“I had to do it. Jimi was worth much more to me dead than alive,” Jeffrey is quoted as telling Wright. “That son of a b*tch was going to leave me. If I lost him, I’d lose everything.”
- Michael Jeffrey; Jimi’s Former Manager. Who should be remembered clearly as “The Fuck Who Murdered Rock and Roll legend the great Jimi Hendrix“.
Somehow reading this news from so long ago, gives me Deja Vu. it’s just like the rumors from all those decades ago – who killed Jimi..
well now it appears we have an answer
Jimi Hendrix on the Dick Cavett Show
this Jeffrey clown should’ve had his mouth stuffed with a combo of Oxycontin, Vicodin and Laxatives; afterwhich he should’ve have a Fentanyl Patch applied to his neck near his spine – so he felt it slowly choking him to death.
By His Own Admission, It was his self prescribed cocktail; that cost us one of the greatest musicians in history -Jimi Hendrix.
This is Jimi Hendrix playing a jam/Hear My Train A Comin’ in Royale Albert Hall 1969. He is a True Bluesmaster, and made us all recognize that Rock and Roll is nothing but the baby of the Blues. it includes ashort shot of Jimi Hendrix as he gets upset with Mitch Mitchell – the drummer; for coming in too early.
Make Sure to Check this Video out ^
If You Love Music, this is 10 mins of PURE JIMI HEXDRIX BLISS
I don’t know where you were when you heard it, but I remember where I was and what I was doing. I was in my first semester of high school; and someone said “Hey Jimi Hendrix OD’d”..
WHADDDDDD ???? NO Fricken Way…but yes it was true.
when I got home from school and looked at the news that evening, it was the headline story. Along with the rest of the world, I was overwhelmed and boo hoo’d for days.
1970 Jimi Hendrix: “Machine Gun”
This is right before he was murdered – in London, in 1970; he is in fine form and this is a rare early video of him playing live
it was just like when Koko Taylor died last week. I’m still feelin that pain deep in my heart. it’s hard to loose a legend; but to murder.. OHFN. This clown needed to stop by my house on the way to his rewards. I promise you his remains wouldn’t have been enuff to pick up and void.
Listen to Jimi talking about his music in October 1968
Read This Sad Piece of Shit Story for the Worlds’ Greatest Guitarist:
( from eurweb.com) Musician’s former roadie says manager confessed to giving him overdose of pills on purpose.
(June 2, 2009)
*A new book written by a roadie for Jimi Hendrix claims the late rock icon was actually murdered by his manager, Michael Jeffrey, who told the author he plied Hendrix with pills and alcohol in order to kill him and collect on the guitarist’s life insurance.
In his book “Rock Roadie,” James “Tappy” Wright claims that Jeffrey made the confession to him in 1971, two years before he was killed in a plane crash.
“I can still hear that conversation, see the man I’d known for so much of my life, his face pale, hand clutching at his glass in sudden rage,” writes Wright in the book, according to Yahoo News.
Hendrix died in September 1970. His body was found in a room at London’s Samarkand Hotel booked by Monika Dannemann, whom Hendrix had known for a matter of days. At the time of Hendrix’s death, a coroner recorded an open verdict, stating that the cause was “barbiturate intoxication and inhalation of vomit.”
Jeffrey is quoted by Wright as telling him: “I was in London the night of Jimi’s death and together with some old friends.. we went ’round to Monika’s hotel room, got a handful of pills and stuffed them into his mouth…then poured a few bottles of red wine deep into his windpipe.”
The manager was allegedly worried that Hendrix was about to fire him. He had recently taken out a life insurance policy worth $2 million, with Jeffrey as beneficiary, reported Britain’s Mail On Sunday.
“I had to do it. Jimi was worth much more to me dead than alive,” Jeffrey is quoted as telling Wright. “That son of a b*tch was going to leave me. If I lost him, I’d lose everything.”
Now I’m sorry for making this a sunday story – but it’s better than a monday story so police, give the girl back the peoples jewelry, and get on with the get on. more on these two blackeyed susans after the trial on the 28th of April – Wednesday. Stay Tuned, cause they’re still not done; we sure of that.
Rihanna had been wearing the jewellery to a pre-Grammys party
Singer Rihanna has asked the LA police to return jewellery taken as evidence the night she was allegedly attacked by her boyfriend Chris Brown.
Police took earrings and three rings from the singer hours before the Grammy Awards ceremony in February.
The items, which were on loan from a shop, are worth over $1.4m (£1m).
Lawyer Donald Etra, who represents the 21-year-old star, said the detective overseeing the case did not object to the return of the items.
The shop which owns the jewellery has asked Rihanna to give the goods back as soon as possible.
‘Photographs’
Mr Etra told the BBC: “Apparently, initially, the police felt that it would be needed as evidence. Now the belief is that photographs would be more than sufficient.
“That being the case, we’re asking the District Attorney to return the pieces.”
The request for the return of the jewellery states that lawyers for Mr Brown are also happy for the pieces to be released.
Mr Brown, 19, was arrested after rowing with Rihanna in a parked car. Both singers cancelled their scheduled appearances at that evening’s Grammy awards.
