People's passwords and their relative strength and weakness is a subject I know quite well. As part of my business, we regularly battle users who think very simple passwords, often times relating to their birthdays and whatnot, are sufficient. Sometimes they simply make "password" or a similiar variant their go-to option. So, when CNBC put together a widget for readers to input the passwords they use to get feedback on their strength or weakness, I completely understand what they were attempting to accomplish. Password security is a real issue, after all -- which is what makes it all the more face-palming that the widget CNBC used was found to be exploitable.

A columnist for CNBC’s The Big Crunch tried to make a misguided point about the FBI’s iPhone situation with an interactive tool that asked readers to input their password to see how secure they were. The post is now down, but if you did comply with the CNBC request, it might be a good idea to change your password. A few people on Twitter claimed the widget is an insecure form that actually submits the characters you enter into the text field to third parties.

Since it’s a form field, it reloads the page when you hit “enter,” changing the url and, in effect, saving the password you just typed in.

“In theory, if there’s someone sniffing traffic on your network, they could see these urls being requested in plain text, and then try sniffing on other traffic coming from you that might indicate some account information,” [Gawker Media's Adam] Pash told me. This could be as easy as finding out your email address. And it wouldn’t be hard for these ad trackers to collect a bunch of people’s passwords in their logs.

So while CNBC’s cool tool is not necessarily malicious, it’s more just sloppy. “I’m not sure it’s a serious threat,” says Pash. “But it’s definitely dumb.”

Dumb in general, yes, but all the more dumb specifically as the widget was created to educate readers on password security, while it simultaneously opened up a security threat vector upon those same readers. This is the kind of thing that is almost too hysterical to be true. The very concept of attempting to educate the public about password security by developing an online widget and asking them to input their passwords is hilariously self-contradicting. Whatever the list of password do's and don'ts are, that list must certainly include something about not simply typing your passwords into online search fields for fun. Add to this that CNBC didn't use HTTPS, and it's starting to get difficult to see what its widget did right on matters of security.

And, if the social media accusations are true and CNBC was indeed sharing data with third parties, including the passwords that users were inputting into the widget, then this goes from laugh-inducing to dumpster fire fairly quickly. And, keep in mind that all of this was done supposedly to educate readers about password security. For CNBC to then start sharing those passwords with third parties? That kind of thing earns you an IT death sentence.

CNBC apparently realized its mistake and took the widget down, but not before teaching its readers a valuable security lesson, albeit not the one it had intended to teach: Don't put your passwords into an online widget, no matter who put it up. That's just dumb.

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Someone's worst fears just became a reality. A lot of "someones," actually.

A Minnesota startup is making headlines today for its novel solution to the age-old problem of "children being frightened by strangers with guns."

Behold, the double-barrel .380-calibre handgun by Ideal Conceal: a gun designed to look exactly like a smartphone, complete with fake camera lens and headphone jack.

"In today's day and age, carrying a concealed pistol has become a necessity," reads the company's website. "But what if you didn't have to conceal?"

"Smartphones are EVERYWHERE, so your new pistol will easily blend in with today's environment," the site further explains. "From soccer moms to professionals of every type, this gun allows you the option of not being a victim."

I'm not sure people are going to be more comforted that people are carrying guns they can't see, especially not US law enforcement, which has already demonstrated it fears cell phones as much as it fears guns.

Here's Ideal Conceal's new weapon:


Now, this is not the first disguised weapon offered for sale. Nor is it even the first gun designed to look like a cell phone.


But it is the one receiving the most media attention. Law enforcement officials have already registered their dismay.

"In general, the concept of any kind of weapon that's disguised, so that it's not apparent that it's a weapon, would be cause for concern," said Bill Johnson, executive director and general counsel for the National Association of Police Organizations.

Yes, it is a cause for concern. But not just for law enforcement agencies. It's highly doubtful most criminals will have much use for a gun that only holds two bullets. But it does give law enforcement the justification it needs to continue harassing people for recording police activity. When any smartphone could conceivably be a weapon, securing the scene means grabbing all the smartphones in the vicinity. Whether or not this seizure would hold up in court during civil proceedings still needs to be tested, but by that point the elimination of possibly damning footage will have already been accomplished.

