Thursday 12 October 2017

Have those who believe climate change is real become a silent majority in Australia?


On 4 October 2017 Australian mainstream media began to publish articles predicting increases in summer temperatures, with 50C extremes becoming common by the end of the century.

The articles spoke of associated increased health risks and heat-related urban infrastructure stress. They mentioned a study published in the science journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Given much of the Australia population experienced the heat extremes of the summer of 2015 these articles should have been speaking to believers when it came to the impact of climate change.

Instead on that Wednesday the comments section of many of the online versions of these articles were choked with anti-science, anti-climate change sentiments. None of those making negative comments appear to have read the research mentioned.

A year earlier, on 26 September 2016, ABC News had reported:

A survey of more than 2,000 Australians by the Climate Institute has found 77 per cent believe climate change is occurring and 90 per cent believe the Federal Government has a responsibility to drive action on it.
The research showed most Australians trust the scientific evidence of climate change and believe there are job and investment opportunities in renewable energy.

If recent reader comments in mainstream media are any indication believers are now becoming a relatively silent majority.

Have they lost heart in the face of successive national leaders like the blindly destructive Abbott and weak-kneed Turnbull?

BACKGROUND


Abstract
Record-breaking temperatures can detrimentally impact ecosystems, infrastructure, and human health. Previous studies show that climate change has influenced some observed extremes, which are expected to become more frequent under enhanced future warming. Understanding the magnitude, as a well as frequency, of such future extremes is critical for limiting detrimental impacts. We focus on temperature changes in Australian regions, including over a major coral reef-building area, and assess the potential magnitude of future extreme temperatures under Paris Agreement global warming targets (1.5°C and 2°C). Under these limits to global mean warming, we determine a set of projected high-magnitude unprecedented Australian temperature extremes. These include extremes unexpected based on observational temperatures, including current record-breaking events. For example, while the difference in global-average warming during the hottest Australian summer and the 2°C Paris target is 1.1°C, extremes of 2.4°C above the observed summer record are simulated. This example represents a more than doubling of the magnitude of extremes, compared with global mean change, and such temperatures are unexpected based on the observed record alone. Projected extremes do not necessarily scale linearly with mean global warming and this effect demonstrates the significant potential benefits of limiting warming to 1.5°C, compared to 2°C or warmer.

Plain Language Summary
Extreme temperatures affect ecosystems, infrastructure, and human health. Understanding how climate change is impacting climate extremes and how extremes will change under future global warming are important scientific research questions. Previous scientific studies have focused on how current temperature extremes have been impacted by climate change, or on how the frequency of these current extremes will change in the future. This study takes a different approach and examines how the severity of future temperature extremes might change in the future. We assess the possible severity of Australian temperature extremes under the limits to warming that are described in the Paris Agreement (1.5{degree sign}C and 2{degree sign}C of global warming above the period prior to industrialization). This study finds that the magnitude of future temperature extremes for Australia does not necessarily increase at the same rate of global warming. The severity of possible future temperature extremes simulated by climate models in this study poses serious challenges for preparedness for future climatic change in Australia. For example, daily temperature extremes of 3.8{degree sign}C above existing records are simulated for Australian states, even under the ambitious Paris efforts to curb global warming.

Lewis, S., King, A, & Perkins-Kirkpatrick, S. (2017) Defining a New Normal for Extremes in a Warming World:

Abstract
The term “new normal” has been used in scientific literature and public commentary to contextualize contemporary climate events as an indicator of a changing climate due to enhanced greenhouse warming. A new normal has been used broadly but tends to be descriptive and ambiguously defined. Here we review previous studies conceptualizing this idea of a new climatological normal and argue that this term should be used cautiously and with explicit definition in order to avoid confusion. We provide a formal definition of a new climate normal relative to present based around record-breaking contemporary events and explore the timing of when such extremes become statistically normal in the future model simulations. Applying this method to the record-breaking global-average 2015 temperatures as a reference event and a suite of model climate models, we determine that 2015 global annual-average temperatures will be the new normal by 2040 in all emissions scenarios. At the regional level, a new normal can be delayed through aggressive greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Using this specific case study to investigate a climatological new normal, our approach demonstrates the greater value of the concept of a climatological new normal for understanding and communicating climate change when the term is explicitly defined. This approach moves us one step closer to understanding how current extremes will change in the future in a warming world.

