Another lone gunman on the loose....
Yale University on lockdown as police seek gunman in ‘heavy overcoat’
Yale University went on lockdown mode Monday to allow police to investigate a call of a person walking around campus with a gun.
USA Today reported that police say they received a call from someone who said his roommate was headed to Yale to shoot at students. The report came from an anonymous caller from a phone booth in New Haven, Conn., where the college is located, the New Haven Independent reported.
Police are searching for an “older white man, balding, in a heavy overcoat, walking toward” Linsley-Chittenden Hall on campus.
Police Brutality Watch.....
Woman claims officer sprayed mace on genitals
A New Mexico woman claims she suffered for weeks after a Bernalillo County corrections officer strip-searched her and sprayed mace in her vagina.
“It’s tantamount to torture,” Peter Simonson, the Executive Director of ACLU of New Mexico said in an interview with 4 On Your Side.
The ACLU, on behalf of Marlene Tapia, filed a federal lawsuit this week two years after the alleged ordeal occurred — two years after Tapia first contacted the organization.
Simonson said civil rights cases are complicated to build, but that his staff filed the case within the two-year statute of limitations.
and.....
Friday morning. On duty. Full Uniform. Marked Squad Car. Officer Jackie Neal, 40, made a traffic stop and then allegedly sexually assaulted a 19-year-old woman, according to the San Antonio Police Department.
Police said the 11-year veteran pulled the victim over on the south side and managed to get her to stand behind his squad car. San Antonio police Chief William McManus described the events that followed as "unthinkable."
An investigation was opened after the victim contacted police. According to a statement issued by the department, Neal was taken into custody by SAPD Special Victims' Unit detectives after officers pulled him over around 2 a.m. Saturday. He was arrested on a warrant for sexual assault, a second-degree felony.
Read More...
Stasi State Watch....
A drivers’ advocacy group is decrying the latest expansion of the District’s automated traffic enforcement program.
Police said the 11-year veteran pulled the victim over on the south side and managed to get her to stand behind his squad car. San Antonio police Chief William McManus described the events that followed as "unthinkable."
An investigation was opened after the victim contacted police. According to a statement issued by the department, Neal was taken into custody by SAPD Special Victims' Unit detectives after officers pulled him over around 2 a.m. Saturday. He was arrested on a warrant for sexual assault, a second-degree felony.
Read More...
Stasi State Watch....
D.C. cops go ‘nuclear’ with traffic cameras
Traffic camera on a traffic light pole, via Wikimedia Commons
D.C. police activated 100 new “next-generation” traffic cameras Saturday to target a growing number of motorist violations ranging from failure to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks to blocking the box.
The new cameras boost the number of automated traffic enforcement devices operated by the Metropolitan Police Department to nearly 300 cameras — an expansion that AAA Mid-Atlantic called the “nuclear option.”
and....
From fighting terrorism to processing payments in the blink of an eye, facial recognition is set to change our ideas on privacy.
A number of exciting developments in the field could even push its toughest critics to reconsider.
"The more people get out of it, the more they'll surrender to it," says Manolo Almagro, senior vice president of digital for TPN Inc. Almagro believes that people will only embrace a technology if the benefits outweigh privacy concerns.
Facial recognition is a computer-based system that automatically identifies a person based on a digital image or video source -- which is then matched to information stored in a database.
Often used in fictional TV-series such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, it is soon set to become a real-life tool for fighting crime. In 2014, the FBI will roll the technology out across the U.S. after pilot testing is completed in some states.
Read More...
A number of exciting developments in the field could even push its toughest critics to reconsider.
"The more people get out of it, the more they'll surrender to it," says Manolo Almagro, senior vice president of digital for TPN Inc. Almagro believes that people will only embrace a technology if the benefits outweigh privacy concerns.
Facial recognition is a computer-based system that automatically identifies a person based on a digital image or video source -- which is then matched to information stored in a database.
Often used in fictional TV-series such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, it is soon set to become a real-life tool for fighting crime. In 2014, the FBI will roll the technology out across the U.S. after pilot testing is completed in some states.
Read More...
and.....
Revealed: Northrop Grumman’s Unmarked Gray Helicopter Drone
Next generation UAV to spy on Americans?
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 25, 2013
Infowars.com
November 25, 2013
Infowars has obtained a photograph of an unmarked gray helicopter drone manufactured by Northrop Grumman which could be used to spy on Americans domestically.
The image was sent to us by someone high up within Northrop Grumman, who told us that the drone is small enough to transported on the back of a large truck or towed in a trailer behind a pickup and can be fitted with all manner of surveillance technology.
It appears to be a smaller version of the company’s MQ-8C Fire Scout helicopter drone, which was tested for the first time earlier this month by the U.S. Navy. Unlike the MQ-8C Fire Scout, the drone seen in the image above has no markings.
