Bill Ryan's Other Blog

A guy by the name of Carlos Simon-Timmerman is a New York native. He’s also a fan of my friend and ultra hottie Lupe Fuentes. He was vacationing and bought one of Lupe’s DVDs while in Venezuela. He stopped in Puerto Rico on his way home to New York and that’s where things get ugly. According to Radar Online (and a ton of other sources which verify the story) he was arrested and charged with illegal possession and transporation of images involving a minor. The problem is, the images he had weren’t of an underage girl, they were of Lupe Fuentes. Lupe is currently 20 years old. She’s done some suggestive modelling prior to 18 but nothing that constitutes as porn. The DVD in question is called Little Lupe the Innocent: Don’t be fooled by her Baby Face and was made when Lupe was 19. Simon-Timmerman spent 2 months in jail and was on the road to conviction. Hearing of his flight, Lupe flew to Puerto Rico to prove beyond any question that she was of age and that she had been of age for over a year when the DVD in question was made.

You might think, how could this happen? I mean, it’s pretty easy to look her up on the Internet (I mean, she only has a few thousand twitter followers for instance). Anyone concerned with the truth could determine that she was of age by spending about 2 minutes on the internet. So how exactly did this happen?

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was the problem.  From what I understand, being an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent makes you an expert on all sorts of things which apparently includes Knowing the Ages of Porn Stars. The agent in question

had testified that Fuentes was “definitely” under the age of 18 in the video, as well as testimony from a pediatrician that had deemed her 100% underage; both of which Fuentes proved wrong when she showed up in court.

The agent was the one that caused the arrest and the agent’s testimony is what did him in.  The agent then went out and found an ‘expert’ to back up his story (Honest, I’m absolutely shocked that an agent would find some hack with credentials to help engage in a witch hunt).  Based solely on the statements by the Agent at first, Simon-Timmerman was arrested and once the agent dragged in his expert, the stage was set for this guy to go down. 

Lucky for Simon-Timmerman, his attorney was able to find Lupe and being the humanitarian that she is, she immediately flew down to help him out.  For the record, the Agent in question wasn’t the one who found her and the Agent never bothered to contact her or anyone representing her.

Think about what your life would be like.. You take a vacation and are scheduled to be back a week later.  You don’t return.  All that gets back to your office is that you were touring Latin America and were arrested for possession of child pornography.  What would you think if that’s all you heard and you were his boss?  What if all you knew was that he was arrested and there was a Federal Agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement who repeatedly verified that your employee was in possession of child porn?  You’d no doubt fire the guy.  Now imagine being stuck in another country arreseted for a very serious crime. At the same time, you’re not able to keep your job and bring in any income. You could claim you were innocent but with a Federal Agent forcefully testifying you were in possession of child porn, who would believe you? Even if you got free after 2 months, you’re still in a world of crap.  You spend 2 months without work and a ton of money on attorneys just to keep from spending the rest of your adult life in jail.

The Agent in question easily could have checked into this. It’s plainly obvious when the DVD was produced.  Before ruining a guy’s life with what’s probably the worst accusation you could make against someone, you’d think the agent would have at least done a little bit of homework.  In the entire 2 months of time, the Agent had plenty of time to follow up on this.  But no, he didn’t.  If Simon-Timmerman was poorer and couldn’t afford such a good attorney, he never would have been able to contact  Lupe and would almost certainly be doing time based on this agent and doctor’s enthusiastic testimony.  Thank God he wasn’t poor and helpless.

So let me see if I get this straight.  An Immigration and Customs Enforcement jumps to the wrong conclusion  and goes on a witch hunt against an innocent man.  The same agent trolls around until he could find an expert that would ‘agree’ with his statement.  The agent makes claims of certainty that Lupe couldn’t possibly be of age( based on his extensive education I’m sure) which could have cost an innocent man a good chunk of his life and the agent never bothered to follow up on any of it.

I’m absolutely shocked that ICE Agents are this arbitrary and capricious – shocked and amazed I tell you. I’m absolutely shocked an ICE agent would abuse his position to hassle someone – say it ain’t so.. an ICE Agent would never do any of this.  I’m absolutely shocked an ICE Agent would make criminal accusations against someone without even determing for sure that a crime had been committed.  I’m absolutely shocked that an ICE Agent would find some hack ‘expert’ to facilitate the witch hunt. I’m absolutely shocked the ICE Agent was willing to destroy someone by making definitive statements they never bothered to verify. And I’m really absolutely shocked that a private citizen would have to spend a bunch of money defending himself against a bunch of dishonest and idiotic charges made by a venerable agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.   The only thing missing is few legally meaningless cease and desist demands from the agent to each web site publishing information about this incident.  The mere mention of an Agent’s name no doubt endangers the agent’s life and the lives of the Agent’s family right? And look at all those spam links discussing this story – Simon-Timmerman must no doubt be behind it all. Radar Online better watch out or they’ll get hassled by cop friends of the Agent.

Yah, honestly, this all just completely shocks me. It’s patently obvious this sort of stuff is freaking institutional at ICE  I really honestly can’t believe an ICE Agent would engage in behavior like this.

[tags]Carlos Simon-Timmerman, Lupe Fuentes, Little Lupe, Little Lupe the Innocent, ICE Agent Abuses, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Abuses[/tags]

It’s well documented that we can’t cut taxes without cutting vital government services.  There’s no waste in the government and they are very careful with our tax dollars.  And we know that private corporations are run by greedy bastards whereas government agencies are run by altruists.  Somehow, the mere act of receiving a paycheck from the government instead of private sector makes one immune to greed, avarice and most other vices afflicting the private sector (I can’t believe I wrote that without barfing).

When a private company does something, directly or indirectly if you will, that hurts private citizens, there’s never a shortage of opportunist politicians wagging their fingers and promising that the bad guys get their due. When it’s a Senator/Congressman/Governor/President that does it, an Ethics Committee is convened and the person is almost always cleared of all wrongdoing (unless his crime is politically incorrect.  Stealing money and taking bribes is almost always OK).

