Techdirt. Stories filed under "chicago" Easily digestible tech news... en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "chicago" Tue, 15 Sep 2015 06:11:00 PDT Chicago Sued Over Its Attempted 9% Netflix Tax Karl Bode noted how the city of Chicago was hoping to cash in on streaming services by imposing a new tax on Netflix. Blind to the negative impact such taxes can have on emerging economies, Chicago proudly proclaimed it would be expanding its 9% "amusement tax" authority (traditionally covering book stores, music stores, ball games and other brick and mortar entertainment) to cover any service that interacts with the cloud. While the new ruling was supposed to technically take effect September 1, Chicago recently announced it was postponing portions of the new tax until next year to field criticism and manage plan logistics.

While Chicagoans wait, the city's now on the receiving end of a new lawsuit (pdf) by the Liberty Justice Center, which claims that Chicago is violating the law in two ways. One, the lawsuit claims that the city aldermen violated city rules by not holding a full vote on the changes. Two, the lawsuit states that Chicago's tax grab also violates the Internet Freedom Tax Act, which prohibits local, state, and federal governments from enacting "internet taxes." The plaintiffs are quick to note that actually putting the idea to a public vote likely wouldn't end well for the city:
"No aldermen voted on this tax. It never went before the Chicago City Council, which makes the so-called 'Netflix tax' an illegal tax," Jeffrey Schwab, an attorney with the Liberty Justice Center, said in a news release Thursday. "If the city wants to tax Internet-based streaming media services, then it should put the measure through the political process, and let Chicagoans have their voices heard through the democratic process."
Should Chicago's plan even survive the lawsuit, it remains unclear how the city plans to collect the tax. Would it demand that Netflix and Spotify tax users themselves, even if they have no physical presence in the city proper? Would Chicago residents be required to report this revenue (which they either won't do, or would hide behind VPNs)? Chicago's just one of many cities taking this controversial tack as traditional revenue runs dry, creating an absolutely mind-boggling legal minefield for new economy companies suddenly facing an ocean of discordant and often logically and legally inconsistent attempts to tax the cloud.

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tax ALL the things
Mon, 17 Aug 2015 14:47:00 PDT Chicago, Los Angeles Police Departments Have Been Using 'Stingrays On Steroids' For Over A Decade Tim Cushing More evidence has surfaced showing local law enforcement agencies are using high-powered surveillance equipment -- equipment originally designed for the military and highly-recommended by the NSA. Ali Winston and the Center for Investigative Reporting have obtained documents showing both Chicago and Los Angeles have used "dirt boxes" (DRT -- Digital Receiver Technology "boxes:" high-powered cell site simulators) since 2005.



Documents from Digital Receiver Technology clearly spell out these interception capabilities.







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Mon, 10 Aug 2015 03:39:54 PDT Chicago's Secret Homan Square Detention Facility Way Worse Than Anyone Thought Timothy Geigner Back in February, we brought you the delightful news that the Chicago police department was rather broadly known to be operating what was essentially a CIA-style black site within the neighborhood of Homan Square. This facility, located in a rough West Side neighborhood of the city, featured such practices as off-the-books detention, lawyer-less interrogations, and the occasional fatality. This place, where detainees would disappear for hours or days, seemed to be a vacuum of civil liberties and instead operated under the theory that Chicago police were rulers over all, and were owed whatever they demanded. The original Guardian link detailed a number of witness stories from those who had been detained at Homan Square, but very little information was available about exactly how widely the facility was being used.

Thanks to the Guardian's FOIA efforts, however, we have some clarity on how much Homan Square is used and how the police detain people there, and, well, it's extremely chilling to anyone with a modicum of interest in civil liberties.
At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal. Of the thousands held in the facility known as Homan Square over a decade, 82% were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney, according to a cache of documents obtained when the Guardian sued the police.

Despite repeated denials from the Chicago police department that the warehouse is a secretive, off-the-books anomaly, the Homan Square files begin to show how the city’s most vulnerable people get lost in its criminal justice system.
I wasn't a math major, but three out of thirty-five hundred detainees receiving visits from counsel is something like not-enough-percent. And before anyone goes off on the dangers of the West Side of Chicago or goes off prospecting for dirt on those detained, a review of the charges against many of those detained at Homan Square are laughably mundane. And that's when charges were filed to begin with.
Documents indicate the detainees are a group of disproportionately minority citizens, many accused of low-level drug crimes, faced with incriminating themselves before their arrests appeared in a booking system by which their families and attorneys might find them.
The CPD response to this, even after the initial story broke months ago, has been that Homan Square isn't a black site, it's simply an undercover base for Chicago police, which, you know, you say tomato, I say black site. Either way, the city's long-running denial maintains that all those arrested are indeed processed through the booking system and can be found by attorneys and families, except the detainees at Homan Square aren't arrested until they're booked at another station, so that doesn't mean anything at all. The Guardian's review of the records show that most of these detentions have occurred under the watchful gaze of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, most of those eventually charged with a crime were charged with anything from traffic violations to drug possession, and under ten-percent of detainees were white, despite whites making up a third of the city's population. And these records only go back to 2004. Homan Square has been in operation since 1995.

After the facts are presented, the article includes the usual quotes from civil rights leaders who lament their own lack of surprise at all of this and who wonder blissfully if anyone will do anything about Homan Square this go around. To hell with that. If you have a brain cell to spare on civil rights for an entire city's population, this ought to both shock you and make you very, very angry.

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Mon, 27 Jul 2015 15:21:51 PDT Police Shut Down Hologram Concert Of Rapper Because They Don't Like His Lyrics; Pretty Clear First Amendment Problem Mike Masnick shut down an entire music festival because they didn't like a particular rapper, Chief Keef, who appeared via hologram (supposedly to avoid arrest for some outstanding warrants in the mid-west). The police don't even try to come up with some other bogus reason. They flat out admit that they didn't want Keef to perform and thus they shut it down:
Hammond police Cmdr. Pat Vicari said the promoters were warned the concert would be shut down if Chief Keef performed.

"We spoke to the promoter several times, and they assured us (Chief Keef) would not be performing," Vicari said. "Later, an officer working the show realized it was being streamed on one of the hip-hop sites, and promoters were warned again they would be shut down.”
Why? Because apparently politicians don't like his lyrics:
Thomas M. McDermott Jr., the mayor of Hammond, said in an interview that his office became aware of the surprise performance, which was also streamed live online, through social media. All of the Craze Fest acts — which included Riff Raff, Lil Bibby and Tink — had been previously vetted because the event was held at a public park, he said.

The reference to Mayor Emanuel was to Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel blocking a similar concert in Chicago a week earlier, when Emanuel's office declared Keef "an unacceptable role model." Because, apparently, in Chicago, you're only allowed to be a role model if the mayor's office gives its stamp of approval:
Last weekend, a Chicago theater called off a similar show after representatives for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office deemed Chief Keef “an unacceptable role model,” whose music “promotes violence” and whose presence via hologram “posed a significant public safety risk.”
Here's the really crazy part, though. The concert itself was to protest violence, and was called a "Stop the Killing" benefit concert, in an effort to raise money for the families of two people that Keef knew who were recently killed in a shooting.