The MQ-8C Fire Scout, described as a “next generation” drone, has “three times the payload capacity of the current model in the military arsenal,” and can remain airborne for twice as long.
Earlier this month, the Federal Aviation Administration released a road map that set the stage for 7,500 surveillance drones to be flying in U.S. skies within the next two years. The FAA’s chief concern is not the privacy implications of such devices, but the threat of them colliding with other aircraft.
The FAA has forecast that 30,000 surveillance drones will be in U.S. skies by the end of the decade.
At least 80 law enforcement agencies already have agreements with the FAA to fly drones for surveillance purposes. Some police departments want to use such drones to watch for “suspicious activity” in high crime areas.
Authorities are already using drones to conduct surveillance of farms and the Department of Homeland Security is also working on deploying drones for purposes of “public safety.”
Earlier this year, the Pentagon began testing to deploy two high-tech surveillance blimps over Washington DC that can remain at 10,000 feet for a month without the need for refueling. The blimps provide an “elevated, persistent over-the-horizon sensor system” and carry “powerful radars that can look deep into enemy territory.”
The U.S. Army also recently tested a football field-sized blimp over the city of New Jersey. The blimp can fly for a period of 21 hours and “is equipped with high-tech sensors that can monitor insurgents from above.”
This past August, the DHS assumed control of surveillance blimps used to monitor the US-Mexico border, a perturbing development for privacy advocates given that the federal agency considers all areas 100 miles inland of the border to be ‘constitution-free zones’ within which the Fourth Amendment does not apply.
and....
DC to begin fingerprinting, taking mug shots of all LEGAL gun owners at police stations
November 25, 2013
Source: Poor Richard's Blog
Washington DC’s new gun regulations are set to take effect on January 1, and they are brazenly unconstitutional.
from Washington Times:
The 1,800 or so criminals who have killed, robbed or assaulted innocent people with guns in the District of Columbia so far this year were hauled into the police station to be fingerprinted, photographed and to undergo a criminal-background check.read the rest
Now, legal gun owners who have committed no crime are getting the exact same treatment. That is neither constitutional, nor fair.
The latest gun-control scheme that starts on Jan. 1 will force every legal firearm owner in the nation’s capital to go in person to police headquarters to renew their registration certificates.
The Metropolitan Police Department filed proposed rules last week to enact this absurd law, and citizens have until Dec. 15 to comment on the regulations.
To avoid becoming a felon, anyone with a gun registered before 2011 will have to go to police headquarters to be fingerprinted, photographed, provide proof of address, pay a fee and confirm they may still legally possess the firearm. The Firearms Registration Section will then create a new registration certificate — now in the form of an ID card — for each gun.
Imagine that, Washington DC, a town full of crooks, is going to begin treating the law abiding citizens the same as felons. This law is not only a violation of the 2nd Amendment, but a hideous encroachment on the 4th as well.
Nanny State....
Source: New American
Government isn’t content to control public behavior, it is now clamping down on how citizens act at home, as well.
Multiple media outlets are reporting that the city council of San Rafael, California has passed an ordinance prohibiting smoking inside residences with shared walls. This would include, of course, apartments, condominiums, duplexes, and other multi-family dwellings.
The ordinance was passed in October 2012, but did not go into effect until November 14, 2013.
According to a statement made by the city council on the city’s official website, the new regulation strengthens “the City’s municipal code to further protect the community from secondhand smoke.”
In particular, the ordinance “applies to all new and existing properties and does not allow grandfathering rights. Landlords and property owners are required to enforce this ordinance through new lease language or lease amendments as well as posting signage.”
The ordinance may be the strictest in the country, and city officials are proud to be out front on the issue. Breitbart News quoted Rebecca Woodbury, “an analyst in the San Rafael’s city manager’s office who helped write the ordinance,” as boasting: “I’m not aware of any ordinance that’s stronger.”
And the Blaze revealed:
The city’s mayor, Gary Phillips, is apparently well-aware of the leadership role San Rafael may have given itself with the decision. He said that the city is “happy to blaze a trail” before the vote took place.
“We’re most happy to be in the forefront of the issue because we think it will greatly benefit our residents and those visiting San Rafael, and we think it will set the tone for other cities as well,” the mayor proclaimed.
The Breitbart News story reported on the opposition to this alarming intrusion into the sanctity of the home:
“The science for that is spurious at best,” said George Koodray, the state coordinator for Citizens Freedom Alliance and the Smoker’s Club in New Jersey.
Steve Stanek, a research fellow at the free-market oriented policy group Heartland Institute in Chicago, supported the rights of smokers.
Stanek, a non-smoker, said, “My sympathies aren’t with smokers because I am one, it’s because of the huge growth in laws and punishments and government restricting people more and more.”
