Gary McKinnon's lawyers have begun a fresh challenge against his extradition to the US. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
Lawyers acting for the computer hacker Gary McKinnon today lodged papers for a fresh high court challenge to stop him being sent for trial in the US.
Last month the home secretary, Alan Johnson, wrote a letter ordering McKinnon's removal to the US on charges of breaching US military and Nasa computers, despite claims by his lawyers that extradition would make the 43-year-old's death "virtually certain".
"The secretary of state is of the firm view that McKinnon's extradition would not be incompatible with his [human] rights," said the letter, dated 26 November. "His extradition to the United States must proceed forthwith."
A judge will now decide whether there is an "arguable case" that should go to a full hearing.
McKinnon's solicitor Karen Todner said new evidence showed that McKinnon was suicidal and could not survive the American prison system.
After the home secretary's decision in November, Todner had said she planned to start a judicial review of the home secretary's decision. "We cannot give up because in some ways it's like dealing with a death row case, and we genuinely believe Gary's life is at stake here," she said.
McKinnon, from north London, was accused in 2002 of using his home computer to hack into 97 American military and Nasa computers, causing damage that the US government claims will cost more than $700,000 (£425,000) to repair.
Lifestyle has a way of impacting how you get custody:
Porn star Janine Lindemulder, who has been fighting a custody battle with her ex-husband, reality television star Jesse James, and his current wife, Sandra Bullock, lost another round Monday when a California court denied her request for "expanded visitation rights," according to the Los Angeles Times. James has had sole guardianship of the 5-year-old girl since the adult actress and director was jailed for tax evasion. Federal prosecutors on August 22, 2008 said Lindemulder, 39, of Huntington Beach, Calif., failed to pay more than $200,000 in taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service. As part of her plea agreement, Lindemulder admitted making a down payment on a $647,000 house in Eugene, Calif. and purchasing a new Jeep and recreational vehicle while knowing she owed the taxes. She served six months behind bars and was released in July.
I don't think she should be judged on the basis of her porn career. I think it is fine to judge her on her legal issues, and her alleged use of drugs. The media are all over this story because it pits Lindenmulder against Bulluck as a "porn star" up against a "good girl." Well, I'm sorry, but both have used sex or sex appeal to sell their products or movies, to a degree, and that does not make one woman better than the other. Bullock herself has not done anything approaching the kind of porn that Lindenmulder has done, but she has done nude scenes. albeit, very tame and mainstream ones. How they have conducted their lives, that's a different story.
MATTHEW DALYUnder an agreement announced Tuesday, the Interior Department will distribute $1.4 billion to more than 300,000 tribe members to compensate them for historical accounting claims, and to resolve future claims.
The settlement resolves a 13-year-old dispute in which Indian tribes claim they were swindled out of billions of dollars in oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties overseen by the Interior Department since 1887.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the settlement a historic, positive development for Indian country and a major step to reconcile decades of acrimony between Indian tribes and the federal government.
Just how bad are Mininova's numbers, though? Well, traffic is down 66% in the week since Mininova deleted more than a million torrents and went legal. Mininova was getting around 5 million visitors a day, according to TorrentFreak, but that's now dwindled to 1.8 million, and continues to decrease. Downloads on the site dropped from over 10 million a day to a measly 371,424. Searches took a hit, too, down from 10 million to 3 million. Sure, it was pretty obvious that Mininova was going to lose traffic when it lost the bulk of its content, but it's still shocking to see how far and how quickly the former most-visited torrent source has fallen.
The other side of the story, of course, will be the effect the well-known Mininova name has on legal torrents. It's too early to say, but my guess is that content creators using Mininova in its new role as a content-distribution channel will see at least a small bump in downloads, now that their work isn't lost in a sea of popular illegal content. Still, that's not much consolation to Mininova's many fans.
[via TorrentFreak]
Police U-turn on photographers and anti-terror laws
Don’t use anti-terror laws to prevent pictures being taken, officers told
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Police forces across the country have been warned to stop using anti-terror laws to question and search innocent photographers after The Independent forced senior officers to admit that the controversial legislation is being widely misused.
