I asked the court hearing my lawsuit against NYPD stop-and-frisk for permission to file the audio recording I posted last week of NYPD officers stopping and frisking a teen for no reason, then cursing at and assaulting him. The NYPD filed opposition to admitting that evidence today because it’s “irrelevant” to my case.
Although I’m allowed to file a lengthy reply citing all the cases where similar evidence was deemed relevant, I feel that my one paragraph reply got the point across:
The case at bench alleges a custom and/or policy of unlawful stop-and-frisks by the NYPD. If the City’s Law Department seriously cannot figure out how an audio recording of another man’s blatantly unlawful stop-and-frisk at the hands of NYPD officers is relevant to this case, it is no wonder that the City’s police officers cannot figure out the difference between lawful and unlawful search and seizure.
Hey, at least they didn’t beat me like the student they beat last week whom they “mistakenly” (that is, without investigation) believed was tresspassing.
Professional Troublemaker ® 
This seems to present more common sense than the courts can handle. Keep up the great work!
Corrupt courts defend corrupt cops.
When Boston Police Spy on Free Speech, Democracy Suffers.
Local activists have been trying to get ‘celebrity guest speakers’ (Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon) for the March 24th demonstration, but at this time it appears that they have been unable to book any of these speakers for their event.
But some well-known speakers will be there. According to this intelligence report,” compiled by the Boston police under the heading “Criminal Act–Groups-Extremists,” among them will be Cindy Sheehan and a “BU professor emeritus/activist” whose name is redacted–it was the late Howard Zinn.
These excerpts come from one of several documents and videotapes obtained through a lawsuit brought against the Boston Police Department by the ACLU of Massachusetts and Massachusetts Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. We are making these criminal “intelligence” reports public today, along with a report analyzing its significance–and avideo of some of the peace activists who have been targeted.
We now have proof of what peace groups and activists have long suspected: Boston Police officers have worked within the local fusion spying center, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), to monitor the lawful political activity of local peace groups and track their movements and beliefs. This information has been retained in searchable electronic “intelligence” reports bearing labels such as “Groups – Civil Disturbance,” “Groups–Extremists,” “HomeSec-Domestic” under the heading “Criminal Act.”
Under what interpretation of the US and Massachusetts Constitutions can the non-violent First Amendment activity of groups like Veterans for Peace and United for Justice with Peace be routinely classified as a criminal act?
If you have glanced at the US Senate subcommittee report on fusion centers that came out earlier this month, you may not be surprised to hear that Boston’s fusion center has been collecting dubious “intelligence” and violating civil liberties in the process.
Fusion centers were set up in the aftermath of 9/11 to facilitate the sharing of “terrorism-related” information among local, state, and federal law enforcement and private entities. But the Senate subcommittee report finds that the nation’s 70 or so fusion centers (the exact number is in dispute–DHS, which contributed the seed funding for the centers, doesn’t know how many exist today) have not uncovered a single terrorist plot.
Read more:
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty-free-speech/when-boston-police-spy-free-speech
POLICING DISSENT: Police Surveillance of Lawful Political Activity in Boston.
Click to access policing_dissent_101812.pdf
State Dept. admits passport form was illegal, but still wants it approved.
From Papers, Please. Challenging ID demands:
Ignoring massive public opposition, and despite having recently admitted that it is already using the “proposed” forms illegally without approval, the State Department is trying again to get approval for a pair of impossible-to-complete new passport application forms that would, in effect, allow the State Department to deny you a passport simply by choosing to send you either or both of the new “long forms”.
Early last year, the State Department proposed a new “Biographical Questionnaire” for passport applicants, which would have required anyone selected to receive the new long-form DS-5513 to answer bizarre and intrusive personal trivia questions about everything from whether you were circumcised (and if so, with what accompanying religious rituals) to the dates of all of your mother’s pre- and post-natal medical appointments, your parents’ addresses one year before you were born, every address at which you have ever resided, and your lifetime employment history including the names and phone numbers of each of your supervisors at every job you have ever held.
Most people would be unable to complete the proposed new form no matter how much time and money they invested in research. Requiring someone to complete Form DS-5513 would amount to de facto denial of their application for a passport — which, as we told the State Department, appeared to be the point of the form.
The State Department’s notice of the proposal in the Federal Register didn’t include the form itself. After we published the proposed Form DS-5513, the story went viral and more than 3,000 public comments objecting to the proposal were filed with the State Department in the final 24 hours of the comment period.
After that fiasco, the State Department went dark for several months, and claimed that they would “revise” the form. But they didn’t give up, and apparently they didn’t listen to (or didn’t care) what they had been told by members of the public in our comments.
The State Department is now seeking approval for a (slightly) revised Form DS-5513 as well as a new Form DS-5520, also for passport applicants, containing many of the same questions.
The State Department no longer wants you to tell the passport examiner about the circumstances of your circumcision, but does still want to know the dates and locations of all of your mother’s pre- and post-natal medical appointments, how long she was hospitalized for your birth, and a complete list of everyone who was in the room when you were born. The revised forms no longer ask for all the addresses at which you have lived, but only for those addresses you are least likely to know: all the places you lived from birth until age 18.
And so on, as you can see for yourself on the proposed Form DS-5513 and Form DS-5520.
http://papersplease.org/wp/2012/09/24/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/tsa-removes-x-ray-body-scanners-from-major-airports/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29
A Clarksville mother accused of berating Transportation Security Administration officers trying to pat down her teenage daughter has been found guilty of disorderly conduct.
Jurors began deliberating around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and reached their verdict about four hours later. Forty-two-year-old Andrea Abbott faces up to 30 days in jail and a $50 fine.
Transportation Security Officer Karen King testified that before the pat-down, Abbott yelled in her face that she didn’t want anyone “touching her daughter’s crotch.”
Abbott eventually allowed her then-14-year-old daughter to undergo the pat-down, but then she refused a pat-down for herself and was arrested.
Abbott took the stand during the trial and acknowledged that she did say a few curse words but said she wasn’t in anyone’s face and had a “normal conversation” about why she believed the pat-down to be inappropriate.
http://www.ctpost.com/news/crime/article/Mother-found-guilty-in-Tenn-pat-down-case-3973407.php
Sad 😦
For more on this story read:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/23/tenn-mom-guilty-disorderly-conduct-berated-tsa-officers-for-daughter-airport/