Later Mr Brown said he was “sorry and saddened” by the incident and had already sought counselling.
He also withdrew his name from Nickelodeon’s Kid’s Choice Awards after coverage of the events “shifted the focus from the music”.
Last month Mr Brown was charged with assault and making criminal threats and is next due to appear in court on 29 April. He denies the charges.
These photos should have been released with the torture memos.. Don’t You Think that would have helped us to understand why they did what they did in their secret prisons?
Photos purporting to show prisoner abuse in Iraq were published in 2004
The Pentagon is about to release “hundreds” of photographs showing the alleged abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, US officials say.
The alleged abuses by US personnel are said to relate to President George W Bush’s time in office.
The photos are being made public in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) five years ago.
The court order had been contested by the Bush administration.
The US defence department said the Pentagon had agreed to release a “substantial” number of previously unseen photographs by May 28.
“I think it will be in the hundreds,” added a Pentagon official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.
‘Visual proof’
The images relate to around 60 criminal investigations of US military personnel suspected of abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2006.
The ACLU says the photos show that the much-publicised abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq amounted to a specific policy.
“These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by US personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” said ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh.
But a Pentagon spokesman downplayed allegations of widespread abuse, saying it had acted swiftly to discipline some 400 personnel found to be involved in abuses.
The release of the photos will increase pressure on the Obama administration to consider prosecuting Bush-era officials for alleged complicity in torture and maltreatment of terrorist suspects, says the BBC’s North America Editor Justin Webb.
It follows the publication last week by the Obama administration of four sensitive memos outlining harsh interrogation techniques approved for use by the CIA by the Bush government.
Rights groups have called for CIA personnel involved in any torture cases to be prosecuted, while critics say the move would endanger national security.
This Woman in the white is a Mother who’s son was murdered by the Police in Barbados. so if you think the Islands are so nice, read this story of how they treat their own citizens. and look at how long it took to come out with this absolutely ridiculous decision. Please Judge,
Marguerita Maloney (right) with a friend before the verdict was announced. This scene changed dramatically after the verdict was announced as Marguerita fell to the ground and wailed.
TO screams of “Murderer”, “You kill my son”, “Dis is just de beginning”, was how the Coroner’s verdict of “death by misadventure” was greeted yesterday by Marguerita Maloney, mother of I’Akobi Tacuma Maloney, and other relatives and friends.
It was minutes before 5 o’clock when Coroner Faith Marshall-Harris delivered her verdict at the Coroner’s Court, Roebuck Street, St. Michael, packed with Maloney’s relatives and friends including his mother and brother, Mandela.
After the Coroner left the courtroom and returned to her chambers, Maloney’s mother and others re-joined the Rastafarian brethren in the courtyard which included his father, David. Dozens had earlier lined the courtyard but had to remain outside during the verdict for lack of space.
Pointing and calling the names of the two officers who were first on the scene at Landlock, St. Lucy, where the 23-year-old chemical engineer died on June 17, 2008, Marguerita told Sergeant Wingrove Headley and Police Constable Wendell Walkes… “De inquest end, but dis is just de beginning. De Rasta brethren gine get you.”
Dressed in white, in stark contrast to the others who wore red shirts and black pants, Marguerita fell to the ground and wailed her son’s name, as well as those of Sojourner Truth, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X and the Rastafarian community.
She was eventually lifted up and left with the group, some of whom carried flags and placards.
I’Akobi Tacuma Maloney, by any standard, was a high achiever .
The 23-year-old, a devout Rastafari, was a recent graduate of the University of the West Indies, with a degree in engineering. Before that, he was valedictorian at his high school, where his classmates voted him “most likely to succeed.” He won a scholarship from the Barbados government that paid for his university education, and he was chosen by the Barbados Ministry of Social Transformation as a youth delegate at the 5th Ministerial Meeting on Children and Social Policy in the Americas. He had a black belt in martial arts and was an accomplished public speaker. He had just joined the Barbados Association of Professional Engineers, and was a summer intern at a cement factory. He seemed to be on a clear path to success.
On 17 June, 2008, everything changed. In circumstances that have not yet been fully explained, Maloney died in an encounter with the Barbados police. According to a police statement , at 5.30 that afternoon officers responded to a report of a “drug landing” at Cove Bay , near the northern tip of the island of Barbados. There they saw Maloney wandering near the top of a steep cliff overlooking the sea. They approached and interviewed him.
“Initial investigations reveal that Maloney suddenly ran and jumped off a cliff, landing on a ledge below. Shortly after this he was washed off this ledge by the pounding waves, which took him out into the sea,” public relations officer inspector Barry Hunte said.
Later, the assistant commissioner of police suggested that Maloney was “depressed” at the time of the incident:
According to the crime chief, police also discovered a note entered in his personal diary which suggested he could have been contemplating suicide.
But Maloney’s family was immediately suspicious of this version of events. His mother pointed out that the police claimed Maloney landed face down on rocks at the foot of the cliff, yet there was a prominent wound at the back of his head. Further, Maloney was reported to have jumped with his haversack on his back, and his body was in the sea for eight hours before it was retrieved — yet when the haversack was returned to his mother, there was no sign of water damage to its contents.
