Lawyers Eye NSA Data as Treasure Trove for Evidence in Murder, Divorce Cases

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NSAThe National Security Agency has spent years demanding that companies turn over their data. Now, the spy agency finds the shoe is on the other foot. A defendant in a Florida murder trial says telephone records collected by the NSA as part of its surveillance programs hold evidence that would help prove his innocence, and his lawyer has demanded that prosecutors produce those records. On Wednesday, the federal government filed a motion saying it would refuse, citing national security. But experts say the novel legal argument could encourage other lawyers to fight for access to the newly disclosed NSA surveillance database.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess,” said George Washington University privacy law expert Dan Solove. “In a way, it’s kind of ironic.”

Defendant Terrance Brown is accused of participating in the 2010 murder of a Brinks security truck driver. Brown maintains his innocence, and claims cellphone location records would show he wasn’t at the scene of the crime. Brown’s cellphone provider — MetroPCS — couldn’t produce those records during discovery because it had deleted the data already.

On seeing the story in the Guardian indicating that Verizon had been ordered to turn over millions of calling records to the NSA last month, Brown’s lawyer had a novel idea: Make the NSA produce the records…

“Relying on a June 5, 2013, Guardian newspaper article … Defendant Brown now suggests that the Government likely actually does possess the metadata relating to telephone calls made in July 2010 from the two numbers attributed to Defendant Brown,” wrote U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenbaum in an order demanding that the federal government respond to the request on June 10.

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Government Could Use Metadata to Map Your Every Move

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Photo Credit: Alex Garcia

Photo Credit: Alex Garcia

If you tweet a picture from your living room using your smartphone, you’re sharing far more than your new hairdo or the color of the wallpaper. You’re potentially revealing the exact coordinates of your house to anyone on the Internet.

The GPS location information embedded in a digital photo is an example of so-called metadata, a once-obscure technical term that’s become one of Washington’s hottest new buzzwords.

The word first sprang from the lips of pundits and politicians earlier this month, after reports disclosed that the government has been secretly accessing the telephone metadata of Verizon customers, as well as online videos, emails, photos and other data collected by nine Internet companies. President Barack Obama hastened to reassure Americans that “nobody is listening to your phone calls,” while other government officials likened the collection of metadata to reading information on the outside of an envelope, which doesn’t require a warrant.

But privacy experts warn that to those who know how to mine it, metadata discloses much more about us and our daily lives than the content of our communications.

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Putin Claims Proof Syrian Rebels Used Chemical Weapons

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putin_1Debate whether the Syrian government or the Syrian opposition used chemical weapons on civilians has been dealt a twist with a little-publicized revelation by Russian President Vladimir Putin his country has evidence chemical laboratories in Iraq produced weapons for the Sunni rebels.

Putin’s revelation came at the end of last week’s G8 Summit of industrialized nations and aligns with an earlier report out of the Middle East that former Baath regime officials of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who are Sunnis, are involved in the production and procurement of such weapons for those fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“We know that opposition fighters were detained on Turkish territory with chemical weapons,” Putin said. “We have information out of Iraq that a laboratory was discovered there for the production of chemical weapons by the opposition. All this evidence needs to be studied most seriously.”

At the time of the press conference, Putin did not detail the sourcing of that evidence, the name or location of the laboratory. He is expected to hand off that data to the United Nations for further study.

The idea that Syria’s government used chemical weapons has been the foundation of a move by President Obama to decide to supply weapons to the Syrian opposition.

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Liberals Can’t Stand Him, Either

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

President Obama has gotten his fair share of verbal abuse from conservatives since his re-election. But now, even his own party is turning on him. On Thursday night, at the annual progressive conference Netroots Nation, leftists from across the country expressed their frustration with Obama and his slow progress in office.

Welcome to the U.S. legal system.

Some were disappointed that they hadn’t seen changes or consequences in the banking sector after the housing crisis. Some were upset that he’s failed to create a single job out of the one million he promised by the end of his second term. Some even voiced their distress over the NSA surveillance scandal and the government’s collection of private data.

