investigation – Techdirt (original) (raw)

DOJ: Phoenix PD Officers Routinely Violated Rights, Deployed Unjustified Deadly Force

from the if-you're-getting-investigated,-you've-done-something-wrong dept

Every report delivered by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division can be described as “scathing” or “damning.” There are simply no exceptions to this rule. It’s not like the Civil Rights unit picks a US law enforcement agency out of the hat and then initiates an investigation. (Maybe it should? I mean, I’m sure there’s plenty of police misconduct flying under the radar at any given moment.)

No, if the DOJ opens an investigation into a local law enforcement agency it’s because that law enforcement agency has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons for months or years. And such is the case with the Phoenix, Arizona police department.

The investigation was announced in 2021, with the DOJ noting the PD routinely violated a decision delivered by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court forbidding governments in the jurisdiction from arresting or fining homeless people for the “crime” of being homeless. It also noted there was more than a hint of a deep-rooted misconduct problem — one that definitely wasn’t made any better by the PD’s mass purge of internal investigation records back in 2019.

The DOJ’s report [PDF] goes further than these initial hints that something’s rotten in Phoenix. It says officers routinely deploy excessive and unreasonable force. It arrived at this conclusion despite the PD’s lack of up-to-date use of force records.

Officers use unreasonable force to rapidly dominate encounters, often within the first few moments of an encounter. Officers fail to employ basic strategies to avoid force, like verbal de-escalation or using time or distance to slow things down. PhxPD’s training has encouraged officers to use force when it is not lawful to do so, and to use serious force to respond to hypothetical, not actual, danger. P

More specifically, officers fire weapons at people who pose no immediate threat. Then they continue to shoot at people long after they’ve been rendered unable to pose a threat. Officers escalate situations seemingly for the sole purpose of deploying deadly force. And when they’re finally out of bullets, they delay rendering aid to those they’ve wounded. Two cases detailed in the report involve officers shooting suicidal people who only posed a threat to themselves. In another incident, officers shot a woman 10 times and did not render any medical aid until more than nine minutes after they had shot her. In another case, they waited fifteen minutes to provide any aid to a person they had shot.

If officers aren’t shooting people, they’re Tasing them, beating them, choking them, or firing non-lethal munitions at them from close range. And just because it’s less-than-lethal doesn’t mean its a reasonable use of force.

In one incident, a group of officers shot 40mm foam rounds, a Taser, and over 20 Pepperballs at an unarmed man within 20 seconds of announcing their presence. The officers planned to take the man into custody for two open felony warrants related to probation violations. They surrounded a storage facility where he stood outside a unit repairing a bicycle. One officer yelled, “Hands!” seconds before firing Pepperballs and yelling, “Get on the ground!” While the officer continued to pelt him with Pepperballs, another officer struck the man with a 40mm impact round. The man turned away, screaming. Then, a third officer advanced and fired a Taser, incapacitating the man. As he fell—nearly hitting his head on the wall of the storage unit—an officer fired another 40mm round.

Officers routinely engaged in violence against people who were never given enough time to comply with shouted, sometimes-contradictory orders from officers. In some cases, the order given to the person was immediately followed by an act of violence. Just as routinely, officers’ reports portrayed their use of force as “justified” due to the person’s supposed “refusal” to comply with their orders.

Then there’s stuff like this, which covers multiple areas of the DOJ’s damning report, all in a single anecdote:

In one example, two officers used excessive force after stopping a bicyclist who ran a red light. The man allowed the officers to search him. As one officer checked the man’s pockets, the man appeared to move something from one hand to the other. The officers grabbed him, told him to put his hands behind his back, and then pulled him to the ground. The man asked, “What am I under arrest for?” An officer said, “For not obeying a police officer.” The officers appeared to recognize they lacked a lawful basis for arresting the man, and one said, “We need to develop PC [probable cause].” Both officers then muted their body-worn cameras. PhxPD arrested him for resisting arrest and possession of marijuana. County and city prosecutors declined to pursue the charges.

There’s a lot more along these lines if you’ve got the stomach for it. Officers routinely violating protocol and internal policy to hogtie people in positions that increased their chance of death. Officers siccing dogs on cooperative arrestees and letting the dogs chew on them while they placed them in handcuffs. Officers continuing to punch, kick, or otherwise physically harm people who were already handcuffed.

Part of this is due to training. Too much of it, surprisingly. As the DOJ notes, Phoenix PD training materials actually encourage this sort of behavior. The chaser is everything else: a systemic failure to discipline officers and officers’ refusal to report force deployment.

There’s also a long section about the PD’s tactics when dealing with the city’s homeless population — efforts that directly contradicted a precedential court ruling by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court. And, like far too many law enforcement agencies in the United States, minorities are the most frequent targets for police harassment and violence.

PhxPD uses race or national origin as a factor when enforcing traffic laws. Officers cite a disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic drivers when compared to violations recorded by neutral traffic cameras in thesame locations. PhxPD also enforces traffic laws more severely against Black and Hispanic driver than it does against white drivers engaged in the same behaviors.

PhxPD enforces alcohol use offenses and low-level drug offenses more severely against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people than against white people engaged in the same behaviors.

PhxPD enforces quality-of-life laws, like loitering and trespassing, more severely against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people than it does against white people engaged in the same behaviors.

Another 20 pages or so is given over to discussing the Phoenix PD’s retaliatory actions against anti-police violence protesters and others engaged in protected First Amendment activities the officers didn’t care for.

Sadly, this is par for the course for DOJ investigations. Every law enforcement agency investigated by the DOJ has pretty much the same list of problems. This clearly shows there’s something wrong with cop culture in general. It’s not a byproduct of the environment these officers work in. No matter where the agency is located, the same sort of violence, abuse, and frequent rights violations are uncovered.

This will start the long, expensive, and pretty much ineffectual process of reforming the Phoenix Police Department. A federal monitor with be put in place and the city will agree to a consent decree. It will make things better in the short term, but very slowly and incrementally. And the most likely outcome will be a lot of nothing. Once the decree is lifted, most agencies tend to go back to doing what they’ve always done: pretend they’re a law unto themselves until the next round of investigations begin.

