Police Charge Man With 'Wiretapping' Because He Made A Phone Call During Traffic Stop

From the you-can't-be-serious dept..techdirt.com
We've covered the disturbing trend of police, prosecutors and the courts to abuse wiretapping laws to charge people with "wiretapping" for recording police in public. The latest such case is even more ridiculous than most. Found via Slashdot, it involves a guy charged with wiretapping the police during a routine traffic stop, because he made a phone call, to which a voicemail system recorded the call at the other end. The guy who was arrested, William Alleman, had just left a gathering of libertarians, meeting in support of an arrest of a local restaurant owner. The police were apparently waiting outside, and Alleman claims he was followed. As he got pulled over, he called the phone number of an answering service for Libertarian activists who are "in trouble with the police" and then used that to record the call. The police claim this was illegal wiretapping.

This is, of course, patently ridiculous. Recording a police officer as he has stopped you is not and should never be considered a crime.

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Art Professor to Remove "Third Eye" Camera From Head

Not everyone is cutout to be an "Eye Spy"...;)
nbcnewyork.com
Artist had a camera installed on the back of his head for a performance project

A New York City professor's controversial art project is becoming quite a headache - literally.

Wafaa Bilal, an assistant arts professor at New York University, needed to remove the camera he had installed into the back of his head earlier this month because his body rejected the foreign object.

One of the three titanium posts holding his "third eye" was removed by surgery this Friday, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, forcing him to find other means to continue with his photography project for a museum in Qatar.

"I'm determined to continue with it," Bilal told the Chronicle about "3rdi" which is described on his website as "a statement on surveillance, the mundane and the things we leave behind."

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4th Amendment Wear– Because everyone loves passive – aggressive protests

cg
f you’ve gone anywhere by plane recently you will no doubt have passed by the dreaded TSA body scanners. If you haven’t been anywhere lately, I’m sure you are still very aware of all the controversy being caused by this invasion of privacy, designed to um, *cough* keep us all safe.

Well, you don’t have to just stand there and take it anymore. A new line of silent protest undergarments are headed your way, allowing you to get your point across, without ever saying a word.

4th Amendment Wear, white undergarments printed with metallic type that shows up on TSA scanners quietly evokes the 4th Amendment. Surely you remember the 4th Amendment, don’t you? It guards against unreasonable search and seizure. The amendment also requires that search warrants be supported by probable cause. Huh. Sounds like a great idea.

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Not All Technical Threats are Bugs: Sonic Nausea device

cg

We’re not too sure what something like the Sonic Nausea device is doing in the open market – shouldn’t stuff like this be banned? After all, the rather deadly combination of high frequency soundwaves that will result in the majority of people who hear it to feel queasy or suffer from headaches, intense irritation, sweating, imbalance, nausea and vomiting sounds (pun intended) as though it belongs to the military or riot police and not in the hands of pranksters. To make matters worse, the nature of its sound makes it all the harder to track down if the device is hidden. Perhaps the 9V battery which it is connected to will be able to provide enough juice to run for hours on end – making it the ideal tool to have everyone in the immediate office feel sick to call it quits for the day.

Note: Contact ComSec LLc, we use State of the Art TSCM equipment to detect, isolate & nullify this type of Technical Harassment Threat. JDL

Justice Department Seeks Ebonics Experts

thesmokinggun.com

AUGUST 23--The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media” The DEA’s need for full-time linguists specializing in Ebonics is detailed in bid documents related to the agency’s mid-May issuance of a request for proposal (RFP) covering the provision of as many as 2100 linguists for the drug agency’s various field offices. Answers to the proposal were due from contractors on July 29.

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You Too Can Have An iPad Spy Suit !

cg

"Q" meets Armani?

So you decided to jump on the bandwagon and buy an iPad. Now what? You can’t just slip it into your pocket like the rest of your electronics, but it just seems odd to carry it in a laptop bag. The iPad just doesn’t have a category so it’s trying to attempt to find the proper way to carry it around. Thankfully one suit maker is more than happy to create a custom suit that has a giant pocket on the inside just for your precious iPad.

Rush out and get yours Here

Chemical Concussions and Secret LSD: Pentagon Details Cold War Mind-Control Tests

wired.com

More than 30 years after it was written, the Pentagon has released a memorandum detailing its involvement in the CIA’s infamous Cold War mind-control experiments.

But a warning to conspiracy theorists on the lookout for new fodder: This isn’t quite Men Who Stare at Goats II.

The 17-page document (.pdf), “Experimentation Programs conducted by the Department of Defense That Had CIA Sponsorship or Participation and That Involved the Administration to Human Subjects of Drugs Intended for Mind-Control or Behavior-Modification Purposes,” was prepared in 1977 by the General Counsel of the Department of Defense and released on May 6 after a Freedom of Information Act request.

Most of the details have been revealed in earlier CIA papers. And if anything, the Pentagon’s recap is a reminder of how little the Department of Defense cops to knowing about the CIA projects.

Still, there are some tantalizing new details. Take the origins of MK-ULTRA, the notorious CIA program that dosed thousands of unwitting participants with hallucinogenic drugs.

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Climate emails hacked by spies

independent.co.uk

A highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably carried out by a foreign intelligence agency, according to the Government's former chief scientist. Sir David King, who was Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser for seven years until 2007, said that the hacking and selective leaking of the unit's emails, going back 13 years, bore all the hallmarks of a co-ordinated intelligence operation – especially given their release just before the Copenhagen climate conference in December.

The emails were stolen from a backup computer server used by the University of East Anglia. They contained private discussions between climate scientists that have embarrassed those involved, particularly Professor Phil Jones, who has stepped down from his post as head of the unit pending an independent inquiry into whether there is any evidence of scientific misconduct. He is not implicated in the hacking.

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