarding a dogfighting ring, has spent the past six years trying to prove he’s a changed man. Since serving his sentence, he’s not just gone back to his football career; he’s become a volunteer for the Humane Society, speaking out in schools and public events about animal abuse and dogfighting. Last year, his foundation gave $200,000 to renovate a rundown local Philadelphia football field. He even became a dog owner, and when the news of his family’s new addition emerged, he announced, “I want to ensure that my children establish a loving bond and treat all of God’s creatures with kindness and respect. Our pet is well cared for and loved as a member of our family. To that end, I will continue to honor my commitment to animal welfare and be an instrument of positive change.” And now, he’s written a memoir for a Christian book publisher with the hopeful title, “Finally Free” – a tale his publicity materials describe as the story of “how a broken man sought and received forgiveness for his wrongs.”Continue Reading… … Read More
