Videotaping of Police NOT Illegal
If you watch the YouTube video below, you’ll see evidence of a cop harassing a civilian for filming an arrest. In several states it appears that federal wiretapping laws have been used to justify this sort of behavior by the police, effectively putting you in their crosshairs for interfering with a police investigation, illegal wiretapping, or worse. (original story courtesy of: boingboing )
In a victory for all camera-phone ninjas everywhere, young and old, a Federal circuit court in the state of MA has ruled that filiming the coppers is an unambiguously constitutionally protected right. For most of us, that’s mere common sense, for the police department, however, the news couldn’t be worse.
Undeterred, in February 2010, Glik filed suit in federal court against the officers and the City of Boston under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the MassachusettsCivil Rights Act. Glik alleged that the police officers violated his First Amendment right to record police activity in public and that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights by arresting him without probable cause to believe a crime had occurred.
Naturally, the police officers moved to dismiss on the basis of qualified immunity, but Judge Young was having none of that, denying the motion from the bench and ruling that "in the First Circuit . . . this First Amendment right publicly to record the activities of police officers on public business is established." The police officers then appealed to the First Circuit, but they have now struck out on appeal as well, with the First Circuit ruling that "Glik was exercising clearly-established First Amendment rights in filiming the officers in a public space, and that his clearly-established Fourth Amendment rights were violated by his arrest without probable cause." .::Citizens Media Law
Posted: September 8th, 2011
at 2:48pm by Black Ock
Tagged with video, cops, camera phone, wiretappig, filming police
Categories: hood status,crime,politricks,real life news,law
Comments: No comments
Destroy the Planet: Buy Organic
Have you chuckled at the apparent inconsistency of a neighbor who drives a 7,000 lb. pavement-melting SUV to Whole Foods and then buys organic produce? It turns out that there is no inconsistency. She is destroying the planet with her SUV and with her purchases of hard-to-grow organic food.
Ridley notes that with genetically engineered crops, synthetic fertilizers, and Roundup to control weeds, the trend of feeding ever more people with less land could be continued. The biggest obstacle to returning land to its wild state is organic farming. Currently we are using 38 percent of the Earth’s land for growing food or grazing animals; at 1961 levels of productivity we would need to be using 82 percent of the land.
Organic farmers won’t use genetically engineered crops, so they spend a lot more time and energy fighting pests. Organic farmers won’t use Roundup and other herbicides, so they plow the weeds under, which kills a lot of small animals and loosens the soil enough that it erodes (or sometimes they resort to flame-throwers). Organic farmers won’t use standard fertilizer, but only manure from cows, which means we’ll need a lot more cows running around.
Organic cotton is an especially hard-on-the-Earth product, according to Ridley. Standard industrial cotton has Bacillus thuringiensis ("bt") genes mixed in and these kill pests, cutting the need for sprayed pesticides in half.
Who knew that "sustainable" would mean a polyester shirt and a bag of Fritos?
Posted: June 5th, 2011
at 11:48am by mnp
Categories: green,not ninja-worthy,grub,development,blogs,law
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Split Second Persuasion
: Continue reading the article :
Posted: May 31st, 2011
at 6:04pm by mnp
Categories: business,"ninja",development,philosophy,law,language
Comments: No comments
Is it Lawful for a Car to Drive Itself?
In the absence of any law to the contrary, it should well be. A new bill is working its way through the Nevada state legislature that would remove any doubt in that state. A.B. 511 directs the Nevada Department of Transportation to authorize autonomous vehicle testing in certain geographic areas of Nevada. Should vehicles meet Nevada DOT standards, they would be permitted to "operate on a highway."
The bill defines not only autonomous vehicle, but artificial intelligence as well. AI is "the use of computers and related equipment to enable a machine to duplicate or mimic the behavior of human beings." An autonomous vehicle uses "artificial intelligence, sensors, and [GPS] coordinates to drive itself." (Source)
Blogger Fined
Libel and creating a "defamation zone" these are the charges brought against Johnny Northside. Read below for part of the story:
Moore, after being fired by the Jordan Area Community Council in January 2009, was hired at the U of M’s Urban Research and Outreach/Engagement Center to study mortgage foreclosures. When Hoff found out, he wrote a post accusing Moore of being involved in a "high-profile fraudulent mortgage," one of several that resulted in a 16-year prison sentence for former real estate agent Larry Maxwell. Moore was not charged in the Maxwell case.
Hoff said he told the truth and had documentation.
District Judge Denise Reilly threw out four of the five statements, saying they were either opinion or the comments of others on the blog. With respect to the remaining statement, the jury agreed with Clark’s claim that Hoff had committed "tortious interference" by meddling with Moore’s employment. Clark pointed out to the jury that Hoff, in a later blog post, took partial credit for Moore’s firing. (Source)
Posted: March 16th, 2011
at 1:43pm by mnp
Categories: myninjaplease,life,fo' real?,real life news,blogs,internets,law,ethics
Comments: No comments
What is a Blog?
Interpreted from the I&B Ministry, supplement to India’s Information Technology Amendment Act 2008:
This is tricky: blogs do two things - they publish content, and have user generated content in the form of comments. at one level, they are a publisher, and at another, an intermediary. The guidelines however, clearly define a blogger only as a user, and that a blog is A"a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video." This is generic, and could mean any online publication, including ours, and online publishers would also come under the ambit of the definition of the term 'users'.
Posted: February 26th, 2011
at 2:16pm by mnp
Categories: web,politricks,blogs,what is?,law
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Does America Need New IP Laws?
The White House isAasking us to give them ideas on what is blocking innovation in America. I thought I’d give them an honest answer. Here it is:
Current intellectual property laws are blocking innovation.President Obama justAset a goal of wireless access for everyone in the US, saying it will spark innovation. But that’s only true if people are allowed to actually do innovative things once they are online.
You have to choose. You can prop up old business models with overbearing intellectual property laws that hit innovators on the head whenever they stick their heads up from the ground; OR you can have innovation. You can’t have both. And right now, the balance is away from innovation.
Posted: February 12th, 2011
at 5:45pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: law,trademark & copyright
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The Law and Large Numbers
So, without getting too political… I’d just like to point out that if our politicians are serious about solving the budget crisis, they need to stop talking about million dollar programs, and start taking about 100 billion dollar ones. The problem is that it’s hard to either slash funding for large programs like defense, or social security, and it’s even harder raise taxes (really at all). But if we never consider those options, we’re never going to get out of the rut.
In my undergraduate physics lab, the instructor had a mantra: "A number without context is meaningless". Now, he originally meant the statement to be a lesson on how important it is to quote errors on your measurements, but I think I can adapt it to apply to giving out numbers like 7 billion without a sense of scale.
Posted: December 14th, 2010
at 10:02pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: business,politricks,blogs,law
Comments: No comments