Link du jour
http://www.davisvanguard.org/2016/02/sn ... aw-school/http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/201 ... ms/126204/https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ra ... llery.html1.
FBI Director Ducks the Most Important Question in the Apple Fight
—By Max J. Rosenthal
| Thu Feb. 25, 2016 1:00 PM EST
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2016/02 ... -fbi-fightIf Apple is forced to help unlock the iPhone used by San Bernardino
shooter Syed Farook, what else can the government make private
companies do? Don't ask FBI Director James Comey.
Members of the House Intelligence Committee repeatedly asked Comey
that question during a committee hearing on Thursday. It was Comey's
first public appearance before Congress since a Los Angeles court
ordered Apple last week to help the FBI by writing new code that would
bypass security features on Farook's phone. Apple refused, and the
battle between the company and the FBI is now major national news.
The fight centers on whether Apple, by complying with the court order
to write new code for the FBI's use, would set a precedent allowing
the government to request essentially anything from tech companies to
aid investigations, whether it was cracking encryption or sneaking
surveillance tools into software updates. But when faced with several
questions on the topic, Comey pleaded ignorance.
"I think the answer would best come from a technical expert and a good
lawyer. I'm neither of those," he said in response to a question from
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House
Intelligence Committee, about the potential limits on the government's
powers to demand help from tech companies. Comey is in fact a good
lawyer—he received a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1985
and served as deputy attorney general, the second-in-command at the
Department of Justice, during the Bush administration.
Another committee member, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), later tried again.
"Where does this authority end?" he asked Comey. "Can you paint a very
bright line for us with respect to where you think that authority
ends?"
"I don't think I can," Comey replied. "I'm really not qualified as
someone to give you a good answer to that one." When Himes attempted
to clarify, asking if the FBI thought its ability to request help
stopped with just Farook's iPhone—a position Comey has taken over the
past week—Comey again ducked. "I actually have not thought of it," he
told Himes. "The FBI focuses on case and then case and then case."
Comey did acknowledge that the Apple case "would be instructive for
other courts," but he argued that the order would be limited because
it applied only to an iPhone 5c—the model Farook used—running a
specific version of Apple's iOS operating system. Many tech experts
disagree with that argument, saying the FBI's request for new code
could be demanded for almost any device.
While Comey did not directly address the notion of precedent, some of
the FBI's supporters in law enforcement have said publicly that the
Apple case could give them the ability to demand that companies
provide them access to the phones of criminal suspects for any number
of crimes. Apple is currently fighting at least 12 other similar
orders for help gaining access to phones held by law enforcement, and
Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, a leading advocate for giving
government access to encrypted devices, says his office has 175 phones
that law enforcement officials want to access.
Max J. Rosenthal is a reporter at the Mother Jones DC bureau covering
national security, surveillance, and occasional sports shenanigans.
Send him tips, ideas or
2.
EXCLUSIVE: CCRB chairman says police unions are ‘squealing like a
stuck pig’ for calling for his removal
Updated: Thursday, February 25, 2016, 9:14 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ccr ... -1.2543106Richard Emery, the chairman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board,
says police unions won't drive him out of office.
Those, Mr. Chairman, are fighting words.
The embattled chairman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board lashed
out Wednesday at police unions, likening their calls for his removal
to “squealing like a stuck pig.”
In his first public response to a controversy over his law firm
representing a man suing a sergeant and a cop who were investigated by
the CCRB, Richard Emery vowed that the Patrolmen’s Benevolent
Association and the Sergeants Benevolent Association are “not going to
drive me out.”
“I was chosen by Bill de Blasio because of my extensive knowledge of
police cases,” Emery told the Daily News.
POLICE UNION BOSS URGES DE BLASIO TO REMOVE CCRB CHAIRMAN
“I’m not going to deprive the public and people who are abused by
police officers of having access to excellent lawyers because some
union is squealing like a stuck pig.”
Civilian Complaint Review Board Chairman Richard Emery, pictured along
with Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch on the
front page, characterizes the PBA as "squealing like a stuck pig."
Senate GOP leaders sign letter vowing to defy Constitution and ignore
ANY Supreme Court nomination.
Five firefighters' families in 2005 Black Sunday blaze case to share
$183 million.
Cops blame Akai Gurley for his own death in their defense in $50M
suit.
View Gallery NYDN front pages of 2016
Emery said the unions have seized on the lawsuit issue revealed by The
News like “some small scrap of meat” to undermine the improvements
he’s made to CCRB, including a 60% increase in substantiated
complaints.
“I take their criticism as a sign of respect,” he said. “They’re
taking us seriously.”
The presidents of the two police unions expressed outrage over Emery’s
use of the word “pig,” which carries the inflammatory sting of an
epithet against cops.