Worse, it makes mistaking a cell phone for a gun a justification for shooting someone carrying nothing more dangerous than a communication device. The slim possibility that it may be a weapon would generate the requisite "fear for safety of self and others" needed to deploy deadly force. While 99.9999% of the time, the smartphone will only be a smartphone, the 0.0001% chance that it isn't is a blank check for phone seizures/deadly force.

For those concerned about any of these issues, the nation's gun laws won't be of much comfort. At best, the law would require purchasers to shell out $200 in tax (above the $395 retail price), rather than the normal $5 tax applied to most guns -- as this would fall into the "any other weapon" category. Chances are concealed-carry permits would be needed in states requiring them, even if the weapon is carried in "plain sight."

Ideal Conceal says it's already received 2,500 emails from interested customers, which is really a very small percentage of gun owners. Despite this weapon's niche status, we can expect to see more law enforcement officials and legislators expressing their concern in the near future, possibly in the form of badly-written bills filled with broad wording and unintended consequences.

But the broader harm won't be felt by law enforcement. It will be felt by citizens "armed" with actual cell phones, who will find their devices confiscated more frequently, possibly with the assistance of deadly force.

Pissed Consumer has uncovered an apparent abuse of the court system by reputation management firms. Getting allegedly defamatory links delisted by Google requires a court order, which is something very few people can actually obtain. But the plaintiffs featured in this Pissed Consumer post seem to have no trouble acquiring these -- often within a few days of filing their lawsuits.

So far, we have collected 11 cases filed in the Superior Court of Contra Costa County in the State of California, where a very suspicious plaintiff files a lawsuit for defamation on one or several third party websites. The lawsuit is filed for a particular Plaintiff, while benefit (removal from search engine) is obtained by another business entity.

Below is just part of the list of cases filed with this court.


What's interesting about all of these cases is how quickly they reach a resolution -- and always in favor of the plaintiff.


In this case it was three weeks. In a normal defamation case, the plaintiff would be lucky to have been granted permission to pursue discovery of the anonymous poster's real identity by this point. But in these cases, not only has the person been identified, but they've also entered a sworn statement admitting their guilt. With this judgment in hand, the plaintiffs approach Google and have the "defamatory" links delisted. (Nearly) instant SEO win.

This suspicious timeline is reflected in other cases filed in the same court.

Now, since it is an anonymous review, let’s ask ourselves a question: how did Attorney Mascott find a defendant in this case without subpoenaing PissedConsumer for their identity? Did he just get lucky? How was Demoin Stroman III, the Defendant in this case, was located just one day after the case had been filed; and not only was located, but also managed to almost immediately provide AttorneyMascott with his fully executed Affidavit? Now, if it were a single case, we could say all this was possible. However, when we are looking at 11 (! ELEVEN ) cases in Contra Costa county in California with exactly the same pattern, it “all this” starts looking quite suspicious…

Just as suspicious is the fact that the defamed party apparently knew the defamer (found him in one day!) but still chose to go through the court system, rather than have the defamer provide a notarized letter to Pissed Consumer directly to get the original review taken down, rather than just the Google search results.

But this is all about cleaning up search results, rather than actually hunting down the real people behind the anonymous Pissed Consumer postings. The court order obtained in this case doesn't even refer to the original posting, nor its actual URL.

The allegedly defamatory statements as presented in the Final Judgment are actually not on the PissedConsumer page that is being removed. Whoever the perpetrators are in this case, their approach was to get Google to de-index the PissedConsumer listing (sub-domain page) for keyword ‘Reputation Defender’.

The text shown in paragraph g. above is the only text that can be assumed to be referred to in the case – “they lie” – verbatim text in the review (Review ID 203379) actually says “Reputation Defender lies…” based on the context of the case. This is only our assumption, since we did not find the exact text on http://reputation-defender.pissedconsumer.com. The language “Reputation Defender lies…” is actually a part of the review –http://reputation-defender.pissedconsumer.com/reputation-defender-lies-20101019203379.html– that was posted anonymously in 2010.

Another company whose web presence used to be defined by negative reviewshas cleaned up its search results using the Contra Costa court system. There's only the smallest indication on the first page of Google search results that something might be off.


That link leads to this takedown request and court order. Once again, the targeted URL is not the negative review, but the entire subdomain referring to BlueGreen Resorts (http://bluegreen-resorts.pissedconsumer.com). And, again, the sworn statement from the supposed defamer was obtained in two days, putting this on the fast track for a judgment in favor of the plaintiff Majestic Vacations (which doesn't even exist according to California business records). In a normal case, any forward movement would still be months away. The docket for this case shows a case management conference set for July 13… which has now been nullified by the speedy delivery of a sworn admission of guilt.