What’s really offensive though is how things are handled when the government’s actions hurt people.  Every year hundreds of thousands of people die or suffer needlessly b/c the FDA won’t allow them access to experimental drugs that might kill them.  The US Government says Pot is bad but pretty much makes research to support or refute this claim illegal.   Virtually every major aspect of the housing meltdown can be attributed to government action.  Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose catalogs a ton of such instances and that book was written way before any of this housing nonsense.

So in the latest instance of government incompetence that would lead to arrests if a private sector company did it on their own…

The US government is huffing and puffing about the evils of governments that spy on their citizens.

Obama administration issued statements of support for Google, and members of Congress are pushing to revive a bill banning U.S. tech companies from working with governments that digitally spy on their citizens. [editor’s note:  I have no doubt that if the other party was in power, their position would be no different]

I commend them on their support for the non-ruling members of the world and I share their outrage.  There’s a problem or two though::

The 1994 CALEA law required phone companies to facilitate FBI eavesdropping, and since 2001, the NSA has built substantial eavesdropping systems in the United States. The government has repeatedly proposed Internet data retention laws, allowing surveillance into past activities as well as present

CALEA, also known as Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act had a pretty noble purpose no doubt, but the implications seem pretty, uhhh, Orwellian? Totalitarian? What do you think Stalin, Mao, Chavez or Castro would think about such a law compared to say a Churchill or a Ghandi?

CALEA’s purpose is to enhance the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance by requiring that telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have built-in surveillance capabilities, allowing federal agencies to monitor all telephone, broadband internet, and VoIP traffic in real-time

Then there was that pesky CARNIVORE (And to think that Taxpayer money was used to pay someone to come up with such a ‘brilliant’ name. It’s amazing that it didn’t receive a warmer welcome with such a friendly name, non?)

After the dust settled from the Carnivore PR disaster, the best and the brightest decided to soften the image of their totalitarian snooping initiatives and Total Information Awareness was born.  Just to be clear, these are a few of many such power grabs.  So pretty much every time you turn around, our government, just like the governments of most other countries, tries to come up with some new way to snoop on its citizens.

Sweden, Canada and the United Kingdom, for example — are rushing to pass laws giving their police new powers of Internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell.

They keep trying and wait for the right moment to claim such intrusions are necessary.  (For the record, President Bush SIGNED the Patriot Act on October 26, 2001. That means it was written, debated, voted on and confirmed in 6 weeks and 3 days.  It was introduced to the House of Representatives within a week of 9/11.  Check it out for yourself.  Do you really believe that it was all written After 9/11?  Or was it already sitting around as a solution waiting for a problem?) 

So we sit here today with Congress in high dudgeon about the Chinese Governments snooping and we’re ready to really stick it to any government that spies on it’s citizens, yet these same people demanded that companies like Google put backdoors into their software so the government could spy on its citizens.  And because of that mandated back door, Chinese Hackers were able to infiltrate Google’s Gmail service and retrieve who knows what.  This cost Google substantial embarrassment and G*d only knows how much in monetary damages.  Who does Google call to get their reputation or money back? (And for the record, I’m not a huge Google sympathizer – it’s just in this case, I think they got the shaft pretty bad).

While we’re taking a trip down memory lane.  Do you remember the early days of the internet?  Remember any time you installed most major software there was all sorts of text making you promise you wouldn’t export anything that contained encryption?  Remember International Traffic in Arms (ITAR) Regulations?  Do you remember Phil Zimmerman?  This is a prime example of what happens when people who DON’T UNDERSTAND TECHNOLOGY DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY , TRY TO LEGISLATE IT INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WRITING INTEROGATORIES, OR LEGAL PROPOSALS, BY YOU.  In a nutshell, ITAR made it illegal to export strong cryptography.  Here’s the genius part of it:

You could write the source code that built the cryptography and send it out of the country, even directly to a known terrorist and not break the law.  You could put it in a text file and email it and not break the law.  You could send the source code, a compiler and instructions on how to compile the program and still not run afoul of ITAR.  But if you compiled the source and transmitted it to a specific list of actors, even if you did so accidentally, you were now a federal criminal.  To show how stupid this is, I downloaded the source for PgP along with an old Borland Compiler.  It took me a total of 6 mouse clicks (Open the program, File->Open->PgpSource-Select All-Compile) to build the application to make the program in question. If you include creating the email, downloading the instructions and attaching the compiler, the whole process takes less than 20 mouse clicks.  So we made something a FEDERAL CRIME and a damn serious one at that (try to get hired with “I Broke federal arms trafficking laws” on your record), where the threshold between completely legal and federal criminal was < 20 mouse clicks.  God knows no bad guys would ever know how to download source code or install a basic C, C++ compiler.  It’d be the hitting F5 that would throw them. 

So we have repeated examples of the government screwing up (and as Friedman pointed out, in many cases causing screw ups that lead to lives lost) over and over again. We know that many in the Prison Industrial Complex sit around waiting for an opportune time to get around the Constitution.  We know that Congress often doesn’t read the text of legislation they vote on.  We know many of them don’t have a clue about technology (and in some cases, ideas so utterly stupid most people couldn’t begin to understand them).  Tell me again why we are so willing to let them make laws related to technology?  (Or much else for that matter)

[tags]Total Information Awareness, CARNIVORE, PGP, Phillip Zimmerman, ITAR, International Traffic in Arms, Google – China, Chinese Hacking of Gmail, CALEA, Milton Friedman, Cryptography, Patriot Act  [/tags]

Every time anyone proposes slowing the growth of government, we hear a cacophony of bellyaching to the tune of ‘cutting necessary services’.  Opponents act as though Washington runs things so efficiently, there’s never any fat to trim.   It wasn’t long ago that a former Speaker of the House claimed that a ridiculously bloated budget had been completely trimmed leaving nothing left to spare.  His point of course was that all waste had been taken out, so nothing but necessary spending was left.  This happened at a time of a record deficit. The current leaders of Congress are every bit as profligate when it comes to spending, and much worse by most measures. When you factor in how dishonest government accounting is (by dishonest I mean “If a private sector company did the same and got caught, its officers would be locked up”) or how the Social Security surplus is used for the General fund, the shamelessness of the deficit becomes even more obscene. Year after year, administration after administration, Congress after Congress, we hear that there’s no real waste and no room for budget constraints (considering how much they yell about spending level decreases, one can only imagine how crazy they’d get if something approaching a real ‘cut’ were ever to be instituted)

Keep that in mind as you read on. 

