Justice

The FBI maintains that its fake news article was justified

The FBI created a fake Seattle Times article containing surveillance software in order to track a school bomb-threat suspect in 2007, according to documents obtained by an advocacy group.

The controversy was publicized Monday evening on Twitter by Christopher Soghoian, a technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, who linked to the FBI documents (pages 61-62) obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights organization. While the FBI’s use of data gathering software in this investigation was reported in 2007 by WIRED, which acquired an FBI affidavit seeking a search warrant for the tool’s use, the latest documents reveal for the first time the FBI’s use of a false news article.

According to the documents, the link to the article was “in the style of the Seattle Times” and used a false Associated Press byline. The article, titled “Bomb threat at high school downplayed by local police department,” was mocked up with subscriber and advertising information.

The link was then e-mailed to the to the MySpace account of the suspect, who police believe was responsible for a series of bomb threats at Timberline High School in Lacey, Wash. When clicked on, the link would deploy FBI software to track his location and computer IP address.

“We are outraged that the FBI, with the apparent assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, misappropriated the name of The Seattle Times to secretly install spyware on the computer of a crime suspect,” said Seattle Times Editor Kathy Best in a statement Monday evening.

AP’s Director of Media Relations Paul Colford also criticized the FBI’s actions, writing in a statement that, “We are extremely concerned and find it unacceptable that the FBI misappropriated the name of The Associated Press and published a false story attributed to AP. This ploy violated AP’s name and undermined AP’s credibility.”

The FBI in Seattle maintains that its technique was justified in locating the suspect, who was arrested on June 14, 2007, two days after the dateline that appeared on the agents’ e-mail correspondence discussing the plan.

“Every effort we made in this investigation had the goal of preventing a tragic event like what happened at Marysville and Seattle Pacific University,” Frank Montoya Jr., an FBI agent overseeing its Seattle operations, told the Seattle Times. “We identified a specific subject of an investigation and used a technique that we deemed would be effective in preventing a possible act of violence in a school setting.”

A spokeswoman for FBI’s Seattle unit also defended the strategy to the Seattle Times, arguing that the FBI did not use a “real Seattle Times article, but material generated by the FBI in styles common in reporting and online media.”

Officer Darren Wilson, who shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in August, has refused to turn up to numerous court dates while on paid administrative leave

The Ferguson police officer who shot dead an unarmed teenager there in August failed to appear in a Missouri court Monday for the hearing of a man he arrested on felony drug charges, forcing the judge to let the suspect walk free.

The ruling to dismiss the case marks the sixth time Officer Darren Wilson’s absence from court has resulted in a dismissal, a county attorney told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Attorneys for the defendant, Christopher A. Brooks, said Wilson could not be compelled to appear in court so long as he was on paid administrative leave from the police force.

Darren Wilson has remained in hiding since Brown’s shooting in August prompted weeks of angry demonstration in Ferguson, Miss., with many calling for Wilson’s arrest for murder.

[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

European Court of Human Rights tells "Naked Rambler" that refusing to wear clothes does not represent freedom of expression

Britain’s “naked rambler” does not have a fundamental human right to ramble through the English and Scottish countryside in the buff, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday.

Stephen Gough, a.k.a. the “Naked Rambler,” argued that he was wrongfully convicted (30 times) and jailed (for 7 years) for his nude treks through the British countryside, which he said should have been protected under his right to privacy and free expression, NBC News reports.

The Strasbourg-based justices, however, ruled that “he had plenty of other ways of expressing his opinions” and determined that his particular form of expression constituted “deliberately repetitive antisocial conduct.”

Gough first started making headlines in 2003 for his insistent determination to remain nude on the streets, in court, or even in prison, where, according to the BBC, he was sequestered from the rest of the prison population because of his refusal to wear clothing.

[NBC News]

(CENTENNIAL, Colo.) — A Colorado judge has postponed the death penalty trial for movie theater shooter James Holmes so that Holmes’ attorneys can have more time to evaluate a second report on their client’s sanity.

Judge Carlos A. Samour wrote in a Monday ruling that jury selection will start Jan. 20. It had been set for Dec. 8.

The new schedule won’t unnecessarily delay the case but gives Holmes’ attorneys time to analyze the second sanity exam and prepare for trial, Samour wrote in the order. Jury selection could take months, with opening statements to begin in early June, as previously expected.

Holmes, 26, a former graduate student in neuroscience, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of killing 12 people and injuring 70 in the July 20, 2012, attack.

More than 400 people were watching a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in the theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora at the time. Holmes’ lawyers acknowledge he was the shooter but argue he was in the grips of a psychotic episode.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. They did not object to a short delay but did note that many victims opposed one.

This is Holmes’ fifth trial date. The first date, in August 2013, was canceled after prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty, raising numerous issues that had to be resolved before trial. The second, in February, was scratched after prosecutors asked for the second sanity evaluation.

The third was Oct. 14, which the judge postponed to Dec. 8 after the doctor conducting the second evaluation requested an extension.