As Eugene Volokh notes, it's difficult to see how this is anything but a First Amendment violation.
The government may impose reasonable content-neutral restrictions on speech in such venues, such as sound level restrictions, and may charge money for the use of the venues. But the government may not restrict speech because of its viewpoint, or the viewpoint that the speakers had expressed elsewhere, which seems to have happened here
He further points out that the "public safety" risk claims are not an acceptable reason to shut down the event either, pointing to Terminiello v. Chicago. Even beyond that, there were no reports of any actual threats or public safety issues at the event itself. And yes, Keef may have outstanding warrants, which would make it perfectly reasonable to have him arrested if he did show up, it still doesn't explain why the concert was shut down.
It will be interesting to see if Keef does anything about this. The hologram appearance was coordinated by Hologram USA, the company owned by wacky publicity hound billionaire Alki David, whose antics we've discussed in relation to his Aereo-clone streaming TV service FilmOn (not surprisingly, the concert was also being streamed live via... FilmOn). David immediately lashed out at the shutting down of the concert and rightly called out the First Amendment violation:
"Shame on the mayor and police chief of Hammond for shutting down a voice that can create positive change in a community in desperate need. And for taking away money that could have gone to help the victims' families," David said in a statement. "This was a legal event and there was no justification to shut it down besides your glaring disregard for the first amendment right to free speech.
Some have argued that Keef intentionally uses conflicts like this to get more publicity to market himself -- and even if it's true that doesn't matter. Even if Keef is truly a horrible person in every way, the First Amendment isn't supposed to only protect the speech of "good people." It's supposed to protect everyone. And yet it's amazing how quickly some in power forget this.

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Thu, 2 Jul 2015 12:44:26 PDT Chicago Rages Against The Future With 9% Tax On Netflix, Spotify And Other Streaming Services Timothy Geigner Almost exactly three years ago, Mike wrote up a post that discussed Planet Money pulling together five economists with differing political views to see what they could all agree on. The result was several policy ideas that appeared to transcend politics if economics was the driving motivator instead of any kind of partisanship. The whole post is awesome, and has influenced my thoughts on economic policy and taxes to a large degree, but I came away from it with one general concept firmly in mind: tax what you want to discourage, don't tax what you want to encourage, and never tax innovation or the future.

And now my home city is taxing the future. You see, the city of Chicago recently announced that it will extend its 9% amusement tax to online streaming services and cloud computing.
A ruling by Chicago’s Department of Finance allows the city to add an extra nine percent tax onto “electronically delivered amusements” and “nonpossessory computer leases.” In an odd combination, buying a subscription to streaming media, such as Netflix or Spotify, would qualify, as would using a cloud computing platform, such as Amazon Web Services. Each would be subject to 9% tax; Chicago is the first major American city to levy a tax on either streaming services or cloud computing services.
Amusement taxes in and of themselves generally violate the concept I highlighted in the opening. After all, if you're a municipality, taxing fun is essentially saying you want less fun. But what makes this re-write of the amusement tax already on the books silly is that it is purely a money-grab. Here's what happened: the amusement tax in Chicago worked primarily to collect revenue from book stores, music stores and movie rental stores, which are obviously becoming increasingly in short supply as consumers move to online stores and streaming services like Netflix and Spotify and Amazon for all of the above. This is actually a good thing from a public interest standpoint for a variety of reasons: less pollution from physical products, more efficiency in the marketplace, the opening of more creative outlets for members of the city, and more access to more content from more places and devices, meaning a more robust economic marketplace. The future, in other words, although increasingly the present as well. And Chicago wants to tax all this, effectively discouraging its use, in order to collect an additional $12 million a year.

Chicago, mind you, is in the hole for roughly one hundred times that amount.
Cities with amusement taxes have lost revenue as more people forgo book stores, record shops and video rental stores in place of online outlets. But $12 million isn’t going to be much more than a drop of water in the bucket of the city’s $1 billion operating shortfall.

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Tue, 24 Feb 2015 14:43:08 PST The Guardian Details The Horrors Of Chicago Police's 'CIA-Style Black Site' Timothy Geigner
Unfortunately, the perception of how our police force cares to operate here is also largely incorrect: it's so much worse than you think. If you thought it was all corruption and laziness from some (and I stress some) of Chicago's finest, you don't know the half of it, because the other half is the pure denial of the basic rights we are supposed to have when dealing with our protectors. The recent work done by The Guardian in detailing how Chicago police operated a CIA-style black site ought to chill the bones of anyone planning on being anywhere near my beloved city.
The practices undertaken at the Homan facility are alleged to include detaining people without documenting their arrest, beatings, keeping detainees shackled for hours at a time, refusing attorneys for detainees access to the facility, and detaining people while refusing them legal counsel for up to a full day. These practices, by the way, weren't reserved for the mature, but were happily visited upon minors, because when you're going to go evil there is no point in half-assing it. Do these types of practices sound familiar to you? Would it help if the detainees were in orange jumpsuits and had the tan of a Cuban sun upon their skin? You get the point.

So, what types of hardened criminals find themselves disappeared at the Homan Square Gitmo?

Church was held at the facility for just under 24 hours, most of that time spent cuffed to the furniture there. Though he had immediately asked to call legal counsel, this request was denied. Neither he nor the 11 other protestors that were taken there were allowed to see legal counsel until finally Church's, and only Church's, lawyer was allowed in after 20 or so hours. Prior to that, police had been questioning him illegaly. Because of the well-publicized nature of the protestor's detention, lawyers had been searching for him for hours. The reason Church couldn't be found wasn't a bug, though. It was a feature.

And yet, as ridiculous as it sounds, Church and the other protestors got off lucky.
On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found “unresponsive inside an interview room”, and pronounced dead. The Cook County medical examiner’s office could not locate any record for the Guardian indicating a cause of Hubbard’s death. It remains unclear why Hubbard was ever in police custody.
It's quite a shame that we can't ask Mr. Hubbard because he died within the facility where lawyers are refused entrance, where detainees are kept out of the record books, and where the police appear to operate with impunity. Now, it's roughly around here where you're thinking one of two things. Some of you are thinking that such a claim as this is so outlandish that there's very little chance that it's true. Others must be thinking that the accusations of abuse and the denial of rights are rare mistakes made by a tiny percentage of officers. Too bad this secret wasn't all that secret.


Keep in mind the references to Gitmo and CIA black sites overseas and then juxtapose that to the ongoing militarization of domestic police within our borders, and the picture becomes a clear warning against allowing the practices of our military and spy organizations to trickle into our domestic police departments. Will the outside world pressure Chicago into giving up the abuse? Unlikely. The outside view of my city is often wrong, but there's no doubting the popular assertion that Chicago is a machine, and the police department represents a powerful cog in that machine, one with a great deal of torque and few placed within which to shove a brick that will keep it from turning.

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Fri, 20 Feb 2015 13:33:00 PST Cabs Strike In Chicago Against Uber; Uber Drivers Presumably Report Uptick In Business Timothy Geigner For a couple of years now, Chicago taxi companies have been making all kinds of noise in an attempt to keep Uber and other ridesharing services from disrupting the marketplace. The whole thing has been a fairly transparent case of a jealous legacy player in an industry not loving a disruptive newcomer. That said, there's precious little validity in a claim against a city or competitor that mostly amounts to: "But I really like all that money I was making."

Not that such a lack of validity is keeping Chicago's taxi services from waving their arms around in an attempt to get attention. The most recent futile event was a staged mini-strike in Chicago's downtown area (actually, directly below my office), during which cabbies refused to pick up fares and instead drove around the loop honking their horns the entire time.
Many cabbies drove through downtown for four hours Tuesday morning, refusing to pick up fares. Dozens of cabs drive in circles around City Hall and the Daley Center for more than an hour, honking their horns to draw attention. Many cabbies had posted protest signs in their windows, accusing Uber of stealing their customers.