Full text here. PDF version here.


Abstract
Persistent extreme temperatures were observed in Australia during 2012–2014. We examine changes in the rate of hot and cold record breaking over the observational record for Australia- and State-wide temperatures. The number of new hot (high-maximum and high-minimum temperatures) temperature records increases dramatically in recent decades, while the number of cold records decreases. In a stationary climate, cold and hot records are expected to occur in equal frequency on longer than interannual time scales; however, during 2000–2014, new hot records outnumber new cold records by 12 to one on average. Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 experiments reveal increased hot temperature record breaking occurs in simulations that impose anthropogenic forcings but not in natural forcings-only experiments. This disproportionate hot to cold record breaking rates provides a useful indicator of nonstationarity in temperatures, which is related to the underlying mean observed Australian warming trend of 0.9°C since high-quality records began in 1910.

Full text here.

Wednesday 11 October 2017

The new Abbott Manifesto is now online


http://tonyabbott.com.au/, snapshot taken 11 October 2017

Let's Make Australia Work Again

"We need to give the public something to hope for; we need to give our own people something to fight for." - Tony Abbott

A plan to win the next election

Fix the Parliament. Reform the senate – make it a house of review, not a house of rejection – to end the gridlock and make Australia work again.

Live within our means. Stop all new and frivolous spending to fix the budget and stop ripping off our grandchildren.

Take the pressure off power prices. End further subsidies of intermittent and unreliable energy.

Make housing more affordable. By scaling back immigration to migrants who can make a contribution from day one.

Make Australia safe. Keep Jihadis off the streets. Stop hate-preachers. Make better use of the armed forces. Let police shoot-to-kill to save innocent lives.

Celebrate Australia - don’t run it down. End funding for bully bureaucracies and welcome straight talking.

Every line in this divisive six-point manifesto flags real danger to a nation hoping to remain an open, free and peaceful multicultural society based on democratic principals and equality before the law. 

Pollie dripping venom at taxpayers' expense


Federal Labor MP for Melbourne Ports since 1998 Michael Danby may have let his website www.nolibirandeal.com lapse on 14 September 2017, however his venom is still dripping at taxpayers’ expense and is now pointedly directed at an ABC journalist.

Australian Jewish News, via Twitter, 1 October 2017, half-page advertisement

Australian Jewish News, 5 October 2017, half-page advertisement


Australian Jewish News, 14 September 2007 via Media Watch

However, the recent increased criticism might be because Mr. Danby may no longer be hopeful of retaining Labor Party preselection ahead of the next federal election.

The Opposition Leader is not the only one deeply unimpressed by Danby’s attack ads.

Perhaps the party’s over for this parliamentarian?

UPDATE

On 16 October 2017 ABC News reported that Danby took a week's sick leave in 2016 but rather than take to his bed he took off for Israel instead.

Wonder if that trip was also at taxpayer expense?

Facebook Inc continues to test the world's patience when it comes to privacy issues and US patience in relation to taxation matters


Worldwide Facebook Inc is estimated to have 2.01 billion monthly active users, with est. 1.7 billion of these users living outside of the USA and Canada.

Australian users comprised 17 million of these account holders in August 2017 - 12 million logging in daily.

In pursuit of profit this social media company is a ruthless data miner – collecting and collating information about every available aspect of the lives of all holders of Facebook accounts.

A fact that makes this company’s users a target of US federal government mass surveillance.

Given that Facebook Inc created a holding company Facebook Ireland Ltd in the low-taxing Republic of Ireland and it is this company which appears to legally possess the data of those est.1.7 billion users, it now finds itself before European Union courts.

