Thursday, December 3, 2009
The Food
Like Plato eventually said about people, you could breed them like animals, for specific traits, and by the experimentation of diet, they found they could create people who could still get through the day's work - not too energetically, but enough to get by. They were too weak to walk off and they weren't too bright, because you need the nourishment in your early years. That's the key to health. It's not just a matter of having plenty of food. It's a variety of the right kinds of food and the right quantity, while you're growing up. That sets you for life. If certain things have been missing, you will suffer in later life. That's inevitable. You can supplement them all, after you have grown up, and defray the damage. It can't be done. It may be slowed a little bit, but it can't be reversed. When your bones are set they're set.
Article
Your Right to Photograph
Posted By admin On December 2, 2009 @ 3:42 pm In Featured Stories | 67 Comments
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
December 2, 2009
Infowars has posted numerous stories and videos documenting police and security guards harassing photographers and videographers in public spaces. In the United States, it is entirely legal for you to photograph people, buildings, infrastructure, and even criminal activity in public, so long as you do not interfere with the police. You don’t need permission and the cops cannot legally stop you or confiscate your camera, film, or video tape.
It is legal to take photographs in public — even of police.
Earlier this year, Aaron Dykes was threatened with arrest in downtown Kansas City, Missouri after filming the local branch of the private Federal Reserve building. Security guards working for the Fed approached Infowars reporters at a city park that houses the National WWI memorial and demanded that they provide their names and disclose why they were filming the building.
Dykes and the Infowars crew were legally photographing the Federal Reserve building but this did not stop over-zealous rent-a-thugs from threatening them.
Infowars posted a video of the confrontation, but YouTube removed it claiming it violates their terms of use. Apparently Google (who owns YouTube) does not want people to know Americans are denied their right to photograph in public, especially when they are photographing buildings where criminal activity is planned and carried out.
In February, an independent videographer attempted to photograph the Federal Reserve building in Washington from a public sidewalk and was told he was violating the law by a Fed cop. See the video:
In 2007, WeAreChange founder and activist Luke Rudkowski was threatened with arrest by New York police for refusing to stop filming on a public sidewalk outside the offices of Larry Silverstein. Cops dressed in street clothes accused Rudkowski of having a gun and a bomb in his backpack. “It is a serious federal and state crime to publicly state that someone has a bomb and is a terrorist when not true — like extreme example of yelling fire in a theater — and needs to be prosecuted,” Alex Jones and Aaron Dykes wrote for the Jones Report on April 27, 2007.
In Britain, under section 44 of the Terrorism Act, citizens taking photographs can be stopped, have their film or digital media confiscated or deleted, and can even be arrested and charged as terrorists.
* A d v e r t i s e m e n t
*
The police state is not as advanced in the United States. For now, a photographer has the right to photograph in public, but that may change.
Below is a link to an information sheet that details your rights as a photographer. It is based on the Bust Card and the Know Your Rights pamphlet that used to be available on the ACLU website. According to Bert P. Krages II, who distributed the sheet, you may distribute the guide to others, provided that such distribution is not done for commercial gain and credit is given to the author.
“The right to take photographs in the United States is being challenged more than ever,” writes Krages. “People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable. Recent examples have included photographing industrial plants, bridges, buildings, trains, and bus stations. For the most part, attempts to restrict photography are based on misguided fears about the supposed dangers that unrestricted photography presents to society.”
Ironically, unrestricted photography by private citizens has played an integral role in protecting the freedom, security, and well-being of all Americans. Photography in the United States has an established history of contributing to improvements in civil rights, curbing abusive child labor practices, and providing important information to crime investigators. Photography has not contributed to a decline in public safety or economic vitality in the United States. When people think back on the acts of domestic terrorism that have occurred over the last twenty years, none have depended on or even involved photography. Restrictions on photography would not have prevented any of these acts. Furthermore, the increase in people carrying small digital and cell phone cameras has resulted in the prevention of crimes and the apprehension of criminals.
As the flyer states, there are not very many legal restrictions on what can be photographed when in public view. Most attempts at restricting photography are done by lower-level security and law enforcement officials acting way beyond their authority. Note that neither the Patriot Act nor the Homeland Security Act have any provisions that restrict photography. Similarly, some businesses have a history of abusing the rights of photographers under the guise of protecting their trade secrets. These claims are almost always meritless because entities are required to keep trade secrets from public view if they want to protect them.
The Photographer’s Right. Click image to download as PDF.
Posted By admin On December 2, 2009 @ 3:42 pm In Featured Stories | 67 Comments
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
December 2, 2009
Infowars has posted numerous stories and videos documenting police and security guards harassing photographers and videographers in public spaces. In the United States, it is entirely legal for you to photograph people, buildings, infrastructure, and even criminal activity in public, so long as you do not interfere with the police. You don’t need permission and the cops cannot legally stop you or confiscate your camera, film, or video tape.
It is legal to take photographs in public — even of police.
Earlier this year, Aaron Dykes was threatened with arrest in downtown Kansas City, Missouri after filming the local branch of the private Federal Reserve building. Security guards working for the Fed approached Infowars reporters at a city park that houses the National WWI memorial and demanded that they provide their names and disclose why they were filming the building.
Dykes and the Infowars crew were legally photographing the Federal Reserve building but this did not stop over-zealous rent-a-thugs from threatening them.
Infowars posted a video of the confrontation, but YouTube removed it claiming it violates their terms of use. Apparently Google (who owns YouTube) does not want people to know Americans are denied their right to photograph in public, especially when they are photographing buildings where criminal activity is planned and carried out.
In February, an independent videographer attempted to photograph the Federal Reserve building in Washington from a public sidewalk and was told he was violating the law by a Fed cop. See the video:
In 2007, WeAreChange founder and activist Luke Rudkowski was threatened with arrest by New York police for refusing to stop filming on a public sidewalk outside the offices of Larry Silverstein. Cops dressed in street clothes accused Rudkowski of having a gun and a bomb in his backpack. “It is a serious federal and state crime to publicly state that someone has a bomb and is a terrorist when not true — like extreme example of yelling fire in a theater — and needs to be prosecuted,” Alex Jones and Aaron Dykes wrote for the Jones Report on April 27, 2007.
In Britain, under section 44 of the Terrorism Act, citizens taking photographs can be stopped, have their film or digital media confiscated or deleted, and can even be arrested and charged as terrorists.
* A d v e r t i s e m e n t
*
The police state is not as advanced in the United States. For now, a photographer has the right to photograph in public, but that may change.
Below is a link to an information sheet that details your rights as a photographer. It is based on the Bust Card and the Know Your Rights pamphlet that used to be available on the ACLU website. According to Bert P. Krages II, who distributed the sheet, you may distribute the guide to others, provided that such distribution is not done for commercial gain and credit is given to the author.
“The right to take photographs in the United States is being challenged more than ever,” writes Krages. “People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable. Recent examples have included photographing industrial plants, bridges, buildings, trains, and bus stations. For the most part, attempts to restrict photography are based on misguided fears about the supposed dangers that unrestricted photography presents to society.”
Ironically, unrestricted photography by private citizens has played an integral role in protecting the freedom, security, and well-being of all Americans. Photography in the United States has an established history of contributing to improvements in civil rights, curbing abusive child labor practices, and providing important information to crime investigators. Photography has not contributed to a decline in public safety or economic vitality in the United States. When people think back on the acts of domestic terrorism that have occurred over the last twenty years, none have depended on or even involved photography. Restrictions on photography would not have prevented any of these acts. Furthermore, the increase in people carrying small digital and cell phone cameras has resulted in the prevention of crimes and the apprehension of criminals.
As the flyer states, there are not very many legal restrictions on what can be photographed when in public view. Most attempts at restricting photography are done by lower-level security and law enforcement officials acting way beyond their authority. Note that neither the Patriot Act nor the Homeland Security Act have any provisions that restrict photography. Similarly, some businesses have a history of abusing the rights of photographers under the guise of protecting their trade secrets. These claims are almost always meritless because entities are required to keep trade secrets from public view if they want to protect them.
The Photographer’s Right. Click image to download as PDF.
Article
Need to Sneak Across the Border "Safely?" Professor Creates Cell Phone App. to Help Guide Immigrants Across Border
By James King in There's an App. For That
Wed., Dec. 2 2009 @ 10:48AM
theres an ap for that.jpg
A brand-new cell phone app., developed by a professor at U.C. San Diego, is supposed to help guide illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border similar to how a GPS system works in a car.
UCSD visual arts Professor Ricardo Dominguez created the app., which he is calling the Transborder Immigrant Tool, to give people crossing the border "a way not to die.
"It locates where you are in relation to where you want to go, what is the best way to get to that point and what you can expect when you reach the endpoint," Dominguez tells the North County Times.
Hmm. What to expect "when you reach your endpoint?" If that endpoint is Maricopa County, the device should probably alert users to a certain malevolent law-enforcement agency that will try and hunt them down like dogs.
Law enforcement agencies are worried that the app. will be used by drug dealers and human smugglers as they try to navigate their way into the United States, and some say Dominguez may be held criminally responsible if it can be proven that someone coming into the country illegally is using the device.
"If I drive you over and show you where to cross, that's a crime," says Peter Nunez, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. "If I'm standing at the border and help you climb over, that's a crime. Theoretically, if you could give them a map, whether it's hand-drawn or computerized, that would also be illegal."
The app. is currently only available on certain types of inexpensive Motorola phones, but Dominguez hopes to have it available for free on other phones like the ultra-suave Apple iPhone.
By James King in There's an App. For That
Wed., Dec. 2 2009 @ 10:48AM
theres an ap for that.jpg
A brand-new cell phone app., developed by a professor at U.C. San Diego, is supposed to help guide illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border similar to how a GPS system works in a car.
UCSD visual arts Professor Ricardo Dominguez created the app., which he is calling the Transborder Immigrant Tool, to give people crossing the border "a way not to die.
"It locates where you are in relation to where you want to go, what is the best way to get to that point and what you can expect when you reach the endpoint," Dominguez tells the North County Times.
Hmm. What to expect "when you reach your endpoint?" If that endpoint is Maricopa County, the device should probably alert users to a certain malevolent law-enforcement agency that will try and hunt them down like dogs.
Law enforcement agencies are worried that the app. will be used by drug dealers and human smugglers as they try to navigate their way into the United States, and some say Dominguez may be held criminally responsible if it can be proven that someone coming into the country illegally is using the device.
"If I drive you over and show you where to cross, that's a crime," says Peter Nunez, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. "If I'm standing at the border and help you climb over, that's a crime. Theoretically, if you could give them a map, whether it's hand-drawn or computerized, that would also be illegal."
The app. is currently only available on certain types of inexpensive Motorola phones, but Dominguez hopes to have it available for free on other phones like the ultra-suave Apple iPhone.