First, we know that the Transportation Security Administration TSA has enough in its budget to employ a blogger (aka Blogger Bob) who’s duties include ridiculing people that complain about serious TSA incompetence.  Apparently there’s room in the budget for TSA Comedians.

Rebecca Solomon, a 22 year old college student got a firsthand view of the comedy routine:

After pulling her laptop out of her carry-on bag, sliding the items through the scanning machines, and walking through a detector, she went to collect her things.

A TSA worker was staring at her. He motioned her toward him.

Then he pulled a small, clear plastic bag from her carry-on – the sort of baggie that a pair of earrings might come in. Inside the bag was fine, white powder.

She remembers his words: “Where did you get it?”

Two thoughts came to her in a jumble: A terrorist was using her to sneak bomb-detonating materials on the plane. Or a drug dealer had made her an unwitting mule, planting coke or some other trouble in her bag while she wasn’t looking.

She’d left her carry-on by her feet as she handed her license and boarding pass to a security agent at the beginning of the line.

Answer truthfully, the TSA worker informed her, and everything will be OK.

Solomon, 5-foot-3 and traveling alone, looked up at the man in the black shirt and fought back tears.

Put yourself in her place and count out 20 seconds. Her heart pounded. She started to sweat. She panicked at having to explain something she couldn’t.

Now picture her expression as the TSA employee started to smile

Read the whole thing

Pretty much everything in this report is outrageous.   First off, if dude thinks he’s going to score with a hot chick by using that lame ass routine, he’s insane (maybe he should try Match.com – which from what I understand, has proven that they can match even the most repugnant of people with equally repugnant partners). 

University of Michigan undergrad Rebecca Solomon, who was the victim of a TSA Commedian Agent

Any list of 10 Ten Ways to ensure you don’t score with her would have to include the Anonymous TSA Agent’s routine.  Then again, he wouldn’t be the first Government Agent to abuse his authority in an attempt to terrorize someone into seeing things his/her way.

Next, and even more outrageous is all the concern for his privacy.  Privacy laws blah blah blah is repeated throughout.  When it’s a private citizen on the other side, when do Privacy laws protect them? I can name the people involved in every single airport scare in the last 10 years so I guess privacy only matters when it’s a government employee.  Posting his name would no doubt endanger the agent’s life or the lives of his family right?  This is a pretty egregious stunt to pull and it’s unprofessional to say the least.  Let’s say it’s the first incident this guy has been involved in and also assume that he was terminated for it (I’ll emphasize that it’s conjecture since there’s apparently no way to determine any of this with certainty since we can’t find out who he is).  All in all, that seems fair and there’s no bigger story here.  However let’s say that he has a long disciplinary history where multiple incidents of inappropriate  behavior and/or including but not limited to directly or indirectly abusive behavior.  If such were the case, why wasn’t he prevented from doing this?   What if he had put in his notice a few weeks ago and decided that since he was leaving, he’d have a little fun.  Why wasn’t there more scrutiny?  I’m not accusing the guy of greater wrongdoing but my point is that there could be a much bigger story here that’s getting whitewashed. I’m cynical enough of the TSA to think that if either or both of those scenarios were true, they’d be very likely to do whatever they could to keep things hush hush.

Compare the treatment the unidentified TSA agent received to the treatment of the Kissing Bandit.  We don’t know the name or the history of this person.  On the other hand, we know that the Lovebird’s name was Haisong Jiang, that he’s 28 years old, that he’s Chinese and that he’s a bio-medical graduate student.  We know he attends Rutgers.  We can even see full video footage of him.  And using simple publicly available searches, we can find out a ton more about the guy (<Snark>I’d post it, but I don’t want to be accused of endangering his life or the life of his family b/c ‘compiling’ aka copying and pasting the first 4 links on a Google search – and posting video images linking him to never before revealed info, information on him.</Snark>  Thousands of people were seriously inconvenienced (it happened at Newark, one of the busiest airports serving one of the nations most densely populated areas) b/c of the incident so it’s not hard to imagine that he might be the target of retaliation [For the record, the idiotically worded run on sentence is an attempt at subtle humor on my part].  Someone might want to physically retaliate but more likely, they’d do so but not hiring him, not renting to him, refusing him service or countless other similar methods.  All he did was try to sneak away for a second to give his non-live-in-person-who-he-hopes-to-be-his-live-in-person a kiss and b/c of TSA incompetence, he’s a national pariah.

Also, in Jiang’s case, had the TSA been doing it’s job, he never would have been able to slip through security as he did – it was only b/c some government worker (I know, shocking huh?) took a break and left his post unattended.  But screw him right?  He doesn’t work for the government so why protect his privacy?  If he gets beat up or hassled, who cares right?  He shouldn’t have made the TSA look stupid in front of the world broken the rules. Post a few front page links from a Google search and they’ll claim you’re an irresponsible hate filled loose cannon, but they can post names, addresses and everything else and well, fair is fair.

There are legitimate instances where government officials need privacy.  No matter how hard I try, I can’t see how this is one of those cases.  Hell, the NYT can publish names of CIA interrogators and maps to cabinet members homes but we can’t disclose who this jackass is?  If folks like him ran the risk of being exposed (which in this case would pretty much ensure he’d never get another date), maybe they’d think about their actions a little more before engaging in such BS?

Shame of the TSA for covering this crap up, shame on them for how they treated Rebecca Solomon and kudos to Rebecca Solomon for not taking it lying down.

The best way to deal with abusive government agents is to speak up, and speak up as loudly and through every available venue possible.