Privacy activist @maxschrems, 3 October 2017:

Facebook operates its international business outside of the United States and Canada via a separate company in Ireland called “Facebook Ireland Ltd”. 85.9% of all worldwide Facebook users (everyone except USA and Canada) are managed in Dublin (Link), which is understood to be part of Facebook’s tax avoidance scheme.

Facebook currently sends all user data to its parent company, “Facebook Inc.” in the United States for processing. European law (Articles 25 and 26 of Directive 95/46/EC) requires that data can only be transferred outside of the EU if the personal data is “adequately protected”. This is in conflict with US mass surveillance laws, which “Facebook Inc.” in the USA is subject to.

Max Schrems: “In simple terms, US law requires Facebook to help the NSA with mass surveillance and EU law prohibits just that. As Facebook is subject to both jurisdictions, they got themselves in a legal dilemma that they cannot possibly solve in the long run.”

The Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland is investigating a complaint made by Max Schrems, an Austrian student with a Facebook account. This complaint relates to the transfer of his data by Facebook Ireland to Facebook Inc. in the United States for processing - an act which is alleged to violate European fundamental rights under Articles 7, 8 and 47 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.


The subsequent investigation by the Data Protection Commissioner has given rise to a High Court case in Ireland (3 October 2017 judgement). The Court has now referred the issue of the validity of the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clause decisions to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling.

History of the Case according to Max Schrems:
The case is based on a complaint, filed by Mr Schrems against Facebook in 2013:

* The case is based on a complaint [PDF] brought by Mr Schrems against Facebook Ireland Ltd. before the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (“DPC”) in 2013 (4 years ago).
* The DPC first refused to investigate the complaint, calling it “frivolous”, but Mr Schrems subsequently succeeded before the CJEU, which overturned the “Safe Harbor” (a EU-US data sharing system) in 2015 [case C-362/14] and ruled that the DPC must investigate the complaint.
* After the invalidation of “Safe Harbor”, Facebook used another legal tool to transfer data outside of the EU, called “Standard Contractual Clauses” (SCCs) [Facebook’s SCCs - PDF].
* SCCs are a contract between Facebook Ireland and Facebook USA, where Facebook USA pledges to follow EU privacy principles [official EU Info Page].
* The case subsequently continued with an updated complaint [PDF] in 2015. The Irish DPC joined Mr Schrems view that the SCCs cannot overcome fundamental problems under US surveillance laws, and specifically agreed that there is no proper legal redress in the United States in such cases. Other issues raised in Mr Schrems complaint have not been investigated yet.
* The DPC refused to use its power to suspend data flows of Facebook as asked by Mr Schrems.
* Instead of only prohibiting Facebook’s EU-US data transfers under Article 4 of the SCCs, the DPC took the unusual move of issuing proceedings against Facebook Ireland Ltd. and Mr Schrems before the Irish High Court. In the procedure the DPC aims to invalidate the SCCs entirely by referring the case to the European Court of Justice (CJEU) in Luxembourg.
*The case was heard for five Weeks in February 2017. The United States Government was joined as an “amicus” to the case, along two industry lobby groups and the US privacy non-profit “EPIC”.

Facebook Inc’s "Double Irish" tax avoidance scheme and other matters also saw it before a US court in 2016, having refused to comply with a number of IRS tax summons. The court case continues to date.

The IRS 2008-2010 audit of Facbook Inc resulted in an assessment of the intangible assets transferred in those years having a value of US $13.8 billion, increasing Facebook's 2010 income by US $84.9 million and causing an income tax deficiency for the parent company.