Article
Stealth Treaty Seeks Strict Controls Over Internet
Posted By admin On December 2, 2009 @ 6:37 am In Featured Stories | 68 Comments
David Bollier
On the Commons
December 2, 2009
ACTA will make YouTube, Flickr, and Blogger impossible.
A sweeping international treaty to regulate how knowledge and creativity may flow on the Internet is now being negotiated. Haven’t heard of it? Funny thing, that’s exactly what the backers of the treaty want. The film, music, publishing and information industries don’t want a public debate about the issues or an open debate in Congress. So they have been working hand-in-glove with the U.S. Trade Representative to move U.S. policymaking offshore and throw a dark cloak of secrecy around everything. The next stop: draconian penalties for anyone who is accused of violating copyright law.
Details about the treaty are murky. But the latest draft, according to a leak summarized on the Boing Boing website, would require:
That Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the U.S. and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM [Digital Rights Management systems], even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM).
Who would have guessed that such nasty stuff was embedded in a treaty called the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)”? That title was presumably meant to reassure people that it’s a non-controversial measure. But fighting counterfeits seems to be just the cover story. The real goal is to win a backdoor expansion of copyright law, much stronger enforcement powers and greater corporate control of the Internet — all without having to go through that pesky process known as democracy.
If the first subterfuge was the misleading title, the second subterfuge was to call ACTA a “trade agreement” rather than a multilateral intellectual property treaty. A trade agreement can be implemented by the Executive Branch on its own, and does not require congressional approval. An intellectual property treaty would require a congressional vote.
This could turn out to be a fatal legal maneuver, Eddan Katz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out in a recent blog post, because an executive agreement like ACTA must “color within the lines of U.S. law.” Yet the U.S. Trade Representative has been quoted as saying that the treatment will “stick as closely to U.S. law as possible.”
Oh, that’s reassuring. As Katz asks: “How can the USTR negotiate an international agreement that sets new global IP enforcement norms requiring changes to U.S. law and policy as an Executive Agreement, without the knowledge or involvement of Congress?” (For more on this point, see Katz’s law review article in the Yale Journal of International Law .)
The bad faith only gets worse. Beyond the misleading title and backdoor legal maneuvers is Very Deep Secrecy. Or more accurately, selective Very Deep Secrecy. Key Washington insiders and corporate players have been granted full access to the draft treaty — but we the little people have been excluded. Wanna read the draft? You can’t. The official rationale is that such disclosures would jeopardize national security. Seriously.
When I blogged about the so-called ACTA treaty — Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — in March 2009, Public Knowledge and others were trying to open up the treaty process through Freedom of Information Act requests and public pressure. As criticism mounted, the U.S. Trade Representative in September came up with an ingenious “solution” — let a handful of public-interest advocates read the ACTA draft — but only after signing a a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that prohibits them from publicly discussing it.
NDAs are a standard tool among Silicon Valley tech companies to prevent proprietary secrets from circulating. Notwithstanding President Obama’s other laudable initiatives in open government, this NDA approach to citizen participation is worthy of Dick Cheney or George W. Bush.
Wait, there’s more! Even this form of restricted access is selectively granted. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) decided to pick and choose who would be invited to sign an NDA and thus be allowed to read the document (but not talk about it publicly).
This Orwellian farce prompted James Love of Knowledge Ecology International — a long-time critic of ACTA and the USTR — to prepare a petition that has garnered thousands of signatories. The petition reads in part:
The opportunity to see the ACTA documents under the NDA was offered to a large number of business interests, but very few public interest or consumer groups, and there were no opportunities for academic experts or the general public to review the documents.
* A d v e r t i s e m e n t
*
USTR officials have indicated that this policy of access by invitation and NDA fully addresses the legitimate demands for more transparency of the negotiation, and it is being considered as a model for the future.
We are opposed to this approach because it creates a small special class of citizens who have rights superior to the majority of the population, and because it gives the government too much discretion in deciding who can monitor and criticize its operations. We have no confidence in this new approach.
Some of the people who have signed such NDAs are grateful for the chance to have had special access to some information, but they also feel constrained by the inability to discuss the contents of the documents, and are confident that nothing they have seen constitutes information that in any way would prejudice the national security of the United States if it were in fact disclosed.
In our opinion, the ACTA negotiations would not exist without the support and engagement of the U.S. government, and they are too important to continue under such questionable practices.
The only rationale for keeping the proposed ACTA text from the public is to suppress criticism and critical thinking about the norms that are being proposed. It is Orwellian and an insult to our intelligence to claim that the secrecy of the ACTA text has anything to do with national security concerns, as the term is commonly understood.
A secret process of arbitrary access, conditioned upon signing non-disclosure agreements to block public debate, does not enhance openness and transparency, and does not inspire respect for the norms that will eventually emerge.
[The full petition can be read here. ]
Public Knowledge also prepared a petition as well, which has been signed by the American Association of Law Libraries, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Future of Music Coalition, Internet Archive and Sunlight Foundation, among others.
Even some Senators are getting upset about the USTR’s high-handed approach to democracy. Senators Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders have sent a letter to the USTR asking that the ACTA text be made public:
ACTA involves dozens if not hundreds of substantive aspects of intellectual property law and its enforcement, including those that have nothing to do with counterfeiting. . . . There are concerns about the impact of ACTA on the privacy and civil rights of individuals, on the supply of products under the first sale doctrine, on the markets for legitimate generic medicines, and on consumers and innovation in general.
The Motion Picture Association of America has no qualms about the secrecy. In its own letter to the USTR, the MPAA dismissed such concerns with a wave of the hand: “Outcries on the lack of transparency in the ACTA negotiations are a distraction. They distract from the substance and the ambition of the ACTA…”
You heard right: democratic process is a “distraction.” At a time when the U.S. is trying to rehabilitate its international image and show others how democracy works, the ACTA treaty is not a very good advertisement for the “American way.”
At this point, it’s unclear how the whole misbegotten mess will play out, but there is no doubt that the key players, including the U.S. Government, are trying to use international law to neuter the Internet, subvert the innovation and participation that open platforms enable, and violate people’s privacy and due process rights — all of this without meaningful public dialogue.
I don’t think the USTR or President Obama really want to go there. It would ignite a political and cultural explosion. If they are too frightened to have an open, honest debate at the draft proposal stage — it they are too frightened of the citizenry — imagine the political blowback that will occur if the treaty actually becomes enforceable law. Let’s face it: A public reckoning will have to occur at some point, and the sooner the USTR backs away from the ledge and opens up its deliberations, the better it will be for it, President Obama and the rest of us.
For more about ACTA, see analyses by Public Knowledge, Michael Geist of University of Ottawa, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Posted By admin On December 2, 2009 @ 6:37 am In Featured Stories | 68 Comments
David Bollier
On the Commons
December 2, 2009
ACTA will make YouTube, Flickr, and Blogger impossible.
A sweeping international treaty to regulate how knowledge and creativity may flow on the Internet is now being negotiated. Haven’t heard of it? Funny thing, that’s exactly what the backers of the treaty want. The film, music, publishing and information industries don’t want a public debate about the issues or an open debate in Congress. So they have been working hand-in-glove with the U.S. Trade Representative to move U.S. policymaking offshore and throw a dark cloak of secrecy around everything. The next stop: draconian penalties for anyone who is accused of violating copyright law.
Details about the treaty are murky. But the latest draft, according to a leak summarized on the Boing Boing website, would require:
That Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the U.S. and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM [Digital Rights Management systems], even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM).
Who would have guessed that such nasty stuff was embedded in a treaty called the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)”? That title was presumably meant to reassure people that it’s a non-controversial measure. But fighting counterfeits seems to be just the cover story. The real goal is to win a backdoor expansion of copyright law, much stronger enforcement powers and greater corporate control of the Internet — all without having to go through that pesky process known as democracy.
If the first subterfuge was the misleading title, the second subterfuge was to call ACTA a “trade agreement” rather than a multilateral intellectual property treaty. A trade agreement can be implemented by the Executive Branch on its own, and does not require congressional approval. An intellectual property treaty would require a congressional vote.
This could turn out to be a fatal legal maneuver, Eddan Katz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out in a recent blog post, because an executive agreement like ACTA must “color within the lines of U.S. law.” Yet the U.S. Trade Representative has been quoted as saying that the treatment will “stick as closely to U.S. law as possible.”
Oh, that’s reassuring. As Katz asks: “How can the USTR negotiate an international agreement that sets new global IP enforcement norms requiring changes to U.S. law and policy as an Executive Agreement, without the knowledge or involvement of Congress?” (For more on this point, see Katz’s law review article in the Yale Journal of International Law .)
The bad faith only gets worse. Beyond the misleading title and backdoor legal maneuvers is Very Deep Secrecy. Or more accurately, selective Very Deep Secrecy. Key Washington insiders and corporate players have been granted full access to the draft treaty — but we the little people have been excluded. Wanna read the draft? You can’t. The official rationale is that such disclosures would jeopardize national security. Seriously.
When I blogged about the so-called ACTA treaty — Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — in March 2009, Public Knowledge and others were trying to open up the treaty process through Freedom of Information Act requests and public pressure. As criticism mounted, the U.S. Trade Representative in September came up with an ingenious “solution” — let a handful of public-interest advocates read the ACTA draft — but only after signing a a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that prohibits them from publicly discussing it.
NDAs are a standard tool among Silicon Valley tech companies to prevent proprietary secrets from circulating. Notwithstanding President Obama’s other laudable initiatives in open government, this NDA approach to citizen participation is worthy of Dick Cheney or George W. Bush.
Wait, there’s more! Even this form of restricted access is selectively granted. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) decided to pick and choose who would be invited to sign an NDA and thus be allowed to read the document (but not talk about it publicly).
This Orwellian farce prompted James Love of Knowledge Ecology International — a long-time critic of ACTA and the USTR — to prepare a petition that has garnered thousands of signatories. The petition reads in part:
The opportunity to see the ACTA documents under the NDA was offered to a large number of business interests, but very few public interest or consumer groups, and there were no opportunities for academic experts or the general public to review the documents.
* A d v e r t i s e m e n t
*
USTR officials have indicated that this policy of access by invitation and NDA fully addresses the legitimate demands for more transparency of the negotiation, and it is being considered as a model for the future.
We are opposed to this approach because it creates a small special class of citizens who have rights superior to the majority of the population, and because it gives the government too much discretion in deciding who can monitor and criticize its operations. We have no confidence in this new approach.
Some of the people who have signed such NDAs are grateful for the chance to have had special access to some information, but they also feel constrained by the inability to discuss the contents of the documents, and are confident that nothing they have seen constitutes information that in any way would prejudice the national security of the United States if it were in fact disclosed.