Defense attorneys sought the latest delay so they could have more time to study the second sanity evaluation, which they said includes 22 hours of interviews with Holmes.

He underwent a mandatory sanity evaluation last year, but the key finding — whether he could tell right from wrong — was not released. Samour ordered the second sanity evaluation in January, after prosecutors said the doctor who conducted the first one was biased. Samour agreed it was flawed.

The evaluation is not the final word on whether Holmes was insane, but it is a key piece of evidence jurors will consider when making that determination.

Findings of Holmes’ sanity evaluations have not been released.

According to a December 2000 report thought sealed from public view

Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky was mistreated in 1998 by authorities who were looking into her alleged affair with former President Bill Clinton, according to a newly released government report from two years after the incident.

The report, thought to be sealed from the public but recently obtained by the Washington Post via a Freedom of Information Act request, details a 12-hour meeting in January 1998 between Lewinsky, FBI agents and prosecutors.

Lewinsky had been scheduled to meet with Linda Tripp, a White House secretary, at the food court of a Washington, D.C.-area mall. Instead, she was ambushed by federal agents and prosecutors. According to Lewinsky’s version of events — detailed in a rare public appearance earlier this week — when she asked to see an attorney, she was told her cooperation would be worth less if she spoke to counsel and told she could receive some 27 years in prison for allegedly lying about her affair with the President in an affidavit, among other crimes.

The findings vindicate her side of how things played out that day and, the report found, call into question ethical decisions made during the aggressive questioning of Lewinsky and her mother by lawyers working for Ken Starr’s Office of Independent Counsel.

[The Washington Post]

(WASHINGTON) — Four former Blackwater security guards were found guilty Wednesday in the 2007 shootings of more than 30 Iraqis in Baghdad, and a federal judge ordered them immediately to jail.

In an overwhelming victory for prosecutors, a jury found Nicholas Slatten guilty of first-degree murder. The three other three guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were found guilty of multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and gun charges.

The four men had been charged with a combined 33 counts in the shootings and the jury was able to reach a verdict on all of them, with the exception of three charges against Heard. The prosecution agreed to drop those charges.

The outcome after a summerlong trial and weeks of jury deliberation stunned the defense.

David Schertler, a lawyer for Heard, said “the verdict is wrong, it’s incomprehensible. We’re devastated. We’re going to fight it every step of the way. We still think we’re going to win.”

The shootings on Sept. 16, 2007, caused an international uproar over the role of defense contractors in urban warfare.

The State Department hired Blackwater to protect American diplomats in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, and elsewhere in the country. Blackwater convoys of four heavily armored vehicles operated in risky environments where car bombs and attacks by insurgents were common.

Slatten was charged with first-degree murder; the others were charged with voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and gun charges.

The case was mired in legal battles for years, making it uncertain whether the defendants would ever be tried.

The trial focused on the killings of 14 Iraqis and the wounding of 17 others. During an 11-week trial, prosecutors summoned 72 witnesses, including Iraqi victims, their families and former colleagues of the defendant Blackwater guards.

There was sharp disagreement over the facts in the case.

The defendants’ lawyers said there was strong evidence the guards were targeted with gunfire from insurgents and Iraqi police, leading the guards to shoot back in self-defense. Federal prosecutors said there was no incoming gunfire and that the shootings by the guards were unprovoked.

The prosecution focused on the defendants’ intent, contending that some of the Blackwater guards harbored a low regard and deep hostility toward Iraqi civilians.

The guards, the prosecution said, held “a grave indifference” to the death and injury that their actions probably would cause Iraqis. Several former Blackwater guards testified that they had been generally distrustful of Iraqis, based on experience the guards said they had had in being led into ambushes.

Prosecutors said that from a vantage point inside his convoy’s command vehicle, Slatten aimed his SR-25 sniper rifle through a gun portal, killing the driver of a stopped white Kia sedan, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y.

At the trial, two Iraqi traffic officers and one of the shooting victims testified the car was stopped at the time the shots were fired. The assertion that the car was stopped supported the prosecution argument that the shots were unwarranted.

Defense lawyers pressed their argument that other Blackwater guards — not Slatten — fired the first shots at the Kia sedan and that they did so only after the vehicle moved slowly toward the convoy, posing what appeared to be a threat to the Blackwater guards’ safety.

Once the shooting started, hundreds of Iraqi citizens ran for their lives.

It was “gunfire coming from the left, gunfire coming from the right,” prosecutor Anthony Asuncion told the jury in closing arguments.

One of the government witnesses in the case, Blackwater guard Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty to killing the driver’s mother, who died in the passenger seat of the white Kia next to her son.

The maximum sentence for conviction of first-degree murder is life imprisonment. The gun charges carry mandatory minimum prison terms of 30 years. The maximum prison term for involuntary manslaughter is eight years; for attempted manslaughter it is seven years.

