New York’s Court of Appeals drew a vital line in the sand between the ever-advancing ability of police to track a citizen’s every movement, and the right of citizens to not dwell constantly under the eye of the state.

The court concluded Tuesday that State Police had violated New York’s Constitution in failing to take the basic step of asking a judge for a search warrant before placing a global positioning system tracking device on Scott Weaver’s car.

Police maintained they didn’t need a warrant, because GPS tracking didn’t constitute a search. It was, they argued, no different from having police tail Mr. Weaver.

Wrong. Technology enabled police to effectively plug Mr. Weaver into a device, monitor him 24 hours a day for more than two months and download his life into a computer. The crime he was convicted of — burglary of the Latham K-Mart in 2005 — hadn’t even occurred when the GPS was planted. To this day, police have not offered a reason for tracking him.

This week’s decision threw out the GPS evidence and sent the case back for a new trial.

A 4-3 majority opinion written by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said this technology does not merely enhance the human abilities police officers use to track a suspect. His analysis reads like a description of a police state:

“The potential for a similar capture of information or ’seeing’ by law enforcement would require, at a minimum, millions of additional police officers and cameras on every street lamp …That such a surrogate technological deployment is not … compatible with any reasonable notion of personal privacy or ordered liberty would appear to us obvious.”

A significant concern not reflected in the ruling is that such technology isn’t selective. It would indiscriminately record the movements of everyone using the car, not just the person of interest to police.

This decision does not prevent police from using the latest tools to catch criminals. It simply says that such a deep intrusion into a person’s life amounts to a search, and that police must first convince a judge that there’s a reason for it.

Our justice system is constantly trying to balance public safety and privacy. In 1928, in a case concerning phone tapping, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote:

“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect … They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — one of the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”

Some might say this case was about whether law enforcement can keep up with technology. It was about much more than that. It was about whether a free nation, and our personal liberty, can keep up with it, too. Narrowly, they did.

Source: Times Union

One single short article in the Wall Street Journal that merely acknowledges this weekend’s Bilderberg Group meeting in Athens is the only US media coverage of a confab involving around 150 of the globe’s most influential movers and shakers.

“The managers of world capitalism aren’t always popular, which is one reason the Group of Seven leaders now meet in out-the-way resorts that are hard for protesters to reach.” WSJ reports.

A Google News search on “Bilderberg,” which is now in its third day, returns 33 results, all of which consist of articles from this website, a smattering of other alternative media reports, in addition to a snippet from the French Press Agency and Charlie Skelton’s London Guardian updates.

Even if you accept the ludicrous claim of the debunkers – that Bilderberg is a mere “talking shop” that contributes nothing towards actual policy – do you still not think it odd that only one mainstream U.S. press outlet has even mentioned it in passing?

A mere book signing by an ex-politician would generate at least a few headlines, yet we have dozens of CEO’s, European and Federal Reserve banking and finance kingpins, Prime Ministers, European royalty, NSA officials, professors from top Universities, NATO and UN officials, oil company chairmen, and foreign policy luminaries meeting behind closed doors and yet only one U.S. media report!

The outright complicity of the corporate media in blackballing Bilderberg coverage reminds us why the elite encounter little hindrance in conspiring in such a secretive and undemocratic manner every single year without facing any substantial public scrutiny.

Source: Prison Planet

Former researcher in U.S. custody accused of cross-border smuggling

No one from Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory bothered to report the theft of 22 vials of biological material to police, despite an international uproar over a former researcher accused of smuggling the substances across the U.S. border.

On Wednesday, scientific director Dr. Frank Plummer confirmed RCMP alerted lab staff about the stolen materials on May 5 — the same day a former vaccine researcher was arrested by FBI special agents after U.S. Customs discovered the vials stuffed in a glove in the trunk of his car at the Manitoba-North Dakota border crossing.

Some of the vials included genes from the deadly Ebola virus, but local scientists say the material is not infectious.

Konan Michel Yao, 42, faces U.S. criminal charges for smuggling and is currently in the custody of a U.S. marshal.

The vials are considered government property, and Plummer initially said the matter was referred to Winnipeg police.

But on Thursday — more than a week after the theft came to light — police said no one from the lab has reported the incident.

“Right now, we’re not investigating it,” a police spokeswoman said, noting the theft falls within Winnipeg Police Service jurisdiction because it occurred within the city.

Lab officials did not respond to calls from the Free Press on Thursday.

The latest revelation comes one day after senior lab officials admitted they had no idea that 22 vials of biological substances were missing from the high-security facility for close to four months.

Plummer has said the researcher signed a form declaring he did not steal anything from the lab and understood he was not allowed to. The national lab does not conduct searches of staff when they exit the lab and does not routinely take inventory of the thousands of vials containing non-infectious biological substances.

Court documents allege the former researcher stole the vials on his last day of work at the virology lab in January because “he did not want to start his research over from the beginning when he entered into his next fellowship” with the National Institutes of Health at the Biodefense Research Laboratory in Maryland.

Mary Ellen Kennedy, former director of Health Canada’s office of biosafety, said the incident raises questions what kind of security protocols the National Microbiology Lab has in place and how they’re handled. Although Kennedy said there’s a core group of longtime scientists who work at the lab, there are also researchers and PhDs who come in to work on projects for a short period of time.

She said it might be a good idea to screen temporary staff differently to guard against future theft.

“The Americans seem to be pursuing it and it’s unclear what we’re doing as Canadians. In a very broad sense, I think we’re behind the U.S.”

Kennedy said Americans developed very strict biosecurity protocols post-9/11 and have agencies and personnel to enforce them that don’t exist in Canada.

Dr. Tom Ksiazek, former chief of special pathogens with the Centres for Disease Control in the U.S., said the CDC ensures vials of non-infectious materials are accounted for, but that scientists do not keep as strict controls on them as they do for infectious agents.

Ksiazek said it appears the incident has more to do with intellectual property and ownership of research than it does with security protocols. He said researchers must fill out request forms to transport biological material with them if they are leaving one lab to take a job in another.

Though most facilities are accommodating, Ksiazek said there can be delays, as legal departments in both labs have to clear the transfer and the paperwork. He also said some individuals feel they have a stake in the research, and that it wouldn’t be the first time a scientist took a vial of his work with him.

Source: Winnipeg Free Pree

It seems like we’ve heard this story before.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Four U.S. contractors affiliated with the company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide fired on an approaching civilian vehicle in Kabul earlier this month, wounding at least two Afghan civilians, according to the company and the U.S. military.

The off-duty contractors were involved in a car accident around 9 p.m. on May 5 and fired on the approaching vehicle they believed to be a threat, according to the U.S. military. At least some of the men, who were former military personnel, had been drinking alcohol that evening, according to a person familiar with the incident. Off-duty contractors aren’t supposed to carry weapons or drink alcohol.

The incident occurred as the U.S. is facing rising outrage from Afghan leaders over civilian casualties from U.S. air strikes. For Xe, which is the name Blackwater chose earlier this year to distance itself from its controversial security work in Iraq, the shooting comes as the Obama administration and Defense Secretary Robert Gates reconsider the role of military contractors, a practice that boomed during the Bush administration.

From CNN:

Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Xe, the parent company of Paravant, said the company was aware of the incident in Afghanistan involving the four contractors, but was unable to provide specific details for legal reasons.

She said Xe is also conducting its own investigation.

Tyrrell said Xe has terminated the contracts with the four involved for failure to follow standards and regulations set by Xe and all four have been instructed by Xe not to leave the country without the permission of the Department of Defense, Tyrrell said.

Source: Raw Story