In our opinion, the ACTA negotiations would not exist without the support and engagement of the U.S. government, and they are too important to continue under such questionable practices.
The only rationale for keeping the proposed ACTA text from the public is to suppress criticism and critical thinking about the norms that are being proposed. It is Orwellian and an insult to our intelligence to claim that the secrecy of the ACTA text has anything to do with national security concerns, as the term is commonly understood.
A secret process of arbitrary access, conditioned upon signing non-disclosure agreements to block public debate, does not enhance openness and transparency, and does not inspire respect for the norms that will eventually emerge.
[The full petition can be read here. ]
Public Knowledge also prepared a petition as well, which has been signed by the American Association of Law Libraries, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Future of Music Coalition, Internet Archive and Sunlight Foundation, among others.
Even some Senators are getting upset about the USTR’s high-handed approach to democracy. Senators Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders have sent a letter to the USTR asking that the ACTA text be made public:
ACTA involves dozens if not hundreds of substantive aspects of intellectual property law and its enforcement, including those that have nothing to do with counterfeiting. . . . There are concerns about the impact of ACTA on the privacy and civil rights of individuals, on the supply of products under the first sale doctrine, on the markets for legitimate generic medicines, and on consumers and innovation in general.
The Motion Picture Association of America has no qualms about the secrecy. In its own letter to the USTR, the MPAA dismissed such concerns with a wave of the hand: “Outcries on the lack of transparency in the ACTA negotiations are a distraction. They distract from the substance and the ambition of the ACTA…”
You heard right: democratic process is a “distraction.” At a time when the U.S. is trying to rehabilitate its international image and show others how democracy works, the ACTA treaty is not a very good advertisement for the “American way.”
At this point, it’s unclear how the whole misbegotten mess will play out, but there is no doubt that the key players, including the U.S. Government, are trying to use international law to neuter the Internet, subvert the innovation and participation that open platforms enable, and violate people’s privacy and due process rights — all of this without meaningful public dialogue.
I don’t think the USTR or President Obama really want to go there. It would ignite a political and cultural explosion. If they are too frightened to have an open, honest debate at the draft proposal stage — it they are too frightened of the citizenry — imagine the political blowback that will occur if the treaty actually becomes enforceable law. Let’s face it: A public reckoning will have to occur at some point, and the sooner the USTR backs away from the ledge and opens up its deliberations, the better it will be for it, President Obama and the rest of us.
For more about ACTA, see analyses by Public Knowledge, Michael Geist of University of Ottawa, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Article
Obama's 'Prestige' on the Line in Copenhagen, With Climate Deal Far From Certain
Analysts say that while President Obama might help strike a broadly worded climate change deal in Copenhagen, a legally binding replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol may be just as unlikely after his visit as before.
President Obama's plans for seeking an international agreement at a U.N. climate change conference next week sound precariously similar to his plans for pitching Chicago as the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics two months ago.
At both meetings, the president scheduled very brief appearances, planning to arrive early and be long gone before any decision was reached. And, coincidentally, the destination in both cases was Copenhagen, Denmark.
Obama's first visit ended in decisive failure, with Rio de Janeiro winning the bid. So is the president setting himself up for a repeat? Or is he facing down his Denmark demons and looking to get his mojo back?
Patrick Michaels, former president of the American Association of State Climatologists and environmental fellow at the Cato Institute, said he has his doubts.
"The president is carrying nothing credible in his pocket, so how can he compel people to do something credible?" he said, referring to the fact that Congress has not passed its cap-and-trade bill.
Obama has traveled abroad extensively -- to summits and conferences and high-level meetings -- since taking office. Those trips have produced a slew of agreements and announcements, but little concrete action. And on some of the biggest issues of the world stage -- the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iranian nuclear program among them -- the president's approach has yielded little progress.
Analysts say that while Obama might help strike a broadly worded deal in Copenhagen, a legally binding replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol may be just as unlikely after his visit as before.
Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., reminded the president of his limits in a letter he sent to the White House last week after Obama announced he would travel to Copenhagen and lay out America's goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
"I would like to express my concern regarding reports that the administration may believe it has the unilateral power to commit the government of the United States to certain standards that may be agreed upon (in Denmark). ... The phrase 'politically binding' has been used," Webb wrote. "As you well know from your time in the Senate, only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country."
Michaels said that letter alone hurts Obama's efforts in Copenhagen, since it could confirm delegates' suspicions that the president may not be prepared to hold up the United States' end of any grand bargain.
Heather Conley, senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Obama's travel schedule could also dim his chances of success.
The president plans to stop by on Dec. 9, before heading to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize the next day. But the climate conference lasts two weeks, from Dec. 7-18.
"The timing is off," Conley said. "He's going to be there the second or third day of the beginning of the negotiations. Political leaders are a bit flummoxed because they don't know how to incorporate President Obama's visit to Copenhagen, which they applaud, but it's not quite in the right sequence to make a concrete agreement possible."
She said any agreement would come at the "very end" of the conference, not the beginning.
The White House said the timing of the president's visit is immaterial.
"I think the president believes that that visit happening at the beginning is just as important as it would be at any point to getting that deal going quicker," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Many officials at home and abroad have praised Obama effusively for his decision to attend the climate change summit and lay out U.S. targets.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said in a statement that Obama's pitch "could be one hell of a global game changer."
"The fact that the president will attend the Copenhagen talks underscores that the administration is putting its money where its mouth is, putting the president's prestige on the line," Kerry said.
That's a dangerous place for the president's prestige to be, given what happened last time in Copenhagen. The president's other international trips have yielded mixed results.
Obama's eight-day trip through Asia last month didn't result in any concrete victories for the United States, though the president said his talks with Asian leaders could spur economic growth.
In a positive sign, China and Russia -- two nations Obama has reached out to -- later joined the United States and other Western nations in condemning Iran's nuclear activities. But Iran then turned around to declare defiantly that it would develop 10 more nuclear sites.
With Russia, Obama's travels yielded a number of agreements, including a pledge to cooperate more fully on bringing security to Afghanistan and a transit agreement allowing U.S. military equipment and supplies to travel through Russia on their way to Afghanistan.
The two countries also put out a statement setting out target limits for warheads and delivery systems, guiding negotiations for a new treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
But that effort has slowed, with administration aides now admitting that both countries will probably need a "bridge" agreement because a new deal won't be hammered out before the current treaty expires Dec. 5.
Elsewhere, the April G-20 summit in London resulted in a pledge for more than $1 trillion in financing to the International Monetary Fund and other institutions. And during the summertime G-8 meeting in Italy, industrialized nations pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
But a Kyoto successor is what the international community is focusing on when it comes to climate change. And the split is wide between developed countries like the United States and developing countries like India and China, which are hesitant to commit to binding targets.
The fact that the Senate has not yet followed the House's lead in passing a U.S. climate change bill puts Obama in a potentially weakened position in Copenhagen.
Michaels predicted "a lot of comprehensive hot air" in otherwise chilly Denmark.
"A breakthrough will be claimed when in fact none will exist," he said.
FoxNews.com's Judson Berger and Fox News' Wendell Goler contributed to this report.
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Analysts say that while President Obama might help strike a broadly worded climate change deal in Copenhagen, a legally binding replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol may be just as unlikely after his visit as before.
President Obama's plans for seeking an international agreement at a U.N. climate change conference next week sound precariously similar to his plans for pitching Chicago as the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics two months ago.
At both meetings, the president scheduled very brief appearances, planning to arrive early and be long gone before any decision was reached. And, coincidentally, the destination in both cases was Copenhagen, Denmark.
Obama's first visit ended in decisive failure, with Rio de Janeiro winning the bid. So is the president setting himself up for a repeat? Or is he facing down his Denmark demons and looking to get his mojo back?
Patrick Michaels, former president of the American Association of State Climatologists and environmental fellow at the Cato Institute, said he has his doubts.
"The president is carrying nothing credible in his pocket, so how can he compel people to do something credible?" he said, referring to the fact that Congress has not passed its cap-and-trade bill.
Obama has traveled abroad extensively -- to summits and conferences and high-level meetings -- since taking office. Those trips have produced a slew of agreements and announcements, but little concrete action. And on some of the biggest issues of the world stage -- the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iranian nuclear program among them -- the president's approach has yielded little progress.
Analysts say that while Obama might help strike a broadly worded deal in Copenhagen, a legally binding replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol may be just as unlikely after his visit as before.
Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., reminded the president of his limits in a letter he sent to the White House last week after Obama announced he would travel to Copenhagen and lay out America's goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
"I would like to express my concern regarding reports that the administration may believe it has the unilateral power to commit the government of the United States to certain standards that may be agreed upon (in Denmark). ... The phrase 'politically binding' has been used," Webb wrote. "As you well know from your time in the Senate, only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country."
Michaels said that letter alone hurts Obama's efforts in Copenhagen, since it could confirm delegates' suspicions that the president may not be prepared to hold up the United States' end of any grand bargain.
Heather Conley, senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Obama's travel schedule could also dim his chances of success.
The president plans to stop by on Dec. 9, before heading to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize the next day. But the climate conference lasts two weeks, from Dec. 7-18.
"The timing is off," Conley said. "He's going to be there the second or third day of the beginning of the negotiations. Political leaders are a bit flummoxed because they don't know how to incorporate President Obama's visit to Copenhagen, which they applaud, but it's not quite in the right sequence to make a concrete agreement possible."
She said any agreement would come at the "very end" of the conference, not the beginning.
The White House said the timing of the president's visit is immaterial.
"I think the president believes that that visit happening at the beginning is just as important as it would be at any point to getting that deal going quicker," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Many officials at home and abroad have praised Obama effusively for his decision to attend the climate change summit and lay out U.S. targets.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said in a statement that Obama's pitch "could be one hell of a global game changer."
"The fact that the president will attend the Copenhagen talks underscores that the administration is putting its money where its mouth is, putting the president's prestige on the line," Kerry said.
That's a dangerous place for the president's prestige to be, given what happened last time in Copenhagen. The president's other international trips have yielded mixed results.
Obama's eight-day trip through Asia last month didn't result in any concrete victories for the United States, though the president said his talks with Asian leaders could spur economic growth.
In a positive sign, China and Russia -- two nations Obama has reached out to -- later joined the United States and other Western nations in condemning Iran's nuclear activities. But Iran then turned around to declare defiantly that it would develop 10 more nuclear sites.
With Russia, Obama's travels yielded a number of agreements, including a pledge to cooperate more fully on bringing security to Afghanistan and a transit agreement allowing U.S. military equipment and supplies to travel through Russia on their way to Afghanistan.