Two experts said the slain teenager's autopsy supports the claim that Brown struggled with the officer who shot him

Michael Brown was shot in the hand at close range, according to an analysis of the slain teenager’s autopsy by two experts not involved in the case. That revelation sheds a small amount of light on Brown’s death, which triggered months of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, but still leaves unanswered questions about the sequence of events that led to police officer Darren Wilson shooting and killing the unarmed Brown on Aug. 9.

Wilson has told investigators that Brown struggled for Wilson’s pistol inside a police SUV and that Wilson fired the gun twice, hitting Brown once in the hand, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Wilson later shot and killed Brown, igniting violent protests and national outrage. St. Louis medical examiner Dr. Michael Graham said Tuesday that the autopsy “does support that there was a significant altercation at the car.”

Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in San Francisco, said the autopsy shows Brown was facing Wilson when Brown took a shot to the forehead, two shots to the chest and a shot to the upper right arm. Melinek said that contradicts witnesses who claim Brown was shot while running away from Wilson or while his hands were up.

Neither Melinek nor Graham are involved in the investigation.

[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

“If we want peace in our streets, we must work together to create a more just and equal society"

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon announced Tuesday the formation of a regional commission to address inequality in Ferguson, Mo., the site of ongoing protests after an unarmed black teen was shot and killed in August by a white police officer.

The “Ferguson Commission” will include leaders in business, public safety, education as well as “ordinary citizens” who will investigate issues of poverty, law enforcement and education in the St. Louis suburb and provide policy recommendations, Nixon said in a press conference.

“Legitimate issues have been raised by thoughtful voices on all sides,” Nixon said. “Shouting past one another will not move us to where we need to go.”

The commission, which is not tasked with examining Brown’s death, will be appointed by early November, Nixon’s spokesman Scott Holste told the Wall Street Journal. The governor expects the group to provide recommendations by early spring.

Nixon’s announcement follows months of protests, some violent, over the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson, whose case is currently under review by a grand jury. The commission’s announcement also comes on the heels of a Monday arrest of a Missouri state senator who was arrested in Ferguson after reportedly refusing to comply with police orders during a demonstration there.

“If we want peace in our streets, we must work together to create a more just and equal society,” Nixon said. “This is a defining moment that will determine whether this place will be known as a region marred by racial division and unrest, or a region that pulled together to rise above and heal.”

[Wall Street Journal]

The Paralympic gold medalist was acquitted of murder last month

Athlete Oscar Pistorius was sentenced Tuesday to five years imprisonment for the Valentine’s Day killing of his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

The 27-year-old double-amputee was found guilty of culpable homicide after shooting Steenkamp through the toilet door of his home in Pretoria on Feb. 14, 2013.

The “Blade Runner,” as Pistorius is known due to his trademark prosthetic limbs, claims he thought an intruder lurked inside, but the state maintained that he shot four times with the intention of killing Steenkamp after the couple had argued.

The South African was acquitted of murder by Judge Thokozile Masipa last month after a high-profile trial that was televised around the world.

In sentencing Pistorius, Masipa said she weighed, “The personal circumstances of the accused and interests of society.”

She added: “A non-custodial sentence would send the wrong message to the community, but a long sentence would also not be appropriate.”

Pistorius made history as the first Paralympian to compete against able-bodied athletes at the 2012 London Olympics. He has apparently been suffering from depression since Steenkamp’s death.

A separate firearms charge received three years imprisonment, suspended for five years.

Read next: Heated Reaction in South Africa to Pistorius Sentence

Three justices issued a dissent calling the law "purposefully discriminatory"

The Supreme Court decided Saturday that Texas can enforce its controversial voter identification law in November’s midterm elections, despite recently blocking several similar laws in other states.

The law, which requires Texas voters to show photo identification like a driver’s or gun license, a military ID or a passport, is championed by some who argue that it reduces voter fraud. However, critics say it’s a means of disenfranchising voters, particularly minority groups and the poor, who can be less likely to have the government-issued identification required by the law.

While the Court left its decision over the law unexplained, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a dissent criticizing the voter ID rules, calling them “a purposefully discriminatory law” that undermines “public confidence in elections.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Ginsburg’s dissent, the New York Times reports.

A report released this month by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office showed that voter ID laws similar to those in Texas contributed to lower voter turnouts in two states in 2012—between about 2.2 and 3.2 percentage points in Tennessee and 2 percentage points in Kansas. Those declines were greater among younger and black voters.

Critics of the Texas law say it would disenfranchise 600,000 registered voters in Texas, disproportionately affecting blacks and Hispanic or Latino voters. Texas officials have countered by saying that estimates of the number of people who could be deterred from voting by the law are unfounded.

After many months of legal wrangling, the Texas law, first passed in 2011, was blocked earlier this month by Texas Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of the Federal District Court in Corpus Christi. The Supreme Court’s decision overturns Gonzales’ injunction against the law, allowing it to be applied.

In the absence of an official explanation of the Court’s decision, some observers are speculating the justices allowed the law to stand to prevent confusion so close to the November’s elections. Those observers feel that reluctance to disturb the status quo as voting looms near has been the single common thread tying together several of the Court’s seemingly discordant decisions regarding voter ID laws in recent weeks.

[New York Times]