In the case of RepDefense Solutions suing on behalf of Reputation Defender, that "company" was "formed" on the same day its lawsuit was filed: February 2nd. Just as attorney Owen Mascott's link to any reputation management firm cannot be determined at this point, nominal company figurehead "Monica Andersen" is a similar dead end.

The two attorneys behind the filings Pissed Consumer uncovered have had their licenses suspended multiple times. What appears to be happening here -- fake companies suing fake defamers -- should result in further discipline, if anyone can tie the two to a reputation management firm… or to the defendants who are always magically located and convinced to sign statements with a couple of days of filing.

These two are apparently helping questionable businesses paper over their dismal reputations with possibly fraudulently-obtained court orders. Unfortunately, courts can be manipulated just like search engine results by those willing to try anything to clean up their online reputation. Putting more eyes on this shady reputation management tactic will hopefully expose the entity behind it.

Yesterday, at the excellent RightsCon event in San Francisco, Senator Ron Wyden gave a barn burner of a speech, in which he detailed why it was so important to protect our privacy and security in a digital age, at a time when law enforcement and the intelligence communities are digging deeper and deeper into all of our personal information. He started out with a clear and emphatic statement on how he will block any attempt by Congress to undermine encryption:

I am here to tell you why I will use every power I have as a senator to block plans to weaken strong encryption. I am here to tell you why FBI Director Comey’s plans and expected legislation will be a lose-lose - they would lead to less security and less liberty

Furthermore, he made it clear that anyone who says that this just a debate between privacy and security has it totally wrong:

And let me be clear at the outset that the debate about data security is not about choosing security or choosing privacy. It is about choosing less security or choosing more security. People who think that the government should have more surveillance powers will often try to frame this debate as a choice between privacy and security. They are wrong. Our job is to convince the public that when politicians or the news media say that, we are here to tell you it’s not the case. It’s less security versus more security.

He further pointed out that, contrary to the claims of James Comey and others in law enforcement, this is the "golden age of surveillance" in that modern technologies have given law enforcement much more access to private information than they've ever had before. And he compared the freakout claims from law enforcement to similar claims 50 years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that law enforcement had to read people their rights -- and law enforcement and the media insisted this would lead to much more criminal activity:

I think that it is useful to compare this discussion to another one that was playing out fifty years ago. Fifty years ago this summer, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in the case of Miranda vs. Arizona, in which the Court ruled that before law enforcement officers interrogate a suspect, they must advise that person of his or her constitutional rights. Everyone who’s ever watched a TV cop show knows this – you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney, and so forth. Today, this is a very important feature of the American justice system. It helps ensure that poor people know that they have the same rights under the law as rich people who can afford high-priced lawyers. And it helps reduce the likelihood of innocent people who are unsure about their rights being pressured to sign false confessions. The Miranda ruling helped bring our country closer to the promise of equal justice for all.

But if you had been following the public debate back in the summer of 1966, you would have heard a lot of politicians and prosecutors saying that the sky was falling. A few weeks after the decision, a New York Times headline read “Miranda Decision Said to End Effective Use of Confessions.” The article quoted some of the most respected prosecutors and law enforcement officials in the country warning that this decision was an absolute catastrophe. Future president Richard Nixon called the ruling a “Dickensian legalism” that would “hamstring” law enforcement, and he even suggested that the Constitution should be amended to overturn it.

Needless to say, the sky did not fall. In fact, crime rates have been dropping for the past twenty or thirty years. The national murder rate and burglary rate are both lower than they were the day that the Miranda ruling was handed down. Obviously there are a lot of factors that go into crime rates, but I think it’s clear that despite all of the dire warnings from both politicians and respected law enforcement officials, this ruling did not lead to the end of law enforcement in America. Fifty years later, the Miranda ruling remains a cornerstone of American due process.