The two countries also put out a statement setting out target limits for warheads and delivery systems, guiding negotiations for a new treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
But that effort has slowed, with administration aides now admitting that both countries will probably need a "bridge" agreement because a new deal won't be hammered out before the current treaty expires Dec. 5.
Elsewhere, the April G-20 summit in London resulted in a pledge for more than $1 trillion in financing to the International Monetary Fund and other institutions. And during the summertime G-8 meeting in Italy, industrialized nations pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
But a Kyoto successor is what the international community is focusing on when it comes to climate change. And the split is wide between developed countries like the United States and developing countries like India and China, which are hesitant to commit to binding targets.
The fact that the Senate has not yet followed the House's lead in passing a U.S. climate change bill puts Obama in a potentially weakened position in Copenhagen.
Michaels predicted "a lot of comprehensive hot air" in otherwise chilly Denmark.
"A breakthrough will be claimed when in fact none will exist," he said.
FoxNews.com's Judson Berger and Fox News' Wendell Goler contributed to this report.
SEARCH
Click here for FOX News RSS Feeds
Advertise on FOX News Channel, FOXNews.com and FOX News Radio
Jobs at FOX News Channel.
Terms of use. Privacy Statement. For FOXNews.com comments write to
foxnewsonline@foxnews.com; For FOX News Channel comments write to
comments@foxnews.com
© Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright 2009 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
All market data delayed 20 minutes.
Article
Obama increases troops in Afghanistan by 40%
Posted By admin On December 2, 2009 @ 4:56 pm In Washington Politics | 69 Comments
Press TV
December 2, 2009
The US president has decided to raise the number of American troops in Afghanistan by some 40 percent, a move that would see Washington deploy another 30,000 soldiers.
In a live televised speech at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York on Tuesday, Barack Obama said the troops would be deployed in the first part of 2010.
“As commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan,” he told the cadets.
He stated that the fresh troops, who will increase the number of US forces in Afghanistan from 68,000 to 100,000, would focus on targeting the resurgent Taliban, securing key population centers, and training military personnel.
In a very emphatic tone, he warned that the United States would end its eight-year mission in the next 19 months. He said that a drawdown would begin in July 2011.
However, he gave no deadline for a full US withdrawal but tried to imply the given date for the start of the pullout indicated that his administration was not pursuing an “open-ended escalation” of the war effort.
“Our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended… the nation that I am most interested in building is our own,” he said, reasoning that an open-ended military campaign would get the US tangled up in “nation building project of up to a decade” in Afghanistan.
* A d v e r t i s e m e n t
*
Obama then went to revive the arguments that Washington has tried to provide as justification for the invasion of Afghanistan since the beginning of the 2001 occupation, by recalling the September 11 incidents.
“It is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place… On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people,” he said.
“They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women and children.
“As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda — a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world’s great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents,” he added.
There are no estimates available on the number of civilians who have been killed in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion, but according to UN figures, over 1,500 Afghans have been killed just in the first half of 2009.
Furthermore, countless reports by international press, including leading US media, indicate that the top al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders such as Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar all reside in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
During the past eight years, the US has made no substantial effort to detain these top leaders in Pakistan, while Britain even presented an initiative for dialogue with the militants and a possible compromise.
On his Tuesday speech, Obama also acknowledged that the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated over the last several years as the Taliban had gained ground.
He also said that now the Afghans must take responsibility for their own country, without explaining how this could happen considering the significant US military buildup in Afghanistan.
The president said the US must pay attention to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, adding that the same “cancer” of terror that hampered Afghanistan had taken root along the border with Pakistan.
Pakistan and the United States have a common enemy in extremism, he claimed.
Obama also leaned heavily on NATO allies and other countries by calling on them to help escalate the war by sending more soldiers, and said, “We must come together to end this war successfully.”
NATO diplomats said Obama was asking alliance partners in Europe to add 5,000 to 10,000 troops to the separate international force in Afghanistan.
NATO allies and other countries have about 40,000 troops on the ground in the war-torn state.
Article printed from Infowars: http://www.infowars.com
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/obama-increases-troops-in-afghanistan-by-40/
Posted By admin On December 2, 2009 @ 4:56 pm In Washington Politics | 69 Comments
Press TV
December 2, 2009
The US president has decided to raise the number of American troops in Afghanistan by some 40 percent, a move that would see Washington deploy another 30,000 soldiers.
In a live televised speech at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York on Tuesday, Barack Obama said the troops would be deployed in the first part of 2010.
“As commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan,” he told the cadets.
He stated that the fresh troops, who will increase the number of US forces in Afghanistan from 68,000 to 100,000, would focus on targeting the resurgent Taliban, securing key population centers, and training military personnel.
In a very emphatic tone, he warned that the United States would end its eight-year mission in the next 19 months. He said that a drawdown would begin in July 2011.
However, he gave no deadline for a full US withdrawal but tried to imply the given date for the start of the pullout indicated that his administration was not pursuing an “open-ended escalation” of the war effort.
“Our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended… the nation that I am most interested in building is our own,” he said, reasoning that an open-ended military campaign would get the US tangled up in “nation building project of up to a decade” in Afghanistan.
* A d v e r t i s e m e n t
*
Obama then went to revive the arguments that Washington has tried to provide as justification for the invasion of Afghanistan since the beginning of the 2001 occupation, by recalling the September 11 incidents.
“It is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place… On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people,” he said.
“They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women and children.
“As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda — a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world’s great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents,” he added.
There are no estimates available on the number of civilians who have been killed in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion, but according to UN figures, over 1,500 Afghans have been killed just in the first half of 2009.
Furthermore, countless reports by international press, including leading US media, indicate that the top al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders such as Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar all reside in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
During the past eight years, the US has made no substantial effort to detain these top leaders in Pakistan, while Britain even presented an initiative for dialogue with the militants and a possible compromise.
On his Tuesday speech, Obama also acknowledged that the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated over the last several years as the Taliban had gained ground.
He also said that now the Afghans must take responsibility for their own country, without explaining how this could happen considering the significant US military buildup in Afghanistan.
The president said the US must pay attention to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, adding that the same “cancer” of terror that hampered Afghanistan had taken root along the border with Pakistan.
Pakistan and the United States have a common enemy in extremism, he claimed.
Obama also leaned heavily on NATO allies and other countries by calling on them to help escalate the war by sending more soldiers, and said, “We must come together to end this war successfully.”
NATO diplomats said Obama was asking alliance partners in Europe to add 5,000 to 10,000 troops to the separate international force in Afghanistan.
NATO allies and other countries have about 40,000 troops on the ground in the war-torn state.
Article printed from Infowars: http://www.infowars.com
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/obama-increases-troops-in-afghanistan-by-40/
Article
Surveillance Shocker: Sprint Received 8 MILLION Law Enforcement Requests for GPS Location Data in the Past Year
News Update by Kevin Bankston
This October, Chris Soghoian — computer security researcher, oft-times journalist, and current technical consultant for the FTC's privacy protection office — attended a closed-door conference called "ISS World". ISS World — the "ISS" is for "Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception, Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Gathering" — is where law enforcement and intelligence agencies consult with telco representatives and surveillance equipment manufacturers about the state of electronic surveillance technology and practice. Armed with a tape recorder, Soghoian went to the conference looking for information about the scope of the government's surveillance practices in the US. What Soghoian uncovered, as he reported on his blog this morning, is more shocking and frightening than anyone could have ever expected
At the ISS conference, Soghoian taped astonishing comments by Paul Taylor, Sprint/Nextel's Manager of Electronic Surveillance. In complaining about the volume of requests that Sprint receives from law enforcement, Taylor noted a shocking number of requests that Sprint had received in the past year for precise GPS (Global Positioning System) location data revealing the location and movements of Sprint's customers. That number?
EIGHT MILLION.
Sprint received over 8 million requests for its customers' information in the past 13 months. That doesn't count requests for basic identification and billing information, or wiretapping requests, or requests to monitor who is calling who, or even requests for less-precise location data based on which cell phone towers a cell phone was in contact with. That's just GPS. And, that's not including legal requests from civil litigants, or from foreign intelligence investigators. That's just law enforcement. And, that's not counting the few other major cell phone carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. That's just Sprint.
Here's what Taylor had to say; the audio clip is here and we are also mirroring a zip file from Soghoian containing other related mp3 recordings and documents.
[M]y major concern is the volume of requests. We have a lot of things that are automated but that's just scratching the surface. One of the things, like with our GPS tool. We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy, so, just the sheer volume of requests they anticipate us automating other features, and I just don't know how we'll handle the millions and millions of requests that are going to come in.
Eight million would have been a shocking number even if it had included every single legal request to every single carrier for every single type of customer information; that Sprint alone received eight million requests just from law enforcement only for GPS data is absolutely mind-boggling. We have long warned that cell phone tracking poses a threat to locational privacy, and EFF has been fighting in the courts for years to ensure that the government only tracks a cell phone's location when it has a search warrant based on probable case. EFF has also complained before that a dangerous level of secrecy surrounds law enforcement's communications surveillance practices like a dense fog, and that without stronger laws requiring detailed reporting about how the government is using its surveillance powers, the lack of accountability when it comes to the government's access to information through third-party phone and Internet service providers will necessarily breed abuse. But we never expected such huge numbers to be lurking in that fog.
Now that the fact is out that law enforcement is rooting through such vast amounts of location data, it raises profoundly important questions that law enforcement and the telcos must answer:
* How many innocent Americans have had their cell phone data handed over to law enforcement?
* How can the government justify obtaining so much information on so many people, and how can the telcos justify handing it over?
* How did the number get so large? Is the government doing massive dragnet sweeps to identify every single cell phone that was in a particular area at a particular time? Is the government getting location information for entire "communities of interest" by asking not only for their target's location, but also for the location of every person who talked to the target, and every person who talked to them?
* Does the number only include requests to track phones in real-time, or does it include requests for historical GPS data, and if so, why did the telcos have that incredibly sensitive data sitting around in the first place? Exactly when and how are they logging their users' GPS data, and how long are they keeping that data?
* What legal process was used to obtain this information? Search warrants? Other court orders? Mere subpoenas issued by prosecutors without any court involvement? How many times was this information handed over without any legal process at all, based on government claims of an urgent emergency situation?
* Looking beyond Sprint and GPS, how many Americans have had their private communications data handed over to law enforcement by their phone and Internet service providers?
* What exactly has the government done with all of that information? Is it all sitting in an FBI database somewhere?
* Do you really think that this Orwellian level of surveillance is consistent with a free society and American values? Really?
These questions urgently need to be asked — by journalists, and civil liberties groups like EFF, and by every cell phone user and citizen concerned about privacy. Most importantly, though, they must be asked by Congress, which has failed in its duty to provide oversight and accountability when it comes to law enforcement surveillance. Congress should hold hearings as soon as possible to demand answers from the government and the telcos under oath, and clear the fog so that the American people will finally have an accurate picture of just how far the government has reached into the private particulars of their digital lives.