[tags]Rebecca Solomon, TSA, Transportation Security Administration, Tom Delay,Haisong Jiang, TSA Abuses[/tags]

I was reading Radley Balko’s latest article on some abuses going on in Maricopa County Arizona and the DejaVu almost knocked me over.  Basically, he documents how Sheriff Joe Arpaio and a district Attorney Andy Thomas use the court system to abuse adversaries. All I can say is, you don’t need to travel to Arizona to see this sort of behavior.

Tactic 1 – Claim publication of public information endangers the lives of law enforcement.  The New Times (a popular alternative weekly newspaper) was writing an article on some very questionable land deals Sheriff Joe Arpaio was engaged in.  Early on the good Sheriff made all sorts of accusations about their motives and the accuracy of their reporting so they answered his charges. To do so, they published the addresses about each piece of land in question.  They also published information gained from public documents which are accessible to anyone that would like to see them.  Sheriff Joe’s flunkie Andy Thomas claimed publication of this information put the Sheriff’s life and that of his family in danger.  And he proceeded to try to litigate against the New Times on the grounds that publication of that information violated a very specific state law against publishing specific information about law enforcement employees. I’ve heard more ridiculous claims than this but this is pretty amazing nonetheless.

Among the more egregious examples were Thomas’ charges against the Phoenix New Times, the city’s long-standing alternative weekly. In 2007, the New Times ran a series of articles on some questionable real estate deals involving Arpaio, and as part of the series published the location of tracts of land Arpaio owns, including his home address. Thomas argued that the articles violated a state law prohibiting the publication of the address of a law enforcement officer. Thomas then did something remarkable: His office issued a subpoena demanding the IP address and any indentifying information of anyone who had ever visited the New Times website. Better yet, the subpoena required the publication to turn over any information related to cookies that would reveal what other websites New Times readers were visiting.

“That may have been the broadest subpoena ever issued in the history of the United States,” Bolick says. “It literally violated the rights of tens of thousands of people. Including me, I should add. I read the New Times online.”

The New Times, in a conscious contravention of grand jury secrecy rules, posted the subpoena on its website, concluding that such a blatant and sweeping violation of the Constitution demanded exposure. In response, Thomas and Arpaio had the paper’s owners arrested. After public outcry and criticism from First Amendment proponents across the country, Thomas was forced to drop the charges and withdraw the subpoena just one day later.

Tactic 2 – Overreach

So in response, they subpoenaed everything, IP Address of everyone that visited the site, the identity of each IP address and the cookies.  This is a particularly obnoxious tactic.  By making ridiculous demands, one can seriously hurt another party b/c of the hardship fulfilling such a request causes.  Think about the IP Addresses and cookies issue.  All of that information has to be centrally collected first. It probably already was collected, but it didn’t sit in one place. The subpoena covered anyone that had ever visited the site.  To comply with it, the company would have to dedicate several people and a lot of time and money to fulfill it.  They couldn’t just ignore it so one way or the other, they had to respond. This cost very little to request but costs a ton to fulfill.  So there’s a built in advantage there and an unethical agent could seriously exploit this.  How can they claim they needed to know the identity, ip info and cookie info of people who had visited the site a year before?  How can they claim they needed info about people who didn’t even read the article? 

Tactic 3 – The Threat of Arrest

The New Times editors did what anyone in the same position would have. These thugs were engaging in seriously unethical behavior and were trying to hide behind the cloak of secrecy.  Law Enforcement officers and agencies have some legitimate needs to privacy, there’s no question about that.  Too many times however, individuals try to hide behind their badge to attack and criticize those that put out legitimate information about them, public information  for that matter. How was the public threatened or endangered by the publication of a subpoena? It’s almost as ridiculous as claiming that someone pasting links to the first 4 Google hits on a certain subject endangers someone’s life and the life of their family.  One’s picture identifying them by name and information about their job can sit out in cyberspace for years without a peep, but have an adversary respond to accusations from that person leveled by pointing this out, and it’s ‘Compiling” the information and putting their life and the lives of their family at risk. (Yes, I too can write in that ‘style’ of writing).  It takes some serious chutzpah (or astounding technological ignorance) to claim that a web page containing the first 4 links of a Google search is somehow “Compiling” information that was never compiled before, all the while ignoring the fact that Google had already compiled the information in the first place in what’s commonly known as a Search Results Page!

The New Times simply embarrassed them by bringing to light the actions Sheriff Joe and company were engaged in.  And for that, they were arrested.  Even if you’re vindicated as they were, you still get hauled in. You still have to miss work. You still have to go through all the crap and expense associated with being arrested.  

———————————————

There are a few other tactics I can think of but I’ll save them for a more appropriate post.  The fact is, the same sort of BS tactics are used all the time by people in power against those trying to expose the awful stuff they engage in.  The only thing missing here is Sheriff Joe saying the New Times lied and writing a few incoherent paragraphs about how the New Times is trying to Destroy, Destroy, Destroy Destroy.  I wonder if there’s a secret “How to attack anyone telling the truth about you” playbook out there that they all read from?

[tags]Sheriff Joe Arpaio , Attorney Andy Thomas , Maricopa County, Radley Balko, New Times[/tags]

Mock a government agency or agent thereof and you’ll likely encounter some serious harassment pushback.  People completely ignorant of technology all of a sudden become technological experts (or should I say mailto:technological.experts).  They can claim pretty much anything and find an audience who is at least willing to look into it b/c of their position. Claims that would cause people to fall over with laughter get taken seriously b/c a Government Agent made it.

Apparently though, it’s perfectly fine for a government blogger to mock individual citizens.  I’d also point out that when private citizens make any direct mention of the material they are covering, they are accused of being reckless and endangering the security of agents and their families.  When they respond by making indirect references and not naming names, they are accused of trying to slip through the cracks or something similarly disingenuous.

