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User: pmocek

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  1. Re:No surprise on Seattle Police Raid Tor-Using Privacy Activists (thestranger.com) · · Score: 1

    Run a tor node and download cp (without using tor) and you're having the best excuse ever.

    Why would people do that when they could just use Tor Browser?

    Become an ISP and you have a pretty good excuse, as well.

    Regardless of all that, this isn't about an alibi. It's about the fact that he police had no reason to suspect the targets of their search, but they left out information the judge should have received, got a warrant, and searched anyway.

  2. Re:What if a bad guy was a TOR node on Seattle Police Raid Tor-Using Privacy Activists (thestranger.com) · · Score: 1

    Just because it was a TOR node doesn't automatically mean the people weren't up to no good.

    Just because you posted a comment on Slashdot doesn't automatically mean you weren't up to no good.

    Just because it was a Wave G (ISP) circuit doesn't mean the people at the Wave G office weren't up to no good.

    It sounds like you are looking at this backward. Traffic exiting the Tor network to the open Internet is not indication that the operator of the Tor node generated that traffic. Based on such alone, there is no reason to suspect to find evidence of related crime at the operator's home. If Detective Gill had fully informed the judge in her application for warrant, the judge would likely not have issued warrant to search Jan's and David's home, because the fact that an IP address assigned to them by Wave G was on the list of Tor exit nodes means that there was no reason to suspect to find evidence related to that IP address at their home.

    SPD's ICAC unit are trained on Tor. They know this stuff. They misled the judge and went on a fishing expedition.

  3. Re:Wait a minute... on Seattle Police Raid Tor-Using Privacy Activists (thestranger.com) · · Score: 1

    nobody is going to get in any trouble whatsoever over this, except the luckless couple.

    That seems likely, but keep an eye on complaint 2016OPA-0288, filed earlier this week with Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional accountability.

  4. This is just making shit up to allow them to put up cameras, against local laws, and then refuse to explain what the hell they're doing.

    Seattle's surveillance equipment ordinance was enacted after the SCL-ATF grease dumping incident. But SCL are still allowing ATF to secretly install cameras on SCL poles.

  5. Why would anybody believe that the ATF is even investigating illegal grease dumping into municipal sewers?

    I and received e-mails that show Seattle City Light staff requesting that ATF install a camera on an SCL pole. Why would they go to ATF? Because ATF owe them a favor or two for all the times SCL let ATF secretly install cameras on SCL poles for ATF's purposes. SCL security manager Doug Williams keeps a list of those. I've received an improperly-redacted installment of my request for present and past versions of that list.

  6. How the hell does that fall under the ATF's jurisdiction?

    It doesn't. Seattle City Light requested that ATF install the cameras. SCL likely don't have their own, and their security manager, Doug Williams, regularly allows ATF to secretly install cameras on SCL poles, so when he wants some installed, he just calls his buddies at ATF.

  7. ATF and others have multiple surveillance cameras on Seattle City Light poles. In the 2011 grease-dumping investigation, SCL contacted ATF to request that they install cameras so that SCL could catch the dumpers. I learned this by reading e-mails to and from SCL, mostly to security manager Doug Williams, I received via Public Records Act request.

  8. Why is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms interested in illegal grease dumping?

    I'm the Seattleite who dug up those records. ATF were likely not interested in people dumping grease. Seattle City Light were, because it was damaging their equipment. Since security manager Doug Williams at SCL regularly lets ATF and other agencies covertly install surveillance cameras on SCL's poles (which I learned by reading e-mails to and from him I received via Washington Public Records Act request), ATF were likely paying back the favor.

  9. Re:We already have laws to cover this on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    Care to address the issue at hand instead of throwing up strawmen? I don't believe that public servants spend much time in private situations while on the job. I'm not arguing that police don't deal with people at those people's worst moments. I'm not arging anything about the entertainment value of watching public servants on the job.

    Whether or not the public have access to public records is up to the public to decide. The people of Washington do not yield our sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give our public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for us to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that we may maintain control over the instruments that we have created.