Excerpt from United States Securities And Exchange Commission filing by Facebook Inc for the quarterly period ended June 30, 2016:

We are subject to taxation in the United States and various other state and foreign jurisdictions. The material jurisdictions in which we are subject to potential examination include the United States and Ireland. We are under examination by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for our 2008 through 2013 tax years. Our 2014 and subsequent years remain open to examination by the IRS. Our 2011 and subsequent years remain open to examination in Ireland. We do not anticipate a significant impact to our gross unrecognized tax benefits within the next 12 months related to these years. On July 27, 2016, we received a Statutory Notice of Deficiency (Notice) from the IRS relating to transfer pricing with our foreign subsidiaries in conjunction with the examination of the 2010 tax year. While the Notice applies only to the 2010 tax year, the IRS states that it will also apply its position for tax years subsequent to 2010, which, if the IRS prevails in its position, could result in an additional federal tax liability of an estimated aggregate amount of approximately $3.0 - $5.0 billion, plus interest and any penalties asserted. We do not agree with the position of the IRS and will file a petition in the United States Tax Court challenging the Notice. If the IRS prevails in the assessment of additional tax due based on its position, the assessed tax, interest and penalties, if any, could have a material adverse impact on our financial position, results of operations or cash flows. [my yellow bolding]

Tuesday 10 October 2017

National ID Database: so you think if you do nothing wrong you'll have nothing to fear?


“There is also a tendency for technologies to converge, allowing for the creation of devices with increased surveillance capabilities. CCTV, for example, may be combined with facial recognition technology….to identify individuals from their images. Another example is modern mobile phones, which combine telephonic services with GPS tracking software, digital visual and sound recording capabilities, and connection to the internet. A consequence of the convergence of surveillance technologies is the greater ability of surveillance users to compile detailed pictures of members of the public, making it increasingly difficult for individuals to maintain their privacy and anonymity.” [Victorian Law Reform Commission – Surveillance in Public Places: Final Report 18, 2010]

This month the Turnbull Government, state and territory governments have agreed to add the photo IDs of all registered drivers to the Facial Biometric Matching Capability (FBMC) database (est. 16 November 2016) which already has access to passport photographs, visa application photos, airport surveillance images and arrest ID images from the criminal justice system.

Additional images will probably be harvested from social media and added to this database which is to be used with CCTV footage of the general population going about their daily lives when considered necessary by police and security services. The biometric 'map' of an individual's face created by FBMC being easily applied to searches of video footage from public venue, shopping centre, street and road cameras as CCTV technology is now capable of recognising faces of people, vehicles, animals and bags automatically.

FBMC will involve using a Face Verification Service , Face Identification Service, One Person One Licence Service and Facial Recognition Analysis Utility Service in identity matching, along with a the Document Verification Service, Identity Data Sharing Service and/or any other government identity matching or data sharing service and, of course one of the areas it will be used is in so-called crime prevention.

Use of this facial recognition database will also be available to authorised private sector agencies and, like many new tools it is likely there will be function creep so that photo IDs will be required by more government agencies and private businesses when interacting with individuals in the future.

The Facial Biometric Matching Capability database will function alongside the Biometric Identification Services (BIS) which features national identification capability using fingerprints, palm prints, foot prints and facial recognition, person identity and evidence image case management, image enhancement tools and record auditing, matching services of one to one, one to few, one to many, and many to many, as well as photobook, photo line-up and witness viewing services.

But what’s the worry? After all if you are an ordinary person not committing a crime you have nothing to fear. Right?

Well there is this on the horizon…………..


Criminologists at Monash undertake cutting edge research in the areas of risk and security that is theoretically sophisticated, innovative and highly relevant to areas of pressing national and international concern. The discipline hosts two recipients of the Australian government’s prestigious Future Fellowship Award, Professor Sharon Pickering and Associate Professor Weber, both undertaking programs of research on border policing. Their jointly authored book Globalization and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier was awarded Australia’s most significant criminology publication award in 2013. The Border Crossing Observatory is the online repository of all border-related research undertaken by Monash Criminology and our national and international partners. Criminologists at Monash have received multiple highly competitive Australian Research Council grants to investigate a host of risk and security related topics, amongst them, counter terrorism laws and policing, immigration and exploitive labour practices, deportation, regional security, and the gendered nature of border crossing and transnational law enforcement. Our risk and security research expertise includes the interrelated topics of borders, counter terrorism, state crime, transnational crime, irregular migration, human trafficking, risk and disability, and pre-crime. [my yellow bolding]

What is “pre-crime”?