Within two days of the incident, the Ichirouganaim Council for the Advancement of Rastafari (ICAR) , a Barbadian Rastafari advocacy group, had set up a blog, AfriKa CRY BLOOD , to “promote, protect and defend the Ras Tacuma case.” ICAR began collecting evidence of possible foul play, disputed police allegations of Maloney’s involvement in drug smuggling, and made an urgent call for a full investigation of his death. The blog documented a protest held in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, as well as questions raised by members of the Barbados parliament.
There will be no public process to examine the circumstances of how he died while “in the company of” Barbados police. Eventually, the local news media will quietly let the story fade into the past, and people will say “Well, there was some sort of inquiry and it showed…” BUT THAT WILL BE A LIE.
BFP went on to remind its readers of a previous case in which a young man mysteriously died after an encounter with police. Meanwhile, Barbados Underground posted the full text of a statement by the People’s Democratic Congress, a political party.
… we in PDC ask that NOT ONLY must there be a Coroner’s Inquest into the circumstances of this death as soon as possible , BUT that ALSO the Attorney General allow his department to carry out their own fair and impartial investigations into this grievous affair.
I’Akobi was just like me. Young, intellectual, UWI graduate, ambitious, good job and with locks. You want to think that our society has advanced to such a point that all your other accomplishments mean something….
She linked to a thread at the Rastafari Speaks forum, in which Sis Ali suggested Maloney was the victim of police profiling: “someone saw Rasta up there and called the police.”
With Maloney’s family and the Barbadian Rastafari community still waiting for answers, ICAR has organised another protest march on Friday 1 August — the day when the end of slavery is commemorated across the Anglophone Caribbean — and launched an online petition calling for justice.
And We Are Still Talking about What To Do, In New Orleans – Why ?? Fix The Damn Levees so the city can be a city again, ACE You Asses. you know that the Mr Go made this problem, so undamn the shit and let the wet lands come back to life; and the natural reefs regenerate to save Nola.
Much of New Orleans was flooded by Hurricane Katrina
Building bigger, stronger levees in New Orleans will not be enough to save the US city from another Hurricane Katrina, a report has said.
The risks of severe flooding in the city could “never be fully eliminated”, said an independent panel of experts.
The report said the authorities should consider raising the level of buildings and even abandoning flood-prone areas.
More than 1,800 people died in the devastating 2005 hurricane, and about 80% of the city was flooded.
New Orleans has about 563 km (350 miles) of barriers, levees and other structures intended to protect the city.
But in August 2005, large sections of this system failed and much of the city was inundated by the storm surges brought by Katrina.
The report, from the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Research Council (NRC), said the disaster had exposed the “many weaknesses in the hurricane protection and preparedness systems” for New Orleans and surrounding areas.
It said there had been “undue optimism” about the ability of the protection systems to withstand the impact of a storm on the scale of Katrina.
Voluntary relocation
FLASHBACK TO KATRINA
Katrina struck US Gulf Coast in August 2005 as a Category Three storm, killing more than 1,800 people
New Orleans was 80% flooded after storm surge breached protective levees
US government was blamed for slow, botched response that exacerbated disaster
The report said improvements made to the flood protection system since Katrina had “reduced some vulnerabilities”.
But, it said that “the risks of inundation and flooding never can be fully eliminated by protective structures, no matter how large or sturdy those structures may be”.
The authors advised that as there can be no absolute protection against storm surges and flooding, the authorities should consider encouraging people to move away from areas at risk.
Where this is not possible, “significant improvements in flood-proofing measures will be essential”.
This would include raising the standard height for ground floors of properties, strengthening critical infrastructure such as power and telecommunications and improving evacuation plans.
The report also found that there had been “limited understanding and appreciation of the risks of living behind levees”.
It advised that these risks needed to be communicated more clearly and consistently to those in affected areas.
Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest storms in US history, causing billions of dollar of damage and leaving tens of thousands of people homeless.
The US government was heavily criticised for the extent of the damage and for what was perceived to be a slow response to the disaster.
What We Want to know is, Why would he be in Czechoslovakia anyway ? and who would read anything this asswipe put out ? obviously the leftists are reaching deep into the shit bins to put this type of filth out for circulation. thankfully the plot was stopped before it caught them off guard.
Duke once held a seat for Louisiana in the House of Representatives
Czech authorities have ordered a former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, to leave the country.
The 59-year-old American was invited to the Czech Republic by a local far-right group and had planned to give lectures and promote a book.
But on Friday he was arrested and questioned by police on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, an offence under Czech law.
Mr Duke has not been charged, but was ordered to leave the country.
He has reportedly been given a deadline of midnight on Saturday.
His lawyer was quoted in local media as saying she would lodge a complaint against the police on his behalf.
The Czech interim prime minister-designate, Jan Fischer, appeared on Czech television to say the opinions expressed in Mr Duke’s book were “simply unacceptable, incomprehensible”.
David Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the notorious white supremacist Ku Klux Klan group. He once held a seat for the Louisiana state House of Representatives, and made an unsuccessful bid for the US presidency.