Filed Under: arizona, civil rights, department of justice, doj, investigation, phoenix, phoenix pd, phoenix police department, police accountability, police misconduct

The EU’s Investigation Of ExTwitter Is Ridiculous & Censorial

from the bureaucrats-should-not-be-determining-speech-policy dept

People keep accusing me of criticizing Elon Musk because I “hate” him. But I don’t hate him, nor do I criticize him out of any personal feelings at all, beyond thinking that he often is hypocritical in his decision making, and makes decisions that defy common sense and logic. But when he does the right thing, I’m equally happy to call it out positively.

And while I’ve seen some people cheering on the EU’s new investigation of ExTwitter under the DSA (Digital Services Act), I think it’s extremely problematic and hope that Elon fights it. As we’ve explained, the DSA — while more thoughtful and careful in its approach than most US legislation about social media — remains a tool that can be abused for censoring speech.

Supporters of the DSA kept insisting to me that it would never be used that way, while wink-wink-nudge-nudging that if it didn’t magically stop ill-defined bad content online then it had somehow failed.

And thus, it was quite notable when the EU’s unelected technocrat enforcer, Thierry Breton, started threatening ExTwitter and other Silicon Valley companies earlier this year. The most notable thing was that Breton lumped together illegal content (which the sites are required to take down) and “disinformation,” which (in theory!) they’re not required to take down, but are supposed to have some form of best practices for responding to.

Breton lumped the two together, falsely suggesting that websites were required to remove disinformation under the DSA, which would be quite problematic, given that there is no agreed upon definition of disinformation, and often there are extremely conflicting beliefs about what is and what is not disinformation.

And, yet, this new investigation seems focused on exactly that, among other things:

This feels extremely heavy handed and really none of the EU’s business. Community Notes, while not a replacement for a full trust & safety effort, is a really unique and worthwhile experiment (and one that I’d like to see other sites implement as well). How exactly does one judge the “effectiveness” of the system and how is that the EU’s business?

Similarly, this seems really sketchy as well:

I mean, yes, Elon fucked up the whole “blue check as a marker of authority” concept by selling them, rather than using it as part of an actual verification system, but again, calling it “deceptive design” seems like a ridiculous statement, and suggests that the EU now feels it’s reasonable to critique product choices by companies.

Even if we think Elon’s choices around this were dumb and wholly counterproductive, that really shouldn’t be for the government to step in and decide.

And, of course, by kicking off this investigation over such silly things, it really undermines what might be legitimate concerns and areas of investigation, making the whole process — and the DSA itself — appear to be less credible.

Still, I can’t help but close this story with a bit of a “told ya so” directed at Elon. Remember, weeks after announcing his intention to purchase Twitter, Elon sat down with Breton and gave a full throated endorsement of the DSA approach. At the time, we warned him that if he really supported free speech, he’d actually be speaking out about the risks for free speech under the DSA (something old Twitter did in pushing back against earlier drafts of it). But instead, he told Breton that he agreed with this approach. And now he’s its first victim.

I hope that he has ExTwitter fight back against this intrusion, as that would help make it clear that the DSA’s rules should not get this deep into the level of tinkering with content on a site or with random features of a site the EU dislikes.

Filed Under: community notes, deceptive design, dsa, elon musk, free speech, investigation, thierry breton, verification
Companies: twitter, x

Missouri AG Announces Bullshit Censorial Investigation Into Media Matters Over Its Speech

from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is currently engaged in numerous legal battles over speech which can more or less be summarized as “criticism of people Andrew Bailey likes is censorship,” but “criticism of people Andrew Bailey doesn’t like is good and just and important to the marketplace of ideas.”

Andrew Bailey is a hypocrite.

But that’s no surprise.

What’s worth calling out, however, is just how hypocritical Missouri AG Andrew Bailey is, and how he, while pretending to be a supporter of free speech, is abusing the power of his office to suppress speech he disagrees with and to silence voices.

While he wasn’t Attorney General when the lawsuit began, Bailey is currently leading the Missouri v. Biden case, which the Supreme Court is about to hear an important piece of in the renamed Murthy v. Missouri. That case raises serious questions regarding the boundaries of where the government can seek to pressure others regarding free speech. As I’ve discussed in detail, I agree that the government should not be pressuring anyone to be silenced. But there need to be clear rules to determine the difference between mere persuasion and information sharing, and coercion and intimidation.

But it’s important to be clear on what Bailey/Missouri’s position in this case is: it’s that any efforts by government officials to challenge the speech of anyone is an inherent violation of the 1st Amendment.

Except, that seems to only apply to cases where the government is run by Democrats and they are criticizing Republicans. When the scenarios reverse, AG Bailey seems to have a very different take. This has been true for a while. For example, we noted that Bailey had no problem the very day after he received an early victory in the Missouri v. Biden case, publicly threatening the retailer Target over its support of an LGBT organization.

Having gotten away with that, Bailey is taking this kind of thing up a notch. We had mentioned a few weeks ago that he had tweeted about how he was “looking into” whether or not Media Matters engaged in fraud in response to that organization’s article highlighting that big name advertisers had ads appear next to blatant neo-Nazi content.

And this week, Bailey announced a more formal investigation, sending a letter to Media Matter’s executive director that is so batshit crazy that it should call into question the competency of anyone who voted for Bailey. Bailey also tweeted about the investigation, which makes him sound even more ridiculous, because he’s literally admitting that he’s doing this investigation to protect ExTwitter which he (laughably) claims is “the last platform dedicated to free speech in America.”

It’s not even close to that, and I’ll note that this suggests Donald Trump’s own Truth Social is not viewed positively by Bailey.

But, again, remember, Elon Musk’s own lawsuit against Media Matters admits that Media Matters’ report was 100% true. He merely disputes that the ad/content combination that Media Matters reported on was common. But, Media Matters did not claim that the combination was common, just that they saw it. And the lawsuit admits that the organization did. He just doesn’t like it.