Beyond the city’s reliance on questionable science, the violation of the “Takings Clause” of the Constitution may actually be actionable.
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, in relevant part, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has handed down several decisions aimed at defining the scope of the so-called Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
An article from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law reports:
The Court has had a difficult time articulating a test to determine when a regulation becomes a taking. It has said there is “no set formula” and that courts “must look to the particular circumstances of the case.” The Court has identified some relevant factors to consider: the economic impact of the regulation, the degree to which the regulation interferes with investor-backed expectations, and the character of the government action.
By applying the ordinance to owners and renters, an argument can be made that its enforcement will impact the ability of investors to receive a return on their investment in property within San Rafael. Where once owners could sign leases with any citizen, regardless of their smoking preference, that property will now be restricting to renting to those who do not smoke. That may be fine going forward, but considering the “no grandfathering” clause of the ordinance, many of those who have purchased buildings as investment income property will now see their ability to achieve occupancy severely reduced by an overzealous local government.
As the ordinance has only been in effect for about 10 days as this is being written, it seems that local land owners would have a cause of action against the San Rafael city council. Should the owners of apartments, condos, and all other residences that contain units that share walls be able to demonstrate that their property rights have been diminished by the city council without the “just compensation” required by the Constitution, then the ordinance would be subject to being struck down.
Should the ordinance be enforced as written, owners of qualifying property will find themselves unable to use their property as intended and unable to recover for their losses.
There are those opponents of the ordinance who have chosen, unfortunately, to focus on the soundness of the science rather than on the assault on the fundamental right of property.
In the long run, health risks identified by science or by “science” will change. There will rarely be consensus on such issues, particularly when forces on both sides have billions of dollars to pour into competing studies (Michael Bloomberg and the tobacco industry, for example).
What does not change, however, and is not subject to contemporary or corporate manipulation, is the sacrosanct place afforded property in the Anglo-American legal tradition.
Proponents of the law point to the “nuisance exception” that the Supreme Court has established. Put simply, the high court has ruled that the right to injury neighbors is not covered by the Takings Clause, and thus need not be compensated for should the government decided to regulate the injurious behavior.
This has gone too far, however.
Writing for the Cato Institute, Roger Pilon explains the potential for abuse of the nuisance exception to the Takings Clause:
In defining the nuisance exception, therefore, care must be taken to tie it to a realistic conception of rights, which the classic common law more or less did. Thus, uses that injure a neighbor through various forms of pollution (e.g., by particulate matter, noises, odors, vibrations, etc.) or through exposure to excessive risk count as classic common-law nuisances because they violate the neighbor’s rights. They can be prohibited, with no compensation owing to those who are thus restricted.
By contrast, uses that “injure” one’s neighbor through economic competition, say, or by blocking “his” view (which runs over your property) or offending his aesthetic sensibilities are not nuisances because they violate no rights the neighbor can claim. Nor will it do to simply declare, through positive law, that such goods are “rights.”
Indeed, that is the route that has brought us to where we are today. After all, every regulation has some reason behind it, some “good” the regulation seeks to bring about. If all such goods were pursued under the police power—as a matter of right—then the owners from whom the goods were taken would never be compensated. The police power would simply eat up the compensation requirement.
And that is where the citizens of San Rafael find themselves today. The city council has unconstitutionally exercised the police power and has “eaten up” the protected property rights of owners of multi-family dwellings.
Although the fight wouldn’t be an easy one, property owners in San Rafael affected by the newly enforced ordinance would be wise to stand against their local government’s deprivation of their right to enjoy their property. When regulations run amok, property rights are almost always the victim.
Government isn’t content to control public behavior, it is now clamping down on how citizens act at home, as well.
Multiple media outlets are reporting that the city council of San Rafael, California has passed an ordinance prohibiting smoking inside residences with shared walls. This would include, of course, apartments, condominiums, duplexes, and other multi-family dwellings.
The ordinance was passed in October 2012, but did not go into effect until November 14, 2013.
According to a statement made by the city council on the city’s official website, the new regulation strengthens “the City’s municipal code to further protect the community from secondhand smoke.”
In particular, the ordinance “applies to all new and existing properties and does not allow grandfathering rights. Landlords and property owners are required to enforce this ordinance through new lease language or lease amendments as well as posting signage.”
The ordinance may be the strictest in the country, and city officials are proud to be out front on the issue. Breitbart News quoted Rebecca Woodbury, “an analyst in the San Rafael’s city manager’s office who helped write the ordinance,” as boasting: “I’m not aware of any ordinance that’s stronger.”
And the Blaze revealed:
The city’s mayor, Gary Phillips, is apparently well-aware of the leadership role San Rafael may have given itself with the decision. He said that the city is “happy to blaze a trail” before the vote took place.