The strongly worded warning was circulated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) last night. In an email sent to the chief constables of England and Wales's 43 police forces, officers were advised that Section 44 powers should not be used unnecessarily against photographers. The message says: "Officers and community support officers are reminded that we should not be stopping and searching people for taking photos. Unnecessarily restricting photography, whether from the casual tourist or professional, is unacceptable."
Writing in today's Independent, he says: "Everyone... has a right to take photographs and film in public places. Taking photographs... is not normally cause for suspicion and there are no powers prohibiting the taking of photographs, film or digital images in a public place."
He added: "We need to make sure that our officers and Police Community Support Officers [PCSOs] are not unnecessarily targeting photographers just because they are going about their business. The last thing in the world we want to do is give photographers a hard time or alienate the public. We need the public to help us.
"Photographers should be left alone to get on with what they are doing. If an officer is suspicious of them for some reason they can just go up to them and have a chat with them – use old-fashioned policing skills to be frank – rather than using these powers, which we don't want to over-use at all."
Section 44 of the Terrorism Act allows the police to stop and search anyone they want, without need for suspicion, in a designated area. The exact locations of many of these areas are kept secret from the public, but are thought to include every railway station in and well-known tourist landmarks thought to be at risk of terrorist attacks.
Many photographers have complained that officers are stopping them in the mistaken belief that the legislation prohibits photographs in those areas. Forces who use Section 44, most commonly London's Metropolitan Police, have repeatedly briefed and guided frontline officers on how to use the powers without offending the public.
But privately senior officers are "exasperated, depressed and embarrassed" by the actions of junior officers and, particularly, PCSOs who routinely misuse the legislation. One source said that an "internal urban myth" had built up around police officers who believe that photography in Section 44 areas is not allowed.
The aberrations have resulted in nearly 100 complaints to the police watchdog. Since April 2008 every complaint made by a member of the public about the use of Section 44 powers, unlike other complaints, must be forwarded to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. In the past 18 months there have been 94 complaints. Eight of these specifically mentioned the fact that the issue arose around photography. Acpo's communiqué has been welcomed by rank-and-file police officers and photographers alike.
Simon Reed, the chairman of the Police Federation, which represents England and Wales's 140,000 rank-and-file officers, said: "I think some new guidance will be welcome."
New orders: The message to officers
This is the message circulated by Andy Trotter, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, to police forces in England and Wales.
"Officers and PCSOs are reminded that we should not be stopping and searching people for taking photos.
"There are very clear rules around how stop-and-search powers can be used. However, there are no powers prohibiting the taking of photographs, film or digital images in a public place. Therefore members of the public and press should not be prevented from doing so.
"We need to co-operate with the media and amateur photographers. They play a vital role as their images help us identify criminals.
"We must acknowledge that citizen journalism is a feature of modern life and police officers are now photographed and filmed more than ever.
"However, unnecessarily restricting photography, whether from the casual tourist or professional is unacceptable and worse still, it undermines public confidence in the police service."
A personal viewpoint: 'I was reminded why I left the police'
I spent 27 years as a PC in the Met, but it was during a trip to my old police station with a friend late last year that I was starkly reminded why I eventually decided to leave.
Since 2003 I have been living in France, where I coach a children's rugby team not far from Toulouse. But last December my sister needed to see a specialist in Harley Street so I went with her and a rugby friend of mine back to London for the week.
While my sister went to the doctors I suggested to my friend, Will, that we should go and take a look at Albany Street police station near Regent's Park, which was where I spent my first eight years as a copper.
It's the kind of station that looks like something out of Dixon of Dock Green, it has a lovely little blue police light outside the entrance and I asked Will whether he'd take a picture of me standing underneath it. Within seconds we found ourselves approached by two PCSOs who told us that we were not allowed to take photographs of police stations.
I didn't want to be a sad old git by telling stories of my past and the nostalgia I felt for the place. So instead I said: "We're tourists. We want a picture of that Blue lamp, it's iconic and it represents London bobbies." But they didn't want any of it and ordered us to stop taking photographs. The second PCSO started asking Will for his details which he began to give before I informed him that he was under no obligation to do so.
I'd clearly failed what the police call "the attitude test" because they radioed for back-up from inside the police station and we were soon joined by a police constable. Often during my time as a policeman I would hear this policy. If someone was bolshy, argumentative or challenging in any manner, refusing to play by the police rules and not willing to show deference, then they had failed the "attitude test".