By Rory Cellan-Jones BBC News technology correspondent
The IWF was set up in 1996 to police access to images of child abuse.
The BBC goes behind the scenes at the Internet Watch Foundation to see how its researchers cope with the psychologically demanding job of policing sites peddling images of child abuse.
The watchdog that blocked a Wikipedia page last year over a rock album cover says it still believes that the image at the heart of that controversy was illegal.
But the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) says it has moved on after the row in December 2008, and claims its quest to eradicate child abuse images from the web is now having real success.
Critics have accused the organisation of being both unaccountable and ineffective. This week the BBC was given unique access to the work of the IWF, as the watchdog tries to fight back.
It’s in a house in a quiet village north of Cambridge that the Internet Watch Foundation runs a hotline for reports of child abuse images. It’s a job the self-regulatory body was given in 1996, as the internet industry sought to avoid direct control by the police or government.
Upstairs at its HQ there is a door marked “IWF staff only – image viewing in progress”. I was allowed in, to find four analysts at work, sifting through reports that have arrived overnight from members of the public.
The analysts, who mostly have backgrounds in IT, prefer to remain anonymous, but one of them, Karen, agreed to tell me about her work.
She showed me a list of the reports she had to deal with that day, some from members of the public who said they had been looking for adult sites but had been shocked to come across child abuse images.
Some callers fear they may be accused of downloading illegal images.
Her first task is to try to determine whether the images are in fact illegal under UK law. “My next step would be to chase that image or website to the country where it is located,” she said.
In almost all cases, the offending sites are abroad, and Karen contacts one of the IWF’s 35 sister organisations – if there is one in the country concerned – and informs the UK police.
I put it to Karen that it must be difficult to do such emotionally draining work, especially when some feel that it’s not even worthwhile. “There are times when I questioned my own sanity for doing this,” she admitted.
“However, I’m a mother with two children, I feel that it’s an important job and someone needs to do it. That’s how I get through the day.”
Karen sees some sites cropping up time and again, with the criminals moving them from country to country, trying to stay one step ahead.
She said: “We’re also finding a trend towards sexual abuse images of younger and younger children, and more severe forms of abuse.”
She explains that most of the sites operate a pay-per-view system, charging $80-100 (£55-68) per month for access to images and videos.
The offending sites are also added to the blacklist compiled by the IWF for internet service providers, which then block access.
There are times when I questioned my own sanity for doing this
Karen, IWF researcher
It was this process which led to the blocking of a Wikipedia page about a 1970s album cover featuring an image of a naked young girl. That ruling, reversed within days, threw a spotlight on the IWF, and the transparency of its procedures.
David Gerard of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia and other similar projects, says the incident showed the IWF to be “ham-fisted and incompetent at every level”.
He maintains that there is no way to block illegal content “without massive collateral damage to speech, communication, learning and society”.
Dr Richard Clayton , a computer scientist at Cambridge University, has a different criticism – that the watchdog suffers from confusion about its aims.
Browse The Internet In Privacy using Vidalia Tools
His research shows that, while banks manage to get phishing sites taken down within hours, the IWF takes an average of 28 days to get child abuse sites removed. “‘Are they trying to get sites removed from the internet?’ he asks, if so they’re doing a poor job.
“Alternatively, if they think their aim is to catch the criminals putting up this material, then they should become part of the police.”
The IWF censored an image that appeared on a Wikipedia page
Peter Robbins, chief executive of the IWF, says the various critics are ignoring the fact that the watchdog’s mission is proving a success.
He says the IWF has learned from the Wikipedia controversy, though he still believes the image on the album cover was illegal. “Was that an image of a pre-pubescent girl? Yes. In our view it’s not OK,” he says.
But he accepts that it was not realistic to ban an image that was widely available in shops and on the internet. “I don’t want to dwell on this incident. The fact is that we are dealing with some horrendous content on a daily basis and we’re working really hard with hotlines and law enforcement bodies to try to stop the distributors of these images.”
This is our post from Freedom Sunday – Read All About it, and Decide which story means most to you. then click on the title link and read the whole story; at it’s home blog. these stories were gleaned from Slashdot.
Make sure to leave us a comment, telling us What Freedom Means To You, Really.
Hugh Pickens writes “The NY Times reports that legal and operational problems surrounding the NSA’s surveillance activities have come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees, and a secret national security court, and that the NSA had been engaged in ‘overcollection’ of domestic communications of Americans.
The practice has been described as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional. The Justice Department has acknowledged that there had been problems with the NSA surveillance operation, but said they had been resolved.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the intelligence community, did not address specific aspects of the surveillance problems, but said in a statement that ‘when inadvertent mistakes are made, we take it very seriously and work immediately to correct them.’
The intelligence officials said the problems had grown out of changes enacted by Congress last July to the law that regulates the government’s wiretapping powers, as well as the challenges posed by enacting a new framework for collecting intelligence on terrorism and spying suspects.