Put simply, “pre-crime” activity is a crime not yet committed – it is the suspicion that an individual might be capable of breaking an unidentified law at some unspecified time in the future.

Such suspicion does not mean there is a need to charge, prosecute or convict for a specific crime. Intervention at “pre-crime” stage is supposedly risk containment.

You don’t have to be researching bomb-building or Googling how to buy a weapon online to commit a “pre-crime” activity - it can be your thoughts and political opinions spoken aloud or written down, as well as your actions at a public meeting or protest rally.

It can even be allegedly ‘guilty knowledge’ in that you knew the time and place a small environmental activist group was going to confront their local MP or you saw a person painting an anti-government picket sign ahead of a planned street march.

Going to the media – social or mainstream – with a genuine complaint against a government department might be considered a “pre-crime” if you visibly persist in seeking answers, redress or apology. You could easily be labelled "fixated" by police if a government minister takes offence and decides to complain.

If you make a small donation to a group the police or government consider problematic, troublesome or obstructive of the aims of government or big business you may at some time in the future be considered politically partisan and displaying “pre-crime” tendencies.

These are just some of the groups that are already complained about by big business and politicians: Environment Victoria, Wilderness Society (Australia, Victoria & Queensland), Friends of the Earth, Victorian National Parks Association, Australian Conservation Foundation, Lock the Gate Alliance, 350.org Australia, the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, the Australian Marine Conservation Society, Australian Marine Conservation Society, Friends of the Earth Australia, Politics in the Pub and GetUp! as well as Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd.

Just belonging to a group or community association which speaks up on matters of social, economic, environmental or political concern could see you being eyed off as part of a potential conspiracy in the making.

In at least one Western country pre-crime can also manifest itself as a suspicion that you have come into a city centre with the intention of having a drink or two and you will be given a 48 hour direction-to-leave order.

With the notion of “pre-crime” there is no presumption of innocence and little more than lip service to due process if any arm of state or federal government decides you are a person of interest.

So how will pre-crime activity be monitored by police and security services? Well one of the methods used will be surveillance and this surveillance may involve use of the Facial Biometric Matching Capability database created by the Turnbull Government.

Surely this couldn’t possibly happen in Australia? you say. Think again. 

We already keep individuals in gaol long after their court-imposed sentence has been fully completed under continuing detention legislation, have preventative detention without charge and control orders which can be applied to both minors and adults, police are known to use spyware to enter, monitor and control home computers and, in certain circumstances your home can be entered and searched without your knowledge by police and security services.

And here in Australia we have a history of unwarranted surveillance based on an individual's political association (1950s Cold War era) and political dissent (1960s & early 1970s Viet Nam War era) as well as virtually unchallenged unlawful use of coercive powers (Border Force 2014 to 2017).

Police and security agencies are constantly pushing for more legislation which would allow amongst other matters the creation of a raft of pre-emptive, punitive measures based solely on suspicion and an individual’s “pre-crime” tendencies.

Right now in Australia governments are all about political and physical control of the population - they are not about human rights, 'civil liberties' or a free, open and democratic society.

As a society Australia has been sliding down that slippery slope towards an authoritarian destination for years now and in 2017 we appear to have reached the bottom of the slope.

“For years, there’s been ample evidence that authoritarian governments around the world are relying on technology produced by American, Canadian, and European companies to facilitate human rights abuses.  From software that enables the filtering and blocking of online content to tools that help governments spy on their citizens, many such companies are actively serving autocratic governments as "repression’s little helper."
The reach of these technologies is astonishingly broad: governments can listen in on cell phone calls, use voice recognition to scan mobile networks, read emails and text messages, censor web pages, track a citizen’s every movement using GPS, and can even change email contents while en route to a recipient. Some tools are installed using the same type of malicious malware and spyware used by online criminals to steal credit card and banking information. They can secretly turn on webcams built into personal laptops and microphones in cell phones not being used. And all of this information is filtered and organized on such a massive scale that it can be used to spy on every person in an entire country.” [Electronic Frontiers Foundation, accessed 7 October 2017]

“Australia’s leading privacy and civil liberties organisations condemn the decision by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to provide all images from state and territory driver’s licence databases to the federal National Facial Biometric Matching Capability.
The creation of such a comprehensive national facial database is an unnecessary and disproportionate invasion of the privacy rights of all Australians, is the foundation for suspicionless, warrantless mass surveillance and is fundamentally incompatible with a free and open society.