Nor does Bailey.

So here, we have Bailey launching an investigation into a private organization over its speech criticizing another private organization. That’s way more of a 1st Amendment violation than the White House sending a note to Twitter telling them of someone impersonating a politician and asking if it violates Twitter’s policies.

But, more ridiculously, Bailey claims that this obvious attack on free speech (using the taxpayer-funded, power of the government to intimidate and stifle speech he doesn’t like) is somehow in support of free speech. Here’s Bailey’s statement:

We have reason to believe Media Matters used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to bully advertisers into pulling out of X, the last platform dedicated to free speech in America….

Enemies of free speech are attempting to kill X because they cannot control it, and we are not going to let Missourians be subject to fraud in the process.

I’m fighting to ensure progressive tyrants masquerading as news outlets cannot manipulate the marketplace in order to wipe out free speech.

It’s that last line that’s really telling. He admits that his effort here is based on ideology and is an attempt to attack an ideology he disagrees with. He is publicly admitting his desire here is to suppress speech from those he disagrees with. The claim that it is “manipulating the market” is also quite telling. What Bailey is really admitting is that he does not believe in the marketplace of ideas, because if progressives are allowed to speak, they might convince people of their views — something Bailey is publicly admitting is unacceptable.

Imagine if a Democratic AG did the same thing to Fox News. Or the Daily Caller. Or the NY Post. Or the Federalist. People would be rightly up in arms about this being a violation of the 1st Amendment. Because it would be.

Bailey’s letter to Angelo Carusone at Media Matters is even dumber.

I have reason to believe that your firm’s alleged actions may have violated Missouri consumer protection laws, including laws that prohibit nonprofit entities from soliciting funds under false pretenses. E.g., Mo. Rev. Stat. § 407.020.1. I am especially concerned that Media Matters’ actions, if proven true, have hampered free speech by targeting an expressly pro free speech social media platform in an attempt to cause it financial harm while defrauding Missourians in the process.

Does anyone think Bailey could find a single person who donated to Media Matters and feels defrauded based on the organization’s report about ads next to Nazi content?

The demands from Bailey are intrusive, intimidating, and a clear attempt to suppress anyone else’s future attempts to investigate or publicly criticize Musk. He demands that Media Matters preserve all sorts of internal, editorial discussions that are none of his fucking business:

Again, imagine if California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, demanded the same of the Federalist? The entire GOP would scream loudly (and, for once, accurately) about it being a clear and obvious attempt to influence and intimidate critical media coverage.

Yet, I’ll bet that not a single GOP or GOP-supporting site, which claims to be about free speech, will call out this move by Bailey.

But, really, it’s quite incredible how Bailey’s views are so different depending on the type of speech. When the government is concerned about speech he likes, it’s censorship. When a private entity says stuff he dislikes, he’ll mobilize the vast investigatory powers of his state to intimidate and threaten them into silence.

Andrew Bailey is no friend to free speech.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, andrew bailey, fraud, free speech, hypocrite, investigation, missouri
Companies: media matters, twitter, x

Details Of FTC’s Investigation Into Twitter And Elon Musk Emerge… And Of Course People Are Turning It Into A Nonsense Culture War

from the closing-in dept

Back in the fall we were among the first to highlight that Elon Musk might face a pretty big FTC problem. Twitter, of course, is under a 20 year FTC consent decree over some of its privacy failings. And, less than a year ago (while still under old management), Twitter was hit with a $150 million fine and a revised consent decree. Both of them are specifically regarding how it handles users private data. Musk has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t care about the FTC, but that seems like a risky move. While I think this FTC has made some serious strategic mistakes in the antitrust world, the FTC tends not to fuck around with privacy consent decrees.

However, now the Wall Street Journal has a big article with some details about the FTC’s ongoing investigation into Elon’s Twitter (based on a now released report from the Republican-led House Judiciary who frames the whole thing as a political battle by the FTC to attack a company Democrats don’t like — despite the evidence included not really showing anything to support that narrative).

The Federal Trade Commission has demanded Twitter Inc. turn over internal communications related to owner Elon Musk, as well as detailed information about layoffs—citing concerns that staff reductions could compromise the company’s ability to protect users, documents viewed by the Wall Street Journal show.

In 12 letters sent to Twitter and its lawyers since Mr. Musk’s Oct. 27 takeover, the FTC also asked the company to “identify all journalists” granted access to company records and to provide information about the launch of the revamped Twitter Blue subscription service, the documents show.

The FTC is also seeking to depose Mr. Musk in connection with the probe.

I will say that some of the demands from the FTC appear to potentially be overbroad, which should be a concern:

The FTC also asked for all internal Twitter communications “related to Elon Musk,” or sent “at the direction of, or received by” Mr. Musk.

I mean… that seems to be asking for way more than is reasonable. I’ve heard some discussion that these requests are an attempt to figure out who Musk is delegating to handle privacy issues at the company (as required in the consent decree), but it seems that such a request can (and should) be more tailored to that point. Otherwise, it appears (and will be spun, as the House Judiciary Committee is doing…) as an overly broad fishing expedition.

Either way, as we predicted in our earlier posts, the FTC seems quite concerned about whether or not Twitter is conducting required privacy reviews before releasing new features.

The FTC also pressed Twitter on whether it was conducting in-depth privacy reviews before implementing product changes such as the new version of Twitter Blue, as required under the 2022 order. The agency sought detailed records on how product changes were communicated to Twitter users.

It asked Twitter to explain how it handled a recently reported leak of Twitter user-profile data, to account for changes made to the way users authenticate their accounts, and to describe how it scrubbed sensitive data from sold office equipment.

Another area that is bound to be controversial (and Matt Taibbi is, in his usual fashion, misleadingly misrepresenting things and whining about it) is that the FTC asked to find out which outside “journalists” had been granted access to Twitter systems:

On Dec. 13, the FTC asked about Twitter’s decision to give journalists access to internal company communications, a project Mr. Musk has dubbed the “Twitter Files” and that he says sheds light on controversial decisions by previous management.