From there, he announced what he's calling a new "Compact for Privacy and Security in the Digital Age" with four key prongs:

• Protecting strong encryption to safeguard Americans’ private data. Wyden’s Secure Data Act would ban the government from forcing companies to build backdoors or otherwise weaken the security of their products.
• Overhauling the Third Party Doctrine to make clear individuals do not lose their privacy rights just because they share some of their personal information with a particular company.
• Increasing transparency by holding at least three congressional hearings each year on the privacy impacts of surveillance laws, authorities and practices.
• Being on high alert for fresh attempts to undermine checks on government power. Right now the Justice Department is seeking a change to the rules for getting warrants to track computer hackers that would allow DOJ to use a single warrant to remotely access any computer that a suspected hacker is believed to have broken into. This rule change could potentially allow federal investigators to use a single warrant to access millions of computers, and it would treat the victims of the hack the same as the hacker himself.
• Finally, the government must do much more to hire people who understand technology and the implications of weakening digital security and privacy.

He spent some time in his speech blasting the concept of the third party doctrine and how ridiculous it is in practice:

Here’s the problem. A few decades ago, courts began ruling that if you provide information to a third party, like your bank or your phone company, you are no longer keeping it private, and it is no longer protected under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

There is a huge, glaring problem with that logic. When you share your information with a single private company, that is not the same thing as making it public. Your phone company may have records of who you call, and your bank may have records of how you spend your money, but your contract with them will have rules for when and how they are allowed to share that information. They are not allowed to just disclose it freely.

This is true in the digital world as well. When I post a handsome new profile picture on Facebook, or send out a tweet to tell people that I’m holding a town hall in Oregon, I’ve chosen to make that information public. But when I send an email to my wife, or store a document in the cloud so I can work on it later, my service provider and I have an agreement that my information will stay private. The premise in current law is that I have agreed to make that information public just because my service provider is holding it. And that premise is simply absurd.

It's yet another great speech on an important topic from Senator Wyden -- and he includes a call to action to get people who support this vision to speak out on it. As it stands right now there are a few others in Congress who get how important all of this is, but many do not. And that needs to change. And while many people will be quite cynical about this and say that we'll never get others in Congess to recognize this issue, Senator Wyden reminded everyone that many people had the same view about SOPA/PIPA and the public eventually shifted Congress' position on that as well:

We can win this fight for security and liberty. It obviously won’t be easy, but we’ve done it before. Remember in the January of 2012, we were talking about the anti-Internet SOPA and PIPA bills. The first vote was on whether to override my hold on PIPA. Talk about long odds. The Chamber of Commerce, Hollywood, all the powerful special interests were against us. When that debate started, no one gave us a chance. Then the Internet community mobilized. Websites went dark in protest. And when the dust settled, well, everyone here knows how that ended. We won. Let’s work together and do it again.

While I do worry about the tendency of some to always roll out the "SOPA example" as proof, it is true that when enough people speak up, all the lobbyists and money in the world can be defeated. And this is a time when it would be nice to see that happen again.

The rise in public awareness of the dangers of corporate sovereignty provisions in agreements like TPP and TAFTA/TTIP has brought with it a collateral benefit: academics are starting to explore its effects in greater depth. An example is a new paper from Krzysztof J. Pelc, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, at McGill University in Canada. Called "Does the Investment Regime Induce Frivolous Litigation?" (pdf), it looks at how the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism has evolved in recent years, and in a very troubling direction.

Along the way, the paper explores one of the central arguments made by those supporting the inclusion of corporate sovereignty chapters in major agreements: investors lose most of the claims that they bring against governments, so ISDS is really nothing to worry about. But Pelc identifies a key question posed by this line of thinking:

Why would investors continue to file these highly costly cases, if the expected success rate is so low?

In fact, things turn out to be even more mysterious:

Current estimates actually overstate investors' success rates, especially when it comes to specific types of legal claims. What is more, this rate of success has been dropping precipitously over time -- the exact opposite trend to the one we observe in inter-state disputes in the trade regime over the same period.

By analyzing 1421 individual claims in 676 investment disputes from 1993 to present day, Pelc discovered that most disputes are over what are claimed to be instances of indirect expropriation by governments. That's in contrast to the traditional direct kind, for example when dictators send their armed thugs to throw foreign investors out of a factory they own -- something that almost never happens these days. Indirect expropriation is claimed by companies to include things like enforcing higher standards for drug patents, or simply trying to protect key water supplies from pollution. Pelc explains why investors are doing this, even though the odds of winning are low:

The cost of investor-state litigation -- far higher than the cost of, e.g., trade litigation -- means that firms may benefit from spillover effects of the challenges they bring forth. When Philip Morris challenged Australia's labeling regulations, New Zealand put its own labeling legislation on hold, and Philip Morris loudly praised the decision. If litigation exerts a sufficient deterrent effect, firms may benefit even when they lose a case. The result is an increased likelihood of frivolous litigation, where the purpose of a challenge is not so much to win the dispute or obtain compensation, as it is to deter further regulation.