I guess I hoped the PC would show more common sense but he repeated the same line, that the police station was in a "sensitive zone" and that we had to stop taking photographs. Eventually we gave up and walked away.
When, following the recent fiasco around Trafigura, I saw Carter-Ruck partner Andrew Stephenson at a Parliamentary committee meeting, he seemed utterly unrepentent.
Carter Ruck’s attempt, on behalf of Trafigura, to ban the media from reporting a question in the British Parliament, had triggered calls for the company’s Directors to be dragged to the bar of the House of Commons and formally reprimanded. Justice Minister Bridget Prentice had reiterated that the 1688/9 Bill of Rights, gave the media an absolute privelege to cover the proceedings of Parliament, and that this was essential for the effective functioning of our democracy.
In seeking to explain his firm’s behaviour to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, Stephenson certainly appeared defensive, but he didn’t seem in the least bit sorry. He did, though, seem keen to reassure us that the injunction secured by his company on Trafigura’s behalf had been intended merely as an interim holding measure, and that the original purpose had never been to gag the reporting of Parliament.
So it seems very surprising to read in today’s Sunday Times that Stephenson appears to have gone out of his way to persuade the Commons authorities that the law does, after all, allow for the gagging of Parliamentary procedure:
In a submission to a Commons select committee, Carter-Ruck, a law firm that specialises in libel, argues that newspapers and publishers would be in contempt of court if they published parliamentary questions, answers or debates that fell under super-injunctions.
Advisers to John Bercow, the Speaker, are understood to have informed the culture, media and sport committee that Carter-Ruck’s position is correct. MPs regard the position as a serious threat to free speech and the proper functioning of democracy.
Super-injunctions — under which even reporting the existence of the injunction is banned — are increasingly being used to stop the media publishing information. MPs are now concerned that they threaten the media’s right to report what MPs can freely say in parliament, a privilege affirmed in the Parliamentary Papers Act of 1840…
At the time of the disagreement, Bridget Prentice, the justice minister, said Carter-Ruck was wrong to claim super-injunctions applied to the reporting of parliamentary proceedings.
However, in a submission to the culture committee published last week, Andrew Stephenson, a senior partner at the firm, said the minister was under a “misapprehension”.
He said that while MPs were guaranteed the right to free speech under the 1688 Bill of Rights within the House of Commons, the reporting of parliament remained subject to court orders.
The Speaker’s counsel declined to comment, but is understood to agree with Stephenson’s assessment.
So it seems, after all, that Parliamentary democracy is still under attack, and that Carter-Ruck may be making headway in their attempt to overturn a centuries-old democratic freedom.
What I think this demonstrates, again, is that Carter-Ruck is not just an ordinary law firm, doing what ordinary law firms do. They are actively engaged in lobbying the government to curtail our liberties in the interests of their clients. They are behaving, in other words, like a right-wing activist group.
Presumably if the goverment takes this issue seriously enough, they will table emergency legislation which makes the absolute right to report Parliament fully explicit. In the meantime, judges could presumably ensure that any secret injuction they do grant includes a statement spelling out that the measure does not apply to the reporting of Parliament.
As I’ve argued elsewhere, there’s also a pretty clear-cut ethical case for (peaceful, legal) direct political action against Carter-Ruck. The idea that a lawyer – or indeed any other professional – should be exempted from the moral consequences of their professional choices is, in my view, a self-serving myth.
Lawyers who seek to apply an unjust law – be that the law that jailed Oscar Wilde or the laws being used today to suppress freedom of speech – don’t evade moral accountability simply by hiding behind the fact that what they’re doing is ‘legal’. I can’t help but wonder if we might have avoided some of the trouble we’re now in if more had been done to challenge unethical companies like Carter-Ruck at an earlier stage.
But lastly, there has to be a question here about practicality. However much Carter Ruck and their corporate clients might like to suppress free speech through the use of one secret injunction after another, the recent Twitter-storm around Trafigura has shown that this can sometimes be impossible in practice.