Even without hearings, though, the need for Congress to update the law is clear. At the very least, Congress absolutely must stem the government's abuse of its power by:
* Requiring detailed reporting about law enforcement's access to communications data using the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), just as it already requires for law enforcement wiretapping under the Wiretap Act, and make sure that the government actually fulfills its obligations rather than ignore the law for years on end.
* Requiring that the government "minimize" the communications data it collects under ECPA rather than keep it all forever, just like it is supposed to do with wiretaps.
* Prohibiting the government from using in a criminal trial any electronic communications content or data that it obtains in violation of ECPA, just as the government is prohibited by the Wiretap Act from using illegally acquired telephone intercepts.
* Clarifying that ECPA can only be used to get specific data about particular individuals and cannot be used for broad sweeps, whether to identify everyone in a particular geographic area or to identify every person that visits a particular web site.
It's time for Congress to pull the curtain back on the vast, shadowy world of law enforcement surveillance and shine a light on these abuses. In the meantime, we give our thanks to those like Chris Soghoian who are doing important work to uncover the truth about government spying in America.
UPDATE: Sprint has responded to Soghoian's report:
The comments made by a Sprint corporate security officer during a recent conference have been taken out of context by this blogger. Specifically, the “8 million” figure, which the blogger highlights in his email and blog post, has been grossly misrepresented. The figure does not represent the number of customers whose location information was provided to law enforcement, as this blogger suggests.
Instead, the figure represents the number of individual “pings” for specific location information, made to the Sprint network as part of a series of law enforcement investigations and public safety assistance requests during the past year. It’s critical to note that a single case or investigation may generate thousands of individual pings to the network as the law enforcement or public safety agency attempts to track or locate an individual.
Instances where law enforcement agencies seek customer location information include exigent or emergency circumstances such as Amber Alert events, criminal investigations, or cases where a Sprint customer consents to sharing location information.
Sprint takes our customers’ privacy extremely seriously and all law enforcement and public safety requests for customer location information are processed in accordance with applicable state and federal laws.
This response provides some important answers, while raising even more questions. First off, Sprint has confirmed that it received 8 million requests, while denying a charge that no one has made: that 8 million individual customers' data was handed over. Sprint's denial also begs the question: how many individual customers have been affected?
As for Sprint's claim that in some instances a single case or investigation may generate thousands of location "pings", that is certainly possible, but that doesn't make the 8 million number any less of a concern, or moot any of the important questions raised by Soghoian in his report or by EFF in its post regarding the lack of effective oversight and transparency in this area.
Even assuming that Sprint's statement about "pings" is true, 8 million — or, in other words, 8,000 thousands — is still an astronomical number and more than enough to raise serious concerns that Congress should investigate and address. Moreover, the statement raises additional questions: exactly what legal process is being used to authorize the multiple-ping surveillance over time that Sprint is cooperating in? Is Sprint demanding search warrants in those cases? How secure is this automated interface that law enforcement is using to "ping" for GPS data? How does Sprint insure that only law enforcement has access to that data, and only when they have appropriate legal process? How many times has Sprint disclosed information in "exigent or emergency circumstances" without any legal process at all? And most worrisome and intriguing: what customers does Sprint think have "consent[ed] to the sharing [of] location data" with the government? Does Sprint think it is free to hand over the information of anyone who has turned on their GPS functionality and shared information with Sprint for location-based services? Or even the data of anyone who has agreed to their terms of service? What exactly are they talking about?
These questions are only the beginning, and Sprint's statement doesn't come close to answering all of them. Of course, we appreciate that Sprint has begun a public dialogue about this issue. But this should be only the beginning of that discussion, not the end. Ultimately, the need for Congress to investigate the true scope of law enforcement's communications surveillance practices remains. Congress can and should dig deeper to get the hard facts for the American people, rather than forcing us to rely solely on Sprint's public relations office for information on these critical privacy issues.
News Update by Kevin Bankston
This October, Chris Soghoian — computer security researcher, oft-times journalist, and current technical consultant for the FTC's privacy protection office — attended a closed-door conference called "ISS World". ISS World — the "ISS" is for "Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception, Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Gathering" — is where law enforcement and intelligence agencies consult with telco representatives and surveillance equipment manufacturers about the state of electronic surveillance technology and practice. Armed with a tape recorder, Soghoian went to the conference looking for information about the scope of the government's surveillance practices in the US. What Soghoian uncovered, as he reported on his blog this morning, is more shocking and frightening than anyone could have ever expected
At the ISS conference, Soghoian taped astonishing comments by Paul Taylor, Sprint/Nextel's Manager of Electronic Surveillance. In complaining about the volume of requests that Sprint receives from law enforcement, Taylor noted a shocking number of requests that Sprint had received in the past year for precise GPS (Global Positioning System) location data revealing the location and movements of Sprint's customers. That number?
EIGHT MILLION.
Sprint received over 8 million requests for its customers' information in the past 13 months. That doesn't count requests for basic identification and billing information, or wiretapping requests, or requests to monitor who is calling who, or even requests for less-precise location data based on which cell phone towers a cell phone was in contact with. That's just GPS. And, that's not including legal requests from civil litigants, or from foreign intelligence investigators. That's just law enforcement. And, that's not counting the few other major cell phone carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. That's just Sprint.
Here's what Taylor had to say; the audio clip is here and we are also mirroring a zip file from Soghoian containing other related mp3 recordings and documents.
[M]y major concern is the volume of requests. We have a lot of things that are automated but that's just scratching the surface. One of the things, like with our GPS tool. We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy, so, just the sheer volume of requests they anticipate us automating other features, and I just don't know how we'll handle the millions and millions of requests that are going to come in.
Eight million would have been a shocking number even if it had included every single legal request to every single carrier for every single type of customer information; that Sprint alone received eight million requests just from law enforcement only for GPS data is absolutely mind-boggling. We have long warned that cell phone tracking poses a threat to locational privacy, and EFF has been fighting in the courts for years to ensure that the government only tracks a cell phone's location when it has a search warrant based on probable case. EFF has also complained before that a dangerous level of secrecy surrounds law enforcement's communications surveillance practices like a dense fog, and that without stronger laws requiring detailed reporting about how the government is using its surveillance powers, the lack of accountability when it comes to the government's access to information through third-party phone and Internet service providers will necessarily breed abuse. But we never expected such huge numbers to be lurking in that fog.
Now that the fact is out that law enforcement is rooting through such vast amounts of location data, it raises profoundly important questions that law enforcement and the telcos must answer:
* How many innocent Americans have had their cell phone data handed over to law enforcement?
* How can the government justify obtaining so much information on so many people, and how can the telcos justify handing it over?
* How did the number get so large? Is the government doing massive dragnet sweeps to identify every single cell phone that was in a particular area at a particular time? Is the government getting location information for entire "communities of interest" by asking not only for their target's location, but also for the location of every person who talked to the target, and every person who talked to them?
* Does the number only include requests to track phones in real-time, or does it include requests for historical GPS data, and if so, why did the telcos have that incredibly sensitive data sitting around in the first place? Exactly when and how are they logging their users' GPS data, and how long are they keeping that data?
* What legal process was used to obtain this information? Search warrants? Other court orders? Mere subpoenas issued by prosecutors without any court involvement? How many times was this information handed over without any legal process at all, based on government claims of an urgent emergency situation?
* Looking beyond Sprint and GPS, how many Americans have had their private communications data handed over to law enforcement by their phone and Internet service providers?
* What exactly has the government done with all of that information? Is it all sitting in an FBI database somewhere?
* Do you really think that this Orwellian level of surveillance is consistent with a free society and American values? Really?
These questions urgently need to be asked — by journalists, and civil liberties groups like EFF, and by every cell phone user and citizen concerned about privacy. Most importantly, though, they must be asked by Congress, which has failed in its duty to provide oversight and accountability when it comes to law enforcement surveillance. Congress should hold hearings as soon as possible to demand answers from the government and the telcos under oath, and clear the fog so that the American people will finally have an accurate picture of just how far the government has reached into the private particulars of their digital lives.
Even without hearings, though, the need for Congress to update the law is clear. At the very least, Congress absolutely must stem the government's abuse of its power by:
* Requiring detailed reporting about law enforcement's access to communications data using the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), just as it already requires for law enforcement wiretapping under the Wiretap Act, and make sure that the government actually fulfills its obligations rather than ignore the law for years on end.
* Requiring that the government "minimize" the communications data it collects under ECPA rather than keep it all forever, just like it is supposed to do with wiretaps.
* Prohibiting the government from using in a criminal trial any electronic communications content or data that it obtains in violation of ECPA, just as the government is prohibited by the Wiretap Act from using illegally acquired telephone intercepts.
* Clarifying that ECPA can only be used to get specific data about particular individuals and cannot be used for broad sweeps, whether to identify everyone in a particular geographic area or to identify every person that visits a particular web site.
It's time for Congress to pull the curtain back on the vast, shadowy world of law enforcement surveillance and shine a light on these abuses. In the meantime, we give our thanks to those like Chris Soghoian who are doing important work to uncover the truth about government spying in America.
UPDATE: Sprint has responded to Soghoian's report:
The comments made by a Sprint corporate security officer during a recent conference have been taken out of context by this blogger. Specifically, the “8 million” figure, which the blogger highlights in his email and blog post, has been grossly misrepresented. The figure does not represent the number of customers whose location information was provided to law enforcement, as this blogger suggests.
Instead, the figure represents the number of individual “pings” for specific location information, made to the Sprint network as part of a series of law enforcement investigations and public safety assistance requests during the past year. It’s critical to note that a single case or investigation may generate thousands of individual pings to the network as the law enforcement or public safety agency attempts to track or locate an individual.
Instances where law enforcement agencies seek customer location information include exigent or emergency circumstances such as Amber Alert events, criminal investigations, or cases where a Sprint customer consents to sharing location information.
Sprint takes our customers’ privacy extremely seriously and all law enforcement and public safety requests for customer location information are processed in accordance with applicable state and federal laws.
This response provides some important answers, while raising even more questions. First off, Sprint has confirmed that it received 8 million requests, while denying a charge that no one has made: that 8 million individual customers' data was handed over. Sprint's denial also begs the question: how many individual customers have been affected?
As for Sprint's claim that in some instances a single case or investigation may generate thousands of location "pings", that is certainly possible, but that doesn't make the 8 million number any less of a concern, or moot any of the important questions raised by Soghoian in his report or by EFF in its post regarding the lack of effective oversight and transparency in this area.