Pelc says his analysis shows this kind of "frivolous" corporate sovereignty litigation is becoming more common:

Firms are litigating more and more, and they are winning less and less. To wit, investors win less than 10% of the indirect expropriation claims they bring against democratic countries. The design of the regime, which allows private standing [whereby private firms or individuals can themselves decide to bring a lawsuit against governments], has contributed to such frivolity: compared with analogous regimes like international trade, it features little of the restraint that exists in dispute settlement between sovereign states.

The fact that corporations can sue nations under ISDS without needing to ask permission, or to satisfy any pre-conditions, makes it particularly easy to bring "frivolous" claims against democratic governments purely in the hope that doing so will chill further regulations, rather than with any serious hope of winning substantial damages. Of course, the fact that such awards are also available represents an additional incentive to file lots of corporate sovereignty challenges, however weak. Pelc points out another feature of ISDS that encourages companies to bring even the most frivolous cases: the absence of reciprocity -- the risk that they will be sued back. In fact:

The only cost they face from a legal challenge is the cost of counsel -- which in the case of the investment regime, in particular, remains quite high. Yet they need not worry about possible retaliatory challenges, or the reputational costs of belligerence. Quite the opposite, a reputation as an aggressive claimant may work to a multinational company’s net benefit.

That kind of behavior is evident in the ISDS cases brought by Philip Morris against both Australia and Uruguay. They are clearly designed to establish the multinational company as a determined litigator in order to discourage other countries from bringing in new regulations to reduce tobacco consumption.

Pelc's paper is an important contribution to the field because it reveals the oft-repeated claim that corporate sovereignty is really nothing to worry about because investors rarely win as deeply misleading: investors do not need to win formal victories in ISDS tribunals in order to triumph in the wider world outside. It also shows that the one-sided nature of corporate sovereignty -- where companies can sue nations, but not the other way around -- not only tilts the playing field unfairly towards investors, but encourages them to abuse the system even further. Both are compelling reasons to drop corporate sovereignty chapters in trade agreements completely.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Last year, we wrote about a lawsuit Lionsgate Studios had initiated against TD Ameritrade over a throwaway line at the end of one of the latter's advertising spots. That commercial included the line, "Nobody puts your old 401(k) in the corner," an imperfect parody of a famous line from Dirty Dancing, the rights for which are owned by Lionsgate. The fact that the ad was no longer running at the time of the lawsuit, nor the fact that Lionsgate was in no way involved in the investment business, failed to keep the studio from claiming this was trademark infringement. The studio even went so far as to hilariously claim that consumers would be confused into thinking that TD Ameritrade either had rights to the movie or was in some way affiliated with Lionsgate Studios.

It seems the court wasn't buying this argument any more than we did, having now ruled against Lionsgate Studios and giving it a little verbal lashing for trying to dress up what looks to be chiefly a copyright infringement claim as a trademark claim.

"The Court cannot see how this is different from a copyright infringement claim, or a claim that Defendants have failed to obtain the permission of the author of the 'idea, concept or communication embodied in those goods' ... Plaintiff alleges that this would cause consumer confusion as to Lions Gate’s association with the TD Defendants and their services. But this exact claim and theory can and is made in Plaintiff’s copyright infringement cause of action: that the protected elements of Dirty Dancing, including the line 'Nobody puts Baby in a corner,' were publicly used without the authorization of the sole licensor of Dirty Dancing, Lions Gate."

The reason Lionsgate dressed this up as a trademark issue is that allowed it to assert that TD Ameritrade was falsely associating itself with the movie studio, its property, and/or unfairly competing with it. With the court correctly requiring the studio to assert this as a copyright infringement claim, if it asserts anything at all, the only real tests are whether or not TD Ameritrade's advertisement appropriated Lionsgate Studios' work as its own by parodying the line. Which of course means that Fair Use will come into play, as it is certainly an appropriate defense here.

