Where Are My Keys?

Isn't this forcing a suspect to self-incriminate?

Interesting events in a case involving an encrypted hard drive:

A federal magistrate is reversing course and ordering a Wisconsin man suspected of possessing child pornography to decrypt hard drives the authorities seized from his residence.

The development comes as a month after the same magistrate thwarted prosecutors’ demandsthat Jeffrey Feldman unlock drives they believe contain child pornography.

Decryption orders are rare, but are likely to become more commonplace as the public slowly embraces a technology that comes standard even on Apple computers. The orders have never squarely been addressed by the Supreme Court, despite varying opinions in the lower courts.

Just last month, U.S. Magistrate William Callahan Jr. said the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination protected even those suspected of unsavory crimes, but added that “this is a close call.”

But prosecutors convinced Callahan to change his mind. Among other reasons, the authorities were able, on their own, to decrypt one drive from Feldman’s “storage system” and discovered more than 700,000 files, some of “which constitute child pornography,” the magistrate said.

When he ruled against the government last month, the magistrate said the authorities did not have enough evidence linking Feldman to the data, and that forcing the computer scientist to unlock it would be tantamount to forcing him to confess that it was his. But that theory is now out the door, because the data on the decrypted drive contains pictures and financial information linking Feldman to the “storage system,” the magistrate said last week.

“Such being the case, the government has now persuaded me that it is a ‘foregone conclusion’ that Feldman has access to and control over the subject encrypted storage devices. Thus, under the current state of the law as more particularly discussed in the court’s April 19 Decision and Order, Fifth Amendment protection is no longer available to Feldman with respect to the contents of the encrypted storage devices.”

How is this any different than me having a locked super-secure safe in my house, after the Cops have shown up with a warrant?  They can't force me to open that safe, can they?  They can ask for the key/combination, I can tell them I lost it, and it's on them to find a way in.

The authorities know the hard drive is his, they know it is encrypted, how can he be compelled to "unlock" it for him, and not violate the Fifth Amendment?

Good.

The "discovery" process should be interesting.

Disgusting abuse of power..

 

Why was he arrested?  Mr. Grisham will soon be winning a large sum of money from the State of Texas.

Can't marry, can't divorce?

A judge in Arizona has refused to divorce the "pregnant man" that gave birth to three kids.

Welcome to the world's most confusing divorce case. A judge in Arizona today declined to grant a divorce to Thomas Beatie, who attained minor celebrity status as the "pregnant man" a few years back and gave birth to three children. Beatie, who was born a woman but identifies as a man, married wife Nancy in Hawaii in 2003. But was he a man or a woman at the time? Beatie had undergone a double-mastectomy by then and was starting hormone therapy, but he still had a woman's reproductive organs, reports AP. The judge today decreed that there wasn't enough evidence proving Beatie was a man at the time of the wedding. That makes it a same-sex marriage, which means that the state of Arizona doesn't recognize it. And if the state doesn't recognize the marriage, it can't grant a divorce, either.

SCOTUS and Marriage..

As usual, Steyn nails it:

 Three weeks ago, I wrote:

An institution that predates the United States by several millennia will be defined for a third of a billion people by whichever way Anthony Kennedy feels like swingin’ that morning. The universal deference to judicial supremacism is bizarre and unbecoming to a free people.

Paul Mirengoff says today over at Powerline:

The fact that the Supreme Court may be about to pass judgment on the age-old definition of marriage is the reductio ad absurdum of American constitutional jurisprudence. That we have reached this point tells us that the Supreme Court has taken some terribly wrong turns.

The fact that, until very recently, marriage has universally been deemed to require an opposite sex component doesn’t mean that this component must be required forevermore. But a decent appreciation of democracy, human history, and the fallibility of the individual means that nine glorified lawyers shouldn’t be the ones who make the change. Nor should they be in a position where they might make it.

Amen. And no court with any understanding of accountable government or constitutional propriety would go along with it. It may well be that the tide has turned, and the American people are cool with gay marriage. In that case, their elected representatives should enact it into law (as the House of Commons at Westminster recently did). But the spectacle of a nation agog waiting for a puff of smoke from Justice Kennedy to see which way he’s going to blow is ridiculous. Why not ask Punxsutawney Phil?