Even assuming that Sprint's statement about "pings" is true, 8 million — or, in other words, 8,000 thousands — is still an astronomical number and more than enough to raise serious concerns that Congress should investigate and address. Moreover, the statement raises additional questions: exactly what legal process is being used to authorize the multiple-ping surveillance over time that Sprint is cooperating in? Is Sprint demanding search warrants in those cases? How secure is this automated interface that law enforcement is using to "ping" for GPS data? How does Sprint insure that only law enforcement has access to that data, and only when they have appropriate legal process? How many times has Sprint disclosed information in "exigent or emergency circumstances" without any legal process at all? And most worrisome and intriguing: what customers does Sprint think have "consent[ed] to the sharing [of] location data" with the government? Does Sprint think it is free to hand over the information of anyone who has turned on their GPS functionality and shared information with Sprint for location-based services? Or even the data of anyone who has agreed to their terms of service? What exactly are they talking about?
These questions are only the beginning, and Sprint's statement doesn't come close to answering all of them. Of course, we appreciate that Sprint has begun a public dialogue about this issue. But this should be only the beginning of that discussion, not the end. Ultimately, the need for Congress to investigate the true scope of law enforcement's communications surveillance practices remains. Congress can and should dig deeper to get the hard facts for the American people, rather than forcing us to rely solely on Sprint's public relations office for information on these critical privacy issues.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The Laws Regarding The Food The School Serves YOU
EDUCATION CODE
SECTION 35181-35186
35181. The governing board of each school district may convene
hearings, make findings, and adopt and issue policy statements
setting forth the responsibilities of the pupils of that school
district regarding academic performance, attendance, in-school
behavior, and any other aspects of school life which the school
district governing board may deem relevant to this task.
35182. The governing board of any school district may market or
license any noneducational mainframe electronic data-processing
software developed by the school district to any person or any public
or private corporation or agency. Proceeds from the marketing or
licensing of noneducational mainframe electronic data-processing
software under this section shall be used exclusively for educational
purposes.
35182.5. (a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the
following:
(1) State and federal laws require all schools participating in
meal programs to provide nutritious food and beverages to pupils.
(2) State and federal laws restrict the sale of food and beverages
in competition with meal programs to enhance the nutritional goals
for pupils, and to protect the fiscal and nutritional integrity of
the school food service programs.
(3) Parents, pupils, and community members should have the
opportunity to ensure, through the review of food and beverage
contracts, that food and beverages sold on school campuses provide
nutritious sustenance to pupils, promote good health, help pupils
learn, provide energy, and model fit living for life.
(b) For the purposes of this section, the following terms have the
following meanings:
(1) "Nonnutritious beverages" means any beverage that is not any
of the following:
(A) Drinking water.
(B) Milk, including, but not limited to, chocolate milk, soy milk,
rice milk, and other similar dairy or nondairy milk.
(C) An electrolyte replacement beverage that contains 42 grams or
less of added sweetener per 20 ounce serving.
(D) A 100 percent fruit juice, or fruit-based drink that is
composed of 50 percent or more fruit juice and that has no added
sweeteners.
(2) "Added sweetener" means any additive that enhances the
sweetness of the beverage, including, but not limited to, added
sugar, but does not include the natural sugar or sugars that are
contained within any fruit juice that is a component of the beverage.
(3) "Nonnutritious food" means food that is not sold as part of
the school breakfast or lunch program as a full meal, and that meets
any of the following standards:
(A) More than 35 percent of its total calories are from fat.
(B) More than 10 percent of its total calories are from saturated
fat.
(C) More than 35 percent of its total weight is composed of sugar.
This subparagraph does not apply to the sale of fruits or
vegetables.
(c) The governing board of a school district may not do any of the
following:
(1) Enter into or renew a contract or permit a school within the
district to enter into or renew a contract that grants exclusive or
nonexclusive advertising or grants the right to the exclusive or
nonexclusive sale of carbonated beverages or nonnutritious beverages
or nonnutritious food within the district to a person, business, or
corporation, unless the governing board of the school district does
all of the following:
(A) Adopts a policy after a public hearing of the governing board
to ensure that the district has internal controls in place to protect
the integrity of the public funds and to ensure that funds raised
benefit public education, and that the contracts are entered into on
a competitive basis pursuant to procedures contained in Section 20111
of the Public Contract Code or through the issuance of a Request for
Proposal.
(B) Provides to parents, guardians, pupils, and members of the
public the opportunity to comment on the contract by holding a public
hearing on the contract during a regularly scheduled board meeting.
The governing board shall clearly, and in a manner recognizable to
the general public, identify in the agenda the contract to be
discussed at the meeting.
(2) Enter into a contract that prohibits a school district
employee from disparaging the goods or services of the party
contracting with the school board.
(3) Enter into a contract or permit a school within the district
to enter into a contract for electronic products or services that
requires the dissemination of advertising to pupils, unless the
governing board of the school district does all of the following:
(A) Enters into the contract at a noticed public hearing of the
governing board.
(B) Makes a finding that the electronic product or service in
question is or would be an integral component of the education of
pupils.
(C) Makes a finding that the school district cannot afford to
provide the electronic product or service unless it contracts to
permit dissemination of advertising to pupils.
(D) Provides written notice to the parents or guardians of pupils
that the advertising will be used in the classroom or other learning
centers. This notice shall be part of the district's normal ongoing
communication to parents or guardians.
(E) Offers the parents the opportunity to request in writing that
the pupil not be exposed to the program that contains the
advertising. Any request shall be honored for the school year in
which it is submitted, or longer if specified, but may be withdrawn
by the parents or guardians at any time.
(d) A governing board may meet the public hearing requirement set
forth in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (1) of subdivision (c) for
those contracts that grant the right to the exclusive or nonexclusive
sale of carbonated beverages or nonnutritious beverages or
nonnutritious food within the district, by either of the following:
(1) Review of the contract at a public hearing by a Child
Nutrition and Physical Activity Advisory Committee established
pursuant to Section 49433 that has contract review authority for the
sale of food and beverages.
(2) (A) An annual public hearing to review and discuss existing
and potential contracts for the sale of food and beverages on
campuses, including food and beverages sold as full meals, through
competitive sales, as fundraisers, and through vending machines.
(B) The public hearing shall include, but not be limited to, a
discussion of all of the following:
(i) The nutritional value of food and beverages sold within the
district.
(ii) The availability of fresh fruit, vegetables, and grains in
school meals and snacks, including, but not limited to, locally grown
and organic produce.
(iii) The amount of fat, sugar, and additives in the food and
beverages discussed.
(iv) Barriers to pupil participation in school breakfast and lunch
programs.
(C) A school district that holds an annual public hearing
consistent with this paragraph is not released from the public
hearing requirements set forth in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (1)
of subdivision (c) for those contracts not discussed at the annual
public hearing.
(e) The governing board of the school district shall make
accessible to the public any contract entered into pursuant to
paragraph (1) of subdivision (c) and may not include in that contract
a confidentiality clause that would prevent a school or school
district from making any part of the contract public.
(f) The governing board of a school district may sell advertising,
products, or services on a nonexclusive basis.
(g) The governing board of a school district may post public signs
indicating the district's appreciation for the support of a person
or business for the district's education program.
(h) Contracts entered into prior to January 1, 2004, may remain in
effect, but may not be renewed if they are in conflict with this
section.
35183. (a) The Legislature finds and declares each of the
following:
(1) The children of this state have the right to an effective
public school education. Both students and staff of the primary,
elementary, junior and senior high school campuses have the
constitutional right to be safe and secure in their persons at
school. However, children in many of our public schools are forced
to focus on the threat of violence and the messages of violence
contained in many aspects of our society, particularly reflected in
gang regalia that disrupts the learning environment.
(2) "Gang-related apparel" is hazardous to the health and safety
of the school environment.
(3) Instructing teachers and administrators on the subtleties of
identifying constantly changing gang regalia and gang affiliation
takes an increasing amount of time away from educating our children.
(4) Weapons, including firearms and knives, have become common
place upon even our elementary school campuses. Students often
conceal weapons by wearing clothing, such as jumpsuits and overcoats,
and by carrying large bags.
(5) The adoption of a schoolwide uniform policy is a reasonable
way to provide some protection for students. A required uniform may
protect students from being associated with any particular gang.
Moreover, by requiring schoolwide uniforms teachers and
administrators may not need to occupy as much of their time learning
the subtleties of gang regalia.
(6) To control the environment in public schools to facilitate and
maintain an effective learning environment and to keep the focus of
the classroom on learning and not personal safety, schools need the
authorization to implement uniform clothing requirements for our
public school children.
(7) Many educators believe that school dress significantly
influences pupil behavior. This influence is evident on school
dressup days and color days. Schools that have adopted school
uniforms experience a "coming together feeling," greater school
pride, and better behavior in and out of the classroom.
(b) The governing board of any school district may adopt or
rescind a reasonable dress code policy that requires pupils to wear a
schoolwide uniform or prohibits pupils from wearing "gang-related
apparel" if the governing board of the school district approves a
plan that may be initiated by an individual school's principal,
staff, and parents and determines that the policy is necessary for
the health and safety of the school environment. Individual schools
may include the reasonable dress code policy as part of its school
safety plan, pursuant to Section 32281.
(c) Adoption and enforcement of a reasonable dress code policy
pursuant to subdivision (b) is not a violation of Section 48950. For
purposes of this section, Section 48950 shall apply to elementary,
high school, and unified school districts. If a schoolwide uniform
is required, the specific uniform selected shall be determined by the
principal, staff, and parents of the individual school.
(d) A dress code policy that requires pupils to wear a schoolwide
uniform shall not be implemented with less than six months' notice to
parents and the availability of resources to assist economically
disadvantaged pupils.
(e) The governing board shall provide a method whereby parents may
choose not to have their children comply with an adopted school
uniform policy.
(f) If a governing board chooses to adopt a policy pursuant to
this section, the policy shall include a provision that no pupil
shall be penalized academically or otherwise discriminated against
nor denied attendance to school if the pupil's parents chose not to
have the pupil comply with the school uniform policy. The governing
board shall continue to have responsibility for the appropriate
education of those pupils.
(g) A policy adopted pursuant to this section shall not preclude
pupils that participate in a nationally recognized youth organization
from wearing organization uniforms on days that the organization has
a scheduled meeting.
35183.5. (a) (1) Each schoolsite shall allow for outdoor use during
the schoolday, articles of sun-protective clothing, including, but
not limited to, hats.
(2) Each schoolsite may set a policy related to the type of
sun-protective clothing, including, but not limited to, hats, that
pupils will be allowed to use outdoors pursuant to paragraph (1).
Specific clothing and hats determined by the school district or
schoolsite to be gang-related or inappropriate apparel may be
prohibited by the dress code policy.
(b) (1) Each schoolsite shall allow pupils the use of sunscreen
during the schoolday without a physician's note or prescription.