If Carter-Ruck are right and Bridget Prentice is wrong, then it seems that I may, after all, have been in contempt of court when I posted the ‘banned’ Parliamentary Question on Twitter back in October. Would I be willing to do so again? I wouldn’t rule it out. And it strikes me that now would be a good time to get a head-count of bloggers and Tweeters prepared to consider engaging in peaceful civil disobedience should Carter-Ruck – or anyone else – attempt to gag the reporting of Parliament again. You can leave a comment here or email me via richardcameronwilson AT yahoo DOT co DOT UK.
A woman who tried out her new pocket camera by video-recording a few minutes of her sister's surprise birthday party at a showing of "New Moon" has been charged with a felony -- "camcordering" a movie.
Penalties for camcordering have been ratcheting higher and higher (and have been introduced in international treaty negotiations, as well as in bilateral trade agreements with the US, which demands that its trading partners imprison people operating video recorders in cinemas). But the actual incidence of camcordered pirate DVDs is declining relative to "screeners" and other leaks from the industry itself.
The movie industry has turned into an alcoholic dad who beats up his family at the slightest transgression while ignoring his own gross failures -- blaming everything on external forces and refusing to confront its own problems.
Meanwhile, 22-year-old Samantha Tumpach spent two nights in jail for recording her friends singing "Happy Birthday" at a movie theater, for capturing less than four minutes of a feature film. She is charged with a felony and if convicted, could lose the right to vote, to work with children, to hold office, and to partake in full civil life.
And the movie industry's pitch to us remains, "Please stop pirating our discs, because if you don't stop, we may be driven out of business and then society would suffer from our absence."
Charged With Felony After Taping 4 Minutes Of "New Moon" (Thanks, Blaire!)
(Image: Camcordering, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike photo from kowitz's photostream )
Legislative tactician extraordinaire Stuart Smalley
Face it, Senate Republicans--you're pathetic. You don't represent the ideals of the Republican Party. With a handful of exceptions, you barely represent your constituents. But you're not the Republicans I grew up with. You're a disgrace. And a third-rate TV comedian has eaten your lunch:
The Republicans are steamed at Franken because partisans on the left are using a measure he sponsored to paint them as rapist sympathizers — and because Franken isn’t doing much to stop them.
“Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview.
“I think it’s going to make a lot of senators leery and start looking at things he’s doing earlier on, because I don’t think it got appropriate attention ahead of time.”
In a chamber where relationship-building is seen as critical, some GOP senators question whether Franken’s handling of the amendment could damage his ability to work across the aisle. Soon after Tennessee GOP Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander co-wrote an op-ed in a local newspaper defending their votes against the Franken measure, the Minnesota Democrat confronted each senator separately to dispute their column — and grew particularly angry in a tense exchange with Corker.
Their votes were disgraceful. They shouldn't have voted against it. They should have strengthened it with their own amendments and co-opted the sentiment behind it. With ten Senators voting with the Democrats, that's what you do. Line up behind Hatch, Grassley and Bennet, rather than McCain, Sessions, Vitter, Graham, Inhofe and Coburn, you morons. Unless you're from a state made up of rapists, child molesters and the Taliban, you vote for laws that protect women, not against them. That's what you do when you're challenged by a backbencher with the third least amount of seniority in the United States Senate. You take what he puts up and co-opt it.
People familiar with the Corker exchange say it was heated and ended abruptly — a sharp departure from the norm on the usually clubby Senate floor.
At issue is an amendment to the Pentagon spending bill that would bar “future and existing” federal contracts to defense contractors and subcontractors “at any tier” who mandate employees go through a company’s arbitration process for workplace discrimination claims — including claims of sexual assault. The measure passed 68-30, with 10 Republicans voting yes and 30 voting no.
Franken, who declined to be interviewed, has said previously that the measure was inspired by the story of former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones, who alleges that she was drugged, beaten and gang-raped at age 19 when stationed in Baghdad. She fought the arbitration clause in her contract, and in September the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Jones’s sexual assault allegations were not “related to” her employment, allowing her to proceed in court. KBR is fighting the ruling.
Good God, how could anyone vote against that? It's a no brainer. When handed an amendment like that, you run alongside the bandwagon. Why hand your next opponent something to bash you with? You mean to tell me Al Franken knows more about legislative strategy than the leadership of the Republican Party in the United States Senate?
Amateurs, one and all.