Radley Balko covers a story that would be comical if it weren’t so serious.  An 8 year old  boy (Mikey Hicks) was/is unlucky enough to have the same name as someone on the terrorist watch list.  He’s hassled on a flight and his mother complains.  The airline blames the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) , the TSA blames the airline. The Mikey Hicks and his mother  Najlah Hicks are given the run around and get really frustrated that they can’t get this issue resolved.  They make enough noise that the outrage can’t be ignored and is eventually picked up by the New York Times.  The next day,  The Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) official blogger (Blogger Bob), mocks the boy’s plight.  Of course,  the blogger was speaking in general and wasn’t pointing to any specific cases let alone this one.

First and foremost, I want clarify that my post wasn’t directed at this or any family who have been inconvenienced in situations such as this, but more at the perpetual reporting that there are children on the No Fly list. – Blogger Bob

Does this pass the stink test?  We report, you decide.

Let’s not be reactionary and jump to conclusions here, is it really that hard to believe Blogger Bob’s story?  Prior to this point, there wasn’t a single blog post about this oh so important point of his that he just felt soo strongly about he couldn’t help but speak out.  Several posts have been penned about Children and the new screening equipment, but not one about any media frenzy when children are improperly singled out.  Now, this kid is hassled and there’s a high profile embarrassment for the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) that gets a lot of attention and really makes them look incompetent (I guess that’s redundant considering I said “high-profile embarrassment”).  The story hits the NY Times on January 14, 2010 and he pens his piece on January 15, 2010.  But any references are just a coincidence you see. (Too bad private citizens don’t get such benefits of the doubt).

Last week, Matt Welch linked to a New York Times story about Mikey Hicks, an eight-year-old whose getting pulled aside for extra screening when he tries to fly, in spite of the Transportation Security Administration’s assertion on its website that there are no children on its watch or no-fly lists.

The next day over at the too-cute-by-half TSA blog, official TSA blogger Bob Burns weighed in. Might keep in mind as you read that Burns is paid with your tax dollars.

It’s inevitable that every several months or so, some cute kid gets their mug posted on a major news publication with a headline reading something like: “Does this look like a terrorist to you?” Anything involving kids or cats gets tons of mileage and everybody starts tweeting and retweeting that there’s an 8 year old on the no fly list.

There are no children on the No Fly or Selectee lists.

What happens is the child’s name is a match or similar match to an actual individual on the No Fly or Selectee Watch List.

Read the whole thing.

In this ridiculous CYA, Update, he throws out this gem:

The way I write and address issues is different than a spokesperson would address issues with traditional media, and I certainly didn’t mean to belittle the experience of any families who have been through this.

Like a few other government employees, I guess Blogger Bob doesn’t understand the legal concepts of Principal and Agent.  That’s understandable, I mean, it’s not like there’s a lot of freely available and easy to find material on the subject.  Let me help Blogger Bob out.  When you work for someone, you are an agent of theirs.  Whether you’re (wearing a company uniform, driving a company car, sending email using a signature stating your role and affiliation or posting on a blog), you are for all intents and purposes a ‘spokesperson’ unless you make it known up front that you are performing as a non-affiliated party (and depending on the circumstances, even that’s not good enough).

Well I’ve been a little hard on Blogger Bob and I should ease up a little.   Blogger Bob was cool enough to post an update and straighten things out.  In it, he engages in pure CYA diplomacy although it’s a bit suspect considering he took a pretty bad tongue lashing from Najlah Hicks, Mikey Hicks’ mother.  I think he shouldn’t be so ‘vague’ because after all, it makes it look like he’s taking advantage of oversights in the wording. Perhaps something along these lines would be more appropriate:

I Blogger Bob, hereby state no statement was made, directly or indirectly , including but not limited to accusations, insinuations, snarky responses etc, regarding the minor child, by me

I don’t know what in the hell such a statement would improve and neither I nor anyone else could figure out what in the hell the statement said, that’s true.  But I have it on good authority from a law enforcement agent that such writing techniques are necessary because situations like this warrant extreme precision and clarity.  What you say, “this is the diametrical opposite of clarity and precision, assuming it’s even intelligible by someone, it’s so vague and ubiquitous that it’s meaningless and I doubt even an attorney could even state clearly what it means”. Perhaps so, but this is what’s required according to those in positions to know. Remember, no one promised you everything you encountered would make sense now did they?

My standard disclaimer applies.  All commentary is my own and no one else’s. It is not free to be used in any shape manner or form, including but not limited to, directly or indirectly, reading it, writing it or printing it, by you.  This is nonsensical commentary intended to be humorous and nothing else.   If you don’t like my sense of humor, there are millions of other blogs that would love to have you as a subscriber.  All assertions not stated as opinion are substantiated by links to the source, all else is opinion and not a statement of fact, direct, indirect, implied or otherwise. All characters referenced are fictitious and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidence, just like it was with Blogger Bob.

[tags]Mikey Hicks,Najlah Hicks, Blogger Bob, TSA, Transportation Security Administration , Radley Balko[/tags]

Imagine someone directly and indirectly  sitting at home on a Saturday afternoon including but not limited to with their live-in person spouse and directly and indirectly  two kids. It’s a bright sunny day out and the direct and indirect sounds of birds chirping and dogs barking is in the air. Neighbors are mowing the lawn, others are jogging or walking.  Kids are riding their bikes. It’s an idyllic scene on a beautiful day  The wind blows a door shut in the other room.  Imagine both people hopping to their feet.  The kids stare directly and indirectly wondering why they just jumped up.  They both directly or indirectly grab firearms near by and one of them even chambers a round including but not limited to preparing the gun to fire. Nothing is said to the kids directly or indirectly but the mood gets very tense and very serious including but not limited to extreme quiet.  One adult follows the other directly and indirectly as they peep around corners, retreat then spring forward.  As the leader springs forward, the tail gunner ‘covers’ them including but not limited to turning around backward to eliminate the possibility of an ambush.  They directly and indirectly proceed to clear the house, room by room, by them. In the end, they directly and indirectly find that it was just the wind, no intruder, no nothing including but not limited to an actual person, demon, premonition, ghost, goblin, fairy, vampire or werewolf.