“It’s good music to my ears,” said cab driver Rocky Mmomo, a steering committee member of the United Taxidrivers Community Council. Mmomo said cabbies want the tax industry deregulated, so it can better compete with Uber and the other ride-sharing companies.
A couple items to note here. First, don't be fooled by old Rocky's claim that they just want the cab companies to be deregulated so they can be on a level playing field with Uber drivers. What isn't mentioned here is the obvious problem with that line of thinking: Uber's service and livery services aren't really the same thing, so the same regulations don't apply. A full-time taxi driver employed by a taxi service that pays for the medallion and proper livery license is a far cry from an Uber driver who does a little people-shipping during his or her off hours. They're just not the same thing and pretending they are won't get anyone anywhere.

And the city of Chicago, for its part, is licensing Uber based on what it actually is.
On Monday, the city agreed to issue a “transportation network provider” license to Uber, after negotiations led to a promise from Uber to provide more stringent safety measures than required by the city’s ride-sharing ordinance. Uber competitors Lyft and Sidecar were granted similar licenses three months ago.
Again, as you can see, Uber and ridesharing service providers aren't cab companies. Pretending they are doesn't make any sense. But that's what the legacy cab companies want. And you can tell that's all they want by their arguments for deregulation.
“We’ll be sitting at a hotel for two, three hours; and all of a sudden you see three UberX cabs just came and picked up customers while we’re just sitting there. How is that fair? That’s not fair to a cab driver,” cab driver Mustafa Husein said.
Forgive me, sir, but who the hell ever promised you fairness when it comes to competing in a changing business marketplace? The very nature of disruptive business models are to be "unfair" to the legacy models so as to build a more efficient product and happier customers. That's the entire point. I'm fairly certain nobody promised cabbies a living, after all. So honk away, guys. I'm sure Uber drivers are happy to pick up those fares you refuse.

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Wed, 11 Feb 2015 13:44:00 PST Police Officers Can Sue Newspaper For Publishing Descriptive Info, Raising Serious First Amendment Issues Mike Masnick "balance" free speech rights against state publicity rights. Now, over in the 7th Circuit, there's a troubling ruling that seems to suggest a particular privacy law might similarly override the First Amendment. The writeup at the Columbia Journalism Review (link in the previous sentence) is a really great overview of the case, or you can read the ruling itself.

In short, the Chicago Sun-Times published a series of reports investigating whether or not Chicago Police "manipulated" an investigation into a manslaughter case, involving a nephew of then Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley. That nephew, R.J. Vanecko, had apparently punched another man, David Koschman, leading Koschman to fall over and hit his head -- leading to a brain injury from which he died a few days later. The Sun-Times report argued that the police investigation was designed more to protect Vanecko, rather than bring him to justice.

In exposing the questionable nature of the investigation, the Chicago Sun-Times highlighted the key "police lineup" that the CPD had put together, showing Vanecko and five police officers. No eyewitness picked out Vanecko, but the Sun-Times report argued that the police had chosen officers who strongly resembled Vanecko to make it difficult to pick out who really was involved. In order to make this point, reporters at the paper used a public records request to get the lineup photos, but then also got the physical information about the other officers in the photo via the state's motor vehicle records database, controlled by the Illinois Secretary of State.

The point, obviously, was to show the physical resemblance to Vanecko. However, the officers in question sued the Sun-Times, arguing that publishing the information from the motor vehicle database, violated the Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) of 1994. That law bars the disclosure of "personal information" from the various Department of Motor Vehicles' records. It was originally passed after people had been using information in those databases to find and harass people they disagreed with politically.

The Sun-Times argued, reasonably, that the First Amendment should protect its right to publish this information. However, both the lower court and the 7th Circuit appeals court have now both disagreed.

The appeals court starts out by first noting that the information that was published -- the police officers' "approximate date of birth, height, weight, hair color, and eye color" are "personal information" as defined by the DPPA. That seems ridiculous enough already, given that those aren't exactly things that are private information for the most part. From there we get to the First Amendment analysis. First, the court says that there's nothing unconstitutional about the DPPA's prohibition on obtaining the information, since that doesn't involve any expression. The Sun-Times argued that even so, the purpose here was to stifle reporting by denying the press access to such information. It pointed to the recent ACLU case we covered, where the court said a law banning the recording of police violated the First Amendment, but the court doesn't buy it:
However, ACLU is distinguishable on several grounds. While the Illinois eavesdropping statute’s effect on First Amendment interests was “far from incidental” because it banned “all audio recording of any oral communication,”..., the same is not true of the DPPA’s prohibition on the acquisition of personal information from a single, isolated source. It can hardly be said that this targeted restriction renders Sun-Times’s right to publish the truthful information at issue here—much of which can be gathered from physical observation of the Officers or from other lawful sources (including, of course, a state FOIA request)—“largely ineffective.” Further, in forbidding only the act of peering into an individual’s personal government records, the DPPA protects privacy concerns not present in ACLU. If a member of the press observed one of the Officers in public—for example, during a traffic stop—he could publish any information gleaned from that interaction without offending the DPPA. By contrast, the Illinois eavesdropping statute operated as a total ban on recording police officers’ activities, even when they were “performing their duties in public places and speaking at a volume audible to bystanders.”
Now, how about the restriction on disclosing the information -- which seems to fall even more squarely into the First Amendment arena? Again, the court doesn't buy it. It points out that while it would be protected in publishing the information if someone else got it and gave it to the Sun-Times, that doesn't apply if the Sun-Times itself broke the law in getting the information:
The Supreme Court has established that “if a newspaper lawfully obtains truthful information about a matter of public significance then state officials may not constitutionally punish publication of the information, absent a need to further a state interest of the highest order.” .... Sun-Times, however, cites no authority for the proposition that an entity that acquires information by breaking the law enjoys a First Amendment right to disseminate that information. Instead, all of the many cases on which Sun-Times relies involve scenarios where the press’s initial acquisition of sensitive information was lawful.
The court then has to do some rather fancy tap dancing to get around some of its previous rulings that said similar activity was protected free speech, by arguing that the "intent" matters.
Sun-Times fares no better in its invocation of precedent from this circuit. Sun-Times points to our opinion in Thomas v. Pearl, 998 F.2d 447, 449 (7th Cir. 1993), in which a college basketball coach secretly taped conversations with a player about illegal perks offered by a rival university, as an example of what Sun-Times terms “theoretically unlawful news-gathering techniques inherent to successful journalism.” Yet in Thomas, we determined that the coach lacked the requisite intent to be found in violation of federal wiretapping laws, id. at 452–53, and thus had not unlawfully obtained the in-formation at issue. Sun-Times also cites Desnick v. American Broadcasting Cos., 44 F.3d 1345, 1355 (7th Cir. 1995), for the proposition that the First Amendment protects a broadcaster’s “surreptitious, confrontational, unscrupulous and ungentlemanly” investigatory tactics. But Desnick’s ruling applies only insofar as “no established rights are invaded in the process.” Id. Here, of course, Sun-Times’s acquisition of the Officers’ personal information invaded their established rights under the DPPA. This is a crucial distinction. Although Sun-Times claims that, in acquiring and disclosing truthful information, it engaged only in “perfectly routine, traditional journalism,” it cannot escape the fact that it acquired that truthful information unlawfully.
The thing that I don't get is why it's the Sun-Times that is being seen as the one who broke the DPPA here. It seems more like it was the Secretary of State, who gave the Sun-Times the information which it controlled in the first place. But the Court seems blind to that concept:
We would face an analogous scenario if a third party had obtained personal information in violation of the DPPA and transmitted that information to Sun-Times, who subsequently published it. But that is not our case. Here, there is no intervening illegal actor: Sun-Times itself unlawfully sought and acquired the Officers’ personal information from the Secretary of State, and proceeded to publish it. Where the acquirer and publisher are one and the same, a prohibition on the publication of sensitive information operates as an effective deterrent against the initial unlawful acquisition of that same information. Such acquisition carries little benefit independent of the right to disseminate that information to a broader audience. We therefore conclude that the government’s deterrence interest is both important and likely to be advanced by the DPPA’s ban on Sun-Times’s disclosure of the Officers’ per-sonal information.
But that doesn't make much sense. Asking the Secretary of State for the information seems like a perfectly reasonable journalistic tactic in investigating a story.