The agency asked Twitter to describe the “nature of access granted each person” and how allowing that access “is consistent with your privacy and information security obligations under the Order.” It asked if Twitter conducted background checks on the journalists, and whether the journalists could access Twitter users’ personal messages.

Given the context, this request actually seems reasonable. The consent decree is pretty explicit about how Twitter needs to place controls on access to private information, and the possibility that Musk gave outside journalists access to private info was a concern that many people raised. Since then, Twitter folks have claimed that it never gave outside journalists full access to internal private information, but rather tasked employees with sharing requested files (this might still raise some questions about private data, but it’s not as free wheeling as some worried initially). If Twitter really did not provide access to internal private data to journalists, then it can respond to that request by showing what kind of access it did provide.

But, Taibbi is living down to his reputation and pretending it’s something different:

Matt Taibbi tweet to WSJ article saying: "which journalists a company or its executives talks to is not remotely the government's business. This is an insane overreach."

At best, Taibbi seems to be conflating two separate requests here. The request for all of Musk’s communications definitely does seem too broad, and it seems like Twitter’s lawyers (assuming any remain, or outside counsel that is still having its bills paid) could easily respond and push back on the extensiveness of the request to narrow it down to communications relevant to the consent decree. That’s… how this process normally works.

As for the claim that which journalists an executive talks to is not the government’s business, that is correct, but lacking context. It becomes the government’s business if part of the conversation with the journalist is to violate the law. And… it’s that point that the FTC is trying to determine. If they didn’t violate the consent decree, then, problem solved.

Thus, the request regarding how much access Musk gave to journalists seems like a legitimate question to determine if the access violated the consent decree. One hopes that Twitter was careful enough in how this was set up that the answer is “no, it did not violate the consent decree, and all access was limited and carefully monitored to protect user data,” but that’s kinda the reason that the investigation is happening in the first place.

Indeed, in the House Judiciary Committee report, in which they try to turn this into a much bigger deal, they do reveal a small snippet of the FTC’s requests to Twitter on this topic that suggest that Taibbi is (yet again) totally misrepresenting things (it’s crazy how often that’s the case with that guy), and their concern is literally to the single point implicated by the consent decree: did Twitter give outside journalists access to internal Twitter systems that might have revealed private data:

I would be concerned if the request actually were (as Taibbi falsely implies) for Musk to reveal every journalist he’s talking to. But the request (as revealed by the Committee) appears to only be about “journalists and other members of the media to whom” Elon has “granted any type of access to the Companies internal communications.” And, given that the entire consent decree is about restricting access to internal systems and others’ communications, that seems directly on point and not, as the Judiciary Committee and Taibbi complain, about an attack on the 1st Amendment.

It remains entirely possible that the FTC finds nothing at all here. Or that if it tries to file claims against Twitter that Twitter wins. Unlike some people, I am not rushing to assume that the FTC is going to bring Twitter to account. But there are some pretty serious questions about whether or not Musk is abiding by the consent decree, and violating a consent decree is just pleading for the FTC to make an expensive example of you.

Filed Under: consent decree, elon musk, ftc, investigation, matt taibbi, privacy, subpoena
Companies: twitter

Texas’ Long Indicted Attorney General Launches Investigation Into Whether Or Not He’s The Biggest Elon Musk Sycophant Yet

from the answer-points-to-yes dept

Okay, so, it was just a few weeks ago that a teenager went into an elementary school and killed 21 people, including 19 children. You might think there are important things about that which should draw the attention of the state’s top lawyer. Attorney General Ken Paxton is a busy man. He’s running for a third term in the job, while still waiting for the supposed trial on his indictment that happened seven years ago. He also wasted a bunch of time on a bunch of bogus “stop the steal” lawsuits, and led the charge on the ridiculous attempt to force DirecTV to platform nonsense peddler OAN. Oh, and of course, his office is also leading the charge to enforce his obviously unconstitutional social media content moderation bill.

But, even with all that going on, he’s apparently got enough time to try to kiss up to Elon Musk, who proudly moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas a few years back, and has since cultivated closer and closer ties to the Republican party.

So, on Monday, just hours after Musk filed a letter with the SEC setting up his pretext for backing out of the Twitter deal, Paxton announced that his office was launching an investigation into spam bots on Twitter. I only wish I were joking. But this is an actual thing that an actual elected official is wasting taxpayer money on.

Today Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation against Twitter for potentially false reporting over its fake bot accounts in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

On Twitter, “bots” are automated, non-human accounts that can do virtually the same things as real people: send tweets, follow other users, and like and retweet others’ posts. Spam accounts like these inflate followers and reach, and often push deceptive and annoying activity. Bot accounts can not only reduce the quality of users’ experience on the platform but may also inflate the value of the company and the costs of doing business with it, thus directly harming Texas consumers and businesses.

Twitter has received intense scrutiny in recent weeks over claiming in its financial regulatory filings that fewer than 5% of all users are bots, when they may in fact comprise as much as 20% or more. The difference could dramatically affect the cost to Texas consumers and businesses who transact with Twitter.

So, a few things about all this. First, lol, wut? This is not something an Attorney General is supposed to be investigating. This is an even more thinly veiled suck up to Musk than Musk’s thinly veiled pretext for bailing on the Twitter deal. Second, even here, Paxton misstates the issue. The single study that people have been pointing to suggesting 20% spam is studying something different than Twitter’s SEC filings which talk about less than 5% of its daily monetizable daily active users are false or spam accounts. That could still mean that over 20% of the users on the site are spam. The report is just about monetizable daily active users. And Twitter has explained its methodology for this.

To just jump in and compare the 5% number to the 20% number is comparing two totally different things.

Also, once again, this is not something a state AG is supposed to be investigating.

This is clearly a political witch hunt by a state AG, something that happens with alarming frequency these days (on both side so political aisle).