If Kim (who technically fits the definition of ‘live-in person’ )and I were to directly or indirectly do this while our daughter directly or indirectly played video games, including but not limited to the Xbox 360, it would be the height of irresponsibility.  But that’s b/c I’m not highly trained to do such things directly or indirectly, and neither is Kim directly or indirectly, by you. So if we anything including but not limited to  this, it would be seen for exactly what it is, paranoid insanity w/ a touch of wannabe machismo, by you.

A federal agent on the other hand, could directly or indirectly do the same thing and it would be perfectly acceptable, by them.  Federal Agents including but not limited to alphabet soup agencies after all, would never directly or indirectly pull out a gun directly or indirectly but if they did, there’d be absolutely no chance of an accidental shooting. Including but not limited to hurting someone accidentally. 

You can certainly imagine then directly and indirectly, my amazement, including but not limited to sheer cognitive dissonance and shock I experienced both directly and indirectly when I read the following:

A Waupaca woman finds herself in the middle of a major security investigation at Cleveland’s airport.

Kimmy Janke had gone through security. In fact, she was in a secure part of the terminal when she stopped to go to the bathroom before making her connecting flight.

That’s when she found a loaded handgun. . . . A Cleveland police report confirms a fully-loaded .40-caliber pistol was left on top of a toilet paper dispenser. [editor’s note, I wonder if it was a Sig or a Glock   ?]

“A little kid could have grabbed that. The wrong person could have grabbed that. You never know,” Janke said.

We’ve since learned the gun was traced to a federal customs agent. [editor’s note: I substituted ‘federal customs agent’ for the real agency name]

[Agency Name] officials have denied all requests to explain why a highly-trained agent left her gun in the bathroom, claiming there is an internal investigation.

How can this be?   This lady wasn’t the member of some Podunk Police Department including but not limited to Podunk Township Police Department or Bumfuk Egypt Police Department.  She was a highly-trained federal agent and her training included but wasn’t limited to advanced firearms training. Membership of a Podunk Police Department was not directly or indirectly achieved, by her. Federal agents don’t directly or indirectly make mistakes and are never ever ever involved in any firearm accidents (including but not limited to ones that cause death or bodily harm), by them. Never!

Clearly this Kimmy Janke lady suffers from the ignorance, including but not limited to the same cluelessness that I did.  No one directly or indirectly explained to her that gun safety is irrelevant when federal agents are involved, including but not limited to members of the DEA, CIA, FBI, OHS, SSI, Elite Republican Guard or the Elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard. All serious risks, including but not limited to life threatening ones,  immediately disappear when an agent directly or indirectly appears. 

Is  taking a dump in a public stall including but not limited to a urinal, directly and indirectly really that hard? ‘Hard’ for the purposes of discussion means everything including but not limited to, extreme constipation  I directly and indirectly consider myself one of the foremost experts on taking a dump, including but not limited to pinching one out, squeezing out a turtlehead, busting a33, letting one go etc and although I try to avoid public stalls, I’ve managed to pinch one off directly or indirectly in public stalls before including but not limited to airport stalls. In fact, most of my experience ‘in the field’ includes but is not limited to airport stalls.  I’ve seen many gross,  stalls including but not limited to ones with semen on the commode seats, urine on the tank and bowl, graffiti on the stall area and homosexual hookup details, but never had any drama.  I never had directly or indirectly experienced any strangeness, including but not limited to glory holes (well, one I was pretty sure was a glory hole but it looked like it had been decommissioned), wide stances, loaded guns sitting around, nothing.  Why do govt employees directly or indirectly have so much trouble in places including but not limited to  airport crappers?  How’s a gun directly or indirectly different from other devices including but not limited to a Kindle, Laptop or Cell phone ,with respect to stowing it while you do the deed?   What I mean is, the time should not be directly or indirectly put on the floor, by you.  That’s because it’s both directly and indirectly repugnant.  The item should not be directly or indirectly left outside of the stall by, because you don’t want anything bad happening to it, including but not limited to having it stolen.  So a stall is hit, pants and dropped and a dump commences, by you, directly or indirectly, including but not limited to a floater, a one wiper or a blaster  When you’re done, you wipe (I wipe directly and indirectly), put the item under your arm or on the commode tank, zip up, grab your stuff and leave.  It’s really easy.  I know the govt really likes directly and indirectly incompetent people who can only stay employed b/c of ridiculously protective rules, including but not limited to ones rivaling collective bargaining agreements but taking a dump just isn’t that hard (and if it is, you need more fiber in your diet.  And if you eat enough fiber on Christmas Eve, Mr Hankey might even come visit you, directly or indirectly, by him.)

Who knows, all things considered, maybe she’ll sneak off for a few days with Hott Rod directly or indirectly the worlds sexiest boss (“sacrificing my time with [spouse] and [child]”), hoping his live-in person doesn’t get wise to them and hoping her husband live-in person doesn’t overhear any conversations she has with Rod, because that might necessitate “police was called”. This would directly and indirectly include having sexual relations with, buying calling cards for and paying for rooms for, directly both parties, even though one party makes more than the other directly or indirectly.

[The hypothetical situation I propose above is purely hypothetical. Any resemblances, affairs with Rod, live-in persons, spouses overhearing calls, police was called etc are purely coincidental, by you.. All other brands and names are directly and indirectly property of their respective owners, by you.  If an erection lasts for more than 4 hours, consult your physician immediately. I disclaim all liability, including liability for infringement of any proprietary rights, relating to use of information in this specification. I do not warrant or represent that such use will not infringe such rights. In fact, that’s a very strong possibility. Materials are copyrighted and are protected by worldwide copyright laws and treaty provisions. They may not be copied, reproduced, modified, published, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way, without my prior written permission, by you. 