The court then goes into even more troubling waters, as the judges basically decide that the information here isn't that important anyway, and that also undermines the First Amendment claims. It notes that in other cases, courts have found that "privacy concerns give way when balanced against the interest in publishing matters of public importance." Again, we're back to this idea that there's some sort of mythical "balancing act" between the First Amendment and privacy rights. And, when the court puts these two things on the scales in this case, it thinks the balance goes to privacy, rather than the First Amendment. Why? Because it finds that the "personal information" about the officers really isn't that important to the story.
While Sun-Times provided details of the Officers’ physical traits to highlight the resemblance between the “fillers” and Vanecko, most of the article’s editorial force was achieved through publication of the lineup photographs that Sun-Times obtained through its FOIA request—the value added by the inclusion of the Officers’ personal information was negligible. Each Officer’s height is evident from the lineup photographs, while their weights and ages are relevant only to the extent that they increase the Officers’ resemblance to Vanecko—a resemblance that the photographs independently convey. And, although identifying the Officers’ hair and eye colors may add some detail to the published black-and-white photographs, their personal information is largely redundant of what the public could easily observe from the photographs themselves. Therefore, Sun-Times’s publication of the Officers’ personal details both intruded on their privacy and threatened their safety, while doing little to advance Sun-Times’s reporting on a story of public concern.
This seems immensely troubling for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it puts the court system into the editing business, deciding which facts are actually relevant to the story, and which are somehow unnecessary. The court notes that it's possible a case "involving less privacy concerns or information of greater public significance" would come up with a different result, but that's also ridiculous. First of all, how is someone's height and eye color such a great "privacy concern"? Second, this again seems like a pretty clear restriction on the freedom of the press. It's not something that you "balance." The First Amendment is pretty clear that Congress cannot pass a law abridging the freedom of the press. And yet here, the court seems to think that it's okay, as long as it's "balanced."

Because of this, the police can now sue the paper for daring to reveal their eye color and whatnot. This seems like a terrible ruling for the First Amendment, and even while the court tries to limit it to the specific facts of this case, it seems likely that this particular ruling is now likely to be cited against reporters quite a lot.

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Tue, 16 Dec 2014 12:33:00 PST Traffic Cam Company 'Bagman' Pleads Guilty To Bribing Chicago Transportation Official Tim Cushing John Bills
Managing Commissioner
Chicago Transportation Department
30 N. LaSalle Street
Suite 1100
Chicago, IL 60602  
(312) 744-3600

Mr. John Bills,

As the Commissioner of Chicago's DOT, you are undoubtedly aware that unsafe driving kills or injures hundreds of people every year.* While not every death or injury can be prevented, there are proactive measures that can be taken to reduce this terrible toll.

*[Stats tk, but probably a lot.]

One of the best deterrents is a non-intrusive camera: one that acts as both a recording device and a police officer. (And a judge and jury, truth be told.) In fact, these cameras -- which can* monitor speed and red light violations -- perform 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, generating a possibly unlimited amount of revenue for your department, as well as for the city itself. They may also make your streets safer, both for commuters and pedestrians -- something that can be highlighted when pursuing funding.

*[The spirit is willing, but the tech is weak.]

Unlike more static revenue streams like vehicle registration feeds and road taxes, camera systems can be tweaked as needed to guard against budget shortfalls. Working in conjunction with Redflex specialists, you'll be able to avail yourself to a variety of revenue boosters like shortened yellow lights, sudden speed limit changes, unchallengeable tickets and any number of camera malfunctions or programming errors that will almost always* result in more generated revenue.

*[Caveats apply. See 135-page agreement for further details.]

Choosing the best traffic camera solution for your city is a daunting decision. We at Redflex believe we can offer what many of our competitors can't, or at least likely won't. In addition to our traffic camera "expertise," we also offer the following:
  • A condominium in Gilbert, Arizona
  • Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep discounts on hotel rooms, car rentals and meals
  • Debt consolidation plans for select transportation officials
  • Multiple personal finance options

We realize your have your choice in traffic control systems, but would like to remind you that only one company can offer you up to $570,000 in cash over the next eight years.


Martin "Bagman" O'Malley
Senior Consultant

Redflex Traffic Systems
Phoenix, Arizona
866 703-8097

[h/t velox -- and, yes, if you hadn't figured it out yet, this is satire, but based on a true story]

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that's 'safety' with a capital $
Thu, 13 Nov 2014 14:44:00 PST Chicago School Zone Speed Cams Tag Drivers Even In The Summer, Because Chicago Timothy Geigner Well, this is fun. We just recently wrote about how Chicago's speed cameras, ostensibly all to do with safety, failed to bring in as much money as Mayor Rahm Emanuel had suggested in his budget plan. Yes, tickets based on speed cameras were worked into the budget numbers, which is a strange thing to do if they're supposed to be about safety and not money. Safe driving, in other words, should not trigger a budget crisis. But it turns out the ticketing revenue might still be inflated, even at the crisis number, as a bunch of speeding tickets were generated by cameras within school zones flagging drivers for driving over the school zone limit in the summertime.
Kenneth Maschek, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit filed in circuit court Friday, says he was issued a $100 fine for speeding near Lane Tech College Prep High School on June 26, 2014. A speed camera, or Automated Speed Enforcement system, captured alleged violation, but the school year ended on June 10, Maschek claims. His was one of more than 34,000 violations that Chicago issued over summer break this year, from July 1 to September 1, according to the lawsuit. Maschek says the law is meant to keep the areas around schools, statutorily defined as one-eighth of a mile, safe for the children attending them.
We appear to be doubling up on claiming that revenue-generating laws are all about safety. In this case, speed cameras ticketed drivers for driving over limits intended to protect children when there were no children present. In case you were wondering, state law specifically prohibits issuing citations for driving over school zone limits except on "school days." This resulted in millions in revenue that never should have been generated.
The city's website states that school safety zones are in effect from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on school days, reducing speed to 20 mph until 4 p.m. and 30 mph after that. Maschek who cites the page and related press releases in his lawsuit, notes that signs posted near the zones also say the speed reduction applies "on school days when children are present." Residents of Chicago "routinely drive through school safety zones on an ongoing basis," leaving them constantly vulnerable to speeding tickets when the reduced speed should not be in effect, the complaint states.
I expect that the city will mumble something about summer school and blah blah blah, because that's what we do in my home city. When confronted with a clear mistake or inequity, we look it straight in the eye and pretend it doesn't exist. It's sort of a municipal past time around these parts. Hopefully the courts will see through any push back. Either way, the claim that speed cameras have anything to do with safety should be over and done with.

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Thu, 6 Nov 2014 04:09:46 PST Chicago Transit Cops Start Up Their Own Security Theater, Will Start Randomly Swabbing Bags For Explosive Residue Tim Cushing It appears Chicago wants to get in on New York City's racket -- steamrolling civil liberties because of a supposed terrorism nexus. For New York City, it's been every day since Sept. 11th, 2001, greatly aided and abetted by a nanny statist mayor and a police commissioner who'd never seen a personal freedom he didn't immediately dislike.