Anyway, Paxton sent a Civil Investigative Demand, which is basically a subpoena, to Twitter. I imagine Twitter will seek to quash or otherwise limit it. I am reminded of the time that the MPAA got then Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to issue a similar CID to “investigate” Google. Google fought it and eventually Hood dropped the whole thing. Chances are this is going nowhere.

Still, this is obvious to basically everyone — whether you support Elon or not — that this is nothing more than a blatant abuse of Ken Paxton’s office and powers in a political manner, to benefit the most wealthy resident in his state in the lead up to his next election. In a just world, the people of Texas would send Paxton packing in November for such a blatant abuse of office. But, in the world we live in today, it’ll probably give him an electoral boost, because instead of trying to help the people of Texas, the people of Texas seem to like it when their Attorney General spends their tax money by vanquishing people he perceives as his political enemies.

Filed Under: abuse of office, elon musk, fake accounts, investigation, ken paxton, spam, spam bots, subpoean
Companies: twitter

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Thu, Sep 2nd 2021 05:32am - Karl Bode

If you’ve spent any real time digging into Trump GOP era tech policies, you’ve probably noticed they’re a jumbled mess of contradictions and inconsistencies, cloaked in a lot of performative propaganda. The same party that thought net neutrality (the FCC holding telecom giants vaguely accountable) was a government hellscape, pivoted on a dime to try and force the FCC into regulating social media companies. The same GOP that whines incessantly about “big tech” via performative populism, routinely runs for the hills any time somebody actually tries to rein in corporate power or implement genuine antitrust reform.

Of course in the mainstream press (in this context usually The New York Times, Axios, The Washington Post, Politico, and friends), the inconsistency of the GOP’s policy platforms is never really explained. It’s part of the “view from nowhere” disease that has infected mainstream U.S. political coverage, where everything is portrayed in a “he said, she said” frame of perfect symmetry, leaving your readers completely uncertain where the truth actually lies. It’s driven by a fear of upsetting sources and advertisers, and results in a media that simply refuses to call a duck a duck (or bullshit bullshit) when urgently required.

That bubbled up again this week as the GOP bristled at the fact the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob has been asking telecom and tech companies to retain relevant communications between lawmakers and organizers. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Signal, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile have all received requests. As Mike has noted there are concerns that the requests are worryingly broad, including troves of internal communications at the companies’ themselves.

At the same time, many of the requests (especially those looking at the text message and call logs from telecom companies) are perfectly legitimate, and if investigators can find text messages showing coordination between the violent Capitol-assaulting mob, its organizers, and the GOP, that kind of seems arguably important in terms of a functioning democracy and avoiding even worse scenarios down the road. After all, guys like Jim Jordan are nervously babbling in interviews like this one for a reason:

Ohio's @Jim_Jordan confirms to me:

?I spoke with [Trump] on Jan. 6th."

Before, during or after attack?

?I spoke with him that day, after? I think after. I don't know if I spoke with him in the morning or not. I just don't know…I don't know when those conversations happened.? pic.twitter.com/h4fbuMYtk0

— Taylor Popielarz (@TaylorPopielarz) July 28, 2021

Several GOP members seem particularly nervous about text messages and phone logs, and are now taking to television threatening to “shut down” telecom companies if they cooperate with the probe in any way whatsoever:

This is, of course, utterly nonsensical, zero calorie, idiot theater. Congress as a whole worships the ground companies like AT&T walk on, and the GOP in particular has never stood up to AT&T on any issue of substance. Ever. Why? Because AT&T’s extremely politically powerful (thanks in large part to its cozy relationship with the NSA), and a major GOP campaign contributor. There’s legitimately a 0.0% chance that AT&T or Verizon see any meaningful penalties for cooperating with legal requests, especially from a party with a thirty year track record of mindlessly kissing telecom’s ass.

The GOP for years has opposed privacy protections and embraced expansive government surveillance. And its entire brand has been built on the worship of purportedly “free markets” without the imposition of government intervention. And the entire Trump GOP has been to take “political norms” in the alleyway and beat the ever loving piss out of them, repeatedly. Yet this morning we saw the Rupert Murdoch editorial pages pretending to care about both telecom privacy and (gasp!) “political norms”:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also took to Twitter to threaten to shut down private companies for complying with legal information requests (you know, “free markets!” and all that):

Nobody’s violating federal law. It’s a valid inquiry into an extremely dangerous, precedent setting event. And “federal law” on privacy is weak in the first place largely courtesy of forty years of DC policy choices. There’s just layers of gibberish here, particularly the pretense that the GOP gives two flying shits about rampant government surveillance or “political norms.” If Congress is doing something illegal that violates privacy, anyone can sue to stop them. Instead, the GOP is having yet another toddler moment, engaging in hollow bullying to shut down private businesses they know they’ll never actually follow through on.

As Ken White notes, one could argue that this kind of behavior, while likely not prosecutable, qualifies as corruption and obstruction of justice:

Granted, this most likely ends (like the mythical GOP support for “antitrust reform”) with zero penalties for telecom companies, because there’s nothing to penalize. Still, letting a bunch of mindlessly ambitious authoritarians try to overthrow elections with zero meaningful penalty sets a clearly dangerous precedent. As does threatening companies for complying with perfectly valid legal requests.

Shutting down AT&T is a non-starter, so what is the GOP going to do to “punish” telecom companies? Re-establish the FCC’s ability to hold telecom monopolies accountable? Stop blocking efforts to impose broadband privacy rules? Finally start holding them accountable for fraud? Rein in their overly enthusiastic participation in our domestic surveillance program? Force AT&T and Verizon to close up shop and go home? Give me a break.

It’s just empty-headed bullying by GOP lawmakers clearly nervous about what these requests could reveal about one of the dumbest yet most dangerous days in recent U.S. history. And yet courtesy of DC beltway press’ “he said, she said” framing of the situation, a reader walks away from most terrible coverage of this dispute with the impression that the GOP’s position here could be perfectly reasonable. (“Bob the authoritarian says a valid investigation into him is illegal, but his colleague Jane says that’s not true. Who’s right? Who knows?” ?_(?)_/?).