(2) Each schoolsite may set a policy related to the use of
sunscreen by pupils during the schoolday.
(3) For purposes of this subdivision, sunscreen is not an
over-the-counter medication.
(4) Nothing in this subdivision requires school personnel to
assist pupils in applying sunscreen.
35184. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the
governing board of a high school district may enter into a contract
with the governing board of any of its feeder elementary school
districts to provide instruction at the schools of the high school
district to all or a portion of the pupils enrolled in the sixth
grade at the contracting elementary school district.
(b) For the purpose of computing allowances and apportionments
pursuant to Chapter 4 (commencing with Section 41600) and Article 2
(commencing with Section 42230) of Chapter 7 of Part 24, the
contracting elementary school shall continue to report average daily
attendance for those sixth grade pupils. Upon receipt of any funds
allocated to the elementary school district based upon the average
daily attendance reported for those sixth grade pupils, the
contracting elementary school district shall transfer those moneys to
the contracting high school district.
35185. A school district may require proof of registration pursuant
to Article 8.2 (commencing with Section 12620) of Chapter 6 of
Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code, as a condition to
agreement to enroll that student.
35186. (a) A school district shall use the uniform complaint
process it has adopted as required by Chapter 5.1 (commencing with
Section 4600) of Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations, with
modifications, as necessary, to help identify and resolve any
deficiencies related to instructional materials, emergency or urgent
facilities conditions that pose a threat to the health and safety of
pupils or staff, and teacher vacancy or misassignment.
(1) A complaint may be filed anonymously. A complainant who
identifies himself or herself is entitled to a response if he or she
indicates that a response is requested. A complaint form shall
include a space to mark to indicate whether a response is requested.
All complaints and responses are public records.
(2) The complaint form shall specify the location for filing a
complaint. A complainant may add as much text to explain the
complaint as he or she wishes.
(3) A complaint shall be filed with the principal of the school or
his or her designee. A complaint about problems beyond the authority
of the school principal shall be forwarded in a timely manner but
not to exceed 10 working days to the appropriate school district
official for resolution.
(b) The principal or the designee of the district superintendent,
as applicable, shall make all reasonable efforts to investigate any
problem within his or her authority. The principal or designee of the
district superintendent shall remedy a valid complaint within a
reasonable time period but not to exceed 30 working days from the
date the complaint was received. The principal or designee of the
district superintendent shall report to the complainant the
resolution of the complaint within 45 working days of the initial
filing. If the principal makes this report, the principal shall also
report the same information in the same timeframe to the designee of
the district superintendent.
(c) A complainant not satisfied with the resolution of the
principal or the designee of the district superintendent has the
right to describe the complaint to the governing board of the school
district at a regularly scheduled hearing of the governing board. As
to complaints involving a condition of a facility that poses an
emergency or urgent threat, as defined in paragraph (1) of
subdivision (c) of Section 17592.72, a complainant who is not
satisfied with the resolution proffered by the principal or the
designee of the district superintendent has the right to file an
appeal to the Superintendent, who shall provide a written report to
the State Board of Education describing the basis for the complaint
and, as appropriate, a proposed remedy for the issue described in the
complaint.
(d) A school district shall report summarized data on the nature
and resolution of all complaints on a quarterly basis to the county
superintendent of schools and the governing board of the school
district. The summaries shall be publicly reported on a quarterly
basis at a regularly scheduled meeting of the governing board of the
school district. The report shall include the number of complaints
by general subject area with the number of resolved and unresolved
complaints. The complaints and written responses shall be available
as public records.
(e) The procedure required pursuant to this section is intended to
address all of the following:
(1) A complaint related to instructional materials as follows:
(A) A pupil, including an English learner, does not have
standards-aligned textbooks or instructional materials or
state-adopted or district-adopted textbooks or other required
instructional material to use in class.
(B) A pupil does not have access to instructional materials to use
at home or after school.
(C) Textbooks or instructional materials are in poor or unusable
condition, have missing pages, or are unreadable due to damage.
(2) A complaint related to teacher vacancy or misassignment as
follows:
(A) A semester begins and a teacher vacancy exists.
(B) A teacher who lacks credentials or training to teach English
learners is assigned to teach a class with more than 20-percent
English learner pupils in the class. This subparagraph does not
relieve a school district from complying with state or federal law
regarding teachers of English learners.
(C) A teacher is assigned to teach a class for which the teacher
lacks subject matter competency.
(3) A complaint related to the condition of facilities that pose
an emergency or urgent threat to the health or safety of pupils or
staff as defined in paragraph (1) of subdivision (c) of Section
17592.72 and any other emergency conditions the school district
determines appropriate.
(f) In order to identify appropriate subjects of complaint, a
notice shall be posted in each classroom in each school in the school
district notifying parents, guardians, pupils, and teachers of the
following:
(1) There should be sufficient textbooks and instructional
materials. For there to be sufficient textbooks and instructional
materials each pupil, including English learners, must have a
textbook or instructional materials, or both, to use in class and to
take home.
(2) School facilities must be clean, safe, and maintained in good
repair.
(3) There should be no teacher vacancies or misassignments as
defined in paragraphs (2) and (3) of subdivision (h).
(4) The location at which to obtain a form to file a complaint in
case of a shortage. Posting a notice downloadable from the Web site
of the department shall satisfy this requirement.
(g) A local educational agency shall establish local policies and
procedures, post notices, and implement this section on or before
January 1, 2005.
(h) For purposes of this section, the following definitions apply:
(1) "Good repair" has the same meaning as specified in subdivision
(d) of Section 17002.
(2) "Misassignment" means the placement of a certificated employee
in a teaching or services position for which the employee does not
hold a legally recognized certificate or credential or the placement
of a certificated employee in a teaching or services position that
the employee is not otherwise authorized by statute to hold.
(3) "Teacher vacancy" means a position to which a single
designated certificated employee has not been assigned at the
beginning of the year for an entire year or, if the position is for a
one-semester course, a position to which a single designated
certificated employee has not been assigned at the beginning of a
semester for an entire semester.
SECTION 35181-35186
35181. The governing board of each school district may convene
hearings, make findings, and adopt and issue policy statements
setting forth the responsibilities of the pupils of that school
district regarding academic performance, attendance, in-school
behavior, and any other aspects of school life which the school
district governing board may deem relevant to this task.
35182. The governing board of any school district may market or
license any noneducational mainframe electronic data-processing
software developed by the school district to any person or any public
or private corporation or agency. Proceeds from the marketing or
licensing of noneducational mainframe electronic data-processing
software under this section shall be used exclusively for educational
purposes.
35182.5. (a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the
following:
(1) State and federal laws require all schools participating in
meal programs to provide nutritious food and beverages to pupils.
(2) State and federal laws restrict the sale of food and beverages
in competition with meal programs to enhance the nutritional goals
for pupils, and to protect the fiscal and nutritional integrity of
the school food service programs.
(3) Parents, pupils, and community members should have the
opportunity to ensure, through the review of food and beverage
contracts, that food and beverages sold on school campuses provide
nutritious sustenance to pupils, promote good health, help pupils
learn, provide energy, and model fit living for life.
(b) For the purposes of this section, the following terms have the
following meanings:
(1) "Nonnutritious beverages" means any beverage that is not any
of the following:
(A) Drinking water.
(B) Milk, including, but not limited to, chocolate milk, soy milk,
rice milk, and other similar dairy or nondairy milk.
(C) An electrolyte replacement beverage that contains 42 grams or
less of added sweetener per 20 ounce serving.
(D) A 100 percent fruit juice, or fruit-based drink that is
composed of 50 percent or more fruit juice and that has no added
sweeteners.
(2) "Added sweetener" means any additive that enhances the
sweetness of the beverage, including, but not limited to, added
sugar, but does not include the natural sugar or sugars that are
contained within any fruit juice that is a component of the beverage.
(3) "Nonnutritious food" means food that is not sold as part of
the school breakfast or lunch program as a full meal, and that meets
any of the following standards:
(A) More than 35 percent of its total calories are from fat.
(B) More than 10 percent of its total calories are from saturated
fat.
(C) More than 35 percent of its total weight is composed of sugar.
This subparagraph does not apply to the sale of fruits or
vegetables.
(c) The governing board of a school district may not do any of the
following:
(1) Enter into or renew a contract or permit a school within the
district to enter into or renew a contract that grants exclusive or
nonexclusive advertising or grants the right to the exclusive or
nonexclusive sale of carbonated beverages or nonnutritious beverages
or nonnutritious food within the district to a person, business, or
corporation, unless the governing board of the school district does
all of the following:
(A) Adopts a policy after a public hearing of the governing board
to ensure that the district has internal controls in place to protect
the integrity of the public funds and to ensure that funds raised
benefit public education, and that the contracts are entered into on
a competitive basis pursuant to procedures contained in Section 20111
of the Public Contract Code or through the issuance of a Request for
Proposal.
(B) Provides to parents, guardians, pupils, and members of the
public the opportunity to comment on the contract by holding a public
hearing on the contract during a regularly scheduled board meeting.
The governing board shall clearly, and in a manner recognizable to
the general public, identify in the agenda the contract to be
discussed at the meeting.
(2) Enter into a contract that prohibits a school district
employee from disparaging the goods or services of the party
contracting with the school board.
(3) Enter into a contract or permit a school within the district
to enter into a contract for electronic products or services that
requires the dissemination of advertising to pupils, unless the
governing board of the school district does all of the following:
(A) Enters into the contract at a noticed public hearing of the
governing board.
(B) Makes a finding that the electronic product or service in
question is or would be an integral component of the education of
pupils.
(C) Makes a finding that the school district cannot afford to
provide the electronic product or service unless it contracts to
permit dissemination of advertising to pupils.
(D) Provides written notice to the parents or guardians of pupils
that the advertising will be used in the classroom or other learning
centers. This notice shall be part of the district's normal ongoing
communication to parents or guardians.
(E) Offers the parents the opportunity to request in writing that
the pupil not be exposed to the program that contains the
advertising. Any request shall be honored for the school year in
which it is submitted, or longer if specified, but may be withdrawn
by the parents or guardians at any time.
(d) A governing board may meet the public hearing requirement set
forth in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (1) of subdivision (c) for
those contracts that grant the right to the exclusive or nonexclusive
sale of carbonated beverages or nonnutritious beverages or
nonnutritious food within the district, by either of the following:
(1) Review of the contract at a public hearing by a Child
Nutrition and Physical Activity Advisory Committee established
pursuant to Section 49433 that has contract review authority for the
sale of food and beverages.
(2) (A) An annual public hearing to review and discuss existing
and potential contracts for the sale of food and beverages on
campuses, including food and beverages sold as full meals, through
competitive sales, as fundraisers, and through vending machines.