For Chicago, the terrorism connection isn't nearly as clear. In fact, there doesn't seem to be any justification for the deployment of random explosive-residue-swabbing checkpoints at public transit stations.
There is "no known terrorist threat" that prompted the new procedure slated to begin the week of Nov. 3, Nancy Lipman, Chicago police commander for public transportation, said Friday at a news conference announcing the initiative.
OK... With that, um, cleared up, here's how the TSA-Lite random acts of intrusion will go down.
Chicago police say they will randomly select one rail station each day to set up the screening table outside the rail turnstiles during rush hour. Lipman said most of the stations will be downtown but other stops will be included as well.

A team of four to five officers will man the table, which will have two explosives testing machines.
One rail station… out of dozens… selected randomly... with each search also being randomly generated.
Police will approach riders, whom they have randomly selected by picking a random number that morning, Lipman said.

This randomly-selected person -- if carrying a bag -- will be asked to submit to an explosive residue test. The bag will not be opened. Unless it tests positive, in which case further impositions will be imposed.

A positive test triggers a search request. Commuters can refuse but they won't be allowed to board their train and will be asked to leave the station. Almost "free to go," but not quite. Chicago transit cops will be free to perform less voluntary searches should they decide "probable cause" exists to do so. Given that a bag has just tested positive for explosives, that should be all the justification they need.

Police spokesman Marty Maloney calls this random act of security theater a "proactive, protective measure." Nearly everyone else, if given a few minutes to think about it, will call it "futile." Or "stupid."

The multiple layers of randomness are essential to preventing charges of discrimination or other civil liberties violations. (This is what makes DUI checkpoints and the TSA's "enhanced screening" Constitutional -- you either have to stop everybody or be truly random.) But this precaution also undermines the effectiveness of the effort. In fact, everything about this program borders on uselessness.

Anyone can refuse the initial test. They can also refuse to have their bags searched if they do test positive for explosive residue. Both actions will likely be viewed with suspicion but neither leads directly to detainment.

The city boasts more than 140 entry points, just for this mode of public transportation. Anyone who would rather avoid the "random checkpoint" will have plenty of options. The program checks a random entry for random people, rather than making any attempt to truly spot suspicious individuals or behavior. The Transit Authority takes great care to explain just how painless the process will be, what with limited checkpoints and no mandatory searches, but these words of comfort only highlight the fact that the screening system is almost entirely composed of security holes. The chances that this will actually prevent an attack are so close to zero as to be completely indistinguishable from doing nothing.

In exchange for its half-assed efforts, the city will likely net itself a few additional lawsuits, thanks to that inevitable byproduct of poorly-thought-out and poorly-implemented security theater programs: civil liberties' violations.

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Wed, 22 Oct 2014 03:53:32 PDT Complete Failure: Chicago's Speed Camera Traps Fail To Bring In The Revenue Mayor Emanuel Counted Upon Timothy Geigner Speed cameras, just like their red-light camera brethren, have been pretty well established as nothing more than revenue machines for local municipalities. Their application results in a myriad of issues, such as the fact that the cameras don't work, not to mention that the cameras don't work, oh, and the cameras don't work and the companies behind them might try to fudge the evidence if you dispute a ticket. The excuse for these cameras that don't work has always been that they are designed to make the roads safer under the theory that if motorists know that the cameras exist, they will be less likely to speed. That supposed justification is belied by two facts. The first is that some people who have tried to warn motorists that the cameras exist have been dragged to court for doing so, which sort of defeats the entire supposed purpose of the cameras. The second fact that disproves the justification is that Chicago just can't help going all Chicago on itself.

Local reporters have the glorious story of the latest Chicago budget crisis that has Mayor Emanuel scrambling for only one reason: Chicago motorists are way better behaved than he'd planned for in his previous budget.
You heard that right: Good behavior is bad for the budget. Real bad, reports CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine. CBS 2 has learned the speed cameras caught far fewer speeders than expected. According to the Mayor's 2015 Budget Overview, there have been "lower than expected violation rates."

How much lower? Fifty million dollars lower. Emanuel's administration had figured on $90 million in fines to help balance this year's budget, but they can only count on $40 million. That's a $50 million shortfall, putting pressure on the next spending plan.
Think about the logic here for a moment: Rahm Emanuel wrote a spending budget for the third largest city in the country that relied on a certain revenue number from speed cameras. Where's the incentive for better behavior on the road in that? There is none. The fact is that Chicago drivers are far better behaved than the city expected. That's an outcome you'd think the city would be celebrating. Instead, it's considered a negative, because the speed cameras were never about safety, they were only a method to fill the city's coffers to the tune of milliions of dollars. That isn't so much public policy as it is an extortion racket that happens to have failed.
"It was a combination of the camera company’s salesmanship and the city's greed," says camera critic Barnet Fagel.
You may not want to forgive the camera company their sales tactics, but how much do you really want to fault them? They're a large company beholden to nothing beyond the profit motive. They can't be expected to have the best interests of a city's population at heart. The Chicago city government on the other hand? Most citizens likely didn't elect Mayor Emanuel out of a sense of sadomasochism or the theory that we all just have a bit too much money in our pockets. Stories like these are among the reasons that Emanuel isn't considered invulnerable in the upcoming mayoral election.

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Fri, 22 Aug 2014 10:11:10 PDT Shocking: Red Light Camera Company CEO And Chicago City Official Indicted On Corruption Charges Timothy Geigner We've long-argued that red light cameras, those little flashy things that ticket you for going through a stop light, have always been way less about safety and almost entirely about generating revenue for municipalities. And, while we've covered how corrupted the money-flow of these systems can be, you just have to admire the brazenly "Chicago-way" story of how the windy city got into bed with camera peddlers.
The former chief executive officer of Redflex, a major red light camera (RLC) vendor, has been indicted on federal corruption charges stemming from a contract with the City of Chicago. On Wednesday, in addition to former CEO Karen Finley, government prosecutors also indicted John Bills, former managing deputy commissioner at the Department of Transportation, and Bills' friend Martin O'Malley, who was hired as a contractor by Redflex.
Now, I can tell you as a native of the area that city officials getting indicted on corruption charges along with the company bribers barely registers as news here any longer. Hell, we send governors to prison like it was the official retirement plan for the office. The charges in this indictment, however, are a special brand of sleazy. Redflex sold the city on the cameras, hired O'Malley as a contractor for $2 million dollars, and O'Malley then sent much of that cash directly back to DoT official John Bills, like some kind of monetary boomerang. Redflex then got into the act directly, because why the hell not.
Via Redflex employees, Bills also acquired a Mercedes and a condominium in Arizona. A May 2014 affidavit written by an FBI special agent suggests that Bills likely used some of this money to purchase and store a boat, buy a car, pay for an addition to his Michigan cabin, pay for his girlfriend's mortgage, pay his own mortgage, pay his kids' schools, and hire a divorce attorney over the course of several years.
To be fair to Bills, it costs a lot of money to keep your side-piece living happily while you divorce the mother of your children and update that sweet cabin-pad. Oh, it should also be mentioned that Redflex employees sent Bills on a couple of vacations over half a decade, and by "couple" I mean seventeen. This all adds up to 23 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, bribery, and some additional charges thrown in because screw these guys. And it's not as though these stupid cameras all this corruption paid for actually, you know, worked. The Chicago Tribune's reporting indicates that something like 13,000 bogus tickets were issued to city residents via Redflex cameras, which were dropped in 2013 due in part to this scandal.

But, hey, don't worry, guys. Redflex is all over this problem.
"Last year we announced aggressive leadership changes, industry leading compliance policies and procedures, and a distinction between our past and present," Jody Ryan, a spokeswoman, wrote to Ars. "Redflex Traffic Systems is moving forward. Since we announced these changes we have signed, renewed, or executed over 100 contracts. Redflex has cooperated fully with the investigative authorities while maintaining the integrity of our customer programs. Our focus is on making a life-saving difference in the communities we serve across the country."
Except their cameras don't do any of that and nobody is going to trust anything coming from the company or city officials about the effectiveness of the cameras, either, what with the details on how the Chicago bid was won by Redflex being revealed. It turns out that Bills actually coached Redflex on how to win the bid, rigged the voting order so that members of the evaluation committee Bills had convinced to vote for Redflex would vote first (indicating broad support to other members), and then had the company hire his buddy, O'Malley, as the Chicago account manager for Redflex.