David Vaile, Chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation said, “This government has proven it is blind and deaf to privacy and personal information security threats. Make no mistake – this database will affect all Australians, even the most conscientious and law-abiding. It will likely generate massive ‘false positive’ lists that will flood our very effective police and security services with useless distractions. We’ve already seen calls for ‘scope creep’ to cover welfare enforcement, and there’s every reason to expect this capability will come to be used to identify people with unpaid fines and other minor issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” [Electronic Frontiers Australia, 6 October 2017]

“Every single portion of human rights activism overlaps, manifests or is exercised with the use of technology. That alone caused attackers and adversaries to recognize that technology itself is a good vehicle to get to these people and interfere with them or cause them harm.” [Claudio Guarnieri of Amnesty International quoted in Threat Post at Kapersky Lab, 4 October 2017]

Trump administration seeking information on thousands of people who interacted with anti-Trump Facebook page


CNN Politics, 29 September 2017:

Washington (CNN)Trump administration lawyers are demanding the private account information of potentially thousands of Facebook users in three separate search warrants served on the social media giant, according to court documents obtained by CNN.

The warrants specifically target the accounts of three Facebook users who are described by their attorneys as "anti-administration activists who have spoken out at organized events, and who are generally very critical of this administration's policies."….

These warrants were first reported by LawNewz.com.

Facebook has not responded to a request for comment about whether it has, or plans to, comply with the search warrants.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing the three Facebook users, filed a motion to quash the warrants Thursday.

"What is particularly chilling about these warrants is that anti-administration political activists are going to have their political associations and views scrutinized by the very administration they are protesting," said ACLU attorney Scott Michelman.

Facebook was initially served the warrants in February 2017 along with a gag order which barred the social media company from alerting the three users that the government was seeking their private information, Michelman said. However, Michelman says that government attorneys dropped the gag order in mid-September and agreed that Facebook could expose the existence of these warrants, which has prompted the latest court filings. Michelman, however, says all court filings associated with the search warrant, and any response from Facebook, remain under seal.

The Justice Department is not commenting on these search warrants, but government attorneys have issued a similar search warrant to the web provider DreamHost seeking wide-ranging information about visitors to the website disruptj20.org, which provided a forum for anti-Trump protestors. In that case, DOJ modified its initial search warrant seeking millions of IP address for the visitors who merely clicked on the disruptj20.org website. But DC Superior Court Judge Robert Morin largely granted prosecutors' request to collect a vast set of records from the company, which will include emails of the users who signed up for an account associated with the website, and membership lists……

American Civil Liberties Union DC, media release, 28 September 2017:

Overbroad Search Warrant Implicates Private Pages of Two Local Activists and First Amendment Rights of Thousands of Facebook Users

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia (ACLU-DC) went to court today to block the enforcement of search warrants targeting three Facebook accounts as part of the government’s investigation and prosecution of activists arrested on Inauguration Day 2017 in Washington D.C.

Two of the warrants would require Facebook to disclose to the government all information from the personal Facebook profiles of local DisruptJ20 activists Lacy MacAuley and Legba Carrefour from November 1, 2016 through February 9, 2017. Although the warrants claim to seek only evidence in support of the government’s prosecutions of January 20 demonstrations, they demand—among other things—all private messages, friend lists, status updates, comments, photos, video, and other private information solely intended for the users’ Facebook friends and family, even if they have nothing to do with Inauguration Day. The warrants also seek information about actions taken on Facebook, including all searches performed by the users, groups or networks joined, and all “data and information that has been deleted by the user.”