Remember when the Left was saying Bush used the Constitution as toilet paper?

What say you today about Barack Obama then?

In a case freighted with major constitutional implications, a federal appeals court on Friday overturned President Obama’s controversial recess appointments from last year, ruling he abused his powers and acted when the Senate was not actually in a recess.

The three-judge panel’s ruling is a major blow to Mr. Obama. The judges ruled that the appointments he made to the National Labor Relations Board are illegal, and the board no longer has a quorum to operate.

But the ruling has even broader constitutional significance, with the judges arguing that the president’s recess appointment powers don’t apply to “intrasession” appointments — those made when Congress has left town for a few days or weeks.

The judges signaled the power only applies after Congress has adjourned a session permanently, which in modern times usually means only at the end of a year. If the ruling withstands Supreme Court scrutiny, it would dramatically constrain presidents in the future.

And the court ruled that the only vacancies that the president can use his powers on are ones that arise when the Senate is in one of those end-of-session breaks. That would all but eliminate the list of positions the president could fill with his recess powers.

But the court said in the ruling that its duty was not to speed up government, but to hold to constitutional principles.

“If some administrative inefficiency results from our construction of the original meaning of the Constitution, that does not empower us to change what the Constitution commands,” the judges wrote.

I'm sure this information will never be used against you..

The Feds would never use the information in these "Black Boxes" to monitor your miles driven, where you drive, how you drive, or any other data mining, right?

If you bought a car within the past few years, chances are it's spying  on you. Devices known as event data recorders (EDR) tap into your car’s network  of sensors, and dump a stream of data in the event of a crash—including the  vehicle’s speed, throttle/brake pedal position, and seat belt use.

Historically, the issue of who owns EDR data and who can access it has been left  up to the states, with only a dozen enacting laws regarding EDR data use. But today, the AP reports, the National Highway Traffic Safety  Administration (NHTSA) will propose regulations mandating automakers to install  event data recorders on all new vehicles—turning EDR data ownership into a  national issue.

Like any information-gathering technology, EDR is a  double-edged sword. While it can help detect accidents and call for help, as  well as provide auto engineers with a bevy of data to improve crash safety, its  information has also been used against drivers. In one example in 2007, EDR data revealed  that the driver carrying then-Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey in a Chevy Suburban  was traveling 91 mph before it struck a white pickup and critically injured  Corzine.

So far, the extent of the NHTSA's involvement has limited to standardizing these automotive black boxes by outlining 15  data points manufacturers must record during an airbag deployment, and requiring  automakers to notify owners of the devices by noting their existence in the  owner’s manual. The National Motorist Association, a motorist rights advocacy  group, argues that the issue of who owns all this data, and who has a right to  see it, is a mess right now. In addition to the handful of states that  have regulations in place, some insurance companies contractually require  drivers to give up EDR data as an act of full "compliance" in settling a claim.  Even if the federal government rules that ownership is simply defined by who  owns the car, it’s unclear how that will affect people who lease, rent, or  bought their vehicle with a loan.

When I was in college, I did an internship for the Public Defender's office.  We rotated through various departments, and one week I worked with guys from the Prosecutor's office.  We sat in a van at the end of a street, and recorded the license plates of every car that stopped and visited a specific house on the block.  At the end of our shift, we would turn in our list, which was then fed into a computer somewhere.  There were other teams like mine that were recording similar information at other questionable houses in the City.  Sometimes the computer would spit out license plate numbers that had visited multiple houses being watched.  The Prosecutor would then begin paying attention to those cars that "just happened" to visit multiple suspicious houses.

At what point will local cops be able to access information in your "Black Box" without a warrant, and without probable cause.  How secure is the data in your car?

Slippery slope, people..

Most transparent ever?

Hardly.

Among the administration's many violations of public trust to recently become public is the Environmental Protection Agency's apparent attempt to keep some of its correspondence hidden from the light of day through the use of aliases.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, for instance, has reportedly used the name "Richard Windsor" to cover her tracks in private emails.

Federal law prohibits the government from using private emails for official communications unless they are appropriately stored and can be tracked. Because things look suspicious at the EPA, the House Science Committee is investigating the possibility that the agency has conducted business it doesn't want the public to see.