When it comes to Chicago politics, contracts, and the like, this is as Chicago as it gets. However, given that the whole red light camera thing is a money-making scheme to begin with, the whole concept reeks of corruption. Kill these things off now, please.

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the chicago way
Tue, 10 Jun 2014 00:29:29 PDT Chicago Cops Being Sued After Being Caught On Tape Physically And Verbally Abusing A Massage Parlor Employee Tim Cushing A Chicago woman is suing the city, along with ten police officers, for the abuse she was subjected to during a raid of the massage parlor she worked at. The entire interaction (which lasted more than 40 minutes) was caught on tape by the business' camera system.

Here's the beginning of the raid, which shows Chicago's finest interacting with Jianqing Klyzek using a combination of physical force and verbal abuse.

Here's the charming stuff Officer Di Pasquale had to say to Klyzek during their brief conversation.
Defendant DI PASQUALE: You're not fucking American! I'll put you in a UPS box and send you back to wherever the fuck you came from!

Plaintiff: I'm a citizen, OK?

Defendant DI PASQUALE: No you're not! No, you're not a citizen! No, you're not! No, you're not! You're here on our borrowed time. So mind your fucking business before I shut this whole fucking place down. And I'll take this place and then whoever owns it will fucking kill you because they don't care about you, OK? I'll take this building. You'll be dead and your family will be dead.
Note that this follows Officer Messina asking for permission to tase the 5'2" Klyzek "ten fucking times."

Also note -- especially those of you who claim bad cops are anomalies and not representative of the entire force -- that not a single officer (the plain-clothed men lined up against the counter impassively watching a small Asian woman being berated and manhandled by two "uniformed" cops) tried to dial back the aggression or suggested that some of things being said weren't appropriate or helpful. If anyone wants to know why there are so many bad cops, this is part of the problem -- the tacit approval offered by better cops who let this sort of thing happen without intervening.

Not only did these cops not try to defuse a situation that had gotten ridiculously out of hand, but they also assisted Di Pasquale and Messina in their search for the recording device in order to remove the evidence of their misconduct. Unfortunately for them, the device stored recordings off site. (Apparently, this fruitless search made up a large part of the 40-minute "raid.")

Since the officers couldn't find any evidence of prostitution (or human-sized shipping boxes), they fell back on weak claims that Klyzek assaulted an officer by "biting and scratching" as they attempted to restrain her. That failed as well when the judge threw the case out at a preliminary hearing.

But these officers weren't done failing. From the lawsuit:
On information and belief, sometime after the preliminary hearing, one or more of Defendant OFFICERS, contacted an Assistant State's Attorney in order to pursue a Grand Jury indictment for the offense of Aggravated Battery of a Police Officer against Plaintiff.
Based on Officer Sako's (allegedly) false testimony, the grand jury indicted Klyzek for aggravated battery. This was swiftly reversed when her lawyer brought some actual evidence to the grand jury.
On January 13, 2014, after viewing the video recording of Plaintiff's arrest, the State's Attorney's Office dismissed the aggravated battery of a police officer charges against Plaintiff.
Months later, the Chicago PD has yet to arrive at the same conclusion, despite being in possession of the same recorded evidence.
Police spokesman Adam Collins released a statement saying the matter is being investigated by the Independent Police Review Authority and that "the alleged comments, if true, are reprehensible and completely intolerable in our police department."
"If true." So, an officer's word is good enough to secure a grand jury indictment, but a recording -- containing both audio and video -- clearly depicting the chain of events detailed in the lawsuit -- is still up for discussion. If the IPRA ever gets around to using its eyes and ears, maybe it will finally be able to unload Officers Messina and Di Pasquale, something it should have done a half-decade ago.
A separate federal lawsuit alleged that DiPasquale and Messina were among a group of vice squad officers accused of abusing an immigrant during a 2008 prostitution sting. In the 2009 suit, DiPasquale was accused of sticking a gun in one man's face and slamming him into the dashboard of his car, breaking his nose.

The man's attorney, Richard Dvorak, said Monday that the case was settled out of court for less than $100,000.
There's the other reason bad cops are prevalent. The legal system pays victims minimal amounts using taxpayers' money. And those costing the city money simply man a desk or get a few weeks off from work before being given back their badges, guns and, most importantly, power.

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Wed, 19 Mar 2014 19:59:16 PDT Chicago Court Rules Police Misconduct Records Must Be Made Publicly Available Tim Cushing The insularity of law enforcement -- the secrecy and opacity that allows misbehaving officers to escape being held responsible for their actions -- has been partially stripped away in Chicago. The city's appellate court has delivered a decision that puts police misconduct records into the hands of the public.

A three-judge panel of the state Appellate Court in Chicago rejected the city's claim that such files are exempt from the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.
The fact that investigative files are now public records is a big win for public oversight. Internal investigation documents have often been withheld by law enforcement agencies, many of whom seem completely uninterested in opening up their departments to additional scrutiny. Additionally, the city's appellate court has severely limited the use of existing exemptions to deny requests for police misconduct files.
City lawyers argued such records were covered by an exemption in the state's Freedom of Information law for "preliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, memoranda and other records in which opinions are expressed, or policies or actions are formulated."

The judges wrote that exemption only applies to "opinions that public officials form while creating government policy. It does not protect factual material or final agency decisions."
There's still a bit of a loophole left for the Chicago PD to exploit, however.
From what information is out there, it's unclear whether this exception applies to only documents directly related to the disciplinary process or whether it exempts everything related to the case from public records. In either case (though certainly more damaging to oversight in the latter), this exemption gives back a little opacity to misbehaving cops.

On the plus side, this new ruling allows for easier tracking of Chicago police misconduct.
The appeals court also found that "RL" files are open to the public. Those files identify police officers who have accumulated the most misconduct complaints. At issue were two RL files that named officers with the most complaints between 2001-2006 and 2002-2008.
This transparency is something the city of Chicago sorely needs.
A study by University of Chicago professor Craig Futterman found that just 19 of 10,149 complaints accusing CPD officers of excessive force, illegal searches, racial abuse, sexual abuse, and false arrests led to a police suspension of a week or more. In more than 85 percent of internal investigations of complaints, the accused officer was never even interviewed.
If the Chicago PD decides to return to business as usual in terms of responding to misconduct complaints, it will no longer be able to hide its inactivity behind expansive FOI exceptions. And if officers realize they're creating easily accessible public records every time someone files a complaint, they're bound to exercise a bit more discretion while on-duty.

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Wed, 26 Feb 2014 05:39:00 PST Chicago PD Believes It Can See The Future, Starts Warning Citizens About Crimes They Might Commit Karl Bode might commit a crime. Predictive computing can then either target specific areas or specific people that might be in need of some extra law enforcement attention. Except as we've noted repeatedly, these programs are only as valuable as the data they use. Garbage in, garbage out, but in this case you've got a human being on the other end of the equation whose life can be dramatically impacted by law enforcement holding what they believe is "proof" that you'll soon be up to no good.