The third search warrant was issued for the “DisruptJ20” Facebook page (now called “Resist This”), administered and moderated by Emmelia Talarico. Although the page is public, the warrant would require the disclosure of non-public lists of people who planned to attend political organizing events and even the names of people who simply liked, followed, reacted to, commented on, or otherwise engaged with the content on the Facebook page. During the three-month span the search warrant covers, approximately 6,000 Facebook users liked the page.
The ACLU-DC filed a motion to intervene on behalf of the Facebook users whose accounts are targeted, and a motion to quash or modify the search warrants, arguing that the warrants are overbroad under the Fourth Amendment (which protects personal privacy) and are particularly problematic because the lawful political associations and activities of the users and thousands of third parties will be revealed. The ACLU filing asks the court either to void the warrants outright or to appoint a “special master” who is not part of the prosecutor’s office, to review the Facebook information before providing to the prosecutor only the material—if there is any—relevant to their criminal prosecutions.

“Opening up the entire contents of a personal Facebook page for review by the government is a gross invasion of privacy,” said Scott Michelman, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU-DC.  “The primary purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to prevent this type of exploratory rummaging through a person’s private information. Moreover, when law enforcement officers can comb through records concerning political organizing in opposition to the very administration for which those officers work, the result is the chilling of First Amendment-protected political activity.”

None of the ACLU-DC’s clients in today’s filing has been charged by the U.S. Attorney with any Inauguration Day-related crimes.

The public first learned of this case when Facebook revealed it had received the warrants and challenged a gag order attached to the warrants that prevented the company from notifying its customers that their information was sought by federal law enforcement. Public interest groups including the ACLU, ACLU-DC, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Citizen, as well as internet companies including Google, Apple, and Microsoft, filed friend-of-the-court briefs arguing that the gag order should be lifted so the Facebook users could challenge the constitutionality of the search warrants under the First and Fourth Amendments. On the eve of the hearing on the gag order before the D.C. Court of Appeals, the government abruptly withdrew the order. Facebook then notified MacAuley, Carrefour, and Talarico of the warrants and the threats to their privacy.

“My Facebook page contains the most private aspects of my life—and also a frightening amount of information on the people in my life. There are intimate details of my love life, family, and things the federal government just doesn’t need to see,” said MacAuley, one of the ACLU-DC clients challenging the enforcement of the warrants. “Jeff Sessions doesn’t need to see my family photos.”

"This is part of a pattern of prosecutorial overreach in the repression of Inauguration Day protestors," said Carrefour. "This warrant is more than just a violation of privacy. It is a direct attack on D.C.’s grassroots organizing community," said Talarico. "In a city rife with inequities and injustices, the deck is already stacked against us. This overreaching warrant would strike a devastating blow to organizers working every day to make this city a better place."

This is second known attempt by the government to conduct unlawful dragnet searches of the internet and social media in search of evidence against activists arrested on Inauguration Day. In a similar case of government overreach, the government had issued a warrant to website hosting provider Dreamhost for the IP addresses of the 1.3 million people who ever visited the DisruptJ20.org website. Dreamhost, supported by several amici and intervenors, challenged the scope of the warrant and went public with the government’s overbroad request. Amidst public outcry, the government asked the D.C. Superior Court to narrow the time frame of the warrant and eliminate the request for IP addresses. The court agreed and went further by demanding strict safeguards for privacy before the warrant may be executed. The government is now litigating the scope of these additional protections. 

Today’s motions to intervene and to quash were filed in D.C. Superior Court. The case is formally titled In the Matter of the Search of Information Associated with Facebook Accounts disruptj20, lacymacauley, and legba.carrefour That Is Stored at Premises Controlled by Facebook, Inc.


BACKGROUND

The New Yorker, 21 June 2017:

On the morning of January 20th, the day Donald Trump was inaugurated, in Washington, D.C., a large group of anti-Trump protesters, dressed in black, roamed through the city for close to an hour. Some chanted, some dragged newspaper boxes into the street, and some smashed the windows of various stores. In response, the police arrested more than two hundred people, setting in motion a complex legal saga that, months later, is far from over.