(B) The public hearing shall include, but not be limited to, a
discussion of all of the following:
(i) The nutritional value of food and beverages sold within the
district.
(ii) The availability of fresh fruit, vegetables, and grains in
school meals and snacks, including, but not limited to, locally grown
and organic produce.
(iii) The amount of fat, sugar, and additives in the food and
beverages discussed.
(iv) Barriers to pupil participation in school breakfast and lunch
programs.
(C) A school district that holds an annual public hearing
consistent with this paragraph is not released from the public
hearing requirements set forth in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (1)
of subdivision (c) for those contracts not discussed at the annual
public hearing.
(e) The governing board of the school district shall make
accessible to the public any contract entered into pursuant to
paragraph (1) of subdivision (c) and may not include in that contract
a confidentiality clause that would prevent a school or school
district from making any part of the contract public.
(f) The governing board of a school district may sell advertising,
products, or services on a nonexclusive basis.
(g) The governing board of a school district may post public signs
indicating the district's appreciation for the support of a person
or business for the district's education program.
(h) Contracts entered into prior to January 1, 2004, may remain in
effect, but may not be renewed if they are in conflict with this
section.
35183. (a) The Legislature finds and declares each of the
following:
(1) The children of this state have the right to an effective
public school education. Both students and staff of the primary,
elementary, junior and senior high school campuses have the
constitutional right to be safe and secure in their persons at
school. However, children in many of our public schools are forced
to focus on the threat of violence and the messages of violence
contained in many aspects of our society, particularly reflected in
gang regalia that disrupts the learning environment.
(2) "Gang-related apparel" is hazardous to the health and safety
of the school environment.
(3) Instructing teachers and administrators on the subtleties of
identifying constantly changing gang regalia and gang affiliation
takes an increasing amount of time away from educating our children.
(4) Weapons, including firearms and knives, have become common
place upon even our elementary school campuses. Students often
conceal weapons by wearing clothing, such as jumpsuits and overcoats,
and by carrying large bags.
(5) The adoption of a schoolwide uniform policy is a reasonable
way to provide some protection for students. A required uniform may
protect students from being associated with any particular gang.
Moreover, by requiring schoolwide uniforms teachers and
administrators may not need to occupy as much of their time learning
the subtleties of gang regalia.
(6) To control the environment in public schools to facilitate and
maintain an effective learning environment and to keep the focus of
the classroom on learning and not personal safety, schools need the
authorization to implement uniform clothing requirements for our
public school children.
(7) Many educators believe that school dress significantly
influences pupil behavior. This influence is evident on school
dressup days and color days. Schools that have adopted school
uniforms experience a "coming together feeling," greater school
pride, and better behavior in and out of the classroom.
(b) The governing board of any school district may adopt or
rescind a reasonable dress code policy that requires pupils to wear a
schoolwide uniform or prohibits pupils from wearing "gang-related
apparel" if the governing board of the school district approves a
plan that may be initiated by an individual school's principal,
staff, and parents and determines that the policy is necessary for
the health and safety of the school environment. Individual schools
may include the reasonable dress code policy as part of its school
safety plan, pursuant to Section 32281.
(c) Adoption and enforcement of a reasonable dress code policy
pursuant to subdivision (b) is not a violation of Section 48950. For
purposes of this section, Section 48950 shall apply to elementary,
high school, and unified school districts. If a schoolwide uniform
is required, the specific uniform selected shall be determined by the
principal, staff, and parents of the individual school.
(d) A dress code policy that requires pupils to wear a schoolwide
uniform shall not be implemented with less than six months' notice to
parents and the availability of resources to assist economically
disadvantaged pupils.
(e) The governing board shall provide a method whereby parents may
choose not to have their children comply with an adopted school
uniform policy.
(f) If a governing board chooses to adopt a policy pursuant to
this section, the policy shall include a provision that no pupil
shall be penalized academically or otherwise discriminated against
nor denied attendance to school if the pupil's parents chose not to
have the pupil comply with the school uniform policy. The governing
board shall continue to have responsibility for the appropriate
education of those pupils.
(g) A policy adopted pursuant to this section shall not preclude
pupils that participate in a nationally recognized youth organization
from wearing organization uniforms on days that the organization has
a scheduled meeting.
35183.5. (a) (1) Each schoolsite shall allow for outdoor use during
the schoolday, articles of sun-protective clothing, including, but
not limited to, hats.
(2) Each schoolsite may set a policy related to the type of
sun-protective clothing, including, but not limited to, hats, that
pupils will be allowed to use outdoors pursuant to paragraph (1).
Specific clothing and hats determined by the school district or
schoolsite to be gang-related or inappropriate apparel may be
prohibited by the dress code policy.
(b) (1) Each schoolsite shall allow pupils the use of sunscreen
during the schoolday without a physician's note or prescription.
(2) Each schoolsite may set a policy related to the use of
sunscreen by pupils during the schoolday.
(3) For purposes of this subdivision, sunscreen is not an
over-the-counter medication.
(4) Nothing in this subdivision requires school personnel to
assist pupils in applying sunscreen.
35184. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the
governing board of a high school district may enter into a contract
with the governing board of any of its feeder elementary school
districts to provide instruction at the schools of the high school
district to all or a portion of the pupils enrolled in the sixth
grade at the contracting elementary school district.
(b) For the purpose of computing allowances and apportionments
pursuant to Chapter 4 (commencing with Section 41600) and Article 2
(commencing with Section 42230) of Chapter 7 of Part 24, the
contracting elementary school shall continue to report average daily
attendance for those sixth grade pupils. Upon receipt of any funds
allocated to the elementary school district based upon the average
daily attendance reported for those sixth grade pupils, the
contracting elementary school district shall transfer those moneys to
the contracting high school district.
35185. A school district may require proof of registration pursuant
to Article 8.2 (commencing with Section 12620) of Chapter 6 of
Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code, as a condition to
agreement to enroll that student.
35186. (a) A school district shall use the uniform complaint
process it has adopted as required by Chapter 5.1 (commencing with
Section 4600) of Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations, with
modifications, as necessary, to help identify and resolve any
deficiencies related to instructional materials, emergency or urgent
facilities conditions that pose a threat to the health and safety of
pupils or staff, and teacher vacancy or misassignment.
(1) A complaint may be filed anonymously. A complainant who
identifies himself or herself is entitled to a response if he or she
indicates that a response is requested. A complaint form shall
include a space to mark to indicate whether a response is requested.
All complaints and responses are public records.
(2) The complaint form shall specify the location for filing a
complaint. A complainant may add as much text to explain the
complaint as he or she wishes.
(3) A complaint shall be filed with the principal of the school or
his or her designee. A complaint about problems beyond the authority
of the school principal shall be forwarded in a timely manner but
not to exceed 10 working days to the appropriate school district
official for resolution.
(b) The principal or the designee of the district superintendent,
as applicable, shall make all reasonable efforts to investigate any
problem within his or her authority. The principal or designee of the
district superintendent shall remedy a valid complaint within a
reasonable time period but not to exceed 30 working days from the
date the complaint was received. The principal or designee of the
district superintendent shall report to the complainant the
resolution of the complaint within 45 working days of the initial
filing. If the principal makes this report, the principal shall also
report the same information in the same timeframe to the designee of
the district superintendent.
(c) A complainant not satisfied with the resolution of the
principal or the designee of the district superintendent has the
right to describe the complaint to the governing board of the school
district at a regularly scheduled hearing of the governing board. As
to complaints involving a condition of a facility that poses an
emergency or urgent threat, as defined in paragraph (1) of
subdivision (c) of Section 17592.72, a complainant who is not
satisfied with the resolution proffered by the principal or the
designee of the district superintendent has the right to file an
appeal to the Superintendent, who shall provide a written report to
the State Board of Education describing the basis for the complaint
and, as appropriate, a proposed remedy for the issue described in the
complaint.
(d) A school district shall report summarized data on the nature
and resolution of all complaints on a quarterly basis to the county
superintendent of schools and the governing board of the school
district. The summaries shall be publicly reported on a quarterly
basis at a regularly scheduled meeting of the governing board of the
school district. The report shall include the number of complaints
by general subject area with the number of resolved and unresolved
complaints. The complaints and written responses shall be available
as public records.
(e) The procedure required pursuant to this section is intended to
address all of the following:
(1) A complaint related to instructional materials as follows:
(A) A pupil, including an English learner, does not have
standards-aligned textbooks or instructional materials or
state-adopted or district-adopted textbooks or other required
instructional material to use in class.
(B) A pupil does not have access to instructional materials to use
at home or after school.
(C) Textbooks or instructional materials are in poor or unusable
condition, have missing pages, or are unreadable due to damage.
(2) A complaint related to teacher vacancy or misassignment as
follows:
(A) A semester begins and a teacher vacancy exists.
(B) A teacher who lacks credentials or training to teach English
learners is assigned to teach a class with more than 20-percent
English learner pupils in the class. This subparagraph does not
relieve a school district from complying with state or federal law
regarding teachers of English learners.
(C) A teacher is assigned to teach a class for which the teacher
lacks subject matter competency.
(3) A complaint related to the condition of facilities that pose
an emergency or urgent threat to the health or safety of pupils or
staff as defined in paragraph (1) of subdivision (c) of Section
17592.72 and any other emergency conditions the school district
determines appropriate.
(f) In order to identify appropriate subjects of complaint, a
notice shall be posted in each classroom in each school in the school
district notifying parents, guardians, pupils, and teachers of the
following:
(1) There should be sufficient textbooks and instructional
materials. For there to be sufficient textbooks and instructional
materials each pupil, including English learners, must have a
textbook or instructional materials, or both, to use in class and to
take home.
(2) School facilities must be clean, safe, and maintained in good
repair.
(3) There should be no teacher vacancies or misassignments as
defined in paragraphs (2) and (3) of subdivision (h).
(4) The location at which to obtain a form to file a complaint in
case of a shortage. Posting a notice downloadable from the Web site
of the department shall satisfy this requirement.
(g) A local educational agency shall establish local policies and
procedures, post notices, and implement this section on or before
January 1, 2005.
(h) For purposes of this section, the following definitions apply:
(1) "Good repair" has the same meaning as specified in subdivision
(d) of Section 17002.
(2) "Misassignment" means the placement of a certificated employee
in a teaching or services position for which the employee does not
hold a legally recognized certificate or credential or the placement
of a certificated employee in a teaching or services position that
the employee is not otherwise authorized by statute to hold.
(3) "Teacher vacancy" means a position to which a single
designated certificated employee has not been assigned at the
beginning of the year for an entire year or, if the position is for a
one-semester course, a position to which a single designated
certificated employee has not been assigned at the beginning of a
semester for an entire semester.
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