Joe Klein at Time Magazine says the bad news is that ‘the NSA apparently has been overstepping the law,’ but the good news is that ‘one of the safeguards in the [FISA Reform] law is a review procedure that seems to have the ability to catch the NSA when it’s overstepping — and that the illegal activities have been exposed, and quickly.’”
By timothy on because-dna-evidence-is-unimpeachable
Mike writes “Starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will also collect DNA from detained immigrants. For example, This year, California began taking DNA upon arrest and expects to nearly double the growth rate of its database, to 390,000 profiles a year, up from 200,000. Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts, however law enforcement officials are expanding their collection of DNA to include millions of people who have only been arrested or detained, but not yet convicted. The move, intended to ‘help solve more crimes,’ is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.”
Death Metal sends this excerpt from an AP report: “General Dynamics Information Technology put out an ad last month on behalf of the Homeland Security Department seeking someone who could ‘think like the bad guy.’ Applicants, it said, must understand hackers’ tools and tactics and be able to analyze Internet traffic and identify vulnerabilities in the federal systems. In the Pentagon’s budget request submitted last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon will increase the number of cyberexperts it can train each year from 80 to 250 by 2011. With warnings that the US is ill-prepared for a cyberattack, the White House conducted a 60-day study of how the government can better manage and use technology (PDF) to protect everything from the electrical grid and stock markets to tax data, airline flight systems, and nuclear launch codes. … Nadia Short, vice president at General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, said the job posting for ethical hackers fills a critical need for the government.”
The EFF has released a beta version of a new search tool that lets you mine the documents the EFF has unearthed using FOIA requests and lawsuits over the years. Quoting: “In celebration of Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies. The documents relate to a wide range of cutting-edge technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy.” I tried a search for “border” among the documents relating to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and turned up 21 results and fascinating reading.
krou writes “The National Security Archive at George Washington University has awarded its 2009 Rosemary Award to the FBI for worst freedom of information performance (PDF of the award). Previous winners have been the CIA and the Treasury. The NSA notes that ‘The FBI’s reports to Congress show that the Bureau is unable to find any records in response to two-thirds of its incoming FOIA requests on average over the past four years, when the other major government agencies averaged only a 13% “no records” response to public requests.’ The FBI’s explanation, according to the NSA, is that ‘files are indexed only by reference terms that have to be manually applied by individual agents,’ and even then, ‘agents don’t always index all relevant terms.’ Furthermore, ‘unless a requester specifically asks for a broader search, the FBI will only look in a central database of electronic file names at FBI headquarters in Washington.’ Any search will therefore ‘miss any internal or cross-references to people who are not the subject of an investigation, any records stored at other FBI offices around the country, and any records created before 1970.’”
angry tapir writes “One of the discussions at the Source Boston Security Showcase has been the militarization of the Internet. Governments looking to silence critics and stymie opposition have added DDOS attacks to their censoring methods, according to Jose Nazario, senior security researcher at Arbor Networks, with international political situations spawning DDOS attacks.”
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes “A New Zealand court has allowed a plaintiff to serve papers on a defendant via Facebook, following a similar ruling from an Australian court last year. But as these rulings do not necessarily mean, as Facebook announced in a press release, that the courts have endorsed Facebook ‘as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication.’ The trend could lead to abuses if courts start taking ‘Facebook service’ too seriously.” For more of the many words written by Bennett, hop on that curiously named link right below.
Defeat Globalism writes in with a Canadian court decision that has ordered a man suing over injuries from a car accident to answer questions about content on his private “friends only” Facebook page. “Lawyers for Janice Roman, the defendant in the lawsuit, believe information posted on John Leduc’s private Facebook site — normally accessible only to his approved ‘friends’ — may be relevant to his claim an accident in Lindsay in 2004 lessened his enjoyment of life. As a result of the ruling by Justice David Brown of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, Leduc must now submit to cross-examination by Roman’s lawyers about what his Facebook page contains. Brown’s Feb. 20 ruling also makes clear that lawyers must now explain to their clients ‘in appropriate cases’ that postings on Facebook or other networking sites — such as MySpace, LinkedIn and even blogs — may be relevant to allegations in a lawsuit, said Tariq Remtulla, a Toronto lawyer who has been following the issue.”
longacre writes “A man on trial in New York for possession of a weapon has been acquitted after subpoenaing his arresting officer’s Facebook and MySpace accounts. His defense: Officer Vaughan Ettienne’s MySpace ‘mood’ was set to ‘devious’ on the day of the arrest, and one day a few weeks before the trial, his Facebook status read ‘Vaughan is watching “Training Day” to brush up on proper police procedure.’ From the article: ‘”You have your Internet persona, and you have what you actually do on the street,” Officer Ettienne said on Tuesday. “What you say on the Internet is all bravado talk, like what you say in a locker room.” Except that trash talk in locker rooms almost never winds up preserved on a digital server somewhere, available for subpoena.’”