“Mr. Emery’s reference to police officers as ‘pigs’ betrays his
unshakable contempt for the men and women of the NYPD who have risked
their lives to make New York the safest big city in the world,” said
sergeants union leader Ed Mullins.
NYPD SERGEANTS AND CCRB IN STANDOFF OVER COP CASES PROBED BY CHAIRMAN
RICHARD EMERY'S LAW FIRM
3.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pu ... story.htmlJustice Dept. to expand review of FBI forensic techniques beyond hair
unit
February 25 at 6:20 PM
The Justice Department will expand its review of forensic testimony by
the FBI Laboratory in closed criminal cases nationwide to ensure it
has not overstated evidence against defendants, Deputy Attorney
General Sally Yates announced.
In March, the department will lay out a framework for auditing samples
of testimony that came from FBI units handling pattern-based evidence,
such as tracing the impressions that guns leave on bullets, shoe
treads, fibers, soil and other crime-scene evidence, department
officials said this week. The FBI and other crime labs nationwide
conduct more than 100,000 such examinations each year.
Justice Department officials left open questions of which techniques
and how many cases would be reviewed, using what standard over what
time period, and whether convicted defendants would be notified if any
errors are found.
Yates linked the move to an FBI and department finding last year that
nearly all FBI hair examiners overstated testimony about hair matches
incriminating defendants during the two decades before 2000.
[FBI admits flaws in hair analysis over decades]
“We are undertaking this quality-assurance review because we think it
is good operating procedure — and not because of specific concerns
with other disciplines,” Yates said Wednesday in an address to the
American Academy of Forensic Scientists’ annual meeting in Las Vegas.
Hundreds of convicted defendants in hair-match cases have been
notified of the testimony errors, and the bureau and the department
are offering them new DNA testing and lowering barriers to appeals.
Determining “whether the same kind of ‘testimonial overstatement’
. . . could have crept into other disciplines” would help “ensure the
public’s ongoing confidence in the work we do,” Yates said.
[Convicted defendants left uninformed of forensic flaws found by
Justice Dept.]
A spokesman for the FBI Laboratory declined to comment.
In a statement, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), ranking Democrat on the
Senate Judiciary Committee, applauded the Justice Department “for
taking responsibility and launching a full review so that the public
can learn exactly what went wrong and how we can prevent this from
ever happening again.”
Yates’s proposal is among the broadest responses yet to a National
Academy of Sciences panel report in February 2009 that questioned
subjective comparisons of evidence by experts. The panel concluded
that although examiners had long claimed to be able to match pattern
evidence to a source with “absolute” or “scientific certainty,” only
DNA analysis had been validated through statistical research.
[Forensic techniques not as reliable as you may think]
The Obama White House in 2013 appointed a National Commission on
Forensic Science to respond to the National Academy of Sciences’ call
to strengthen standards for research, labs and examiners. Yates said
the department plans to submit a suggested framework for the testimony
review at the commission’s March 21
4.
Homeland Security is spilling a lot of secrets
February 26 2016
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns- ... story.htmlThe Department of Homeland Security suffered over 100 "spills" of
classified information last year, 40 percent of which came from one
office, according to a leaked internal document I obtained. Officials
and lawmakers told me that until the Department imposes stricter
policies and sounder practices to better protect sensitive
intelligence, the vulnerabilities there could be exploited. Not only
does this raise the threat that hostile actors could get their hands
on classified information, it may lead to other U.S. agencies keeping
DHS out of the loop on major security issues.
A spill is not the same as an unauthorized disclosure of classified
information. A Homeland Security official explained that spills often
include "the accidental, inadvertent, or intentional introduction of
classified information into an unclassified information technology
system, or higher-level classified information into a lower-level
classified information technology system, to include non-government
systems."
Examples include: using a copier not approved for the level of
classified information copied; failing to properly mark a classified
product; transmitting classified information on an unclassified system
like Gmail; or sending classified information to someone who, while
having the proper level of clearance, is not authorized to read a
section of information sent to them, the official said.
There were 119 of these classified spills reported throughout the
Homeland Security Department in fiscal year 2015, according to the
internal document, which itself is unclassified. The section with the
most spills by far was the Office of Intelligence and Analysis,
headquartered at building 19 of the Nebraska Avenue Complex in
Washington, led by retired General Francis Taylor. This office is
composed mostly of intelligence analysts assigned to produce and
review classified reports that are often the work of other
intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
One senior Homeland Security official told me that the intelligence
and analysis office at DHS suffers from lax enforcement of the
established policies and practices to protect classified information.
This official said the numbers of classified spills in the internal
report only represents those incidents that were officially reported,
and the actual number is much higher.
S.Y. Lee, a department spokesman, told me that DHS does not comment on
reports of leaked information, but that the department is currently
having mandatory employee training sessions on the handling of
classified and sensitive information.