In fact, CNN reported that it was difficult to find anyone who believed that the president has done enough to live up to the Democratic Party’s expectations for his presidency. CNN reporters found many of their questions about the president were met with shrugs and occasional eye rolls.

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School Apologizes for Threatening Constitution-Citing Valedictorian’s Naval Academy Appointment

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Photo Credit: Mr. T in DC

Photo Credit: Mr. T in DC

A Texas school district has apologized to a high school valedictorian whose appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy was threatened after he delivered a speech that referenced God and the U.S. Constitution — in defiance of district policies.

Remington Reimer, a senior at Joshua High School, made national headlines on June 6 when officials cut off his microphone in mid-speech after he strayed from pre-approved remarks and began talking about his relationship with Jesus Christ…

The following day the principal, Mick Cochran, met with Reimer’s father and …”threatened to send a letter to the United States Naval Academy advising them that Remington has poor character or words to that effect,” Sasser told Fox News. “The principal said he wanted to try to ruin him for what he did – for talking about the Constitution and his faith.”

Fran Merek, the superintendent of the Joshua Independent School District, issued a carefully worded statement apologizing for the incident.

“On behalf of the school district, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Mr. Todd Reimer and Remington Reimer for any interpretation of a threat by Mr. Cochran in expressing his displeasure at a meeting on Friday morning between Mr. Todd Reimer and Mr. Cochran following Remington Reimer’s valedictory address,” Marek wrote in a statement. “The District has never intended to nor will take punitive action against Remington Reimer for deviating from the prior-reviewed speech. The District endorses Remington Reimer’s appointment to the Naval Academy and wishes him success for all future endeavors in his naval career. District officials will ensure that district policy is followed at future graduation ceremonies.”

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Robot Bird Mimics Flight of Actual Bird, May be Used for Surveillance (+videos)

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Several weeks ago, Professor SK Gupta of the University of Maryland finally had a breakthrough in design on a robot bird that he and his students had been working on for eight years. The end result is a flying robot that is almost indistinguishable from a bird.

Professor Gupta explains:

Our new robot is based on a fundamentally new design concept. We call it Robo Raven. It features programmable wings that can be controlled independently. We can now program any desired motion patterns for the wings. This allows us to try new in-flight aerobatics that would have not been possible before. For example, we can now dive and roll.

The new design uses two actuators that can be synchronized electronically to achieve motion coordination between the two wings. The use of two actuators required a bigger battery and an on-board micro controller. All of this makes our robotic bird overweight. So how do we get Robo Raven to “diet” and lose weight? We used advanced manufacturing processes such as 3D printing and laser cutting to create lightweight polymer parts to reduce the weight. However, this alone was not sufficient. We needed three other tricks to get Robo Raven to fly. First, we programmed wing motion profiles that ensured that wings maintain the optimal velocity during the flap cycle to achieve the right balance between the lift and the thrust. Second, we developed a method to measure aerodynamic forces generated during the flapping cycle. This enabled us to quickly evaluate many different wing designs to select the best one. Finally, we had to perform system level optimization to make sure that all components worked well as an integrated system.

Robo Raven will enable us to explore new in-flight aerobatics. It will also allow us to more faithfully reproduce observed bird flights using robotic birds. I hope that this robotic bird will also inspire more people to choose “bird making” as their hobby!

Robotic birds (i.e., flapping wing micro air vehicles) are expected to offer advances in many different applications such as agriculture, surveillance, and environmental monitoring. Robo Raven is just the beginning. Many exciting developments lie ahead. The exotic bird that you might spot in your next trip to Hawaii might actually be a robot!

Farm Bill Comes to Stunning Defeat in House

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

While Americans have been understandably focused on important issues such as the Immigration Bill and the Obama administration scandals, on Thursday, by a vote of 195-234, the House defeated the nearly $1 trillion farm subsidy and food stamp bill–known collectively as “The Farm Bill,” in a searing rebuke to House leadership.

The Wall Street Journal refers to the shocking defeat of the farm legislation as a “revolt,” and describes how the House’s more conservative members who believed the bill spends too much money, including Paul Ryan and Jeb Hensarling, joined with Democrats who said the bill did not offer enough in entitlements to bring the legislation to its knees.