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia filed a federal lawsuit accusing the police of violating the rights of several people by using pepper spray and explosive devices without warning or justification; by making a mass arrest without differentiating between those who had broken laws and those who hadn’t; and by holding detainees for hours without food, water, or access to toilets, and subjecting some to “humiliating and unjustified” invasive searches.

The four plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U.’s lawsuit include Shay Horse, a twenty-three-year-old whose Twitter account identifies him as a photojournalist and “scrumptious/rambunctious anarchist.” According to the lawsuit, Horse broke no laws on the day of the protest but was doused with pepper spray, trapped between police lines for several hours, and then arrested and subjected to a rectal probe. In February, prosecutors dropped all charges against him. The other plaintiffs are Milo Gonzalez, a protester who, the lawsuit says, was also subjected to a rectal search after his arrest and was denied access to a bathroom for nine or ten hours; Elizabeth Lagesse, who, according to the suit, did not break any laws before being arrested but was handcuffed so tightly her wrists bled; and a lawyer named Judah Ariel, who said that he was among a group of people on a sidewalk who were pepper-sprayed without cause but not taken into custody…………

While it seemed clear on the day of the protest that the vandalism and property damage were committed by a small number of people, a superseding indictment handed down in late April charged two hundred and twelve people with rioting, inciting a riot, and engaging in a conspiracy to “damage, destroy, or deface property.” Because participants in a conspiracy can be held responsible for an offense committed by a co-conspirator, the defendants were all charged with breaking the windows of a Bank of America branch, a McDonald’s restaurant, a cafĂ©, and two separate Starbucks stores. All of them faced the possibility of lengthy prison sentences.

According to defense lawyers, there appears to be no modern-day precedent for charging everyone arrested during a particular protest with conspiracy, and, in May, thirty of the accused filed a motion saying that those charges lacked merit and asking that the superseding indictment be dismissed. Lawyers from the Georgetown Criminal Justice Clinic, white-shoe firms like Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, and D.C.’s Public Defender Service joined in the motion, which argued that the indictment had attributed crimes “collectively and indiscriminately” to defendants without offering evidence of individual culpability.

Some of the defendants have said that they believe they are being targeted for their perceived political identity. Calls for an “anti-capitalist anti-fascist bloc” on Inauguration Day had begun circulating soon after the election in November. Social-media messages included a photograph of a group of black-clad figures brandishing flags and what appear to be flares along with the hashtag #disruptJ20 and the words “wear black.” A communiquĂ© on the Web site CrimethInc read, “If Trump is to be inaugurated at all, let it happen behind closed doors, showing the true face of the security state Trump will preside over. It must be made clear to the whole world that the vast majority of people in the United States do not support his presidency or consent to his rule. . . . We must take to the streets and protest, blockade, disrupt, intervene, sit in, walk out, rise up, and make more noise and good trouble than the establishment can bear.”

The authorities seemed aware of the political leanings associated with the protest. Charging documents said that police officers had been “monitoring a planned assembly of individuals that were known to be associated with an anarchist group” and that intelligence-division officers knew that they would be gathering “with the express intent to disrupt Inauguration-related activities.”

Prosecutors in D.C. now face a potentially daunting number of cases, and whether they will be able to come up with individual evidence for each defendant’s case remains to be seen. So far, according to court documents, they have looked at photographs taken by police officers, reviewed video footage, and obtained a judge’s permission to search more than a hundred cell phones seized from those who were arrested. In March, they obtained a warrant to search the home of a man described as a protest organizer and to take computers, cell phones, tablets, and any material documenting the planning of a “riot or ‘Black Bloc’ march” or the planned destruction of property.

Monday 9 October 2017

**************North Coast Voices turns 10 today!*************



The very first North Coast Voices post of the 9,000 plus posts published to date.
A very big thank you to all the original authors on this site, to everyone who has contibuted since by way of posts, stories, tips or comments and of course sincere appreciation of all our readers.

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