U.S. press outlets need to dramatically improve their ability to call out bullshit or this stuff is all going to get significantly worse. Bad faith bullshit only works when you refuse to identify it as clearly bad faith bullshit. Corruption thrives when your press is too timid to clearly call it corruption when required. And by and large the nation’s biggest media outlets continue to fail painfully at the task of highlighting the GOP’s hard right authoritarian swerve, or the bullshit faux-populist propaganda they’re using to make it happen.

Filed Under: due process, empty threats, evidence, gop, investigation, january 6th, jawboning, kevin mccarthy, marjorie taylor greene, obstruction of justice, subpoena, telcos
Companies: at&t, verizon

DOJ Announces Investigation Of Phoenix PD's Use Of Excessive Force And Abuse Of Homeless People

from the information-and-belief-on-top-of-patterns-and-practices dept

With a new Attorney General in charge and a new President in the White House, the Department of Justice is getting back to taking care of the uncomfortable business of investigating local law enforcement agencies. This part of the DOJ’s responsibilities was largely abandoned under Trump, who opened up his presidency by declaring he would “end” the “dangerous anti-police atmosphere.”

Trump actually made it worse. His enthusiastic support for police and police violence did nothing to discourage the sorts of actions that create “anti-police atmosphere.” Concurrently, the DOJ — under AGs Sessions and Barr — looked the other way as law enforcement agencies engaged in activities that violated the rights of the public.

The latest law enforcement agency to under the DOJ’s scope is the Phoenix, Arizona police department. The Phoenix PD last made news here at Techdirt after its union offered cops access to paid service that would “scrub” social media services of their posts. This was deployed in reaction to multiple investigations opened all around the nation after transparency activist group Plainview Project was able to link bigoted and violent social media posts to current law employment officers.

There are some specifics to this investigation that indicate some parts of the Phoenix PD’s enforcement efforts are more problematic than others.

This investigation will assess all types of use of force by PhxPD officers, including deadly force. The investigation will also seek to determine whether PhxPD engages in retaliatory activity against people for conduct protected by the First Amendment; whether PhxPD engages in discriminatory policing; and whether PhxPD unlawfully seizes or disposes of the belongings of individuals experiencing homelessness. In addition, the investigation will assess the City and PhxPD’s systems and practices for responding to people with disabilities. The investigation will include a comprehensive review of PhxPD policies, training, supervision, and force investigations, as well as PhxPD’s systems of accountability, including misconduct complaint intake, investigation, review, disposition, and discipline.

The city is also being investigated to see what culpability it carries for the PD’s anti-homeless actions. It appears the city (and the PD it employs) has been unwilling to obey court precedent finding certain policies unlawful.

A 2018 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals banned cities from arresting or imposing fines on people sleeping in public places in the absence of meaningful housing alternatives.

As a result, local governments in western states have begun to reassess their urban camping ordinances. Among them are cities in Arizona like Glendale and Tempe, which have stopped enforcing urban camping laws.

But little has changed in Phoenix, said Elizabeth Venable, treasurer for the Fund for Empowerment.

Despite the court decision, the Phoenix Police Department is “doing the same thing they’ve always done,” said Venable.

The state appears to believe the proper solution to being on the wrong end of court decisions is to change the law. A new proposal would create sanctioned “camps” for homeless people while still allowing the state to punish homeless people for sleeping in public areas without permission.

The bill would authorize the state to create designated camping areas on state land with access to water, electricity and bathrooms where people experiencing homelessness could stay. Residents of the designated camping area may be required to attend substance abuse treatment or mental health services.

He said the camps would be similar to the temporary parking-lot shelters opened by Maricopa County last year to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Security would be provided at all camping areas.

The bill would prohibit homeless encampments anywhere else on state property.

Yes, this would create other options for temporary housing of homeless people. But it won’t do much to prevent police officers from harassing and arresting homeless people for simply existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it’s this leeway that appears to have led to this investigation — the encouragement of heavy-handed enforcement by city reps, which has manifested as the abuses the DOJ is now digging into.

Unfortunately for the DOJ, it may soon discover it doesn’t have a whole lot of information to work with. As was discovered by Justin Price of AZCentral last year, the city’s contract with the police union allows misconduct records to be destroyed almost at will.

Over 500 of the city’s 3,000 officers have had their pasts memory-holed by the union contract, covering over 600 misconduct incidents ranging from failure to complete reports to deployments of excessive force.

The purging prevents even internal investigators from discovering patterns of misconduct that should result in harsher discipline or termination. It also prevents plaintiffs suing officers over violated rights from obtaining key background info that could indicate an officer is a longtime abuser of citizens. In one case cited in Price’s report, the PD began purging an officer’s records as soon as the officer had been served.

Beyond the impediments posed by a lack of documentation, there’s the question of how much the DOJ can actually change by performing an investigation. At best, it prevents law enforcement agencies from claiming any abuses uncovered are just a matter of perception. At worst, it just forces agencies to keep their heads low for a while and wait for the DOJ (and the public’s interest) to head elsewhere.

It should be noted, however, that every closed DOJ investigation finds evidence of wrongdoing, usually of the “substantial” and “pervasive” varieties. By the time the DOJ decides to step in, the problem is generally too big to ignore. This means the agency being investigated is already aware of the problem but has done nothing to correct it. That mindset — one that views bad cops as victims of public perception — tends to stick around long after the DOJ has dropped off a consent decree and blown town.

Filed Under: doj, excessive force, homeless, investigation, police

Oversight Report Says DC's Metro Police Can't Be Bothered To Investigate Serious Crimes

from the why-fight-crime-when-you-can-just-shuffle-papers dept

Police, v. : maintain law and order

Police, n.: responsible for the prevention and detection of crime and the maintenance of law and order

Given these definitions, how is it that Washington, DC’s Metro Transit Police Department still has the word “police’ in its name?