The WSJ states that the reason for the surprising defeat of the House farm bill was its “mind-boggling price tag–$740 billion for food stamps and $200 billion for farm payments” and other freebies. The taxpayer-funded farm payment subsidies have been shown to find their way into the pockets of wealthy farm owners, agribusiness lobbyists, and even members of Congress who vote on the bill.

While conservatives note that food stamps have grown to an $80 billion per year program, up by about 70% in less than five years, Democrats called the $2 billion in cuts and the addition of a work requirement in the legislation too severe.

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Italian Praised for Saving Jews Is Now Seen as Nazi Collaborator

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Photo Credit: NY Times

Photo Credit: NY Times

He has been called the Italian Schindler, credited with helping to save 5,000 Jews during the Holocaust. Giovanni Palatucci, a wartime police official, has been honored in Israel, in New York and in Italy, where squares and promenades have been named in his honor, and in the Vatican, where Pope John Paul II declared him a martyr, a step toward potential sainthood.

But at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the tale of his heroic exploits is being removed from an exhibition after officials there learned of new evidence suggesting that, far from being a hero, he was an enthusiastic Nazi collaborator involved in the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz.

A letter sent this month to the museum’s director by the Centro Primo Levi at the Center for Jewish History in New York stated that a research panel of more than a dozen scholars who reviewed nearly 700 documents concluded that for six years, Palatucci was “a willing executor of the racial legislation and — after taking the oath to Mussolini’s Social Republic, collaborated with the Nazis.”

The letter said that Italian and German records provided no evidence that he had helped Jews during the war and that the first mention only surfaced years later, in 1952. Researchers also found documents that showed Palatucci had helped the Germans identify Jews to round up.

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Grand Old Propaganda

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Photo Credit: alexmh17

Photo Credit: alexmh17

The “shoot-themselves-in-the-foot” party is stalking the irresistible “youth voter,” or what purportedly has been learned about this elusive prototype. The College Republican National Committee commissioned surveys of young adults, 18 to 29, and issued a report which advises the party to radically alter not just its media tactics and grassroots outreach to youth, but the Party’s current message on some issues.

Take a guess what those issues are.

Let’s start with Planned Parenthood. Leave this poor beleaguered organization alone, say the youngsters in GOP research. Defunding efforts are too “negative.” This contrasts, of course,with the DNC’s positive, pro-fetus advocacy including taxpayer-funded, late-term, sex-selection abortions…

So what’s the solution? The Republicans need to change their message, even though it wasn’t their message. Essentially, the party must change its principles. They must not speak out and try to limit Planned Parenthood’s evil actions any longer…

Which brings us to homosexuality. Predictably, the researchers found that younger voters are more inclined to see nothing wrong with this behavior, dutifully regurgitating the relentless, inaccurate messaging of “gay” advocates and the liberal media. Opposing same sex marriage is a “deal breaker” for one out of four younger voters, who said they’d never pull the lever for such candidates. So what do the “experts” advise?

On the issue of same sex so-called marriage, the report recommends, “…the party ought to promote the diversity of thought within its ranks and make clear that we welcome healthy debate on the policy topic at hand. We should also strongly oppose the use of anti-gay rhetoric.”

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CIA Has Been Secretly Providing Training for Syrian Rebels for Months

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Photo Credit: thenews.com

Photo Credit: thenews.com

The CIA and US special operations forces have been training Syrian rebels for months, since long before President Barack Obama announced plans to arm the opposition, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Training for rebel forces covers the use of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons and has been carried out at bases in Jordan and Turkey since late last year, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed US officials and rebel commanders.

The two-week courses, for about 20 to 45 fighters at a time, began last November at a new US base in the desert in southwest Jordan, it said.

The report came days after the Obama administration announced it had approved the arming of Syrian rebels, though analysts said the United States likely would avoid providing sophisticated guided anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons.

The Central Intelligence Agency typically leads covert training and arming of fighters in foreign conflicts, while military special operations forces can be assigned to covert missions overseen by the spy agency.

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