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Tue, 24 Dec 2013 15:58:02 PST Chicago Sandwich Shop Emails Employees On Dec. 23rd To Say Merry Christmas And You're All Fired Timothy Geigner Let me let you in on a little secret: I don't really like Christmas. Through some combination of those horrible lights, that torture referred to as Christmas music, my disliking of receiving gifts and the proximity to the far superior holiday known as Thanksgiving, December 25th just never gets my trousers off, so to speak. It's led to some of my friends joking that I'm a modern-day Scrooge, which my bank account confirms I am, in fact, not. Besides, it turns out the Chicago area has a much better approximation for Scrooge than I in whoever owns Snarf's Sandwiches on the near North Side.

See, Snarf's thought it would be fun to wait until a couple of days before Christmas to let their employees at their sandwich shop know that, suprise, you're fired. Oh, and because assbaggery prefers its interactions impersonal, they informed their staff of this via a warm and fuzzy email.
3. All staff is terminated, effective Monday, December 23, 2013.
4. All staff may apply for unemployment, if eligible.
6. Payroll will be processed as usual this week and paid on Friday, December 27, 2013.
7. Keep an eye out for the grand opening of the new store.
8. Ownership appreciates your service and wish you well in your new endeavors.

Doug Besant Director of Operations
Bullet point number seven is by far my favorite. Nothing makes a Christmas firing more satisfying than telling the folks fired they should totally come check out the new sandwich shop staffed with all the folks that took their jobs once it reopens. Now, it's interesting that the firing comes just a few days after the staff joined other fast food workers in striking for higher wages, but Snarf's spokeswoman Jill Preston says that's just a happy coincidence.
“During the Christmas holiday we’re pretty slow,” she says. “The restaurant’s usually three quarters closed. This does happen to coincide, but this is something we’ve had planned for awhile.”
So Snarf's has been planning this for some time, huh? In that case, I guess it was just sadism and a hatred for the working stiff that led to management emailing everyone with one day's notice of their termination? At Christmas? Classy. And breaking up with your employees via email? Well that's just the dingle berry on top of the poop sundae for your workers.
“Three days before Christmas and not even a call,” [Employee] Rojas says. “It’s not fair that management and the corporation is treating [employees] this way.”
It looks like Scrooge is alive and well and running a small sandwich shop in Chicago. And somewhere, Tiny Tim just kicked the bucket out of sheer dispair. Happy holidays.

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open faced club scroogewich
Thu, 23 May 2013 10:01:12 PDT Chicago School System On FOIA Requests: Stonewalling, Obfuscation, & Paper-Shredding Timothy Geigner If you're a government with something to hide, there are plenty of shady ways to handle Freedom of Information Act requests. You can make sure your organization is legally allowed to carry guns and simply refuse, like the NYPD. You can also make a big deal about how requests are only honored for in-state residents, as if that were the spirit of the legislation. Or, if you're as big as the federal government, you can play a sort of bureaucratic hackey-sack game with the request for years before releasing the most non-useful information possible. The problem with all of these methods, however, is that they make those using them look petty, but they don't really cement their position in the corrupt jackasses category that I believe all government agencies secretly want to obtain.

Which is why we'll go to the Chicago city government, since they're the obvious experts in the matter. Here, Rahm Emanuel's administration has taken responding to FOIA requests to a whole new level, not only providing nothing in response to such requests, but then answering questions from the Attorney General with non-responses indicating they might just have proactively destroyed the documents being requested. This story begins with our vaunted public school system, the CPS. Glenn Krell wanted to get his hands on what research had been done when CPS put in a longer school day without bothering to give schools any resources to actually do anything with the extra time.
Krell figured CPS had done research on the longer school day because, like every parent in the system, he'd received a letter from Jean-Claude Brizard, then the CEO, claiming that "our elementary school students are receiving 22 percent less instruction time than their peers across the country." So he sent CPS a FOIA request asking for "the reports, statistics, comprehensive city-by-city analysis and other documents that back up the statement by Mr. Brizard."
CPS responded that "the district does not maintain any documents responsive to your request."
Got that? CPS cites a statistic justifying the longer school day, Krell asks for the basis of that statistic, and CPS says there is no document for that. In internet terms, Krell asked for a citation and CPS was unable to provide one. In addition, Krell asked for information on how the city decided to achieve what it calls "selective enforcement tiers", by which high-performing schools are made available to lower-income families as a method for integration. This was another matter about which CPS had indicated its offices were just overflowing with research.
He knew CPS had lots of information on this matter because he'd read about it in the Tribune. In that article, CPS officials boasted about how they'd left no stone unturned in their effort to make the selection process as fair and objective as possible. They said the process considers data such as home-ownership rates in the students' census tracts and the share of homes where English isn't the primary language.
The response to that request? CPS claimed there too it had no documents to turn over. But why? Had Brizard and CPS simply made the statistics and research claims up? To find out, Krell appealed to AG Lisa Madigan, which is exactly what the law indicates you're supposed to do if you get a fishy response to a FOIA request. Madigan's office dutifully asked CPS if such documents had never existed, or if they'd simply been destroyed. CPS responded that they had never maintained those records and they do not exist. The result of that non-answer was for Madigan's office to declare the matter closed.

And that's a problem, because CPS didn't actually answer the AG's question. They do not answer whether or not the documents ever existed at all, only that they never maintained them and they don't exist currently. One way to achieve that answer is for the research to never have actually been done, which would make CPS liars on multiple items it had addressed to parents and the press. Another way is for those documents to have been proactively destroyed instead of maintained, quite possibly so that they'd never have to be revealed for a FOIA request. Either way, that's crappy government. Add to that Madigan's shirking of her responsibility and it's difficult to take Emmanuel seriously when he claims his administration is "the most open, accountable, and transparent government Chicago has ever seen."

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now you see it, now you don't
Thu, 2 May 2013 10:59:00 PDT Bus Company Threatens Redditor With Lawsuit, Meets Ken White, Runs Away Timothy Geigner Another day, another case of a business attempting to stifle online criticism via threat of lawsuit, amirite? We've seen it again and again. Companies ignorant of the terrifying Streisand Effect go after critics and, normally, the only warm and fuzzy feeling we can take away from it is knowing that these abusers are more hated as a result of their threats than they were before. But not today, friends. Today's story ends hilariously well.

It all starts with an Illinois bus company called Suburban Express that operates lines from Chicago to several colleges in and out of the state. Its online reputation is, to say the least, poor.
So, we're dealing with a company that enjoys suing its own customers after slapping their wallets around with insane fines that seem designed less to encourage good behavior than to simply extract more money out of people. Well, if Suburban Express is happy to sue its own customers, you can guess just how aggressive they like to behave with the internet upon which some of these customers express their displeasure. Unfortunately, when that displeasure is aimed at one of the company's drivers who told an exchange student, "If you don't understand English, you don't belong at the University of Illinois or any 'American' University," then you're going to raise the ire of roughly everyone. It was a witness to that event, Jeremy Leval, who took to Facebook to describe the incident. Guess what his prize for outing racism was...
Toeppen wasn't done there, either. He took to Reddit to push back on on Leval's story, indicating that some undescribed person had already apologized for the incident (because that makes it all better?). Unfortunately for him, his company is still being lambasted for its behavior on subreddits for the University of Illinois, where some are also claiming that Suburban Express employees are posting messages accusing reddit users of being virgins and chronic masturbators. Should you think that the idea of a business owner doing all this is a bit far-fetched, it's instructive to note the kind of slimeball we're talking about.
Now, after a bunch of the insulting messages on reddit were deleted by the moderator, Murph Finnicum, Toeppen's attorney threatened to sue him for libel and over deleting the messages purportedly left by Suburban Express employees. James Long, the attorney, demanded "corrective action" immediately due to the damage the company had suffered by having their own posts deleted, and indicated that legal action against him had been authorized by the company.