Metro Transit Police can’t demonstrate that officers investigated thousands of reported robberies, assaults, sex offenses and property crimes over a span of several years, according to the agency’s internal watchdog.

In the case of 1,200 reported crimes, “investigative case files lacked any documentation of investigative activity,” according to a report released Thursday by the agency’s Office of Inspector General. More than 1,600 other case files were missing or withheld from the inspector general, according to the report.

Don’t let the name “transit” fool you as much as the word “police” has. The Transit Police “investigate” all crimes that occur on city transit property. Some of these are serious crimes. And they’re treated with way less enthusiasm than officers deploy against fare jumpers.

909 cases were open robberies (4.89%) 108 cases were open felony assaults (.58%) 471 cases were open misdemeanor assault (2.53%) 3 cases were open felony sex offenses (.02%) 66 cases were open misdemeanor sex Offenses (.36%) 48 cases were open indecent exposure cases (.26%) 1514 cases were open crimes against property (8.15%)

This is part of the long list of crimes that MTPD isn’t solving or even, apparently, investigating. The Inspector General’s report [PDF] is an entertaining read, but for all the wrong reasons. It details a distressing amount of incompetence or lack of cooperation. Or possibly both.

OIG began its investigation in August 2020 and has made multiple attempts to recover all 3,110 investigative files. OIG has provided MTPD numerous opportunities to produce all investigative material associated with these complaints, but MTPD’s production, to date, has been incomplete. After six months, multiple suspense deadlines, and given the significant decrease in the volume of investigative case files being produce by MTPD, the OIG closed its investigation with MTPD’s limited production of investigative files.

[…]

An analysis of the documentation provided revealed that approximately 84.1% (1,215 cases) of what MTPD described as investigative case files lacked any documentation of investigative activity. MTPD staff’s failure to properly and accurately maintain investigative files, evidence, and/or associated judicial records obstructed OIG’s ability to determine if CID Detectives ignored victim complaints between 2010 and 2017.

You know, obstruction is a crime. Obviously, someone other than the MTPD should investigate this.

Maybe it’s not just incompetence. The OIG notes it opened an investigation in 2012 after receiving an allegation that Transit detectives were falsifying investigations. In that investigation, the OIG found discrepancies between what was documented by CID (Criminal Investigations Division) detectives and what the OIG was told by crime victims it interviewed.

The obstruction/incompetence was present then, too.

As in this current investigation, in 2012, the OIG requested to review 2011 and 2012 CID case files; however, MTPD could not produce 88 out of 134 randomly selected suspended case files.

Corrective actions were ordered and supposedly implemented. But the Inspector General says nearly a decade later, some of what it recommended still has yet to be completed by the MTPD.

From what’s seen in this report, it appears the MTPD just isn’t interested in investigating crimes. The investigation files seen by the Inspector General contained almost no evidence any investigation occurred. Instead, it appeared CID detectives were simply checking boxes until the case could be closed, in most cases without any resolution.

Out of the 1,445 case files provided, 82.1% (1,186 cases) contained only a one-page closing document without any evidence that an actual investigation was ever conducted. Moreover, 2% (29 cases) contained only two documents, a closing document and the ER [End Report], which is a document generally prepared based on information gathered by the responding MTPD officer. In these 29 cases, however, there was still no evidence that an actual investigation was ever conducted.

Even though these one-page closing documents did not contain investigative activity, they were nonetheless used to change the status of these investigations from open to suspended, which signifies that no further investigative activity was warranted. Most closing documents were signed by CID management officials who justified the suspension status change of these investigations based solely on a written claim that the statute of limitations to bring charges against a suspect had passed along with a statement indicating they were unable to locate the original report and case file.

Sure, the statute of limitations can prevent some cases from being investigated further, but the MTPD had no idea if the statute of limitations had run because it often had no idea what specific crime was alleged. The cases were “suspended” by CID supervisors, who never bothered to speak to detectives to see what investigative activity had occurred or obtain further details about the alleged crime.

The whole system — bought and paid for with the tax dollars of underserved DC residents — sucks. It starts at the top, gets worse in the middle, and by the time it reaches the bottom, the only thing that does “work” is the perverse incentives.

OIG interviewed numerous other individuals who were current and/or former CID supervisors from 2010 through 2020. None of these individuals could definitively state that all 3,110 victim and general complaints were investigated. They all expressed concern over the discovery of 3,110 complaints that still appeared to be in an open status in the CID database. They generally attributed the lack of accountability and oversight of CID cases to a variety of factors, including lack of supervisory knowledge of CID’s duties and responsibilities; insufficient supervisory staff; lack of administrative case oversight; high caseloads; nonexistence of policies and procedures; and lack of a case tracking system. In addition, the interviews uncovered that performance evaluations of case work only focused on closure rates, which did not account for suspended cases and/or disposition of previously open cases from past fiscal years.

This investigation by the Inspector General is yet another MTPD-related investigation that can never be considered properly closed. The IG says it is forced to conclude that records related to 1,500 investigations simply no longer exist.

As the IG points out, this is abysmal and it will result in a host of negative side effects. The OIG says (again) the MTPD obstructed its ability to carry out this investigation properly. The large number of missing investigative files make it impossible to determine whether or not CID detectives ignored complaints from victims — another allegation of misconduct that cannot fully be resolved. The missing documentation will also put past prosecutions in jeopardy of being overturned. Finally, there’s the blow to public confidence the MTPD can’t possibly absorb — not with its history of tagging minorities for minor offenses while ignoring more serious criminal acts occurring in its jurisdiction.

Filed Under: crimes, dc, investigation, metro police, police

ICE Spent Your Tax Dollars Dragging A Journalist Through The Internet Sewer Over A Mistake She Apologized For

from the fine-people dept

Law enforcement officers protect their own. Even when they shouldn’t. They are quick to react when one of them is slighted and they do so knowing their position as arbiters of law affords them more protection against internet randos than the little people they’re supposed to be serving.