By ScuttleMonkey on tap-dancing-on-the-slippery-slope
Defeat Globalism writes to tell us that many journalists, bloggers, and media law specialists are concerned about a new ruling by a US Court of Appeals in Boston. The new ruling is allowing a former Staples employee to sue the company for libel after an email was sent out informing other employees that he had been fired for violations of company procedures regarding expenses reimbursements. “Staples has asked the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling, and 51 news organizations have filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying that the decision, if allowed to stand, ‘will create a precedent that hinders the media’s ability to rely on truthful publication to avoid defamation liability.’ But Wendy Sibbison, the Greenfield appellate lawyer for the fired Staples employee, Alan S. Noonan, said the ruling applies only to lawsuits by private figures against private defendants, that is, defendants not involved in the news business, over purely private matters.”
MJackson writes “The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has published a draft set of proposals for tackling illegal broadband file sharing (P2P) downloads by persistent infringers, among other things. The proposals form part of a discussion piece concerning the role that a UK Digital Rights Agency (DRA) could play. UK Internet Providers will already be required to warn those suspected of such activity and collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers, though they could soon be asked to go even further. The new discussion paper, while not going into much detail, has proposed two potential example solutions to the problem. UK ISPs could employ protocol blocking or bandwidth restrictions in relation to persistent infringers. In other words, P2P services could be blocked, or suspected users might find their service speeds seriously restricted.”
nloop writes “The Pentagon is intending to develop a new spy ship — a dirigible. At 65,000 feet it would provide a 10 year, solar power based, unblinkingly intricate and continuous view of the surface via radar surveillance. Because of its altitude it would be safe from surface-to-air missiles and most aircraft.
A 1/3-scale prototype, now being designed, is ‘known as ISIS, for Integrated Sensor Is the Structure, because the radar system will be built into the structure of the ship. … ‘If successful, the dirigible… could pave the way for a fleet of spy airships, military officials said.’”
Defeat Globalism writes with this excerpt from Wired: “Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are pursuing a 6-month prison term for a Los Angeles man who pleaded guilty in December to one misdemeanor count of uploading pre-release Guns N’ Roses tracks, according to court documents. Kevin Cogill was arrested last summer at gunpoint and charged with uploading nine tracks of the Chinese Democracy album to his music site — antiquiet.com. The album, which cost millions and took 17 years to complete, was released November 23 and reached No. 3 in the charts. The sentence being sought — including the calculation of damages based on the illegal activity of as many as 1,310 websites that disseminated the music after Cogill released it — underscores how serious the government is about punishing those for uploading pre-release material.”
pnorth writes “Malware writers that sell toolkits online for as little as $400 will now configure and host the attacks as a service for another $50, according to email offers cited by security experts. A technical account manager at authentication firm Vasco said that cyber crime is becoming so business-like that online offerings of malicious code often include support and maintenance services. He said ‘it was inevitable that services would be sold to people who bought the malware toolkits but didn’t know how to configure them. Not only can you buy configuration as a service now, you can have the malware operated for you, too.’”
By timothy on please-send-me-some-polonium-antidote
An anonymous reader writes “Russia’s Kremlin-based youth movement Nashi admits being responsible for 2007 cyberattacks against Estonia. An interesting point is that when you DDoS the systems, it’s not the fault of some people who want to crash it but instead the systems’ for blocking their users due to technical limitations. So if I shot someone to death it’s not my fault for shooting them, but theirs instead because of technical limitations of their body.”
The US Department of Homeland Security is studying lies, damned lies, and smells. They hope to prove that human body odor could be used to tell when people are lying. The department says they are already “conducting experiments in deceptive behavior and collecting human odor samples” and that the research it hopes to fund “will consist primarily of the analysis and study of the human odor samples collected to determine if a deception indicator can be found.”
This is Freedom Sunday – Read All About it, and Decide which story means most to you. then click on the title link and read the whole story; at it’s home blog. these stories were gleaned from Slashdot.
Make sure to leave us a comment, telling us What Freedom Means To You, Really.
Hugh Pickens writes “The NY Times reports that legal and operational problems surrounding the NSA’s surveillance activities have come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees, and a secret national security court, and that the NSA had been engaged in ‘overcollection’ of domestic communications of Americans.
The practice has been described as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional. The Justice Department has acknowledged that there had been problems with the NSA surveillance operation, but said they had been resolved.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the intelligence community, did not address specific aspects of the surveillance problems, but said in a statement that ‘when inadvertent mistakes are made, we take it very seriously and work immediately to correct them.’
The intelligence officials said the problems had grown out of changes enacted by Congress last July to the law that regulates the government’s wiretapping powers, as well as the challenges posed by enacting a new framework for collecting intelligence on terrorism and spying suspects.
Joe Klein at Time Magazine says the bad news is that ‘the NSA apparently has been overstepping the law,’ but the good news is that ‘one of the safeguards in the [FISA Reform] law is a review procedure that seems to have the ability to catch the NSA when it’s overstepping — and that the illegal activities have been exposed, and quickly.’”
By timothy on because-dna-evidence-is-unimpeachable
Mike writes “Starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will also collect DNA from detained immigrants. For example, This year, California began taking DNA upon arrest and expects to nearly double the growth rate of its database, to 390,000 profiles a year, up from 200,000. Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts, however law enforcement officials are expanding their collection of DNA to include millions of people who have only been arrested or detained, but not yet convicted. The move, intended to ‘help solve more crimes,’ is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.”