But, wait, I can already hear you saying: but you promised us this story had a happy ending! Well, it does, courtesy of Ken "Popehat" White.
The result? A letter from attorney James Long to Finnicum:
They ran away as fast as they could. I'm not sure if they are going to continue legal action against Laval, but if they actually read into the Streisand Effect when Ken White mentioned it, then they already know that they really, really shouldn't.

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Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:57:19 PST Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel On City's Illegal Recordings Of Conversations With Journalists: 'Much Ado About Nothing' Tim Cushing a bit of trouble for recording phone conversations with Chicago Tribune reporters without their consent. A city attorney is downplaying the incidents, insisting that there's no "widespread practice of such tapings" and promising that "steps are being taken" to prevent this from happening again.

Why is this a big deal? Because recording a conversation without the consent of all parties is a felony in Illinois. But what happens when city hall officials, who should be familiar with these laws, violate them? Not much. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's response is that committing a felony is nothing to get excited about.

But the commission of a felony is a very big deal if committed by regular citizens. Radley Balko says it's all about who's doing the recording... and who they're recording
So remember when Chicago police were arresting people for recording them, and charging them with crimes punishable by 10 or more years in prison? Remember the woman who was arrested and charged because she attempted to record Chicago PD internal affairs police browbeating her when she tried to report a sexual assault by a Chicago cop? Remember all that stuff we heard from Chicago PD and Cook County DA Anita Alvarez’s office about protecting privacy?
That's not an isolated event. Earlier this year, two men filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago, alleging they were battered, strip-searched and falsely charged after filming a traffic accident caused by a police car. Late last year, a man was arrested for recording the police and charged with illegal eavesdropping and is now facing a sentence of up to 75 years in prison. Another man was arrested and told he was facing 15 years in prison for daring to record a traffic stop.

The good news is that the courts have rejected some of these cases, stating that the law these citizens were arrested for breaking may be unconstitutional. For now, the law still stands. And the recordings done by members of city hall are illegal. The claims that the recordings were simply inadvertent errors rather than part of something more nefarious don't wash when you take a look at what was being discussed when the recordings occurred.

Odd that the illegal recordings would have occurred during discussions about possible law enforcement malfeasance. Emanuel's press aides openly admit that recordings take place during media interviews about "controversial topics," but most of these interviews are done in person, making the recording obvious. No effort was made to inform these reporters that their conversations were being recorded.

Not only is the required consent absent, but the recordings seem to be missing as well:

As Balko points out, the double standard on display here is egregious. Ordinary people get cuffed, threatened, charged with felonies and in some cases, beaten and strip-searched. City officials don't even get a slap on the wrist. Instead, they get the mayor's assurance that their illegal recordings are a whole lot of nothing for anyone to be concerned about. Even the "mysterious" disappearance of the requested recordings fails to raise an eyebrow. Just one of those things that happens to evidence that incriminates politicians and members of law enforcement.

The growing gap between the governing and the governed continues. Those on the enforcement side treat many laws as optional. Those governed and policed are still forced to comply with the laws, no matter how (to paraphrase Frank Zappa) badly written and randomly enforced.

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how dare they!





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Fri, 14 Sep 2012 05:03:00 PDT Seventh Circuit Court: Chicago Cops Can't Use 'Annoyance' As Reason To Stifle Free Speech Tim Cushing whose presence isn't wanted. This overreach has led to the catchall charge "disorderly conduct" being used to cover all sorts of behavior, much of which isn't so much "disorderly" as it is simply "annoying" to the law enforcement officers in question.



First, the background:







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Wed, 20 Jun 2012 03:03:00 PDT A Broken System: Einstein Wouldn't Have Been 'Qualified' To Teach High School Physics Mike Masnick years that many professions that require certain forms of "licensing" are often more about restricting supply. That's not to say those who set up the licensing effort didn't have the best of intentions, but the end effect often doesn't actually do much to benefit the public. I'm reminded of this after reading economist Charles Wheelen explaining why Albert Einstein technically wouldn't have been "qualified" to teach high school physics after retiring from a distinguished career at Princeton. And, for Wheelen, it's not just hypothetical:
When my wife tried to make a mid-career switch to teaching math in the Chicago Public Schools, I no longer needed a hypothetical example. I realized that licensing had the potential to be every bit as harmful in practice as I'd been saying it was in theory.


She found a job at a school adjacent to a public housing project on Chicago's South Side. On about day three of that job—after she had met the students, decorated the classroom, and started teaching—the principal informed Leah that she did not have a "middle-school math endorsement," which the State of Illinois requires.
Amazingly, this happened a second time as well. She did get the "math endorsement," but then lost a job teaching algebra because she didn't have a special "algebra endorsement." And yet, she's clearly qualified to teach those subjects. And, even more importantly, Wheelen points to research showing that students with "certified" teachers don't do any better than those with "uncertified" teachers -- suggesting the whole process has little to do with making sure students get the best education.

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time to fix things
Fri, 8 Jun 2012 08:31:00 PDT Two Men Sue Chicago Police; Claim They Were Abused And Falsely Charged For Filming Officers Leigh Beadon In the past year, we applauded two Illinois courts for protecting every citizen's right to record on-duty police, and ruling that a law criminalizing the act is unconstitutional. We similarly pointed to Boston, where a court forced the city to pay someone they arrested for filming the cops. Of course, it's pretty concerning that this was ever in question to begin with—normally, the argument that "you don't need privacy unless you've got something to hide" is fallacious for a number of reasons, but that doesn't extend to people who are empowered and armed, ostensibly with the consent of the citizenry and on the condition that they follow their own strict code of behavior. The fact that there is a clear push to let officers operate without public scrutiny is intolerable on every level.

But, perhaps worse still, there is the fact that police don't always need a law to protect them from the public's lenses—they can just take matters into their own hands. There are plenty of examples of police harassing people who film them, often threatening to arrest them or going ahead and doing it. It's an intimidation tactic, and really just part of a much larger problem, which is that no matter how much a person is in the right (and how much they know it), the police have plenty of ways to make their life hell for a long time before they see justice, if they ever do. This appears to be the case in a recent Chicago lawsuit, where two men allege they were battered, strip-searched and falsely charged for filming a traffic accident caused by a police car.


The men say they were talking outside with some friends in an early morning in August 2011 when a friend rode by on a motorcycle, heading south on Chicago Avenue.

"At the same time, defendant Captain [Kevin Navarro] was driving a marked Chicago Police Department vehicle, an SUV, northbound on South Chicago Avenue in the wrong lane of traffic, heading northbound in the southbound lane," according to the complaint.

"Defendant Captain drove his police vehicle into plaintiffs' friend, who was traveling southbound on his motorcycle, causing plaintiffs' friend to suffer serious injury."

Numerous police officers arrived quickly.



"After plaintiff Perez was taken into custody, plaintiff Milton, who had also been using his cell phone to record the scene, was seated on his motorcycle, when defendant [Officers] Frahm and Hernandez approached him.

"Defendants Frahm and Hernandez grabbed plaintiff Milton, forced him off of his motorcycle, and threw him to the ground.

The suit continues, claiming that the men were taken to the police station and threatened with felony charges if they didn't help officers delete the recording, and one was strip-searched to check for "other cameras and recording devices" (because most people keep a spare iPhone taped to their inner thigh, of course). They are seeking damages for "false arrest, excessive force, unlawful search, conspiracy, false imprisonment, battery, and malicious prosecution".

Now, we don't have the officers' side of the story yet, but the allegations certainly look bad—and it's not hard to find plenty of instances of similar actions by the police. Assuming the complaint is even close to true, hopefully the court recognizes the affront to justice that this kind of police behavior represents, and joins the growing ranks of courts that are affirming the right to record the police and hold them accountable for their actions.

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