My loyal readers may be wondering, directly or indirectly, why I”m writing like this including but not limited to the repeated use of “by you”, “directly or indirectly” or “including but not limited to.”  I directly and indirectly have very little expertise in legal writing so items written, by me, on items including but not limited to legal issues, will employ this format.  As such, features were created, directly or indirectly, by me, to take a text block and legalize it.  This way, items can be written, directly or indirectly, by me using my normal style of writing, yet I can appear to be adroit in items including but not limited to legal writing.  The latest drop of the Bot directly and indirectly includes but is not limited to several methods to legalize writing as well as disemvowel writing, by you.  The method name is not Legalize b/c Legalize has direct and indirect meanings unrelated to what the methods actually do but even a casual reader of this blog should be able to directly or indirectly determine the information, including but not limited to the method names

Hat Tip: Instapundit

[tags] Kimmy Janke, Waupaca Woman Finds Gun in Airport Bathroom  [/tags]

As absolutely hard as it is to believe, it was a TSA Agent that made such a statement.  Is there anything not wrong with the TSA?  Don’t worry though, the big wigs at the Transportation Security Administration have it all under control:

“TSA’s internal affairs team discovered video evidence that potentially depicted a few members of our workforce consuming illegal drugs. TSA management at LAX immediately identified these individuals, subjected them to reasonable suspicion drug testing and terminated the one who tested positive. TSA practices a zero-tolerance policy for illegal drug use and conducts random drug and alcohol testing at over 450 airports across the country to enforce this rule. We show no leniency to employees who violate the public trust and shame the uniform that is proudly worn by 50,000 men and women in service to this nation.”

To be perfectly honest, I’d be a little more comfortable if drugs were the reason for all of this incompetence, the fact these people are sober is much more disturbing. 

All together now…. “they do such a good job with everything else, let’s let them manage our health care system.  What could possibly go wrong?”

[tags]LAX, TSA, Transportation Security Administration, Larry Fetters, [/tags]

I’m a pretty big supporter of LOCAL law enforcement and as I mentioned several times, I’m very inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.  The reason I’m posting this is for a totally different reason:

The case began after a relative reported Monday that a 17-year-old girl said she was ordered into Jackson’s car on Dec. 18, driven to another location, and assaulted. The girl said the officer had been wearing his uniform and driving his marked patrol car.

I’ve only read the news reports which are damning but I’m not going to convict someone over news reports.  Let’s just say for the sake of argument though, that Officer Jackson is in fact guilty of this. Let’s say he was off duty, in his own car and made no representations of who he worked for.  This would be a totally different case.  The police chief wouldn’t be responding as he did and it wouldn’t really affect the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police dept  But he was wearing the uniform and in a marked car. So even if he was off-duty,he still represents the police department.

Remember that the next time you send something out from your work email account.  Claim otherwise all you want. You’re acting as an agent for your employer.  They are responsible.  And your correspondence carries with it the authority of your position, be it senior software developer at Jugggs magazine or Special Agent in Charge of whatever and anywhere in between. Hate the game all you want, it is what it is and refusals to acknowledge such will only work against you.
This post and all others on this site are subject to the current Copyright as well as the Sites Terms of Use. Any reproduction, duplication or publication without express written permission from the author is strictly prohibited.

[tags] Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Officer Marcus Jackson[/tags]

This is very good news and proof that you don’t just have to bend over and take it when the Feds try to screw you over.

Again, I’d remind you to reread the original article. It was just yesterday that this all had to be done to protect liberty and lives of American citizens etc etc etc. Somehow, magically that all changed in just a few hours.

Actually, what happened is that there was a huge public backlash set in motion by citizens who don’t like being bullied. Dr Reynolds at Instanpundit repeatedly points out it’s very stupid, VERY STUPID, to threaten bloggers and in just about every prominent case, such behavior has blown up in the faces of those engaging in it.

Whenever you hear govt spokespeople making official statements, it’s often like they speak in a different language. In many ways, they do. They use incredible ambiguity to make things sound much more serious than they are. A kid writing on a desk with a pencil is “Vandalism of Government property” for example. You can pretty much count on these official statements to sound as bad as possible so to try to turn people against the target as early as possible. If this sort of crap is true (and not intentionally manipulative BS), then how on Earth does something the TSA said was as serious as this, change so quickly?

It doesn’t. The cat’s out of the bag. The real reason this all happened was that the document they published mentioned this as a Terrorist Attack – not just a Christmas Day Event. That embarassed people in high places b/c it contradicts their official lines.

All I can say is, GOOD. I was pretty sure it’d end like this, but really surprised it happened this quickly. That just reinforces the point. If you’re a blogger and you get threatened, post the stuff and tell everyone. Yell and scream as loud as you can. Trust me, the big scary letters lawyers like to send cut both ways. The more ridiculous their demands and threats, the more stupid they look when you publicize it. Although there are factions inside the government that wish it were otherwise, we don’t live in a Police State and you don’t have to take bullying. (BTW, this also extends to idioticly written, typoladen threats from private attorneys making ridiculous claims for even more ridiculous clients in most cases).

Still no word about the “leave” and what’s going to happen to the original 5 employees.  Even less info about any punishments for the thugs that paid these guys a visit

[tags] Transportation Security Administration, TSA, Christopher Elliott, Steven Frischling, Suzanne Trevino [/tags]

I believe I was a college freshman when The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech… Just Watch What You Say came out. The Wikipedia Entry says it was 1989 but I’m thinking it might be off a little b/c I was a huge ICE-T fan, but who’s going to quibble over a few months.

One song in particular, titled not unsurprisingly Freedom of Speech, Just Watch What you Say was IMHO, one of the more brilliant jams.  ICE-T is a deep thinker and although I don’t always agree with him, I always respect him (and the things I disagree with him on are few and far between).  When it comes to freedom of speech, he’s about as awesome as Nate Hentoff IMHO.

So here’s what happened. The TSA put up a document that wasn’t classified or even secured.  A few bloggers got a hold of it and posted it online. It contained some ridiculous/outrageous stuff and the TSA got really butthurt over it.  Here’s the first part of Wired’s story on it:

Two bloggers received home visits from Transportation Security Administration agents Tuesday after they published a new TSA directive that revises screening procedures and puts new restrictions on passengers in the wake of a recent bombing attempt by the so-called underwear bomber.

Special agents from the TSA’s Office of Inspection interrogated two U.S. bloggers, one of them an established travel columnist, and served them each with a civil subpoena demanding information on the anonymous source that provided the TSA document.