Lionsgate can still pursue TD Ameritrade for allegedly committing copyright infringement, but that's not without its challenges: The studio will have to show the ad featured substantially similar expression as its movie, and even if the judge buys that TD Ameritrade's ad is a rip-off of Dirty Dancing, the defendant can argue its commercial is a protected parody as it had fair use to the copyrighted material. Defending against origin claims would have presented a more slippery defense for the brokerage company.

In other words, Lionsgate, in the interest of defending its own intellectual property rights, chose to debase those same rights by asserting them improperly. This is a common theme for the maximalists out there, of course, to see them abuse the rights they claim to value. Still, it's nice to see a court get this right.

Organ transplant procedures are becoming amazingly complex and reliable. Still, it's a good idea to try to keep your original equipment in good working order. But if you do start having an organ fail on you, it's nice to know there are some options -- and the options are getting better. Here are just a few advances in getting donor organs that don't necessarily involve other people dying.

• Tens of thousands of people are on a waiting list for a kidney transplant because it's not easy to find a matching donor. About 3,000 new patients are added to the list (in the US alone) each month, but a new procedure called desensitization could make organ rejection far less common -- and improve the odds for people looking for a kidney transplant. This method could also be suitable for other organ transplants, but it requires a living donor -- so it's a bit easier to find "spare" kidneys than, say, livers. [url]
• Roughly 4,000 patients in the US are waiting for a heart transplant. Growing a heart from stem cells in a lab might be possible someday, and researchers have gotten a tiny step closer to doing so. It's just not easy to grow tens of billions of cells into a functioning adult heart -- unless you're a baby. [url]
• There are "farms" already trying to grow human tissue inside pigs and sheep -- perhaps developing a way to grow human hearts, kidneys, livers or any other organ on demand. These "human-animal chimeras" aren't being funded with federal NIH funds, but there are other agencies and research groups working on "humanized" animals. Lab mice have been successfully altered to grow a rat pancreas, so it's likely that other animals should be able to grow viable human organs as well. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

This is refreshing. A very stupidly-written law is the basis for evidence suppression in a drug arrest. Not only does the conviction vanish, but so does the law (more or less), thanks to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Looking down at your phone while driving in Indiana is no longer a crime. The Seventh Circuit US Court of Appeals set that precedent last week in dismissing charges against Gregorio Paniagua-Garcia, a man who glanced at his phone while behind the wheel on September 27, 2014. Under Indiana law, it is unlawful to use a cell phone to type, send or read a text message or e-mail while driving. All other uses of the phone are perfectly acceptable.

Because drivers are still free to perform other actions arguably more dangerous than texting (watching movies, browsing the web, reading ebooks, etc.), police officers cannot reasonably suspect that any driver they pass whose eyes appear to be focused on a device (rather than the road) are performing an illegal act.

An Indiana police officer, in the course of passing a car driven by Gregorio Paniagua-Garcia (whom for the sake of brevity we’ll call just Paniagua) on an interstate highway, saw that the driver was holding a cellphone in his right hand, that his head was bent toward the phone, and that he “appeared to be texting.” Paniagua denies that he was texting, the officer has never explained what created the appearance of texting as distinct from any one of the multiple other—lawful—uses of a cellphone by a driver, and the government now concedes that Paniagua was not texting—that as he told the officer he was just searching for music. An examination of his cellphone revealed that it hadn’t been used to send a text message at the time the officer saw him fussing with the cellphone.

So, Paniagua's actions were actually lawful under the terrible law, but the officer used it as a basis for a traffic stop that ultimately resulted in the discovery of five pounds of heroin. As the court notes, the paper-thin basis for the stop is undermined by the law's absurd focus on one device-related activity.

No fact perceptible to a police officer glancing into a moving car and observing the driver using a cellphone would enable the officer to determine whether it was a permitted or a forbidden use.

Using this law as the basis for stops is unreasonable. The court points out that lousy laws make for bad policing and a whole host of civil liberties violations.

The government failed to establish that the officer had probable cause or a reasonable suspicion that Paniagua was violating the no-texting law. The officer hadn’t seen any texting; what he had seen was consistent with any one of a number of lawful uses of cellphones. The government presented no evidence of what percentage of drivers text, and is thus reduced to arguing that a mere possibility of unlawful use is enough to create a reasonable suspicion of a criminal act. But were that so, police could always, without warrant or reasonable suspicion, search a random pedestrian for guns or narcotics. For it would always be possible that the pedestrian was a bank robber, a hired killer on the loose, a drug lord or drug addict, or a pedophile with child pornography on his thumb drive. “A suspicion so broad that [it] would permit the police to stop a substantial portion of the lawfully driving public … is not reasonable.”