Death Metal sends this excerpt from an AP report: “General Dynamics Information Technology put out an ad last month on behalf of the Homeland Security Department seeking someone who could ‘think like the bad guy.’ Applicants, it said, must understand hackers’ tools and tactics and be able to analyze Internet traffic and identify vulnerabilities in the federal systems. In the Pentagon’s budget request submitted last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon will increase the number of cyberexperts it can train each year from 80 to 250 by 2011. With warnings that the US is ill-prepared for a cyberattack, the White House conducted a 60-day study of how the government can better manage and use technology (PDF) to protect everything from the electrical grid and stock markets to tax data, airline flight systems, and nuclear launch codes. … Nadia Short, vice president at General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, said the job posting for ethical hackers fills a critical need for the government.”
The EFF has released a beta version of a new search tool that lets you mine the documents the EFF has unearthed using FOIA requests and lawsuits over the years. Quoting: “In celebration of Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies. The documents relate to a wide range of cutting-edge technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy.” I tried a search for “border” among the documents relating to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and turned up 21 results and fascinating reading.
krou writes “The National Security Archive at George Washington University has awarded its 2009 Rosemary Award to the FBI for worst freedom of information performance (PDF of the award). Previous winners have been the CIA and the Treasury. The NSA notes that ‘The FBI’s reports to Congress show that the Bureau is unable to find any records in response to two-thirds of its incoming FOIA requests on average over the past four years, when the other major government agencies averaged only a 13% “no records” response to public requests.’ The FBI’s explanation, according to the NSA, is that ‘files are indexed only by reference terms that have to be manually applied by individual agents,’ and even then, ‘agents don’t always index all relevant terms.’ Furthermore, ‘unless a requester specifically asks for a broader search, the FBI will only look in a central database of electronic file names at FBI headquarters in Washington.’ Any search will therefore ‘miss any internal or cross-references to people who are not the subject of an investigation, any records stored at other FBI offices around the country, and any records created before 1970.’”
angry tapir writes “One of the discussions at the Source Boston Security Showcase has been the militarization of the Internet. Governments looking to silence critics and stymie opposition have added DDOS attacks to their censoring methods, according to Jose Nazario, senior security researcher at Arbor Networks, with international political situations spawning DDOS attacks.”
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes “A New Zealand court has allowed a plaintiff to serve papers on a defendant via Facebook, following a similar ruling from an Australian court last year. But as these rulings do not necessarily mean, as Facebook announced in a press release, that the courts have endorsed Facebook ‘as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication.’ The trend could lead to abuses if courts start taking ‘Facebook service’ too seriously.” For more of the many words written by Bennett, hop on that curiously named link right below.
Defeat Globalism writes in with a Canadian court decision that has ordered a man suing over injuries from a car accident to answer questions about content on his private “friends only” Facebook page. “Lawyers for Janice Roman, the defendant in the lawsuit, believe information posted on John Leduc’s private Facebook site — normally accessible only to his approved ‘friends’ — may be relevant to his claim an accident in Lindsay in 2004 lessened his enjoyment of life. As a result of the ruling by Justice David Brown of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, Leduc must now submit to cross-examination by Roman’s lawyers about what his Facebook page contains. Brown’s Feb. 20 ruling also makes clear that lawyers must now explain to their clients ‘in appropriate cases’ that postings on Facebook or other networking sites — such as MySpace, LinkedIn and even blogs — may be relevant to allegations in a lawsuit, said Tariq Remtulla, a Toronto lawyer who has been following the issue.”
longacre writes “A man on trial in New York for possession of a weapon has been acquitted after subpoenaing his arresting officer’s Facebook and MySpace accounts. His defense: Officer Vaughan Ettienne’s MySpace ‘mood’ was set to ‘devious’ on the day of the arrest, and one day a few weeks before the trial, his Facebook status read ‘Vaughan is watching “Training Day” to brush up on proper police procedure.’ From the article: ‘”You have your Internet persona, and you have what you actually do on the street,” Officer Ettienne said on Tuesday. “What you say on the Internet is all bravado talk, like what you say in a locker room.” Except that trash talk in locker rooms almost never winds up preserved on a digital server somewhere, available for subpoena.’”
By ScuttleMonkey on tap-dancing-on-the-slippery-slope
Defeat Globalism writes to tell us that many journalists, bloggers, and media law specialists are concerned about a new ruling by a US Court of Appeals in Boston. The new ruling is allowing a former Staples employee to sue the company for libel after an email was sent out informing other employees that he had been fired for violations of company procedures regarding expenses reimbursements. “Staples has asked the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling, and 51 news organizations have filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying that the decision, if allowed to stand, ‘will create a precedent that hinders the media’s ability to rely on truthful publication to avoid defamation liability.’ But Wendy Sibbison, the Greenfield appellate lawyer for the fired Staples employee, Alan S. Noonan, said the ruling applies only to lawsuits by private figures against private defendants, that is, defendants not involved in the news business, over purely private matters.”