  10. Re:Bad precedent on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    These have implications on our privacy, I agree. However, I think there is nothing wrong with the public going fishing for government malfeasance. With the extraordinary authority we give some staff, to harm people on the job in order to enforce our public policy, should come extreme on-the-job scrutiny. If somebody doesn't want the public looking over his shoulder all the time, the being an armed public servant is the wrong job for that person.

  11. Re:We already have laws to cover this on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    I don't believe that public servants spend much time in private situations while on the job. And if we need special teams of police who are assigned to go into people's homes, when invited, without camera, never without a witness, then maybe we should arrange for that.

  12. Re:Bad precedent on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    Do you find it unreasonable for the public to demand access to the entire body of public records because of the burden on public agencies of getting public records out of the systems in which they chose to store the records, or because of people's on-camera interaction with public servants while performing their public duties?

  13. Re:Good Grief on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    Police departments are public-records-generating machines. A large portion of what their staff do is the generation of public records. With every new type of record they decide to create, they need to be thinking about how they will provide public access to those records. To do otherwise is to wall the public off from that which is our right to see. If cop gear suppliers like Coban, Taser, and VieView want to sell their systems to Washington law enforcement agencies, they better figure out a way to make mass-export of public video records to the public feasible.

  14. Re:We already have laws to cover this on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    I believe all of that is correct. Thus, police departments had better stop co-mingling releasable and non-releasable records and portions thereof. Making redaction so time-consuming as to greatly delay production of records is an effective means of circumventing our Public Records Act, and we should not allow our public servants to do so. This goes doubly for those public servants who have the extraordinary authority to harm people on the job.

  15. Re:Man files public records request, news at 10! on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 2

    If only there was some giant network of computers and a sort of web, world-wide, that would allow anyone who is interested to connect to machines on that network remotely, video could be digitized and provided to anyone wishing to review it, without the need to burn it onto physical media and transport it by post or carrier pigeon.

  16. Re:We already have laws to cover this on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    Wrong. In Washington, every record made by a public agency is public record unless it is exempted from our Public Records Act. Public is the default. There is no need for anyone to classifiy a record as public in order to make it so.

  17. Re:Bad precedent on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    Such may be the cost of facilitating public oversight of government staff who are authorized to enforce public policy with force.

  18. Re:Bad precedent on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    Public agencies in Washington are not allowed to discriminate as you suggest. That would be a violation of RCW 42.56.080, which states, "Agencies shall not distinguish among persons requesting records, and such persons shall not be required to provide information as to the purpose for the request except to establish whether inspection and copying would violate RCW 42.56.070(9) or other statute which exempts or prohibits disclosure of specific information or records to certain persons."

  19. Re:anonymously on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    We had to sue Seattle Police Department to get them to provide dashboard camera video. Until recently, they refused to provide it to uninvolved parties until the statutes of limitation on civil and criminal lawsuits ran out. That's three years. They also had a policy of purging video after three years.

    See this report, published yesterday:

    An important precedent for public access to police video was set in June, when the state Supreme Court ruled that the Seattle Police Department had wrongly withheld dashboard camera footage from a KOMO-TV news reporter. The reporter filed a request in 2010 for "any and all" in-car footage the department had tagged to keep since 2007.

  20. Re:anonymously on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 1

    They can post the records on an FTP server, on an HTTP server, using SpiderOak, using OnionShare, or use any of a number of other methods.

  21. Re:Good Grief on Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation · · Score: 2

    Washington's Public Records Act does not require a requester to state the reason for his or her request. We have to identify specific records, and "all incident reports" or "all suchandsuch videos" is sufficiently specific. Refusing the request as you suggested would be a violation of the PRA. Revised Code of Washington 42.56.080 states, "Agencies shall not deny a request for identifiable public records solely on the basis that the request is overbroad."

  22. Re:Uh huh. on Google Announces Chrome OS, For Release Mid-2010 · · Score: 1

    Actually, it should be Chrome/Linux, right? GNU/Linux is an operating system consisting of various GNU utilities used with the Linux kernel, and it sounds like this will be various Chrome utilities used with the Linux kernel.