The document, which the two bloggers published within minutes of each other Dec. 27, was sent by TSA to airlines and airports around the world and described temporary new requirements for screening passengers through Dec. 30, including conducting “pat-downs” of legs and torsos. The document, which was not classified, was posted by numerous bloggers. Information from it was also published on some airline websites.

“They’re saying it’s a security document but it was sent to every airport and airline,” says Steven Frischling, one of the bloggers. “It was sent to Islamabad, to Riyadh and to Nigeria. So they’re looking for information about a security document sent to 10,000-plus people internationally. You can’t have a right to expect privacy after that.”

Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said in a statement that security directives “are not for public disclosure.”

“TSA’s Office of Inspections is currently investigating how the recent Security Directives were acquired and published by parties who should not have been privy to this information,” the statement said.

You really need the rest to see how ridiculous this whole thing is.  They say power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts.  That seems to be particularly true in law enforcement.  Take your average beat cop.  sure, there are some outrages here and there but by and large, your local cops are rock solid – mine here in Duncan, SC sure are.  If I think about my various encounters with the DEA, I cringe. I was unfortunate enough to be near someone they were looking for (I had never met them, had new idea who they were and had no dealings whatsoever).  It was one of the first times in my life I was really scared, and trust me, i don’t scare easily.  I remember back when I had to deal with a multi-agency raid at a company I was working at.  No violent crimes were even alleged and the owner was a very affluent respected member of the community. Yet the FBI and several other agencies came in, with full body armor, Glocks and Sigs ready for action.  Our legal counsel on staff was calling our corporate law firm when a FBI agent said “everyone step away from your desks”.  The thing was, he had just gotten permission from the FBI Agent who was in charge of everything.  This officer told Joe (a name I’m just making up) to step away from his desk.  Joe identified himself as legal counsel (the nameplate on his door said the same thing) and said Agent So and So just said it was ok.  He said again, put the phone down. Joe repeated himself and asked that Agent So and So be called over to verify. He reminded the agent of his legal right to make this call. At that point, the agent unclipped his holster and grasped his gun.There were so many other abuses it’d warrant a post of itself.

I have had dealings with other federal agents and I can’t think of one time I’ve not seen an abuse of power.  For the record, in the first case with the DEA – after searching me and having the dogs come out and sniff everything, I was completely cleared and allowed to go on my way. This was after 3 hours of detainment of me and about 25 other people – all of which were completely innocent and had nothing to do with the supposed drug dealer.  The company I was at was also completely cleared and one of the prosecutors was ultimately removed for misconduct on another case.  However the $1,000,000.00 dollars and time lost for my old boss was never recouped or returned.

Anytime you say anything that a Federal Agent doesn’t like, watch it.  First they’ll probably accuse you of lying. When you defend yourself, they’ll use the material you used to defend yourself as proof that you disclosed something improperly. And of course, they’ll say you put their life or lives of their family in jeopardy.   Telling the truth about anything  improper agents do ALWAYS means you’re revealing something they’ll take issue with.  They usually get really indignant about the assertion that they’d abuse their power. If you see all of this happening –BANK ON IT, you’re in for a fight.  I have also received ‘anonymous’ information before along the same lines. It’s not uncommon for people who want  a story to get out but are afraid of retaliation to send out the information to people they know will publish it.  I’ll be posting it in the near future and it’ll definitely ruffle some feathers. My point though is that this isn’t uncommon and what’s happened here can happen to a whole lot of people. It’s truly an outrage.

Fortunately, we have plenty of means to publicize such abuses. And such abuses can’t exist with daylight shown on them.  The more people that stand up, the more bloggers that cover such abuses, the less they can get away with it.  Ice-T was right though.  We do have Freedom of Speech, you just really better watch what you say (and whatever you do, don’t ‘compile’ the top three hits on Google. Even though Google’s search results already compiled them, if you do the same  prepared for a lot of BS.  Thank God the bloggers have decided to fight back.  And the best way to do that is to publish all the crap they receive. If the govt is really right, it’ll be self-evident. If it’s a matter of people covering up incompetence and screw ups, it’ll be readily evident too.

I’ll give the local cops and even state police the benefit of the doubt all day long – IMHO, they truly deserve it.  Until Federal Law Enforcement cleans up its act, well, Not so much.

Look at these poor guys.  Read what they went through .  Read the Official BS Line. Read the dramatic language the feds used (do they teach you how to make everything sound so freaking dramatic in Fed school or something?)  Then re-read this:

“They’re saying it’s a security document but it was sent to every airport and airline,” says Steven Frischling, one of the bloggers. “It was sent to Islamabad, to Riyadh and to Nigeria. So they’re looking for information about a security document sent to 10,000-plus people internationally. You can’t have a right to expect privacy after that.”

…..“They were indicating there would be significant ramifications if I didn’t cooperate,”

…”The agents searched through Frischling’s BlackBerry and iPhone and questioned him about a number of phone numbers and messages in the devices. One number listed in his phone under “ICEMOM” was a quick dial to his mother, in case of emergency. The agents misunderstood the acronym and became suspicious that it was code for his anonymous source and asked if his source worked for ICE — the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

 

You can read the blogs referenced here, here and here.

One last thing.  This is a big screw up right?  Remember that big screw up called 9/11? Anyone want to give me the names of everyone that was fired as a result of it?  I’ll gladly give you $1,000.00 for each one. This is clearly a screw up even by the TSA’s own admission.  After all

Five TSA workers were put on leave pending an internal investigation into how that document got posted

Anyone want to take bets that this will be the last we here of it?  Anyone want to bet it’s PAID LEAVE (It always is when they don’t mention it one way or the other).  Paid leave is called  a freaking vacation last time I looked  but I don’t know for a fact that it’s paid leave so I don’t want to jump to conclusions.  I’m betting right now no one will be fired, no one will be seriously disciplined either. Any takers?

[tags] Transportation Security Administration, TSA,  Christopher Elliott, , Steven Frischling, Suzanne Trevino[/tags]