Aryabhata writes in with news that should chill the hearts of evil dictators and tax cheats everywhere: one of the last bastions of strong banking secrecy, Switzerland, is bowing to international pressure and agreeing to cooperate with some foreign investigations of wrongdoing. “…the Swiss government announced on Friday that it would cooperate in international tax investigations, breaking with its long-standing tradition of protecting wealthy foreigners accused of hiding billions of dollars. Austria and Luxembourg also said they would help. … The famed ‘numbered accounts’ that do not bear the owner’s name will still be available for clients willing to pay for added anonymity. … Over the past month, leaders have made similar promises in Singapore, Liechtenstein, Bermuda, the British islands of Jersey and Guernsey, and tiny Andorra… other ‘offshore’ banking centers are still available in the Caribbean, Panama, Dubai and elsewhere.”
MJackson writes “The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has published a draft set of proposals for tackling illegal broadband file sharing (P2P) downloads by persistent infringers, among other things. The proposals form part of a discussion piece concerning the role that a UK Digital Rights Agency (DRA) could play. UK Internet Providers will already be required to warn those suspected of such activity and collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers, though they could soon be asked to go even further. The new discussion paper, while not going into much detail, has proposed two potential example solutions to the problem. UK ISPs could employ protocol blocking or bandwidth restrictions in relation to persistent infringers. In other words, P2P services could be blocked, or suspected users might find their service speeds seriously restricted.”
By ScuttleMonkey on daily-dose-of-unbridled-stupidity
TechDirt pointed out a recent bit of foolishness as a followup to California Assemblyman Joel Anderson’s push to force Google and other online mapping/satellite companies to blur out schools, churches, and government buildings. When pushed, apparently his justification was that leaving these buildings un-obscured is the same as shouting fire. “News.com ran an interview with Anderson, where he attempts to defend his proposed legislation as a matter of public safety. He claims that there is no good reason why anyone would need to clearly see these buildings online, and that it can only be used for bad purposes. [...] Apparently, Anderson is the final determiner of what good people do and what bad people do with online maps.”
By timothy on gentlemen-do-not-read-each-other’s-maps
thefickler writes “Gone are the days when governments could easily hide top secret bases. These days it’s a weekend pastime to see who can find top secret facilities using Google Earth. Now it’s the UK government’s turn to be outraged after a secret facility was revealed by a British tabloid. The facility is said to be located in Faslane on the River Clyde in Scotland. This nuclear base was previously blurred out by the request of the British Government.
However, with the latest update provided via Google Earth, many of the blurred out locations were accidentally revealed.” Update: 3/08 at 14:24 by SS: Multiple readers have pointed out that the issue here is not the location of the base — it’s simply that details of buildings and objects within the base (such as the location of a pair of nuclear submarines) are accidentally visible after the UK government specifically requested they be blurred out.
nloop writes “The Pentagon is intending to develop a new spy ship — a dirigible. At 65,000 feet it would provide a 10 year, solar power based, unblinkingly intricate and continuous view of the surface via radar surveillance. Because of its altitude it would be safe from surface-to-air missiles and most aircraft.
A 1/3-scale prototype, now being designed, is ‘known as ISIS, for Integrated Sensor Is the Structure, because the radar system will be built into the structure of the ship. … ‘If successful, the dirigible… could pave the way for a fleet of spy airships, military officials said.’”
Defeat Globalism writes with this excerpt from Wired: “Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are pursuing a 6-month prison term for a Los Angeles man who pleaded guilty in December to one misdemeanor count of uploading pre-release Guns N’ Roses tracks, according to court documents. Kevin Cogill was arrested last summer at gunpoint and charged with uploading nine tracks of the Chinese Democracy album to his music site — antiquiet.com. The album, which cost millions and took 17 years to complete, was released November 23 and reached No. 3 in the charts. The sentence being sought — including the calculation of damages based on the illegal activity of as many as 1,310 websites that disseminated the music after Cogill released it — underscores how serious the government is about punishing those for uploading pre-release material.”
pnorth writes “Malware writers that sell toolkits online for as little as $400 will now configure and host the attacks as a service for another $50, according to email offers cited by security experts. A technical account manager at authentication firm Vasco said that cyber crime is becoming so business-like that online offerings of malicious code often include support and maintenance services. He said ‘it was inevitable that services would be sold to people who bought the malware toolkits but didn’t know how to configure them. Not only can you buy configuration as a service now, you can have the malware operated for you, too.’”
By timothy on please-send-me-some-polonium-antidote
An anonymous reader writes “Russia’s Kremlin-based youth movement Nashi admits being responsible for 2007 cyberattacks against Estonia. An interesting point is that when you DDoS the systems, it’s not the fault of some people who want to crash it but instead the systems’ for blocking their users due to technical limitations. So if I shot someone to death it’s not my fault for shooting them, but theirs instead because of technical limitations of their body.”
The US Department of Homeland Security is studying lies, damned lies, and smells. They hope to prove that human body odor could be used to tell when people are lying. The department says they are already “conducting experiments in deceptive behavior and collecting human odor samples” and that the research it hopes to fund “will consist primarily of the analysis and study of the human odor samples collected to determine if a deception indicator can be found.”
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