The opinion dismantles the government's arguments with aplomb, taking apart each assertion made to defend a drug bust predicated on something that doesn't even approach "reasonable" suspicion. Extending the government's logic to other possibly illegal acts, the court points out the government's reliance on this terrible law is woefully misguided. Since the government can't possibly know how many people looking at their phones while driving are performing illegal acts, it can't base traffic stops on nothing more than the mere possibility something illegal may be happening.

Consider now that some drivers don’t have a driver’s license, or their license has expired. The logic of the government’s position is that either possibility, however slight, justifies the police officer in suspecting that the driver is not authorized to drive and in ordering him to pull over.

The opinion doesn't go so far as to call the law unconstitutional or ask for it to be rewritten, but it does point out the legislation's narrow coverage of a single action (texting) renders the entire law useless. Indiana law enforcement should no longer have any confidence that stops based on this perceived violation will hold up in court.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel ushered in a new age of law enforcement/city transparency recently by opening his mouth and saying words to that effect. This followed the city/law enforcement sitting on the recordings of a highly-controversial shooting by police officers for more than a year.

Maybe Chicago's government will be more open going forward. It certainly isn't applying this new transparency retroactively. The Better Government Association has just filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department for refusing to turn over other recordings of fatal shootings by police officers, which would seem to be in direct opposition of the mayor's statements.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he supports a new policy requiring that videos of fatal shootings by Chicago police be publicly released relatively soon after the incidents.

But the Emanuel administration is stonewalling a Better Government Association request for footage from the past five years, so the BGA is suing the Chicago Police Department – again.

Under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act – the state law known as FOIA that guarantees public access to public records within no more than 10 business days – the BGA asked the police department for copies of records and videos of officer-involved fatal shootings since 2011.

Welcome to Sunshine Week: The Hangover. Sunshine Week -- the yearly, mostly-ironic celebration of government openness and transparency -- wrapped up at the end of last week. FOIA requests briefly spiked to carpet-bombing levels in celebration. Now, everyone gets to participate in the less fun aspects of FOIAing: waiting, appealing, waiting, waiting some more, and possibly lawyering up.

You'd think the Chicago PD would want to get a jump on its new, sunshiny outlook on life. It certainly owes at least that much to the city's taxpayers. Not only are taxpayers funding the police force, but they're also paying for their misdeeds. The Chicago PD -- one of the few government entities to have the audacity to run a domestic "black site" -- has racked up $662 million on lawsuit settlements in the last decade. The city's fucked pension plan system is ensuring that the next generation of Chicagoans -- and their neighboring Illinoians -- will be on the hook for the last generation's bad cops as well.

As for the Better Government Association, this refusal to cooperate with public records requests is just the same old police force, operating under the same old mayor.

This marks the fourth lawsuit the BGA has filed since 2014 against the police department, which is overseen by the mayor and well known for violating FOIA by ignoring, delaying or wrongly denying records requests.

The Chicago PD claims there's "insufficient public interest" to compel it to produce recordings of fatal shootings by its officers -- of which there have been more than 70 since 2011. I guess it has a very different definition of "public interest," as there was certainly massive amounts of public interest in the last shooting video it released -- one that was captured on recording equipment likely tampered with by officers on the scene.

The mayor's office is no better. It's been fending off FOIA requests for emails contained on Rahm Emanuel's personal phone, as well as other emails related to a no-bid school contract that is currently the subject of a federal investgation. Emanuel talked big about a "new era of transparency." One wonders who it was meant to apply to.

This isn't just Chicago and its police force. It's New York and its police force. It's a majority of federal government agencies. The DOJ still has unanswered requests from 1993 lying around. FOIA reform is an annual project for legislators, and every year the efforts are dismantled by agencies deathly afraid of additional transparency or accountability.

For the most part, this is what using your right to information looks like: a well-lit hallway that suddenly funnels into a dark hole with a padlocked door at the end. What should be a worst case scenario -- a public records lawsuit -- is far too often seen as a perfectly acceptable alternative to actually, you know, following the law.