But something that gets lost in these far-too-common reactions is that this is how taxpayers’ money is being spent: on vindictive actions that could have been handled with a 30-second statement or a press release that might take all of 20 minutes to compose.

But instead of letting things go and realizing their position of power is probably all the response that’s needed, tax dollars are spent converting hurt feelings into investigations of private citizens who managed to offend the powers that be. Ken Klippenstein has obtained documents from a FOIA request (and the de rigueur FOIA lawsuit) that shows ICE decided to get all investigatory when someone mistook a tattoo on one of its officials for a racist symbol. That this person was a journalist makes it all that more problematic.

In June of 2018, Talia Lavin, then a fact-checker for The New Yorker, found herself in an unusual position for a journalist: She personally became the target of a government agency. She had come under the scrutiny of ICE’s Office of Public Affairs, the public face of the agency that played a central role in President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.

[…]

When Lavin saw a tweet from ICE featuring one of its officials, Justin Gaertner, with a cross-shaped tattoo, she wondered if it was the Iron Cross familiar to Nazi iconography. She posted a tweet comparing them. When people began pointing out that it could be another symbol, like a Maltese cross, Lavin promptly removed the tweet. But it was already too late.

ICE first responded with a press release. It was not your normal press release. It accused Lavin (mentioning her name [but misspelled as “Levin”) of “baselessly slandering” the “American hero” who worked for the agency. It demanded an apology and a retraction from Lavin and The New Yorker. Following ICE’s public flogging of Lavin, she became a target for vitriol and abuse by white supremacists and alt-right figureheads. Fox News called her a “little journo terrorist.”

Eye for an eye and all that, I guess. You’d think ICE would have been satisfied with the shitstorm it had stirred up. It provoked a response and got some of what it wanted. Lavin not only apologized but she resigned from The New Yorker.

ICE’s main focus — according to the documents obtained by Klippenstein — was securing the future of the official pointed out in Lavin’s since-deleted tweet. The Public Affairs office began burnishing the official’s war record and claimed to have evidence of credible threats to the official’s life. But the only “threat” detailed in email threads was one from someone responding to Lavin’s tweet, stating that the person wished whoever had wounded the official in combat “would’ve finished the job.” Cue a whole bunch of government gears, all grinding tax dollars into salve for skin-deep scratches.

“HSI Tampa will be carefully assessing the twitter based threats and will take appropriate action,” an HSI official replied. “Looping in AD [Assistant Director] Ip for C3 [ICE Cyber Crimes Center] support. HSI Tampa will be submitting a SIR [Significant Incident Report] shortly.”

More remarkably, the email communications indicate ICE may never have seen Lavin’s tweet before it was deleted. ICE’s press office — for all the time it spent making sure its official remained unslighted — didn’t bother preserving the tweet it found so offensive that it issued a press release decrying the person who had published it.

One tweet by a journalist containing one innocent mistake (it’s no secret white supremacists are drawn to law enforcement positions) led to multiple DHS agencies being apprised of non-credible threats while ICE’s public affairs office decided it was in the best interest of the public to publicly attack a journalist for screwing up. It got what it wanted — a retraction, an apology, and a resignation — but at what cost?

Certainly ICE took a hit to its credibility. It may have been correct about the innocuous nature of the tattoo, but it made its point by turning a journalist into a target for internet pitchforks. This is called “punching down.” It could have issued a statement in support of the official and left it at that, but instead, it felt compelled to turn this into a public flogging and an internal investigation handled so sloppily the multi-billion dollar agency couldn’t even search the Wayback Machine for the tweet prompting its deluge of unprofessional behavior.

Filed Under: dhs, foia, hsi, ice, intimidation, investigation, journalism, justin gaertner, talia lavin, the new yorker

from the insider-trading dept

As we noted just a few weeks ago, two Senators — Kelly Loeffler from Georgia and Richard Burr from North Carolina, both of whom were publicly trying to play down the risks associated with COVID-19 — were quietly engaging in stock trades that suggested they had a different viewpoint (while five different Senators sold stock during this period, only Loeffler’s and Burr’s look particularly suspicious). Burr’s stock sell-off was revealed first, and got the most attention, in part because he’s also the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and was getting classified briefings about COVID-19. The latest news on that front is that the Justice Department has supposedly opened an investigation:

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr sold off a large amount of stocks before the coronavirus market crash, and now the Justice Department is looking into his statements around this time period, NPR can report.

Others have reported that the FBI has been in contact with Burr. That doesn’t mean much for now, and the investigation may turn up nothing. But it’s worth noting that it’s happening.

The other Senator, Kelly Loeffler, has some more bad news, as new reports suggest even more stock trading that at least looks suspicious. As was noted in the original report, Loeffler had sold off a bunch of retail stock, and bought into a company that does videoconferencing. The original reports suggest that she sold off somewhere between 1.3millionand1.3 million and 1.3millionand3.1 million in stock right before the US economy went south. Turns out it was way more. The new report shows that she also sold off nearly $19 million in stock of Intercontinental Exchange, the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange. It is worth noting that Loeffler’s husband is the chair and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, and the sales took place between February 26th and March 11th. That means at least some of those sales were happening while she was insisting that the US had everything under control.

Perhaps even more damning, though? Beyond buying into a videoconferencing software company, Loeffler and her husband, Jeff Sprecher, also purchased a bunch of stock in DuPont, a major supplier of the personal protective gear that hospitals are all now desperate for:

Sprecher bought $206,774 in chemical giant DuPont de Nemours in four transactions in late February and early March. DuPont has performed poorly on Wall Street lately, but the company is a major supplier of desperately needed personal protective gear as the global pandemic strains hospital and first responders.

So, to recap: they sold somewhere in the range of $20 million worth of mostly stock market and retail companies — and bought into videoconferencing and protective health gear. All while telling the public that the government she’s a part of has everything under control.

Filed Under: congress, covid-19, fbi, insider trading, investigation, kelly loeffler, richard burr, stock trades