“We’re most happy to be in the forefront of the issue because we think it will greatly benefit our residents and those visiting San Rafael, and we think it will set the tone for other cities as well,” the mayor proclaimed.
The Breitbart News story reported on the opposition to this alarming intrusion into the sanctity of the home:
“The science for that is spurious at best,” said George Koodray, the state coordinator for Citizens Freedom Alliance and the Smoker’s Club in New Jersey.
Steve Stanek, a research fellow at the free-market oriented policy group Heartland Institute in Chicago, supported the rights of smokers.
Stanek, a non-smoker, said, “My sympathies aren’t with smokers because I am one, it’s because of the huge growth in laws and punishments and government restricting people more and more.”
Beyond the city’s reliance on questionable science, the violation of the “Takings Clause” of the Constitution may actually be actionable.
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, in relevant part, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has handed down several decisions aimed at defining the scope of the so-called Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
An article from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law reports:
The Court has had a difficult time articulating a test to determine when a regulation becomes a taking. It has said there is “no set formula” and that courts “must look to the particular circumstances of the case.” The Court has identified some relevant factors to consider: the economic impact of the regulation, the degree to which the regulation interferes with investor-backed expectations, and the character of the government action.
By applying the ordinance to owners and renters, an argument can be made that its enforcement will impact the ability of investors to receive a return on their investment in property within San Rafael. Where once owners could sign leases with any citizen, regardless of their smoking preference, that property will now be restricting to renting to those who do not smoke. That may be fine going forward, but considering the “no grandfathering” clause of the ordinance, many of those who have purchased buildings as investment income property will now see their ability to achieve occupancy severely reduced by an overzealous local government.
As the ordinance has only been in effect for about 10 days as this is being written, it seems that local land owners would have a cause of action against the San Rafael city council. Should the owners of apartments, condos, and all other residences that contain units that share walls be able to demonstrate that their property rights have been diminished by the city council without the “just compensation” required by the Constitution, then the ordinance would be subject to being struck down.
Should the ordinance be enforced as written, owners of qualifying property will find themselves unable to use their property as intended and unable to recover for their losses.
There are those opponents of the ordinance who have chosen, unfortunately, to focus on the soundness of the science rather than on the assault on the fundamental right of property.
In the long run, health risks identified by science or by “science” will change. There will rarely be consensus on such issues, particularly when forces on both sides have billions of dollars to pour into competing studies (Michael Bloomberg and the tobacco industry, for example).
What does not change, however, and is not subject to contemporary or corporate manipulation, is the sacrosanct place afforded property in the Anglo-American legal tradition.
Proponents of the law point to the “nuisance exception” that the Supreme Court has established. Put simply, the high court has ruled that the right to injury neighbors is not covered by the Takings Clause, and thus need not be compensated for should the government decided to regulate the injurious behavior.
This has gone too far, however.
Writing for the Cato Institute, Roger Pilon explains the potential for abuse of the nuisance exception to the Takings Clause:
In defining the nuisance exception, therefore, care must be taken to tie it to a realistic conception of rights, which the classic common law more or less did. Thus, uses that injure a neighbor through various forms of pollution (e.g., by particulate matter, noises, odors, vibrations, etc.) or through exposure to excessive risk count as classic common-law nuisances because they violate the neighbor’s rights. They can be prohibited, with no compensation owing to those who are thus restricted.
By contrast, uses that “injure” one’s neighbor through economic competition, say, or by blocking “his” view (which runs over your property) or offending his aesthetic sensibilities are not nuisances because they violate no rights the neighbor can claim. Nor will it do to simply declare, through positive law, that such goods are “rights.”
Indeed, that is the route that has brought us to where we are today. After all, every regulation has some reason behind it, some “good” the regulation seeks to bring about. If all such goods were pursued under the police power—as a matter of right—then the owners from whom the goods were taken would never be compensated. The police power would simply eat up the compensation requirement.
And that is where the citizens of San Rafael find themselves today. The city council has unconstitutionally exercised the police power and has “eaten up” the protected property rights of owners of multi-family dwellings.
Although the fight wouldn’t be an easy one, property owners in San Rafael affected by the newly enforced ordinance would be wise to stand against their local government’s deprivation of their right to enjoy their property. When regulations run amok, property rights are almost always the victim.
and....
Your phone is talking behind your back — to your doctor
Your phone knows everything about you — how much you walk, talk and what level of Candy Crush you’re stuck on — but soon it could be spilling secrets to your doctor.
More and more physicians are prescribing apps that help track their patients’ illnesses through information collected by their smartphones.
“[The trend] just seems to be exploding,” said Seth S. Martin, a Pollin cardiovascular prevention fellow at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. “With the widespread use now of smartphones, it’s a really exciting opportunity to help people live healthier lives.”
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