On Friday, the committee delivered letters to the EPA and "various agency inspectors general" seeking to find out if "senior personnel have been conducting official business through secretive means such as aliases and private email accounts."

The letters, sent by committee Republican members, express concern that "senior Obama Administration appointees" might be violating the Federal Records Act, Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential Records Act, and "other statutes designed to facilitate transparency and oversight."

...

CEI filed three freedom of information requests in May, seeking information about "certain correspondence on the secondary email account assigned to" Jackson. So far, the government, acting as if it's an authority unto itself, has not cooperated with CEI's reasonable and legal request for the Jackson emails.

What could possibly be in these emails that the Obama administration wants to keep covered up?

Maybe the correspondence is related to the 7,300 internal emails that CEI sued the Treasury Department last week to produce.

The emails CEI seeks are related to a carbon tax that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are expected to propose before the end of the year. They seem to want to keep their plans quiet as long as possible so the public won't know what they're up to.

Whatcha hiding, Mr. President?

I see a few new millionaires being created as you read this..

The horrific things that happened to these young boys at the hands of Sandusky, and enabled by Penn State Academic and Athletic Officials won't go away by winning big civil lawsuits, but it sure will help.  Perhaps it will also cause other programs around the Country to take notice, and do the right thing, should a similar series of events happen at their institutions.

In a statement released along with an extensive report, Louis Freeh -- a former FBI director and federal judge -- blasted former top officials at the school.

Freeh spearheaded the probe into how the school handled allegations of child sex abuse by assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

"Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State," Freeh wrote.

"The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized."

He went on to name four former school officials -- former President Graham Spanier, former Vice President Gary Schultz, former head coach Joe Paterno, and former athletic director Tim Curley.

The four men "never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well being of Sandusky's victims until after Sandusky's arrest," Freeh wrote.

Their failure "to protect against a child sexual predator harming children" lasted "more than a decade," the full report says.

"They exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky's victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well being, especially by not attempting to determine the identity of the child who Sandusky assaulted in the Lasch Building in 2001. Further, they exposed this child to additional harm by alerting Sandusky, who was the only one who knew the child's identity, of what (Mike) McQueary saw in the shower on the night of February 9, 2001."

A special "thank you" goes out to Mike McQueary for bringing this all to light.  I hope the guys that Penn State turned their back on come out of this with huge settlements.

What will the historians write about John Roberts?

Now that the initial shock and surprise from both sides of the aisle is dying down a bit, it's interesting to see what People Smarter Than I are having to say about the decision.

There is quite a bit of speculation that Roberts may have changed his mind.  That comes from how not only his remarks were written, but in how his fellow non-dissenters address him.  Is is possible Roberts began his decision in those closed-door meetings headed in one direction, and then changed his mind after some reflection/deliberation?

We'll probably never know, of course.  There may be an interview or a book down the line, but I can't imagine we will hear/learn anything anytime soon.

Initially, I was very surprised that Roberts voted the way he did.  As I read opinions from both sides today, I'm not in the camp that thinks Roberts is the worst thing that happened to the Court (as some on the Right are claiming).

I do agree with many People Smarter Than I that Roberts gave the Left a short-term victory.  They may have won this battle, but are missing the bigger picture that is the War.

By saying Obamacare is a tax, and not handled under the Commerce Clause, Roberts has done two things simultaneously.  First, he has drasticlylimited the power of the Commerce Clause for future rulings/legislation (and we know how important preserving earlier SCOTUS rulings is to you Lefties!), and he took the filibuster out of play in regards to Obamacare (we know how you wanted to get rid of it, Harry Reid!).

What would have taken a 60 vote Supermajority in the Senate, now only needs a simple 51 vote majority to overturn.  It also brings reconciliation back into play to make changes/eliminate certain key components (Hey Lefties, don't bitch too much if the Right uses the same procedural trick you used in the first place, mmkay?).

Roberts has given the Right several wonderful gifts here.  It remains to be seen if that was his intent all long.

I'm beginning to think it was done purposefully, if one looks at his carefully written words:

“Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our nation´s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

In other words, "You shit in your pants, don't expect me to clean it up for you".